the
running man tumbled forward on his face. He was the last of the pirate
crew.

Molo was crouching, half-bending forward over his instrument table,
with Snap's gun upon him. The girls burst upon us. We armed them. Meka
was safely fastened down below. We backed Molo to the floor in the
corner, with Venza and Anita watching him.

Snap and I were in control of the ship. For temporary periods the
automatics would handle the gravity-shifters. I could operate them
here from the turret. We had a downward velocity toward the Moon. Five
hundred miles below us, no more, was the base of that diabolical
gravity-ray which was so swiftly pulling the twenty-five Grantline
ships to their destruction.

I gripped Snap and told him what we must do. "The forward gun on the
starboard side is almost identical with our Earth guns, the Francine
projectors. With a short range you can handle it and I'll give you a
close mark!"

He dashed for the deck. I set the levers. Gravity-plates with full bow
attraction. Stern repulsion to the Earth and the stern rocket-streams
at highest power.

The _Star-Streak_ responded smoothly; with acceleration such as only
Molo's famous terror of the starways could attain, we dove for the
Moon.

Breathless minutes! Those Wandl ships up in the firmament behind our
stern would probably do nothing; they would not understand this sudden
move of their friendly ship. The brain masters, the insect-like
Wandlites down on the Moon rocks operating the mechanism of the
gravity-ray, would not suspect until too late what the _Star-Streak_
was doing.

Uprushing rocks, the Apennines to one side; the dark yawning maw of
Archimedes on the other. We were diving parallel with the gravity-ray
now, hardly a mile from it, diving for the mechanisms of its source.
Twenty thousand feet of altitude. I bent our rocket-streams up for the
start of our turning. Bow-hull gravity-plates next. Ten thousand feet.
Five thousand.

How close we went I never knew. It was seconds now, not minutes. I
shifted all the controls. Our bow lifted as we straightened. The whole
spreading lunar surface tilted and dipped. Snap fired. I saw the bolt
flash at the tilting landscape and a puff of light down there on the
rocks. And an instant later there were vacant rocks where the little
cluster of men and mechanisms had been. And the upflung gravity-beam
was gone!

The giant towering cliffs of the mountain of Archimedes seemed to rush
at our upturning