was in a cumbersome prison,
all power of quick movement gone. He was a paralyzed giant, tied to
the soil, the ways of the air hopelessly closed. The slightest step
would cost great effort.

"You have protected yourself well, Lar Tantril," he said slowly.

Now Tantril laughed deeply and unrestrainedly. "Yes, and by Mother
Venus," he cried, "it's good to see you this way, Carse, unarmed and
in my power!" He turned to his circle of men and said: "Poor Hawk!
Can't fly any more! I've put him in a cage! So thoughtful of him to
bring his cage along with him so I could trap him inside it! His own
cage!" He guffawed, shaking, and the others laughed loud.

Through it all Hawk Carse stood motionless, his face cold and graven,
his slender body bent under the burden of the dead suit. He still held
in his right hand, limp by his side, the sheaf of papers and their
all-important figure--and the thumb and forefinger of his hand were
moving, so slowly as to be hardly noticeable, in what seemed to be a
lone sign of nervous tension.

"You know, Carse," Tantril observed after his laugh, "I've been half
expecting you, though I don't see how you knew I was the one who took
those papers you're holding. Dr. Ku radioed me, you see. I think you
were reading his message at the time I entered. Did you finish it?"

"No," said the Hawk.

"You'll find it interesting. Let me read it to you." And Tantril took
up the memo.

"From Ku Sui to Lar Tantril: Search House No. 574 in Port o' Porno
closely for anything pertinent to Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow or
giving clue to his whereabouts. Keep what you obtain for me; I will
come to your ranch in five days. Watch for Hawk Carse, Eliot Leithgow
and a Negro, arriving from space at Satellite III in self-propulsive
space-suits." There followed some details concerning the suits'
mechanism; then: "Carse caused me certain trouble and came near
hurting my major inventions. I want him badly."

* * * * *

At this the adventurer's face tightened; his gray eyes went frosty.
All he and Leithgow had deduced, then, was true. Dr. Ku had survived
the crashing of the asteroid's dome. The mechanisms had also
survived--and certainly the coordinated brains--the brains he, Hawk
Carse, had promised to destroy! Now trapped, it seemed that promise
could never be fulfilled....

Yet even through this torturing thought of a promise unkept, the
Hawk's thumb and forefinger moved in their s