d had reached and broken the fragile line of
tubes that intensified the current of the pneumatic plate-shifters. A
suicide? With his last frenzy determined to kill us all?

Then I saw that Hahn had been killed! Not a suicide! In his hand he
gripped a small segment of black fabric, a piece torn from an invisible
cloak? Was it?

The questions were swept away by the necessity for action. Snap was
rigging the hand-compressors. If he could get the pressure back in the
tanks....

I swung on Coniston. "You armed?"

"Yes." He was white-faced and confused, but not in a panic. He showed me
his heat-ray cylinder. "What do you want me to do?"

"Round up the crew. Get all you can. Bring them here to man these
pumps."

He dashed away. Snap shouted after him. "Kill them down if they argue!"

Miko's voice sounded from the turret call grid: "Falling! Haljan, you
can see it now! Check us!"

I did not answer that. I pumped with Snap.

Desperate moments. Or was it an hour? Coniston brought the men. He stood
over them with menacing weapon.

We had all the pumps going. The pressure rose a little in the tanks.
Enough to shift a bow-plate. I tried it. The plate slowly clicked into a
new combination. A gravity repulsion just in the bow-tip.

* * * * *

I signaled Miko. "Have we stopped swinging?"

"No. But slower."

I could feel it, that lurch of the gravity. But not steady now. A limp.
The tendency of our bow was to stay up.

"More pressure, Snap."

"Yes."

One of the crew rebelled, tried to bolt from the room. "God, we'll
crash, caught in here!"

Coniston shot him down.

I shifted another bow-plate. Then two in the stern. The stern-plates
seemed to move more readily than the others.

"Run all the stern-plates," Snap advised.

I tried it. The lurching stopped. Miko called. "We're bow down.
Falling!"

But not falling free. The Moon-gravity pull upon us was more than half
neutralized.

"I'll go up, Snap, and try the engines. You don't mind staying down?
Executing my signals?"

"You idiot!" He gripped my shoulders. His eyes were gleaming, his face
haggard, but his pale lips twitched with a smile.

"Maybe it's good-by, Gregg. We'll fall--fighting."

"Yes. Fighting. Coniston, you keep the pressure up."

With the broken set-tubes it took nearly all the pressure to maintain
the few plates I had shifted. One slipped back to neutral. Then the
pumps gained on it, and it shifted again.