on the desperately ticklish piloting at hand.

He cut speed and eased the _Sunsprite_ down into that thinner area of
the meteor-swarm. Space around them now seemed buzzing with rushing,
brilliant little moons.

The meteorometers had gone crazy, blinking and buzzing unceasing
warning, their needles bobbing all over the direction-dials.
Instruments were useless here--he had to work by sight alone. He eased
the cruiser lower through the swarm, his fingers flashing over the
throttles, using quick bursts of the rockets to veer aside from the
bright, rushing meteors.

"Hurry!" yelled Holk Or hoarsely again, over the tumult. "I
can't--hold them out much longer--"

Down and down went the _Sunsprite_ through the maze of meteor-moons,
twisting, turning, dropping ever lower toward the green asteroid.

A last gasping shout from Holk Or, and the door crashed off its
burned-through hinges. Kenniston, unable to turn from the
life-or-death business of threading the swarm, heard the Jovian
fighting furiously.

Next moment a hand gripped Kenniston's shoulder and tore him away from
the controls. It was Murdock, his eyes blazing, his gun raised.

"Raise your hands or I'll kill you, Kenniston!" he cried.

"Let me go!" yelled Kenniston, struggling to get back to the
throttles. "You _fool_!"

He had just glimpsed the jagged moonlet rushing obliquely toward them
from the left, bulking suddenly big and monstrous.

_Crash!_ The shock flung them from their feet, and the _Sunsprite_
gyrated crazily in space. There was a blood-chilling shriek of
outrushing air from the fore part of the ship, and the slam-slam-slam
of the automatic air-doors closing, down there.

The cruiser's whole bows had been crushed in by the glancing blow of
the meteor. Now, ironically, the ship was falling clear of the
meteor-swarm for Kenniston's piloting had almost won through it before
the impact. But the _Sunsprite_ was falling helplessly, turning over
and over as it plunged down toward the green surface of the jungled
asteroid.

* * * * *

"My God, we're struck!" came Captain Walls' thin yell.

"This is your fault!" Murdock blazed at Kenniston. "You damned pirates
will die for this!"

"Let me at those controls or we'll all die together in five minutes!"
Kenniston cried. "We'll crash to smithereens unless I can make a
tail-tube landing--"

Heedless of Murdock's gun, he jumped to the controls. His hands flew
over the thr