range, even for an accidental, living
far inside a deep armor of flesh. It was possible that she never felt
the crushing force of those blows. Amazingly, she grasped the robot
and drew it to her. And the geepee lost the advantage of leverage. The
bright arms didn't flash so fast nor with such lethal power.

"Gravity!" cried Anti. "All you've got!"

She leaned against the struggling machine.

Gravity. That was something he could do. Docchi turned, took two steps
before the surge of gravity hit him. It came in waves, the sequence of
which he was never able to disentangle. The first wave staggered him;
at the second his knees buckled and he sank to the floor. After that
his eardrums hurt. He thought he could feel the ship quiver. He knew
dazedly that an artificial gravity field of this magnitude was
impossible, but that knowledge didn't help him move.

It vanished as suddenly as it had come. Painfully his lungs expanded.
Each muscle ached. He rolled to his feet and lurched past Jordan.

He didn't find the mass of broken flesh he expected. Anti was already
standing.

"Oof!" she grunted and gazed with satisfaction at the twisted
grotesque shape at her feet. The electronic brain had been smashed,
the body flattened.

[Illustration]

"Are you hurt?" asked Docchi gently, awed.

She waggled the extremities of her body. "Nope, I can't feel anything
broken," she said solemnly. She moved back to get a better view of the
robot. "I'd call that throwing my weight around. At the right time, of
course. The secret's timing. And I must say you picked up your cue
with the gravity well." Her laughter rolled through the ship.

"It wasn't I," said Docchi.

"Jordan? No, he's just getting up. Then who?"

"Nona," said Docchi. "It had to be her. She saw what had to be done
and did it. But how she got that amount of gravity--"

"Ask her," said Anti with fond irony.

Docchi grimaced and limped back into the control room, followed by
Anti and Jordan. Nona was at the gravity panel, her face pleasant and
childlike.

"Gravity can be turned on or off," said Docchi puzzledly, searching
her face for some sign. "And regulated, within certain narrow limits.
But somehow you doubled or tripled the normal amount. How?"

Nona smiled questioningly.

"Gravity engineers would like to know that too," said Jordan.

"Everybody would like to know," Anti interrupted irritably. "Except
me. I'm too pragmatic, I suppose, but I want to know when we s