el. They stooped and waved toward me.

I took a swoop. Passing close down the hull, my rocket-streams struck
the hull plates and gave me sudden downward velocity. I shot down, out
past the keel. And again I saw the enemy ship. She hung poised, no
more than two miles away. And as I looped over, with all the black,
star-strewn firmament in a dizzy whirl, the great Moon-disc, first
above, and then below me, I saw the bow-beam of the enemy swinging. It
came to the _Cometara_, and there it clung.

I had gone perhaps fifty feet below the keel with my dive when I
righted. I was mounting. I saw the opalescent ten-foot circle of the
beam moving along the _Cometara_ hull. It seemed to do no damage; then
suddenly it darted down and clung to me.

I felt nothing save the impact of a gentle push, something shoving
with a ponderable force against me.

I saw the _Cometara_ receding, the heavens swinging as I turned over.
The red disc of the distant Earth swooped. The Moon surface
momentarily seemed rotating and lifting above me.

I was helpless, rolling, then whirling end-over-end. Then again I
steadied. The beam was gone from me.

I saw the _Cometara_, a full mile away from me! The enemy ship was
again in motion, moving toward me, and between the _Cometara_ and the
Earth. And the beam was steady upon the _Cometara's_ mid-section.

The _Cometara_ had a new velocity now. I could not miss it. She was
dwindling rapidly in visual size; relative to me, she was receding,
falling upon the Moon. More than that she was being pushed downward by
the repulsive force of the strange enemy beam upon her. I stared, as
with all the little dots which were our men around and upon her, she
went down into the void.

I found myself presently alone up here, with the enemy ship hovering
nearby. Its maneuvering to thrust the wrecked _Cometara_ toward the
Moon had brought it within a mile of me. The bow-beam was still on the
_Cometara_; and then abruptly it vanished.

The _Cometara_ had almost dwindled beyond the sight of my unaided
vision. By chance, undoubtedly, the beam had fallen upon me and thrust
me from the wreck. I was alone up here now with the enemy, but they
may not have noticed me, or cared. I found my power mechanism intact.
I turned it on; slowly, like a log in water, I began moving away.

A minute. Five minutes. The _Cometara_ was lost. Grantline, all the
men, were lost; with that added downward thrust they could never free
themselves