"'Your friend is unhurt physically, but mentally he now belongs to Jupiter! His intentions were doubtful when he leaped up here beside Eloli, whom your feeble mind refers to as Allie Lane! I should have killed him instantly!'
"I felt unable to think of anything for a moment, and I stared fascinated at the features that confronted me. I noticed that the colors in the chamber were changing again and that the lackadaisical visage of Abaris was growing more pronounced under the varying hues. His saucer-like eye-lids continued their resounding clap-clap-clap like the sound of shutters closing on a camera.
"'I don't believe you, Abaris!' my voice suddenly raised. 'You killed him because you knew that he was Allie Lane's man by all the laws of humanity on this world!'
"'What care we Jovians for the laws of your humanity!' Abaris' thought wave struck me sharply. 'I could have killed you both instantly! You were trespassing on forbidden ground and I therefore had the right to remove you from it!'
"'How did you know we were here?' I asked.
"'Our sentinels on the surface informed us of your coming long before you reached here. We had no intention of harming you unless you entered the crater!'
"'Then that's why you hung up these skeletons out there—to scare us away, eh?' I inquired. 'Did you think a few grinning skulls would make us run?'
"'The skeleton of anything on this earth tends to frighten away the living!' Abaris declared, nonchalantly. 'Even a dog will run from the bones of its kind, why not you who are just a step higher intellectually than the dog?'
"'You're a bragging cuss, aren't you, Abaris?' I shot back with contempt and sarcasm. 'You've been misinformed as to the status of the human race on this world! I could think up a better way to frighten a man than that!'
"'We of Jupiter have many ways to frighten a man if you like to call yourself such. But you see we are not particularly interested in whether we frighten or not. You and your friend and these two humans beside me are the first to have come here since we arrived from Jupiter. We felt no need of methods to frighten others away!'