A million miles away Steve Haller heard the deep guttural voice, and miraculously the pressure on his windpipe ceased. As vision returned, he could see a huge, scarred man with an embryonic degenerate face, standing on the bottom step of the ladder. Vaguely glowing like the others, he made a ghostly figure in the darkness.
"Let them live," he grunted. "We got things to find out." He bent, dragged the dazed Kindt to his feet. "Which ship is yours?"
"The ... Lodestar," Kindt whispered through bruised lips. "She lies over that way about a mile. The magnetism caught us."
"So." The big man's sub-human face expressed satisfaction. "More food and fuel. This has been a good time, eh, Doul? First this liner with food and women, now another ship and" ... he glanced at Fay's inert form ... "another woman. Take six men with guns and see how strongly this new arrival is held."
Watching the six repulsive figures depart, Haller felt suddenly sick. The liner, the big man said, had furnished them with food and women. Fay.... Weakly he swayed to his feet.
"What's this all about?" he demanded. "Who are you?"
"Castaways, or their children's children." The huge figure looked spectral in the weird light that emanated from his skin. "No one leaves the Island of Lost Spaceships. I'm Orth. My people were wrecked many lifetimes ago, mated with the female passengers of the refugee ship, Transvalia. We rule here." He motioned his savage followers forward. "We will go now."
Half-strangled, throat aching, Haller felt himself seized by two of the savage beings, dragged along with Kindt and Barger to the upper deck. One of the phosphorescent figures had thrown Fay over his shoulder, was carrying her like a sack of meal. Through the airlock they were forced and out onto the rough, meteor-heaped surface of the planetoid.
"Haller! Look!" Barger turned toward the distant Lodestar; three figures, hands raised, were emerging from the metal hull. "The yellow rats! Not even putting up a scrap! They might have held the ship indefinitely against these brutes!"
Orth, the semi-simian leader of these denizens of the asteroid, was waving toward the band which had taken the Lodestar. These returned across the rubbled plain shouting jubilantly, with their captives. Carlson, Seltzsky, and Wallace were pale phantoms, cringing under the blows that urged them forward. Joining forces, the two parties set out across the rocky surface, led by the giant Orth.