dense atmosphere of Jupiter, and the hexans in their massed hundreds
died.

The _Sirius_ was brought up beside the heptagon, so that her main
air-lock was against one of the yawning holes in the green metal wall
of the enemy. There she was anchored by tractor beams, and the two
hundred picked men of the I-P police, in full space equipment, prepared
to board the gigantic fortress of the void. Brandon sat tense at his
controls, ready to send his beam ahead of the troopers against any
hexans that might survive in some as yet unpunctured compartment.
General Crowninshield sat beside the physicist at an auxiliary board,
phones at ears and four infra-red visiray plates ranged in front of him;
ready through light or darkness to direct and oversee the attack, no
matter where it might lead or how widely separated the platoons might
become before the citadel was taken.

The space-line men--the engineers of weightless combat--led the van,
protected by the projectors of their fellows. Theirs the task to set up
ways of rope, along which the others could advance. Power drills bit
savagely into metal, making holes to receive the expanding eyebolts;
grappling hooks seized fast every protuberance and corner; points of
little stress were supported by powerful suction cups; and at intervals
were strung beam-fed lanterns, illuminating brilliantly the line of
march. Through compartments and down corridors they went, bridging the
many gaps in the metal through which Brandon's beams had blasted their
way; guided by Crowninshield along the shortest feasible path toward the
little projector room in which Kromodeor, the wounded Vorkul, lay. There
were so many chambers and compartments in the heptagon that it had, of
course, been impossible to puncture them all, and in some of the tight
rooms were groups of hexans, anxious to do battle. But the general's eye
led his men, and if such a room lay before them, Brandon's frightful
beam entered it first--and where that beam entered, life departed.

But the hexans were really intelligent, as has been said. They had had
time to prepare for what they knew awaited them, and they were rendered
utterly desperate by the knowledge that, no matter what might happen,
their course was run. Their power was gone, and even if the present
enemy should be driven off, they would float idly in space until they
died of cold; or, more probably, hurtling toward Jupiter as they were,
they would plunge to certain death up