Copyright ©, 1961, by Ace Books, Inc. All Rights Reserved Printed in U.S.A. ACE BOOKS, INC. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y....

Dark Kensington had been dead for twenty-five years. It was a fact; everyone knew it. Then suddenly he reappeared, youthful, brilliant, ready to take over the Phoenix, the rebel group that worked to overthrow the tyranny that gripped the settlers on Mars. The Phoenix had been destroyed not once, not twice, but three times! But this time the resurrected Dark had new plans, plans which involved dangerous experiments in mutation and psionics. And now the rebels realized they were in double jeopardy

It is a sea, though they call it sand. They call it sand because it is still and red and dense with grains. They call it sand because the thin wind whips it, and whirls its dusty skim away to the tight horizons of Mars. But only a sea could so brood with the memory of aeons. Only a sea, lying so silent beneath the high skies, could hint the mystery of life still behind its barren veil. To practical, rational man, it is the Xanthe Desert. Whatever else he might unwittingly be, S. Nuwell Eli consi

Adam and Brute followed Goat Hennessey down the corridor, towering over him like Saint Bernards on the heels of a terrier. They turned into the dining room, a big square room centered with a rude table and chairs, one wall pierced by a fireplace in which a big cauldron steamed over smouldering coals. The dining room swarmed with a dozen small creatures, human in their pink flesh, more or less human in their twisted bodies. As soon as Goat entered with Adam and Brute in tow, the assemblage set up

Maya's education was extensive, but it did not include the genetic sciences. She was able to follow Goat's explanations and his references to the charts he hung, one after another, on the wall of his study, but she was able to follow them only in a general sense. The technical details escaped her. Nuwell seemed to have a better grasp of the subject. He nodded his dark, curly head frequently, and occasionally asked a question or two. "Surgery is performed with a concentrated electron stream on th

Fancher Laddigan made his way down a long dim corridor in the rear portion of the Childress Barber College, in Mars City's eastern quarter. He stopped and hesitated, with some trepidation, before an unmarked door near the end of the corridor. Completely bald, bespectacled and well up in years, Fancher looked like a clerk and he had the instincts of a clerk. Yet he utilized that appearance and those instincts in a perilous cause. Fancher knocked timidly on the door. On receiving an indistinct inv

Maya Cara Nome looked from her furnished room through cracked shutters at the building across the street. A barber college. The building at 49 Sage Avenue, Mars City, was a barber college. That surprised her. She didn't know exactly what she had expected: a hospital, perhaps, or even a kindergarten. But a barber college! But the source of the information she had received that 49 Sage Avenue was the address she sought was unimpeachable. She had ferreted it out, after a long time and through devio

The three men who stood by a table in the back lobby of the Childress Barber College and checked off the departure of the men at regularly spaced intervals were as different in appearance as they were in their positions in the Order of the Phoenix. Oxvane Childress, big and bearded, was the "front," and directed the very necessary task of administering the Childress Barber College as a genuine barber college. Childress was a prominent member of two of Mars City's civic and social clubs, and care

Maya had never seen Nuwell in such a state of sustained rage. He strode back and forth in the private dining room of the Syrtis Major Club, near the western edge of Mars City, slapping his fist into his hand. His face usually was engaging and boyish, the wave of his dark hair setting it off handsomely, but now it was flushed like that of a petulant child and the lock of hair hung down over his forehead. Maya, the only other person in the room, sat quietly and watched him pace. "They had plenty o

The waiter unplugged the telephone and lifted it from their table. "We're ready to order now," Maya said to him. "And please ask Mr. Gren to come in here." A few moments after the waiter left, the manager came to their table. Quelman Gren was dark and thin-faced, with sleek, oily hair. "When I told you I was here in an official capacity for the government, Mr. Gren, you said you would co-operate with me in every way possible," said Maya. "Yes, Miss Cara Nome, I have made every effort to do so,"

