own men to come up and help him. While they were
relieving the pirates of their pistol belts and cartridge bandoliers,
more came up, their hands over their heads, herded by a combat car
from which Tom Brangwyn covered them with a pair of 12-mm machine
guns. Tom hadn't put in an appearance before he had taken his commando
force into the tunnel; he hadn't even known the chief of Company
Police was on Barathrum.

"Well, nice seeing you," he greeted. "How did you get in?"

"Over the top," Brangwyn told him. "Everything's caved in on the other
side. We have a quarter of the top gallery, and half of this one. Your
father's cleaning up above. Klem's got some men working along the
outside."

Sylvie was tugging at his arm. "Hey, look! Look at that!" she was
clamoring. "Who's she belong to?"

He looked; the _Lester Dawes_ was coming over the edge of the crater.

"She's ours," he said. "It's all over but the mopping up. And counting
the egg breakage."

XI

The shooting died down to occasional rattles of small arms, usually
followed by yells for quarter. An explosion thundered from across the
crater. The _Lester Dawes_ fired her big guns a few times. A machine
gun stuttered. A pistol banged, far away. It took two hours before all
the pirates had been hunted out of hiding and captured, or killed if
found by their former captives, who were accepting no surrender
whatever.

Blackie Perales had been one of the latter; he had been found, his
clothes in rags and covered with dirt and grease, hiding under a
machine in one of the shops back of the dock in which the _Harriet
Barne_ was being rebuilt. He had tried to claim that he was one of the
pirates' prisoners who had eluded the roundup at the beginning of the
battle and had been hiding there since. As soon as the real prisoners
saw and recognized him, they had fallen upon him and clubbed, kicked
and stamped him out of any resemblance to humanity. At that, what he
got was probably only a fraction of what he deserved.

The egg breakage had been heavy, and not at all confined to the bad
eggs. A third gunboat, the _Banshee_, had been destroyed with all
hands during the final attack from outside; in addition, a dozen men
had been killed during the fighting in the galleries. Everybody was
shocked, except Klem Zareff, who had been in battles before. He was
surprised that the casualties had been so light.

At first glance, the spaceport looked like a handsome prize of
vic