. Both he and his guest stared toward
the graceful shaft of the Vulcan, now fully silhouetted against the
whole tremendous bulk of Jupiter, sitting like a titanic scarlet egg
upon the horizon of Callisto. The Jupiter light flooded the vitrite
garden, gave the plants there, chosen with an eye to this, strange,
exotic, glowing colors, flushed Negu Mah and Sliss with a ruby
radiance.

Towards that dark, waiting craft the two they had watched were even now
stealing, tense with the weight of their daring and their crime. In a
moment they would reach her, enter her, actuate machinery that was
miraculous in its complex simplicity, and be gone then on the wings it
gave them into the concealing embrace of universal space.

"You see, my friend Sliss," Negu Mah said finally, "Nanlo is beautiful,
but there is nothing within. Her beauty deceived me. I thought that
where such loveliness existed, there must be a soul to animate it. I
was wrong. She is like an imitation gem--beautiful on the surface,
paste within. Yet the mistake was mine, and I did not blame her. I
indulged her, and still hoped that something real would bloom within
her."

He drained the molkai in his mug, one great gulp, and slumped back.

"The young man, too, Hugh Neils. I thought he would be a companion for
her. But he too is weak. Yet they say they love each other. They
swear--we heard them--that they want only each other and their love for
all time."

Sliss blinked, twice, and Negu Mah nodded.

"Yes," he said. "If they carry out their plans as we heard them, that
feeling will soon go. The sale of the Vulcan, even as stolen property,
would give them many credits. After that--luxury, self-indulgence. And
their natures are too weak to withstand the ravages of such things. So
I have been troubled to know what to do.

"You see, my friend from Venus, though I would have let Nanlo go had
she asked me, my own honor is at stake when she seeks to deal me an
injury by slipping away in the night, and stealing from me the Vulcan.
She is doing evil, and must be punished. The young man, too--indulgent
as I am, I can not let him dishonor me thus without paying any
penalty."

Sliss' eye membranes shut, questioningly.

"Yet," the uranium merchant went on, "I have a fondness for Nanlo. I
will not prevent her from doing as she has chosen to do, for the intent
would still be there, and knowing it as I do, all between us is over. I
can not aid her to fulfill her plans, eit