f they had been squirts from a water-pistol. The guards had been
bunched well together, but they scattered like ten-pins when Carse,
followed by the living thunderbolt of fighting negro, crashed into them.
In that first charge three of them were knocked flat, their guns either
dropping or twisting loose from their hands.

Immediately recovering, the Hawk darted at the fourth with the speed of
a striking cobra; his wiry hands closed around the yellow throat: and
two seconds later that coolie was no longer connected with the
proceedings, a whacking head-thump being his passport into
insensibility. Again Friday's exultant war-whoop bellowed out over the
scene.

Carse pushed to his feet, his deadly fighting smile on his face, a
ray-gun in his hand. He stooped and picked up another.

"Get to the Master!" roared Friday, an ebon god of war between two
futilely attacking bodies. "I'm--followin'!"

In those red seconds, ultimate success was still too impossible a thing
to even hope for. But they would at least try, then die like the men
they were.

Hawk Carse sped on down the corridor, a deadly, smoothly-functioning
fighting machine. And after him a few seconds later came leaping the
negro, a whooping giant with a ray-gun in each hand and the light of
battle flashing in his eyes. As his personal contribution to the fight
he was leaving in the rear three sprawled bodies, two knocked cold and
the third with a broken neck.

Their triumph had so far been a matter of but sixty seconds. The jangle
of the alarm bell continued ominously. It summoned resistance,
well-trained resistance; the defenses of the asteroid awoke to action.
Doors spacing the corridor behind now began to open, releasing dozens of
Orientals. Nor had these men heard Ku Sui's orders. They would shoot to
kill!

* * * * *

Three peering faces suddenly were in Hawk Carse's line of vision ahead:
three ray-guns were settling on him. His famous left hand, the gun-hand
that was known and dreaded throughout space, moved with the eye-blinding
speed that was necessary; his trigger finger bent only three times, but
each of the pencil-thin streaks of orange that spat forth brought down a
man, and he had struck without slackening his stride for an instant.

Twice more his ray-gun spoke, and then the goal, the entrance to the
central laboratory, was just ahead. Carse glanced back.

"Yes, suh!" a fierce voice yelled out to him. "