full force of his charge. The man doubled up painfully, dropping his weapon to the floor. Aram rolled to his feet, catlike. The Green roared with rage and lunged at him. Aram stepped under the attack and brought his two clenched fists down on the back of the man's neck. The Green staggered and spun about, catching Aram in a vise-like embrace. The policeman was huge, and as his arms closed about Aram's lighter frame, Aram could feel his ribs being crushed. His hand closed on the scalpel he had thrust into the waistband of his shorts. He raised it high and drove it hard into the man's broad back. The Green stiffened. With an incredulous expression, he released Aram and toppled to the stone floor.

Aram leaned against the wall of the tunnel, panting, sickened. His hands were red with blood. From somewhere down the tunnel came the sound of booted feet clattering on the stones. Suddenly another Green rounded the turn, an energy rifle in his hands. Aram straightened for the expected attack, but the Green stopped abruptly, his head vanishing into a red smear as another crashing roar echoed down the corridor. As he sank to the floor, Aram turned to see Kant Mikal lowering the first Green's still smoking pistol.

"Let's keep going," Mikal muttered breathlessly.

Stopping only to pick up the fallen Green's rifle, Aram, Kant Mikal and Deve ran on toward the pit.

"Will the others try to make the spaceport?" gasped Jerrold as they ran.

"There's nowhere else to go," returned Mikal simply.

The Greens had not completely occupied the tunnels, for they met no more opposition. The sounds of fighting had stopped, though, as they burst into the large chamber that housed the spacecraft, and Aram realized that the Greens were gathering their forces for an attempt to prevent the Group's escape in the vessels. Aram looked about him with a sick heart. Of the original forty-five that had been in the tunnels before the attack, only ten besides himself and Deve had reached the pit. The others, they told him, had been killed or captured by the Greens, and one of them must have been forced to tell of the spaceships and the plan of escape through the locks.

The steelite doors of the pit were closed, and the remnants of the Group straggled aboard the Star Cluster. Kant Mikal took immediate command of the ship and made ready for the perilous passage through the locks to the sea above. He laid a hand on Aram's shoulder and spoke with feeling. "This isn't the way I planned 

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