From the time she saw Dark Kensington die until Nuwell's arrival at the Chateau Nectaris a day later, Maya remained in her room, half in shock, half in an agony of sorrow and remorse. She was so exhausted by her ordeal that she did sleep, but it was fitfully and without genuine rest. She had her meals sent up to her room, and ate automatically, not tasting the food. Rationally, she could in no way blame herself for Dark's death, but that did not prevent her feeling strongly that her insistence o

Happy Thurbelow finished sweeping the long barracks and leaned wearily on his broom. That is, he didn't lean on it, or it would have collapsed him to the floor, but he made the gesture. Why, he wondered, didn't the Masters make the Toughs sweep their own barracks? Perhaps the Toughs couldn't be made, or perhaps the Masters did it just from an excess of cruelty. Happy's monstrously bloated body sagged, and his skin felt dangerously dry and tight. Happy was so adipose that his hands engulfed the b

The Xanthe Desert stretched red and barren on all sides of the plodding couple, the sands unbroken by the form of plant or stone or any living thing, all the way to the tight horizon of Mars. Above them, the small, glittering sun slid down the copper-hued sky slowly toward the west. It was remarkable, thought Maya, how smooth and flat the desert looked from the air, and how rough and rolling it was when one had to walk across the packed sand. They had been walking for hours and, despite the gent

The two Dark Kensingtons and Happy Thurbelow walked along one of the pathways between the vats, Happy trailing a bit behind. Somewhere near them, they knew, Shadow accompanied them. The place was dim, with the moist dimness of a swamp. The source of the light that filtered through the faint mist and seemed to permeate the air was not discernible, and the roof of this underground world was lost in the darkness above them. The placid surface of the water gleamed vaguely in the vats they passed, an

Brute Hennessey plodded westward through the Xanthe Desert, naked, wearing no marsuit, his head bare to the thin, oxygen-poor Martian air. The two small moons shone in the star-spangled sky above the lone figure, casting fantastic shadows on the sands. But this was not the stupid, shambling Brute Hennessey of a few months past. He walked surely and proudly, and the light of intelligence shone in his eyes. He called himself, now, Dark Kensington. Dark's muscular body had not regained, quite, the

Dark and Maya sat with their backs against the wall of Ultra Vires, and Qril squatted before them, towering huge above them. A little distance away the other three Martians were grouped, playing some sort of game, doing some sort of work or participating in some sort of joint demonstration. Dark could not be sure which. Qril boomed out a long, rolling sentence and Maya broke into laughter. She turned to Dark and translated: "He said he didn't understand why I'm wearing a helmet, when you aren't.

Dark walked across the desert toward the Canfell Hydroponic Farm. He had discarded the marsuit he had been wearing, and substituted for it a light loincloth torn from one of Goat Hen nessey's sheets. This reverse reaction, in a temperature that would be uncomfortably chilly for a fully clothed man and descended far below zero at night, resulted from his recognition that he gained a tremendously greater direct influx of energy from the total exposure of his skin to the sunlight. He could feel the

Nuwell Eli sat with Placer Viceroy, director of the Canfell Hydroponic Farm, in its large underground dining room, eating lunch. This meal was not the tasteless, gelatin-like food that was fed to the Jellies and Toughs and sold on the Mar tian market. It was a meal of thick, juicy steaks from the dome farms around Hesperidum and vegetables from the gardens inside the Mars City dome. "We've been here better than a week, and she's still stubborn," Nuwell said morosely. "Surely she has the intellig

Behind the locked door of the conference room, one of the Masters passed out heatguns to Nuwell, Placer and the other four. "If we use these on them at half intensity, I think we can calm them down without killing any of them," said Placer. "We'll probably have more trouble beating down the Toughs and keeping them from killing all the Jellies than we will subduing the Jellies in the first place." "I hope we warned the three at the other end of the hall in time," said one of the others. "There ha

Moments later, the two groups of Masters converged at the gate, two from one direction and five from the other. "After them!" commanded Placer. "But stay together. We'll have to try to hunt them down in the vats, and maybe the Toughs can help us, but we don't want to get separated so they can pick us off one by one." "Wait, Placer, there's something you ought to know," said one of the two Masters who had come from the direction of the conference room. "Greyde called out a few minutes ago to tell