that's left," Leh was saying. He sped us toward it. Quite obviously now it was trying to escape. Forty or fifty girls were clinging to its hull; too close for its single remaining ray weapon to hit them; girls with close-held projectors eating with bubbling red electro-glare into the hull-plates. We had a glimpse into one of the bullseye portes—gas fumes and red glare in there; and the Gorts, trapped there, in a panic making ready to disembark. We lay close, firing our bolts.

Suddenly a wounded girl was drifting past our turret; she seemed struggling to get to our little pressure porte. Nereid?

Then I saw that it was Venta. She got into the porte; and I pumped out the water; threw myself in and bent over her. She was gasping, but still trying to smile at me.

"We—we have won, Earthman."

"Yes. Yes, Venta. You just lie quiet. Have you seen Nereid?"

"Yes. Here, just a little while ago. I don't know, now."

I stared out the porte bullseye. The Tollgamo ship was breaking; I could see its air coming out in bubbling puffs that caught our cylinder and shoved it away. That ship would be water-filled in a moment. And then I stiffened; tense with horror as I stared. A little side exit-porte of the wrecked vessel suddenly opened. A single huge figure lunged out. A dark-clad giant figure, with round air-helmet and weighted shoes.

Tollgamo! He was no more than fifty feet from me; a red sheen of light struck his helmet so that I could see his face with its quiet, grim smile. And then suddenly, in a leaping dive, he flung himself forward, and seized a girl who was clinging to the vessel's side, blasting with her ray-torch.

Nereid! In the glare, abruptly I saw her, as Tollgamo seized her, catching her by surprise so that she had no chance to escape him. And then her torch and her knife were gone, as he held her body against him and with swaying, shoving tread started away along the bottom.

There were weighted shoes here in our pressure porte. I was only a moment getting Venta out of the porte into the main part of the hull. I slid its door; adjusted my helmet; admitted the water. And then I was swaying out on the rocks, with a knife in my hand.

Vaguely I could see Tollgamo, with Nereid struggling in his grip as he advanced with swaying tread toward where, near at hand, the honeycombed cliff of that 

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