twittering glee, he went into action. It was
all in the spirit of things. Just another delightful game.

Like a thunderbolt he hurtled upon Caltis, tangled with him. It was
absurd, insane. Man and moondog went down together in a silly sprawl.
Sparks flew, became a confused tesseract of luminous motion. Radiance
blazed up and danced and flickered and no exact definition of the
intertwined bodies was possible. Glowing lines wove fat webs of living
color. It was too swift, too involved for any sane perception.

A wild, sprawling of legs, arms and body encircled and became part of
the intricacies of speeding, impossible light.

It was a mess.

Some element or combination of forces in Charley, inspired by
excitement and sheer delight, made unfortunate contact with ground
currents of vagrant electricity. Electricity ceased to be invisible.
It became sizzling, immense flash, in which many complexities made
part of a simple whole. It was spectacular but brief. It was a flaming
vortex of interlocked spirals of light and color and naked force. It
was fireworks.

And it was the end of Big Ed Caltis. He fried, and hot grease
spattered about him. He sizzled like a bug on a hot stove.

When Denver reached the entrance, man and moondog lay in a curious
huddle of interrupted action. It was over.

Charley was tired, but he still lived and functioned after his curious
fashion. For the moment, he had lost interest in further fun and
games. He lay quietly in a corner of rough rock and tried to rebuild
his scattered and short-circuited energies. He pulsed and crackled and
sound poured in floods of muffled static from the earphones in
Denver's helmet.

But this was no time for social amenities. Big Ed Caltis was dead,
very dead. But the others down the slope were still alive.

Like avenging angels, Denver and Darbor charged together down the
slope. Besiegers scattered and fled in panic as twinned beams of
dreadful light and heat scourged their hiding places. They fled
through the grotesque shadow patterns of Lunar night. They fled back,
some of them, to the black ship which had brought them. And there,
they ran straight into the waiting arms of a detail from Space Patrol
headquarters.

* * * * *

Tod Denver's friend, the watchman, had talked. From spaceport he had
called the Space Patrol and talked where it would do some good. A bit
late to be of much use, help had arrived. It took the Space Patro