Sui develop. The switch and main
control are in the left-hand glove._"

"Thank you! Oh, thank you! You give us a chance!" exclaimed old
Leithgow.

He turned and looked for the Hawk, and found him already in the lockers
and pulling out three space-suits. The clumsy, heavy cone of a portable
heat-ray lay on the table ready to hand.

They had little time to waste. The torrid temperature of a new smell of
burned metal around the door they had just entered told them as well as
words that the large projector in the corridor was at last being used to
bore a way in.

With surprising strength in one so slender, Carse lifted the ray and
pointed it at an angle toward the middle of the ceiling. He pressed the
control button, and a blinding stream of violet radiance splashed
against the metal above. It hissed and sputtered where it touched;
molten drops fell sizzling and splattering to the floor; then suddenly
there was a flood of ruddy illumination, and the Hawk dropped the
heat-ray, stepped forward and looked up.

* * * * *

Up through a neatly melted round hole, up at the great glasslike dome
which arched over the whole settlement--up, past it, into the vast face
of Jupiter, hanging out there oppressively near!

Friday, champing for action, left his post by the panel and dragged a
long low cabinet to position under the hole. On top of it he placed the
operating table, and, after he had tripped the table's small wheels,
another table on top of that.

"You first, Eclipse!" his master rapped out as he finished. "I'll pass
the suits to you; then swing Leithgow up."

The negro answered by acting. Swiftly he climbed the rude pile, and
reached for the edge of the hole. It was still searingly hot, and he
gasped with hurt as his palms and fingers clenched over it, but he did
not let go. Levering himself rapidly up, he got a leg through and then
his body. A second later he peered back in and lowered his hands down.

"No one up here yet!" he reported. "All right for the suits!"

Carse passed the three bulky suits to him, and also two extra ray-guns
he had found in the locker.

"Now, Eliot--up!"

With the Hawk's help, Leithgow clambered onto the cabinet. He was just
mounting the operating table when, from behind, came a thin, metallic
voice:

"_Master Leithgow--Eliot Leithgow--please, a favor?_"

* * * * *

Leithgow turned and stared, then