pered.

Another voice sounded behind him and the Very Young Man knew that a man
was coming up along the passageway from the front entrance. Targo's men!
He remembered now the skulking figure he had seen outside the house.
There were more than two, for now he heard other voices, and some one
calling Targo's name.

He held the girl closer and stood motionless. Like rats in a trap, he
thought. He felt the fingers of his right hand holding something heavy.
It was a piece of stone--the stone he had looked at through the
microscope--the stone with which he had struck Targo. He smiled to
himself, and slipped it into his pocket.

The girl had slowly pulled him over to the inner wall of the room. The
footsteps came closer. They would be here in a moment. The Very Young
Man wondered how he should fight them all; then he thought of the knife
that was still in the murdered man's body. He thought he ought to get it
now while there was still time. He heard a click and the wall against
which he and the girl were leaning yielded with their weight. A door
swung open--a door the Very Young Man had not seen before. The girl
pulled him through the doorway, and swung the door softly closed behind
them.

The Very Young Man found himself now in a long, narrow room with a very
high ceiling. It had, apparently, no other door, and no windows. It was
evidently a storeroom--piled high with what looked like boxes, and with
bales of silks and other fabrics.

The Very Young Man looked around him hastily. Then he let go of the
girl, and, since locks were unknown in this world, began piling as many
heavy objects as possible against the door. The girl tried to help him,
but he pushed her away. Once he put his ear to the door and listened. He
heard voices outside in the strange Oroid tongue.

The girl stood beside him. "They are lifting Targo up. He speaks; he is
not dead," she whispered.

For several minutes they stood there listening. The voices continued in
a low murmur. "They'll know we are in here," said the Very Young Man
finally, in an undertone. "Is there any other way out of this room?"

The girl shook her head. The Very Young Man forgot the import of her
answer, and suddenly found himself thinking she was the prettiest girl
he had ever seen. She was hardly more than sixteen, with a slender, not
yet matured, yet perfectly rounded little body. She wore, like Lylda, a
short blue silk tunic, with a golden cord crossing her breast and
enci