into the
room.

"Now for our armor!" he cried.

"Not yet!" snapped Costigan. He was standing rigid, goggled eyes staring
immovably at a spot on the ceiling. "I can't move a millimeter until
you've closed Clio's ether-wall switch. If I take this ray off it for a
second we're sunk. Five floors up, straight ahead down a
corridor--fourth door on right. When you're at the switch you'll feel my
ray on your watch. Snap it up!"

"Right," and the captain leaped away at a pace to be equalled by few men
of half his years.

Soon he was back, and after Costigan had tested the ether-wall of the
"bridal suite" to make sure that no warning signal from his desk or his
servants could reach Roger within it, the two officers hurried away
toward the room in which their space-armor was.

"Too bad they don't wear uniforms," panted Bradley, short of breath
from the many flights of stairs. "Might have helped some as disguise."

"I doubt it--with so many robots around, they've probably got signals
that we couldn't understand anyway. If we meet anybody it'll mean a
battle. Hold it!" Peering through walls with his spy-ray, Costigan had
seen two men approaching, blocking an intersecting corridor into which
they must turn. "Two of 'em, a man and a robot--the robot's on your
side. We'll wait here, right at the corner--when they round it take
'em!" and Costigan put away his goggles in readiness for strife.

All unsuspecting, the two pirates came into view, and as they appeared
the two officers struck. Costigan, on the inside, drove a short, hard
right low into the human pirate's abdomen. The fiercely-driven fist sank
to the wrist into the soft tissues and the stricken man collapsed. But
even as the blow landed Costigan had seen that there was a third enemy,
following close behind the two he had been watching, a pirate who was
even then training a ray projector upon him. Reacting automatically,
Costigan swung his unconscious opponent around in front of him, so that
it was into an enemy's body that the vicious ray tore, and not into his
own. Crouching down into the smallest possible compass, he straightened
out with the lashing force of a mighty steel spring, hurling the corpse
straight at the flaming mouth of the projector. The weapon crashed to
the floor and dead pirate and living went down in a heap. Upon that heap
Costigan hurled himself, feeling for the pirate's throat. But the fellow
had wriggled clear, and countered with a gouging thrust