ced. I saw the little
line of platforms ahead of us. They seemed to move suddenly sidewise.

It was everyone for himself now; none of us could tell where the other
platforms actually were placed or headed. Anita swooped us sharply
down to avoid a possible collision.

"Gregg?"

"Yes. I'm aiming."

I was making ready to drop the small explosive globe bomb. Our search
light ray at the camp, answering Grantline's signal, shot down and
bathed the enemy ship in a white glare, revealing it for our aim.
Simultaneously the brigand bolts came up at us.

I held my bomb out over the shield, calculating the angle to throw it
down. The brigand rays flashed around me. They were horribly close;
Miko had understood our sudden visible shift and aimed, not where we
appeared to be, but approximately where we had been before.

I dropped my bomb hastily at the glowing white ship. The touch of a
hostile ray would have exploded it in my hand. I saw others dropping
also from our nearby platforms. The explosions from them merged in a
confusion of the white glare--and a cloud of black mist as the
brigands out on the rocks used their darkness bombs.

We swept past in a blur of leaping hostile beams. Silent battle of
lights! Darkness bombs down at the ship struggling to bar our camp
searchray. The Benson radiance rays from our passing platforms,
curving down to mingle with the confusion. The electronic rays
sending up their bolts....

Our platforms dropped some ten dynamitrine bombs in that first passage
over the ship. As we sped by, I dimmed the Benson radiance. I peered.
We had not hit the ship. Or if we had, the damage was inconclusive.
But on the rocks I could see a pile of ore carts scattered--broken
wreckage, in which the litter of two or three projectors seemed
strewn. And the gruesome deflated forms of several helmeted figures.
Others seemed to be running, scattering--hiding in the rocks and
pit-holes. Twenty brigands at least were outside the ship. Some were
running over toward the base of our camp ledge. The darkness bombs
were spreading like a curtain over the valley floor; but it seemed
that some of the figures were dragging their projectors away.

We sailed off toward the opposite crater rim. I remember passing over
the broken wreckage of Grantline's little spaceship, the _Comet_.
Miko's bolts momentarily had vanished. We had hit some of his outside
projectors; the others were abandoned, or being dragged to safer
positions.