built a
formidable ranch-house with generators for powerful offensive rays and
a strong defensive ray-web, and manned it with six competent men.
Moreover, he came personally twice a year to transport the cargo of
horn, and let it be known throughout the frontiers that the sign of
the Hawk was on that portion of Iapetus, and that all who trespassed
would have to answer to him. This should have been, ordinarily,
enough. But there was always the sinister, brilliant Dr. Ku Sui,
plotting against him and his belongings, and reckless others to whom
the ranch might look like easy pickings. From these Carse had long
anticipated a raid on Iapetus.

* * * * *

And now he was worried. Clad as usual in a faded blue tunic, open at
the neck, soft blue trousers and old-fashioned rubber soled shoes, he
showed it by pulling occasionally at the bangs of flaxen hair that had
been trained to hang down his forehead to the thick, straw-colored
eyebrows. In his new cruiser, the _Star Devil_, he was within an
hour's time of Iapetus, which lay before the bow observation ports of
the control cabin like a giant buff-tinted orange, dark-splotched by
seas and jungles, on the third of his semi-annual voyages for the
harvest of horn. Away to the left, scintillating and flaming in the
blackness of space, whirled Saturn, his rings clear-cut and brilliant,
his hard light filling the control cabin. Carse was staring unseeingly
at the magnificent spectacle when the giant negro standing nearby at
the space-stick rumbled:

"Well, suh, Ah cain't think they's anything wrong--no, suh. They's
nobody'd _dare_ touch that ranch! No, suh--not Hawk Carse's ranch."

This was "Friday," the herculean black Earthling whom Carse had
rescued years before from one of the Venusian slave-ships, and now a
member of that strange trio of totally dissimilar comrades, the third
of whom was Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow, now absent and at work in
his secret laboratory. Friday thought the Hawk just about the greatest
man in the Solar System, and many times already had he given proof of
his devotion.

Carse looked full at him. "You're a good mechanic, Eclipse," he said,
"but in some ways very innocent. Crane hasn't replied to us for
seventy minutes. He knows we're coming and he should be on duty. That
cargo's valuable, and it's all ready and packed."

"Hmff," Friday grunted. "But who you think'd dare try an' swipe it
when we're so close? One