He turned the gray figurine over and over in his hands. There was a glitter in his eyes now, a glitter of excitement. Things were falling into place in his brain like pieces of a puzzle.
"Examine those images," the girl's voice suddenly ordered. "Do you see any mark on them at all?"
One by one he studied every inch of their surfaces. Abruptly his eyes caught a tiny series of even scratches along the thigh of one of the figurines.
"Ka Ce 54 W," he read slowly.
For a moment silence answered him. Then the voice uttered a low gasp. "It's the first section of the third cypher," she said. "It means ... wait a minute ... it means that the Tombs are in the Dur-Par section of the desert. Jimmy, we've got to go there."
"The Tombs?" he repeated.
"Yes, according to the Chronicles, a secret store of thousands of those parasitical figurines is hidden somewhere out in the Red Desert. The first dynasty Martians, you see, prepared for the emergency which they knew was inevitable, the disappearance of pxar from this planet. That was before they knew of the images' plague properties.
"We've got a race on our hands, Jimmy. Even now the man who first stole the figurines may be heading directly for the Tombs."
Jimmy Starr took out a cheroot, lit it mechanically. Then he voiced a single question. "You must have a personal interest in this matter. What is it?"
She had the answer for that too. "My brother," she said, "is one of the technical officials for the canal-locks project. A murder charge was framed on him, and he was given the alternative of being 'exposed' to the I.P. men or agreeing to accept all the pxar an unidentified source could supply with no questions asked. He has agreed.