“What have all the brains of all the kaldanes that have ever lived done to compare with that single idea of a single red man?”

Ghek was stumped.  Being a kaldane he knew that brains spelled the sum total of universal achievement, but it had never occurred to him that they should be put to use in practical and profitable ways.  He turned away and looked down upon the valley of his ancestors across which he was slowly drifting, into what unknown world?  He should be a veritable god among the underlings, he knew; but somehow a doubt assailed him.  It was evident that these two from that other world were ready to question his preeminence.  Even through his great egotism was filtering a suspicion that they patronized him; perhaps even pitied him.  Then he began to wonder what was to become of him.  No longer would he have many rykors to do his bidding.  Only this single one and when it died there could not be another.  When it tired, Ghek must lie almost helpless while it rested.  He wished that he had never seen this red woman.  She had brought him only discontent and dishonor and now exile.  Presently Tara of Helium commenced to hum a tune and Ghek, the kaldane, was content.

Gently they drifted beneath the hurtling moons above the mad shadows of a Martian night.  The roaring of the banths came in diminishing volume to their ears as their craft passed on beyond the boundaries of Bantoom, leaving behind the terrors of that unhappy land.  But to what were they being borne?  The girl looked at the man sitting cross-legged upon the deck of the tiny flier, gazing off into the night ahead, apparently absorbed in thought.

“Where are we?” she asked.  “Toward what are we drifting?”

Turan shrugged his broad shoulders.  “The stars tell me that we are drifting toward the northeast,” he replied, “but where we are, or what lies in our path I cannot even guess.  A week since I could have sworn that I knew what lay behind each succeeding ridge that I approached; but now I admit in all humility that I have no conception of what lies a mile in any direction.  Tara of Helium, I am lost, and that is all that I can tell you.”

He was smiling and the girl smiled back at him.  There was a slightly puzzled expression on her face—­there was something tantalizingly familiar about that smile of his.  She had met many a panthan—­they came and went, following the fighting of a world—­but she could not place this one.

“From what country are you, Turan?” she asked suddenly.

“Know you not, Tara of Helium,” he countered, “that a panthan has no country?  Today he fights beneath the banner of one master, tomorrow beneath that of another.”

“But you must own allegiance to some country when you are not fighting,” she insisted.  “What banner, then, owns you now?”

He rose and stood before her, then, bowing low.  “And I am acceptable,” he said, “I serve beneath the banner of the daughter of The Warlord now—­and forever.”