t.

All this while, in those few seconds, I was vaulting over Molo, trying
to get back to the ground to leap again. I saw that Anita was crawling
on the rocks. My gravity cylinder was at my belt. I had jammed it
there to leave my hands free just as Wyk struck me.

I saw that Snap and Venza, wrapped together by the wire, had dropped
their gravity projector. Their entwined figures went up some fifty
feet and stopped; then began drifting down.

Molo was shouting, "You, Gregg Haljan! Now for you!"

I struck the rocks and fell twenty feet beyond him. I jerked out my
gravity projector, but I did not know what I wanted to do with it. And
in that second I saw that the standing Molo was aiming at me. Directly
over my head the inert bound bodies of Venza and Snap were falling.

A flash leaped over the dark rocks from Molo. There was a split-second
when I thought it was the end of me. But I was still alive. The bodies
of Venza and Snap struck my head and shoulders; knocked me down. I
felt Molo's ray upon me. Not death, but only his gravity ray, like a
giant hand pulling me. Apparently he wanted us alive. I was scrambling
on the rocks, entangled with Venza and Snap. Molo's radiance clung.
All three of us went tumbling forward toward him. I flashed my own
ray, but I was rolling end over end, and it went wild.

I dropped it, saw Molo's beam vanish, saw his upright standing figure
towering above me. Snap, Venza and I were in a heap at his feet. He
leaned down and seized me. "Now, Gregg Haljan, I will teach you not to
try escaping like this!"

With the huge, muscular Martian gripping me, his fist striking for my
face but missing and hitting my shoulder, this was a semblance of
normality. I could understand fighting like this. I wrapped my legs
around him; my fingers reached for his brawny throat as he kicked us
into the air free of the entangling bodies of Snap and Venza.

We rose a few feet and sank back, gripping each other, lunging and
striking. He was very powerful, this Martian. I caught the round
pillar of his throat with my hands. For an instant I shut off his
wind, but I could not hold the grip. He struck me a glancing blow in
the face, then the heel of his hand was under my chin. It forced back
my head, broke my hold on his throat. With returning breath, he gasped
an inhalation. And I heard his exulting words: "You are not strong
enough!"

We rolled and bumped over the rocks. I caught a blow from his fists
full in m