out a few minutes ago to tell us he had word from Vidonati in the
control room. Those groundcars that were hanging around had attacked
one of the entrance buildings."

"Space!" growled Placer. "There must be a conspiracy involved here
somewhere. We'd better stay up here, then."

He pulled the lever beside the gate to the ramp, and it rumbled down and
crashed into place.

"At least, those two are trapped below," he said with satisfaction. "We
can hunt them down at our leisure when we've repelled this attack from
outside. If we can take them alive, I'm of a mind to make them pay well
for their responsibility in our losing all our experimental Jellies."

The seven of them went on to the conference room, picking their way
among the bodies of the Jellies. Placer took over the intercom from
Greyde.

"Vidonati, this is Placer," he said. "What's the situation?"

"The groundcars attacked the south building," replied Vidonati. "They
moved in and concentrated all three car beams on the airlock and burned
it through. I counted nine men in marsuits who left the groundcars and
went into the building. Of course, as soon as they started blasting the
airlocks, I closed the emergency barrier to block off the downward
ramp."

"Obviously, since we still have air in the place," commented Placer
dryly. "You'd better call Mars City and get them to send help."

"I've already done that," said Vidonati. "A jet squadron's on its way."

"Good," said Placer. "They can be here in about five hours, and it will
take those rebels, or whoever they are, two or three times that long to
burn through one of the emergency barriers, even if they blast an
opening and bring their groundcars into the building to bring the
groundcars' big guns on it."

"Should I stick it out here, or seal all the barriers and come below?"
asked Vidonati. The control room was in the north building.

"Stay up there so you can report on what they're doing, unless they
start to move toward that building," instructed Placer. "If they do,
seal the other emergency barriers at once and come below. We can switch
to the emergency radio down here to keep in touch with the task force
from Mars City, and just wait it out underground until they clean up
these rebels."

"Good enough," agreed Vidonati. "I won't take any chances."

In the vats below, Dark and Maya made their way to Old Beard's hideout,
their heatguns ready, keeping a sharp lookout for Toughs. They reached
it witho