is still jammed.
Hey, what're you up to?"

Darl was swinging his bandaged body up from the cot that had been set
up in the headquarters tent at his insistence. "Can't lie on my back,"
he panted, "with that devil loose on the planet. Lord knows what he's
up to now. We're short-handed enough as it is."

He rose to his feet, staggering with weakness and loss of blood. But
his indomitable will drove him on. "I'll take over the control board.
Send Angus up to relieve Ran-los, and you get below and speed up
production. Earth will need double quantities of surta for food, now
that there's a war on."

* * * * *

Jim turned to convey the order to the Scot, but he whirled to the
tent-flap instead as a riot of sound exploded outside. He tore aside
the canvas, and now there was a burst of shrill, frightened Venusian
cries, and a deeper, rattling chorus. Out on the Dome floor, pouring
from the shaft-head in a panic torrent, came the Venusians. And among
them, leaping, slashing, dragging them down, were countless little
yellow men, their fangs and tusks and curving claws crimson with the
blood of their victims.

"Darl, Mac, they've broken through! The Mercs have broken through!"
The brown plain was a blood-spattered battlefield. Here and there
little groups of the green men, braver than the rest, fought with
spanner and hammer and whatever improvised weapon they may have found.
"Come on, give 'em hell!" The three Earthmen dashed out, weapons in
hand. But friend and foe were so intermingled that they could not use
the devastating ray of their hand-guns. The fighting Venusians were
vanishing under a tossing sea of yellow imps. And still the dwarfs
poured forth from the mine entrance.

A blue form towered, far back, where all green had vanished, and only
Mercurians were left. The Martian's beak opened in a rattling call. A
group of hundreds of pigmies suddenly left the main fight, and came
forward with short, swift steps. They dashed straight for the Earth
trio and cut them off from the Venusians they were running to aid.

* * * * *

Side by side the three fought. Their weapons grew hot in their hands
as the beams cut great swaths in the seething ranks. The attackers
halted, gave back, then surged forward again as the roar of their
alien commander lashed them on.

The Earthmen faced the frenzied throng. A cleared circle was still
around them. Beyond, the Venusians