besides being hundreds in number. After a
while the tide of battle began to turn in their favor.

Brand began to feel his arms ache burningly with the sustained effort
of wielding a weapon that now weighed about twenty-five pounds. He
knew he couldn't keep up the terrific strain much longer. And, in
addition, he could see that the armed Rogans in the rear were steadily
forging ahead among the unarmed attackers, till they soon must be in a
position to blast him with their weapons.

Brand brought down his bar, with failing force but still deadly
effect, on the loathsome face of the nearest Rogan, grunting with
satisfaction as he saw it crumple into a shapeless mass. He thrust it,
spear-like, into another face, and another.

Then, abruptly, he found himself weaponless.

Raising it high to bring it down on an attacker who was almost about
to seize him, he felt the metal bar turn white hot, and dropped it
with a cry as it seared the skin from the palms of his hands. Some
Rogan guard in the rear had managed to train his tube on the bar; and
in the instant of its rising had almost melted it.

* * * * *

Weaponless and helpless, Brand crawled slowly back before the
tortuously advancing mob, keeping close enough to them to be shielded
from the tubes of the rear guards. Without his club he knew the end
was a matter of seconds.

He had an impulse to leap full into the mass of repulsive, crawling
bodies and die fighting as his fists battered at the gruesome faces.
But a second impulse, and a stronger one, was the blind instinct to
preserve his life as long as possible.

Hesitantly, almost reluctantly, acting on the primitive instinct of
self-preservation, he continued to back away from the advancing horde;
away from the switch and toward the rear of the dome.

With the instant of his withdrawal, a Rogan turned toward the lever to
push it back up into contact and release the red kingdom from the
burden of Jupiter's unendurable gravity. And now ensued a curious
struggle. The lever, placed for the convenience of creatures twelve
feet or more tall, was about five feet from the floor. And the Rogan
couldn't reach it!

* * * * *

Stubbornly he heaved and writhed in an effort to raise his
inordinately heavy body from the floor to a point where one of the
weaving arms could reach the switch. But the pipe-stem legs would not
bear its weight. Each time it nearly rea