Here was the clump of rocks where he had been when first he saw Nada. His leaden cylinder was lying here. He stuffed the Zolonite samples carefully into it. Sealed it.

"Now we go down the mountain, Nada, to my ship down there."

A sizzling flash with a tiny crack of thunder interrupted him. The bolt from nearby sizzled over their heads as Morgan, with a sweep of his arm, knocked the girl to the ground and flung himself beside her.

"That's them," he muttered grimly. "Keep down, Nada."

Another bolt cracked with a prismatic shower of sparks on the rocks in front of them. Morgan and the girl were lying in a little depression now, protected by a broken line of rocks with a cliff close behind them. He could see where the pirates were gathered, at the bottom of a small gully some fifty feet away. And then in the silence, an ironic chuckling voice floated over.

"Got you, Morgan. No use putting up a fight. Toss out your gun an' we won't kill you."

Morgan, watchful for the chance to drill one of them if he showed himself, lay quiet with the huddled girl trembling beside him.

"Got your wife with you?" the voice drawled. "That who it is? Come on out and let's have a look at her. We won't hurt her." There was a burst of raucous laughter from the other pirates.

Morgan did not reply. His brain was busy trying to find an out.  

Morgan could see that there was no chance for him and the girl to move from where they were lying. He had chanced a leap from here against Nada's old-fashioned explosive-gun with its single small bullet, but he couldn't take such a chance against modern bolt-weapons. The least move would expose them in the full sheen of Saturn-light.

They lay still.

"So you just want to stay where you are?" the voice called. "Okay, we'll get you."

They were invisible; but back down the distant little gully Morgan suddenly saw the blob of a creeping figure; one of the pirates trying to get to where he could chance a leap. Morgan tensed; raised his gun.

The shadowed blob moved again; straightened a little. Morgan's flash spat its bolt. A scream mingled with the tiny thunder-crack, and the blob leaped into the air, turned over and crashed down again, inert upon the rocks.

 Prev. P 13/14 next