orms were
scooted empty!

Then came confusion.

There had been screams, but now a crazed voice began crying out
mechanically, over and over:

"Space-suit! Space-suit! Space-suit! Space-suit!"

It came from the second guard, who lay twisting on the ground. His
tongue, by some trick of nervous disorganization, beat out those words
like a voice-disk whose needle keeps skipping its groove--and the
effect was macabre.

* * * * *

The central buildings disgorged a crowd of men. Shorty, wiry,
thin-faced Venusians, each with skewer-blade strapped to his side and
some with ray-guns out, they came scrambling into the open, swearing
and wondering. The second guard's insane repetitions directed most of
them in his direction; and they piled in a crowd around him. They had
no attention for what was happening behind, within the buildings they
had emptied. That was what Hawk Carse had planned.

A voice of authority roared up over the general hubbub.

"Rantol! Guard! Rantol, you fool! What happened? What attacked you?
Cut that crazy yelling! Answer me!--you, Rantol!"

"Space-suit! Space-suit! Space-suit! Space--"

"Lar Tantril!" A man with suspicious eyes caught the attention of the
one who had spoken first. "Space-suit, he says! A flying space-suit!
Only Ku Sui has space-suits that fly; or only Ku Sui _had_ them,
rather. You know what that must mean!"

He paused, peering at his lord. The coarse yellowy skin of Tantril's
brow wrinkled with the thought, then his tusk-like Venusian teeth
showed as his lips drew apart in speech.

"Yes!" Lar Tantril said. "It's _Carse_!"

And he ordered the now silent men around him:

"Circle my house, all of you, your guns ready. You, Esret"--to his
second in command--"out gun and come with me."

* * * * *

Even as Lar Tantril spoke, a giant shape was passing clumsily through
the kitchen of his house. Carse had entered from the rear, unseen.
With gun in hand and eyes sharp he crossed the deserted kitchen with
its foul odors of Venusian cookery. Quickly, his metal-shod feet
creating an unavoidable racket, he was through a connecting door and
into the well-furnished dining room. All was brightly lit; he could
easily have been seen through the window-ports rimming each wall; but
he counted on the confusion outside to keep the Venusians engaged for
several minutes more.

Then he went shuffling into the front room of the house,