eaking the stiffest rule of the Service. But, perhaps by now the
flitter was gone, he might never reach the _RS 10_. It was not his
war, right enough. But he'd give the weaker side a fighting chance.

Dalgard followed him into the globe ship, climbing the ladders to the
engine level, watching with curious eyes as Raf inspected the driving
power of the ship and made the best disposition possible of one of the
bombs.

Then they were on the ladder once more as the ship shook under them,
plates buckling as a great wound tore three decks apart. Raf laughed
recklessly. Now that he was committed to this course, he had a
small-boy delight in the destruction.

"They won't raise her again in a hurry," he confided to Dalgard. But
the other did not share his triumph.

"They come--we must move fast," the scout urged.

When they jumped from the hatch, they discovered that the mermen had
been busy in their turn. As many of the supplies as they could move
had been pushed and piled into one great mass. Broken crystal littered
the floor in shards and puddles of strange chemicals mingled smells to
become a throat-rasping fog. Raf eyed those doubtfully. Some of those
fumes might combine in the blast--

Once again Dalgard read his mind and waved the mermen back, sending
them through the door to the ramp and the lower engine room. Raf stood
in the doorway, the bomb in his hand, knowing that it was time for him
to make the most accurate cast of his life.

The sphere left his fingers, was a gleam in the murky air. It struck
the pile of material. Then the whole world was hidden by a blinding
glare.

It was dark--black dark. And he was swinging back and forth through
this total darkness. He was a ball, a blast bomb being tossed from
hand to hand through the dark by painted warriors who laughed shrilly
at his pain, tossed through the dark. Fear such as he had never known,
even under the last acceleration pressure of the take-off from Terra,
beat through Raf's veins away from his laboring heart. He was helpless
in the dark!

"Not alone--" the words came out of somewhere, he didn't know whether
he heard them, or, in some queer way, felt them. "You are safe--not
alone."

That brought a measure of comfort. But he was still in the dark, and
he was moving--he could not will his hands to move--yet he was moving.
He was being carried!

The flitter--he was back on the flitter! They were air-borne. But who
was piloting?

"Captain! Soriki!"