m as if turned to water. Writhing feebly, they endeavored to
get up, but could not; and, still weakly ferocious, began to creep
toward the Earthman like huge-headed worms.

Brand himself had been thrown to the floor with the falling of that
switch. He had felt as though an invisible ocean had been poured on
him, weighting him down intolerably. To move arms or legs required
enormous effort; and to get up on his feet again was like rising under
a two-hundred-pound pack.

The movement of the switch, he saw, had cut off the gravity reducing
apparatus of the Rogans--whatever that might consist of. They were
now, abruptly, subjected to the full force of gravity exerted by
Jupiter's great mass. They could no more stand erect on their
tottering, lofty legs than they could fly.

But, though greatly handicapped by the gravity pull, they were still
not entirely helpless. Like huge, long insects they continued to worm
their way toward Brand, using their four arms and their boneless legs
to help urge them over the flooring. And in their rear the Rogan
guards struggled to lift their tubes and level them at the escaped
prisoner.

Prompt to avoid that, Brand went down on his hands and knees. Thus he
was shielded by the foremost crawling Rogans: the ones in the rear,
with the tubes, could not raise themselves high enough to bore down
over their fellows' heads at the Earthman.

Squatting on his knees, Brand awaited the first resolute crawlers.
And, on his knees, whirling the now thrice weighty bar at heads that
were conveniently low enough to be accessible, he began his last
stand.

* * * * *

On the Rogans came, evidently determined, at any sacrifice of life, to
get the Earthman away from that vital control board. And to right and
left, crouching low to escape the tubes of the guards slowly crawling
forward from the rear, Brand laid about him with the bar.

He got a little sick at the havoc he was wreaking on these
slow-moving, gravity-crippled things: but remembrance of their grisly
feeding habits, and the torture they must by now have inflicted on
Dex, kept him flailing down on soft heads with undiminished effort.

With the gravity pull what it was, the Earthman was immeasurably
stronger than any individual Rogan. For a time the contest was all in
his favor. It was like killing slugs in a rose garden!

Nevertheless, these slugs were, after all, twelve feet long and
possessed of intelligence,