A metal that, defying man's previous deliberations on the habits of metals, supplied man with the most valuable servant he had ever known. A metal so light that a child could carry enough in one hand to coat the entire hull of a space-cruiser—yet so adamant that a gossamer film of it would deflect the impact of a meteoride or the battering crush of a rotor-gun shell! A metal strong enough to grind diamonds to powder—but so resilient that, when molded and properly treated, it would bounce like a rubber ball!
In all the wide universe, hungry mankind had found less than two tons of this vitally precious new metal. An ounce was worth a prince's ransom; so jealously was each gram weighed, guarded and distributed that the U.S.C.—Universal Science Council—could account for every known ounce of it. Yet here, in the noisy bar of Mars' most infamous refuge for scoundrels, a drunken miner toyed with a chunk the size of a billiard ball!
If Chip Warren's attention had previously been attracted by the oddly-assorted quintet, it was riveted now. Fierce curiosity hunched him forward. Abandoning all shame at eavesdropping, he strained eyes and ears upon the group.
It was well that he did so. Otherwise he would not have seen the sober Earthman's gesture to the bartender, the bartender's furtive acquiescence, the tentacular hand opening a colorless phial, pouring its contents into the miner's bottle of lisk. There would have been no one to protect the drunken man from the drug that would swiftly have left him at the mercy of his companions.
But Chip was watching. And moving on raw instinct, without a thought for the consequences, he surged forward. His arm brushed the surprised Uranian aside, his hand thrust just in time to sweep the doped drink from the miner's lips. Glass shattered on the floor, singing a shrill song. Chip's challenging voice echoed its brittle crispness.
"Hold course a minute, buckoes!" he ordered. "What in space goes on around here?"
Chip thought afterward that never in his life had he ever looked upon such stark, forbidding coldness as that which, in the next moment, flamed upon him from the eyes of the newly arrived Earthman.
Everything about the man was cold, bitter and bleak as the hostile depths of space. His eyes were glacier-gray, his lips thin and bloodless as hoarfrost; the hand he shoved forward to grip Chip's wrist in steely grasp was like ice.
The coldness of death was in his voice, although he spoke with infinite quietude.