vern
floor. The graceful little fellow watched him with understanding and
with a smile of amused tolerance. Then he halted the big Martian with an
imperious motion, addressing him in velvety voice.

"Nazu," he said simply, placing a forefinger on his breast and bowing
before the astonished Mado.

"Imps of the canals!" the Martian exclaimed, grinning delightedly as he
cast a swift look at Carr and Ora. "He's telling me his name." "Mine's
Mado," he said, turning his eyes to the keen gray ones that smiled up at
him. "Mado," he repeated, placing a huge fist against his own chest and
bending his body in awkward imitation of the lad's courtly gesture.

They made no attempt to converse in tongues that would convey no
meaning, but there was no mistaking the quick friendship that sprang up
between the incongruous pair. Mado was the boy's slave from that moment,
and Nazu looked up to the Martian with all of youth's admiration for his
vast bulk and rippling muscles.

Suddenly they were without light and Carr saw that a curtain of woven
rushes had been dropped over the mouth of the cave. There were soft
padding footsteps on every side and he drew back against the rock wall
with Ora clasped in his arms. A sinewy hand grasped his wrist and
twisted his right arm free. He lashed out in the darkness and was
rewarded by a grunt of pain as his fist contacted with an unseen face.
Nazu's voice rose in anguish, and Mado's wrathful bellow was followed by
a frightful commotion as he tore into his assailants.

They were everywhere in the blackness, these slippery little savages of
Titan, their half naked bodies crowding him and stifling him with their
sweaty nearness. Again and again Carr struck out, but it was like
fighting a horde of squirming and clawing feline creatures that swarmed
over him and bore him down by sheer weight of numbers. They dragged Ora
from his arms and quickly overpowered him. Thongs of rawhide twisted
deeply into the flesh of his wrists and he was hauled forth into the
daylight.

* * * * *

Securely tied, hand and foot, Carr was propped sitting with his back to
a huge boulder. He saw they had been carried to the place they had
viewed in the disk of the rulden. A dozen paces away, Ora and Mado sat
similarly bound. The Martian had been gagged as well and Carr was forced
to smile despite the seriousness of the situation. His mad bellowings
must have proved as painful to the ears of the