appearance. Intuitively the
three knew that one of them was to be chosen for a first investigation
by the Martian scientists, and that that one would have not even the
slender hope of escape open to the other two. A strange lottery of
life and death!

* * * * *

Randall saw the creature's gaze turn from one to another of them, and
then heard the hiss of his voice as he pointed a taloned paw toward
Milton. Instantly two of the guards had seized Milton and had jerked
him out from the wall, the other guards holding back Randall and
Lanier with threatening tubes. It was upon Milton that the fatal
choice had fallen!

Randall and Lanier made together a half-movement forward, but Milton,
a tense message in his eyes, forced them back. The guards who held the
physicist led him, at the direction of the Martian scientist, toward a
great upright frame at the room's far end, upon which were clustered a
score of dial-indicators. From these flexible cords led; and now the
scientists began attaching these by clips to various spots on Milton's
body. Some mechanical examination of his bodily characteristics were
apparently to be made. Milton shot suddenly a glance at the two by the
wall, and his head nodded in an almost imperceptible signal. The
muscles of Lanier and Randall tensed.

Then abruptly Milton seemed to go mad. He shouted aloud in a terrible
voice, and at the same moment tore from him the cords just attached,
his fists striking out then at the amazed Martians around him. As they
leaped back from that sudden explosion of activity and sound on
Milton's part the guards before Randall and Lanier whirled
instinctively for an instant toward it. And in that instant the two
had leaped.

* * * * *

It was upward they leaped, with all the force of their earthly
muscles, toward the big window-opening a half-dozen feet in the wall
above them. Like released steel springs they sat up, and Randall heard
the thump of their feet as they struck the opening's sill, heard wild
cries suddenly coming from beneath them, as the guards turned back
toward them. Crimson rays clove up like light toward them, but the
instant's surprise had been enough, and in it they had leaped on and
through the opening, into the outside night!

As they shot downward and struck the metal paving outside, Randall
heard a wild babble of cries from inside. A moment he and Lanier gazed
frenziedly around t