ed recklessly at the monster.

A mighty, dimly seen claw caught it, hurled it back across the room.
It lay still, broken, whimpering.

For a moment the thing had lifted its weight from Thad's body. And
Thad slipped quickly from beneath it, flung himself across the room,
snatched up the welding tool.

In an instant the creature was upon him again. But he met it with the
incandescent electrode. He was crouched in a corner, now, where it
could come at him from only one direction. Its claws still slashed at
him ferociously. But he was able to cling to the weapon, and meet each
onslaught with hot metal.

Gradually its mad attacks weakened. Then one of his blind, thrusting
blows seemed to burn into a vital organ. A terrible choking,
strangling sound came from the air. And he heard the thrashing
struggles of wild convulsions. At last all was quiet. He prodded the
thing again and again with the hot electrode, and it did not move. It
was dead.

The creature's body was so heavy that Thad had to return to the
bridge, and shut off the current in the gravity plates along the keel,
before he could move it. He dragged it to the lock through which he
had entered the flier, and consigned it to space....

* * * * *

Five days later Thad brought the _Red Dragon_ into the atmosphere of
Mars. A puzzled pilot came aboard, in response to his signals, and
docked the flier safely at Helion. Thad went down into the hold again,
with the astonished port authorities who had come aboard to inspect
the vessel.

Again he passed among the grotesque and outrageous monsters in the
hold, leading the gasping officers. While they marveled at the
treasure, he lifted the weirdly embellished lid of the coffer of white
crystal, and looked once more upon the still form of the girl within
it.

Pity stirred him. An ache came in his throat.

Linda Cross, so quiet and cold and white, and yet so lovely. How
terrible her last days of life must have been, with doom shadowing the
vessel, and the men vanishing mysteriously, one by one!
Terrible--until she had sought the security of death.

Strangely, Thad felt no great elation at the thought that half the
incalculable treasure about him was now safely his own, as the award
of salvage. If only the girl were still living.... He felt a
poignantly keen desire to hear her voice.

Thad found the note when they started to lift her from the chest. A
hasty scrawl, it lay beneath her