gs, we surged up to the superstructure roof and dropped
upon it. My weapon was gone. Half a dozen adversaries had me pinioned.

Down on the deck I saw that Venza had lost her weapon; Molo and Meka
were clutching her. Snap was fighting with several antagonists. Anita
was loose. She dove for the group in which Snap was struggling, hit
them, kicked and bounded upward, to be seized by two of my own
captors.

"Anita, don't fight! They'll kill you!"

I tried to break loose, but four huge Martians were holding me.

"Oh, Gregg!"

There was horror in Anita's voice. Snap had broken away. At the open
deck-port he stood, as though undecided what to do. The deck was
almost black around him; he was silhouetted against the outside
starlight. From almost at his side, in the darkness, a tiny bolt spat
upward at his head. His arms went wildly out; he tumbled backward. At
the top of the boarding incline his body seemed spasmodically to kick,
and the thrust whirled it down into the darkness.

The end of Snap! A pang went through me. Snap, my best friend!

Molo cursed the unknown man of his crew who had fired the shot. But
none would admit who did it.

"Get to your posts," Molo roared in Martian. "Enough of you are here.
Lash up the prisoners; we're launching away now." He thumped his
brawny sister as she passed him. "Well played, Meka!"

These wily Martians! Molo had planned that Meka was to gather the crew
and wait here at the ship for him and Wyk. If they returned with us as
captives, it would be here that they would come. But if by chance
things went adversely, Molo reasoned we would act just as we did; and
Meka and her men were lurking here in ambush, waiting for us.

All the many various ports swung shut. Anita, Venza, and I, with arms
and legs bound, were taken by Molo to the forward observation and
control room.

The ship was resounding with signals. The interior controls in the
hull-base raised the gravity-pull within the vessel to a strength
comparable to that of Earth. Within a few minutes the _Star-Streak_
lifted from the stage. Strange, weird Wandl fell away from us. We
slid upward through the atmosphere, following one of the globular
Wandl vessels, and headed into space toward the point where, a few
million miles distant, the ships of allied Earth, Venus, and Mars were
gathering.

17

"They are visible." Molo turned from the eyepiece of his
electro-telescope. "Do you want to see them, Gregg Haljan?"