Janice, sensing that she was about to be separated from her lover, threw herself into his arms. The series of things she had gone through in the past twenty-four hours had frayed her nerves almost to the breaking point.
"Don't let them take me away from you, Austin. Don't let them! Oh, Hekki, please!"
Hekalu's face reddened, and then Sega tore the two apart. Shelby struggled but it was useless. Sega's huge muscles were quite equal to the task of mastering a dozen of the best fighting men of Earth.
He dragged his captives aboard the Selba, and guided by the inscrutable Koo Faya, locked them in chambers from which escape would now be definitely impossible. Jan was thrust into the room she had occupied before, but Shelby was put into a chamber somewhat larger than his original prison.
An almost ungovernable fury had taken possession of the young Earthman. If for only a moment he could get his hand on the smooth Hekalu! His fingers clutched and unclutched spasmodically as he hurriedly paced the room. When presently, he found himself hammering on the walls with the frenzy of a trapped gorilla, a realization of where he was headed came to him. "Stop where you are, you fool!" he muttered to himself.
He went to the table where an appetizing breakfast was set out. He ate a little and then waited a while. He wanted to make sure that the food was not drugged. Half an hour passed and he felt no ill effects. He ate the rest of his breakfast. Then he made several attempts to signal Jan by tapping on the walls, but he was quite sure that to get a message to her in this way was now out of the question.
For a long time he gazed out into the sunlit valley floor from his window. Preparations of some kind were under way. It looked as though the entire population, which must have numbered close to fifteen hundred Space Men all told, was getting ready to move away en masse. Scores of the strange black people were hurrying about, lugging loads of weapons and hundreds of large cylindrical objects into four immense box-like things of dull metal. Several vehicles, resembling machines of the Space Men, but many times larger, were clustered together in a group.
It must have been several hours after Shelby had been taken into the space ship that two of Alkebar's people came to his room, carrying between them the unconscious form of the Space Man who had been Jan's and his fellow prisoner during the night of their arrival on Mars. They threw the limp giant down carelessly on one of the bunks, and without a glance at him or the Earthman, they stamped out.
Shelby would have liked to examine his cell mate more closely, but owing to the chain which had again been fastened to his ankle, it was impossible to get nearer to him than four yards. Who was this creature? His gorgeously bejeweled harness and his huge size seemed to indicate that he had been a leader of some kind. Shelby had noticed that all Space Men who had a right to command, were somewhat larger than their fellows.