ilence; they heard neither their friend's shots as
he struck down the three coolies nor their own. Quick glances at the
ship's open port revealed no one; nothing. Probably, they thought, the
Hawk was dead. Even if he were not, they would soon be. A matter of a
minute. Maybe two. Their suits were still intact, but they could not
remain so much longer. Ku Sui had this time ordered them destroyed.

And now half a dozen coolies were leaving the ring tightening around
them and creeping to the _Scorpion_ as additional guards....

It was then, in those last few seconds, with death staring them in the
face, that Friday did a magnificent thing. It happened that Carse saw
him do it as the adventurer jumped out of the _Scorpion_ again and with
frantic speed slipped into the space-suit he had left waiting. Friday
stood straight up, a hundred feet from the enemy--a great bloated
monster in his padded suit--and charged. Leithgow and the Hawk heard, by
their suit helmet-radios, his battle yell of defiance, but the coolies
did not. All silent, apparently, he rushed them--slowly, because of his
hampering suit--his ray-gun spitting orange contempt--and other pencils
of fiery death passing him narrowly by.

And then, while he still charged, the rays stopped stabbing past him,
and he saw the faces of the coolie-guards turn upward. So surprised was
the expression on their faces, that he turned and looked too--and saw
the _Scorpion_, her entrance ports still open, forty feet off the ground
and rising with swift acceleration.

Faster and faster she rose; all ray-guns were silenced before her
astounding ascent. Higher and higher--faster and faster--till with a
stunning, ear-deafening crash she struck the great dome and was through.

Then came chaos.

A huge, jagged gash marked the ship's passage, and through this the air
inside the dome poured with cyclonic force, snatching into in maelstrom
everything unfastened within the dome and hurling it crazily into space.
For seconds the flood rushed out, a visible thing, gray from the soil
which it scooped up; and while its fury lasted every building on the
asteroid quivered and groaned from the terrific strain.

And where, a moment before, men had stood--two white men and a black,
and a score of coolie-guards--there was now nothing save the flat rock
under the gaping hole. The upper soil had been ripped out and flung
forth like a concealing veil around the bodies that had gone with it....