Down and down went the Sunsprite through the maze of meteor-moons, twisting, turning, dropping ever lower toward the green asteroid.

A last gasping shout from Holk Or, and the door crashed off its burned-through hinges. Kenniston, unable to turn from the life-or-death business of threading the swarm, heard the Jovian fighting furiously.

Next moment a hand gripped Kenniston's shoulder and tore him away from the controls. It was Murdock, his eyes blazing, his gun raised.

"Raise your hands or I'll kill you, Kenniston!" he cried.

"Let me go!" yelled Kenniston, struggling to get back to the throttles. "You fool!"

He had just glimpsed the jagged moonlet rushing obliquely toward them from the left, bulking suddenly big and monstrous.

Crash! The shock flung them from their feet, and the Sunsprite gyrated crazily in space. There was a blood-chilling shriek of outrushing air from the fore part of the ship, and the slam-slam-slam of the automatic air-doors closing, down there.

The cruiser's whole bows had been crushed in by the glancing blow of the meteor. Now, ironically, the ship was falling clear of the meteor-swarm for Kenniston's piloting had almost won through it before the impact. But the Sunsprite was falling helplessly, turning over and over as it plunged down toward the green surface of the jungled asteroid.

y God, we're struck!" came Captain Walls' thin yell.

"This is your fault!" Murdock blazed at Kenniston. "You damned pirates will die for this!"

"Let me at those controls or we'll all die together in five minutes!" Kenniston cried. "We'll crash to smithereens unless I can make a tail-tube landing—"

Heedless of Murdock's gun, he jumped to the controls. His hands flew over the throttles, firing desperate quick bursts of the tail rocket-tubes to bring them out of the spin in which they were falling.

The brake-rockets in the bow were gone. The ship was crippled, almost impossible to handle. And the dark green jungles of Vesta's surface were rushing upward with appalling speed.

Kenniston's frantic efforts brought the Sunsprite out of the spin. By firing the lateral rockets, he kept it falling tail-downward.

"We're goners!" yelled someone in the 

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