rentz motors were pumping.

I gripped her. "Put out your helmet-light."

She extinguished it. I handed her my bullet projector.

"Hold it a moment. I'm going to take that belt of bombs."

The trap-door was all but broken under the ramming blows of the men on
the ladder. I leaped over the body of the duty-man, seized the belt of
bombs and strapped it about my waist.

Anita stood with me.

"Give me the projector."

She handed it to me. The trap-door burst upward! A man's head and
shoulders appeared. I fired a bullet into him--the little leaden
pellet singing down through the yellow powder-flash that spat from the
projector's muzzle.

* * * * *

The brigand screamed, and dropped back out of sight. There was
confusion at the ladder-top. I flung a bomb at the broken trap. A tiny
heat-ray came wavering up through the opening, but went wide of us.

The instrument room was in darkness. I clung to Anita.

"Hold on to me! You go first--here is the ladder."

We found it in the blackness, mounted it and went through the cubby's
roof-trap.

I took a hasty look and dropped another bomb beside us. The four-foot
space up here between the cubby roof and the overhead dome went black.
We were momentarily concealed.

Anita located the manual levers of the lock-entrance.

"Here, Gregg."

I shoved at them. Fear leaped in me that they would not operate. But
they swung. The tiny porte opened wide to receive us. We clambered
into the small air-chamber; the door slid closed, just as a flash from
below struck at it. The brigands had seen our little cloud of darkness
and were firing up through it.

We were through the locks in a moment, out on the open dome-top. A sleek,
rounded spread of glassite, with broad aluminite girders. There were
cross-ribs which gave us footing, and occasional projections--streamline
fin-tips, the casings of the upper rudder shafts, and the upstanding
stubby funnels into which the helicopters were folded.

We moved along the central footpath and crouched by a six-foot casing.
The stars and the glowing Earth were over us. The curving dome-top--a
hundred feet or so in length, and bulging thirty feet wide beneath
us--glistened in the Earthlight. It was a sheer drop down these
curving sides past the ship's hull, a hundred feet to the rocks on
which the vessel rested. The towering wall of Archimedes was beside
us; and beyond the brink of the ledge the thousands of feet dow