nings
at once and wants to get back to his board. But what's the matter with
you? Did he ... hurt you, after all?"

"Oh, no; not that. But I'm sick--horribly sick. I'm falling.... I'm so
dizzy I can scarcely see ... my head is breaking up into little pieces
... I just _know_ I'm going to die, Conway! Oh ... oh!"

"Oh, is _that_ all!" In his sheer relief that they had been in time,
Costigan did not think of sympathizing with Clio's very real present
distress of mind and body. "I forgot that you're a
ground-gripper--that's just a little touch of space-sickness. It'll wear
off directly.... All right, I'm coming! Let go of him and get as far
away from him as you can!"

He was now in the street. Perhaps two hundred feet distant and a hundred
feet above him was the tower room in which were Clio and Roger. He
sprang directly toward its large window, and as he floated "upward" he
corrected his course and accelerated his pace by firing backward at
various angles with his heavy service pistol, uncaring that at the point
of impact of each of those shells a small blast of destruction erupted.
He missed the window a trifle, but that did not matter--his flaming
Lewiston opened a way for him, partly through the window, partly through
the wall. As he soared through the opening he trained projector and
pistol upon Roger, now almost to the door, noticing as he did so that
Clio was clinging convulsively to a lamp-bracket upon the wall. Door and
wall vanished in the Lewiston's terrific beam, but the pirate stood
unharmed. Neither ravening ray nor explosive shell could harm him--he
had snapped on the protective shield whose generator was always upon his
person.

But Roger, while not exactly a ground-gripper, did not know how to
handle himself without weight; whereas Costigan, given six walls against
which to push, was even more efficient in weightless combat than when
handicapped by the force of gravitation. Keeping his projector upon the
pirate, he seized the first club to hand--a long, slender pedestal of
metal--and launched himself past the pirate chief. With all the momentum
of his mass and velocity and all the power of his mighty right arm he
swung the bar at the pirate's head. That fiercely driven mass of metal
should have taken Roger's head from his shoulders, but it did not. That
shield of force was utterly rigid and impenetrable; the only effect of
the frightful blow was to set him spinning, end over end, like the
flying baton