Mind Stealers of Pluto

Ron Barnard had stuck his nose into one news
story too many. It had started with a lovely
girl, a wily Chinese and a drug ring that
circled the System. Now it was ending for
him in a rogue spaceship—his epitaph a
rocket's red stream across the starways.

Ron Barnard leaned unhappily on Quong Kee's bar and looked over the worst dive on Mars. This hell hole of Quong Kee's was no fit place even for a newspaperman looking for a story on the dope ring that was haunting the outer planets. The habitues were cut-throats, fugitives from Earth and the space police. To say nothing of theneoin fiends.

The two unshaven men hunched at a corner table, for instance. He eyed them in contempt. They were far gone in their addiction to the drug, and he would put no crime past them. They probably would murder their grandmothers for a gram ofneoin.

The two persons in question straightened as if a gun had been fired. They faced the bar, and their questing eyes found Barnard. One of them, teeth bared and hands bent into claws, started to move toward the reporter.

"What did you think?" the man demanded.

Barnard dropped a coin on the bar and tried to walk carelessly to the door. He wanted no fights with aneoin-filled madman. Silently he cursed himself for forgetting the extra sensory powers imparted by the drug. But the men had seemed too far gone to use their ESP.

The man charged across the room. Barnard saw that escape was out and resigned himself to a fight. He waited for the wild lunge, sidestepped and shot in a right that sent the addict reeling back. A few customers watched with mild interest. But this was routine at Quong Kee's—nobody would interfere.

Sullenly, the man glared at him, as if gathering courage for another charge. Barnard knew that actually the irresponsible creature was working himself up to a murderous pitch. Now he felt the waves of fury beating at his mind.

He waited, tense and ready. From the corner of his vision he saw the drapes that cut off the back room come apart, and a figure hurrying out. A slender figure in faded coveralls. Then he looked again.

It was a woman—a slender pale girl who clicked somehow in his memory. He had seen her around Kainor, this port city of Mars, several times in the past few days.

Watching her, he almost missed the onslaught of theneoin fiend. The fury of the charge backed him to the wall and he lashed out desperately against the claws and knees of the man. His head jammed against the wal