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He heard someone call: “I got him. He fell off the rock. We’ll take him back down below.”

Then another voice–ominously. “He won’t mind. He’ll be glad we did it for him–afterwards.”

“I’ll go get him,” said the first voice. The man stepped around the side of the boulder–just in time to have a hard-pitched rock come thunking into his midsection.

“Oof!” he grunted, took a couple of steps backwards, and collapsed.

Five down. Fifty-four to go. It could go on forever this way.

“What’s the matter?” asked the man who had replied to the first one with those chilling words.

“Nothing,” said Wayne, in a fair imitation of the prostrate crewman’s voice. “He’s heavy. Come help me.”

Then he reached down and picked up the fallen man’s beam gun. He took careful aim.

When the sixth man stepped around the rock, he fired. The beam went wide of the mark, slowing the other down, and Wayne charged forward. He pounded two swift punches into the amazed crewman, who responded with a woozy, wild blow. Wayne ducked and let the fist glide past his ear, then came in hard with a solid body-blow and let the man sag to the ground. He took a deep breath.

Six down and only fifty-three to go.

* * * * *

He crawled back to the edge of the precipice and peered down into the valley. There was no one to be seen. It was obvious that Colonel Petersen was still enforcing the six-man rule.

As he watched, he saw the airlock door open. A spacesuited figure scrambled down the ladder and sprinted across the deadly sand of the valley floor.

It was Sherri! Wayne held his breath, expecting at any moment that one of the little monsters beneath the sand would sink its vicious needle upward into Sherri’s foot. But her stride never faltered.

As she neared the precipice, another figure appeared at the airlock door and took aim with a gun.

Wayne thumbed his own needle-beam pistol up to full and fired hastily at the distant figure. At that distance, even the full beam would only stun. The figure collapsed backwards into the airlock, and Wayne grinned in satisfaction.

Seven down. Fifty-two to go.

He kept an eye on the airlock door and a finger on his firing stud, waiting to see if anyone else would come out. No one else did.

As soon as Sherri was safely up to the top of the precipice, Wayne ran to meet her.

“Sherri! What the devil did you come out here for?”

“I had to see you,” she said, panting for breath. “If you’ll come back to the ship before they beam you down, we can prove to Colonel Petersen that you’re all right. We can show them that the Masters–“

She realized suddenly what she said and uttered a little gasp. She had her pistol out before the surprised Wayne could move.

He stared coldly at the pistol, thinking bitterly that this was a hell of a way for it all to finish. “So they got you too,” he said. “That little display at the airlock was a phony. You were sent out here to lure me back into the ship. Just another Judas.”

She nodded slowly. “That’s right,” she said. “We all have to go to the Masters. It is–it–is–is–“

Her eyes glazed, and she swayed on her feet. The pistol wavered and swung in a feeble spiral, no longer pointed at Wayne. Gently, he took it from her nerveless fingers and caught her supple body as she fell.

He wiped his forehead dry. Up above, the sun was climbing toward the top of the sky, and its beams raked the planet below, pouring down heat.

* * * * *