ohp the Martian." Gargantuan laughter rocked him. "I am
your god, Earthmen. Bow down to me!"

"Damfido," said Jerry, which was evidently all he could manage to get
out of "Damned if I do."

"Drop your weapons on the floor," said the being.

Pink drew his gun; casually he sighted on the great head above him, and
risked one shot, which had all the effect of a sunbeam; then he let the
pistol fall. The others discarded theirs. The naked creature reached out
a foot and herded the weapons into a corner. "You can't hurt me with
them," he said, "but you might try suicide, and I need you. Take heart,
mortals," he said, laughing, "you may get out alive!"

Then he dwindled and his lines blurred into ephemera and he slid out
through the door, which was open perhaps an inch.

CHAPTER VII

"But by all that's holy," said Daley (it was an hour later, and the
eight were gathered in the control room, Kinkare now bandaged and
relieved of pain, but unable to speak), "if he's a brain-picker, and got
his lingo out of our minds, who did he get 'take heart mortals' from?"
The lieutenant glanced at Pinkham. "It may seem little, but it's
minutiae that will give us clues to his nature, and therefore how to
fight him. Take heart, mortals, after all. Who talks like that?"

"You're right," said Pink wearily. "It's little things we've got to look
for. Like, evidently, gin bottles."

"Item," said Jerry, who was eating a sandwich. "He's composed of
something alien to any life we know. Gas? I doubt it. Atomic shock would
disseminate gas. Are his molecules loose and do they edge aside for
obstacles, compress together when he wants to shrink, and so on?
Possible. But anyhow, he's different--and so far as we know,
invulnerable."

"How did he gimmick the guns?" asked Calico, a note of desperation in
his voice. "We picked them up as soon as he'd gone, and they wouldn't
fire."

"Same way he gimmicked the intercom, the life-scanner, the space drive.
Known hereafter as Unknown Method One."

"Another item," went on Jerry. "He talks English without using a
lingoalter. Thus, probably, he's telepathic. 'Take heart mortals' he
might have grubbed out of somebody's subconscious."

"It adds up to this," said Pink. "We're helpless against him. Granting
this, I say let's go get him."

It made no sense, it was the gesture of fools in love with death or of
madmen battling their own futility; but every officer there shouted,
"Right!" Except for Joe