olice and the battle raged
fiercer than ever. It did not last long. The ends of the column had
already closed in. The police filled the corridor and overflowed into
the yawning chasm cut by the annihilating ray. Outnumbered, surrounded
upon all sides, above, and below by the Terrestrials, the hexans fought
with mad desperation to the last man--and to the last man died. And even
though in lieu of their own highly efficient space-armor they had fought
in weak, crude, and hastily improvised space-suits, which were pitifully
inferior to the ray resistant, heavy steel armor of the I-P forces,
nevertheless the enormous strength and utter savagery of the hexans had
taken toll; and when the advance was resumed, it was with extra lookouts
scanning the entire neighborhood of the line of march.

Since the troops had entered the fortress as close to their goal as
possible, it was not long until the leading platoon reached the door
behind which Kromodeor lay. Tools and cylinders of air were brought up,
and the engineers quickly fitted pressure bulkheads across the corridor.
There was a screaming hiss from the valves, the atmosphere in that
walled-off space became dense, and mechanics attacked with their power
drills the door of the projector room. It opened, and four husky
orderlies rapidly but gently encased the long body of the Vorkul in the
space-suit built especially to receive it. As that monstrous form in
its weirdly bulging envelope was guided through the air-locks into the
_Sirius_, Crowninshield barked orders into his transmitter and the
police reformed. They would now systematically scour the fortress, to
wipe out any hexans that might still be in hiding; to discover and
destroy any possible traps or infernal machines which the enemy might
have planted for their undoing.

Assured that the real danger to the _Sirius_ was over and that his
presence was no longer necessary, Brandon turned his controls over to an
assistant and went up to the Venerian rooms, where von Steiffel and his
staff were to operate upon the Vorkul. There, in the dense, hot air, but
little different now from the atmosphere of Jupiter, Kromodeor lay;
bolted down to the solid steel of the floor by means of padded steel
straps. So heavy were the bands that he could not possibly break even
one of them; so closely were they spaced that he could scarcely have
moved a muscle had he tried. But he did not try--so near death was he
that his mighty muscles did not