Lolan's shocked eyes flashed to a pair of burning, amused ones. Arzt's broad lips were smiling fixedly. The young officer tried to mask his horror. "Let someone else do it," he countered. "Killing women is out of my line."
"Killing that woman, you mean!" the Commander pounced on him. "I've known what was in your mind all these months. I hoped you'd see the foolishness of it. You're too good a man to lose inside the execution chamber. What's the matter with you, Lolan? Are you deceiving yourself that these damned Venusian dogs are good enough for a Martian officer?"
Hatred swept Lolan suddenly like a flame. With difficulty he held his voice to a flat, deadly hiss. "Good enough! Too good, if you ask me! I'm sick of driving sick men into mines reeking of sulphur fumes, to dig iridite for us to decorate our uniforms with. Tired of seeing them live like animals, in filthy shacks ready to fall in on them or in tenements crawling with vermin. If cracking a bloody whip is what being a Martian officer means, I'm ashamed of being one. I'd change my Sub-Commander's rank here for that of a private back on Mars!"
Arzt's face grew hot and red with a dark suffusion of blood. "The only transfer I'll give you is to Rock Island, on the Fluorine Sea," he grated. "Would that suit you better?"
Lolan's spine crawled. Rock Island was a tiny hump of land in the middle of a sea perpetually blanketed in fogs—fogs laden with deadly fluorine. But someone had to keep the light on that island to guide incoming space-ships. The keepers usually lasted about six weeks. "In other words, I stay here or I die!" he stated flatly.
"Exactly. So let's hear the last of this. If you complain again I'll take it as treason. Remember my orders: In four days I want to see their bodies in the dead-house. If I don't—it will be yours I'll see there!"
Lolan's first chance to examine the bracelet was in the solitude of his room an hour later. He drew all the shades, while a feeling of tension built stiflingly within him. Under the soft glow of a lamp he studied it.
Plainly he traced the outlines of all the buildings in the rambling system of barracks that sprawled over the hill. Rooms had been marked in by someone who knew the set-up. The Martian received a stiff jolt at seeing his room, and Arzt's, marked with X's. Marked for death, he knew!
Lolan's fist closed on the bauble. He let his glance go to the curtained window, seeming to see through and beyond it. A tumult of jarring thoughts rang harsh discordance in his mind. But clear and sharp sounded one note, that his hands must slay Mora and her father or he himself would die. No night-long brain-wracking was needed for him to know that he preferred death to carrying out Arzt's orders. But perhaps ... there was another way!