abdomen. The fiercely driven fist sank
to the wrist into the soft tissues and the stricken man collapsed. But
even as the blow landed, Costigan had seen that there was a third enemy,
following close behind the two he had been watching, a pirate who was
even then training a ray projector upon him. Reacting automatically,
Costigan swung his unconscious opponent around in front of him, so that
it was into that insensible body that the vicious ray tore, and not into
his own. Crouching down into the smallest possible compass, he
straightened his powerful body with the lashing force of a mighty steel
spring, hurling the corpse straight at the flaming mouth of the
projector. The weapon crashed to the floor and dead pirate and living
went down in a heap. Upon that heap Costigan hurled himself, feeling for
the enemy's throat. But the pirate had wriggled clear, and countered
with a gouging thrust that would have torn out the eyes of a slower man,
following it up instantly with a savage kick for the groin. No automaton
this, geared and set to perform certain fixed duties with mechanical
precision, but a lithe, strong man in hard training, fighting with every
foul trick known to his murderous ilk.

But Costigan was no tyro in the art of dirty fighting. Few indeed are
the maiming tricks of foul combat unknown to even the rank and file of
the highly efficient Secret Service of the Triplanetary League; and
Costigan, a Sector Chief of that unknown organization, knew them all.
Not for pleasure, sportsmanship, nor million-dollar purses do those
secret agents use Nature's weapons. They come to grips only when it
cannot possibly be avoided, but when they are forced to fight in that
fashion they go into it with but one grim purpose--to kill, and to kill
in the shortest possible space of time. Thus it was that Costigan's
opening soon came. The pirate launched a particularly vicious kick, the
dreaded "coup de sabot," which Costigan avoided by a lightning shift. It
was a slight shift, barely enough to make the kicker miss, and two
powerful hands closed upon that flying foot in midair like the sprung
jaws of a bear-trap. Closed and twisted viciously, in the same fleeting
instant. There was a shriek, smothered as a heavy boot crashed to its
carefully pre-determined mark: the pirate was out, definitely and
permanently.

The struggle had lasted scarcely ten seconds, coming to its close just
as Bradley finished blinding and deafening the robot. C