ians dropped; quietly and without
a struggle, unknowing. Busy executives dropped upon their cushioned,
flat-topped desks; hurrying travelers and messengers dropped upon the
floors of the corridors or relaxed in the noxious waters of the ways;
lookouts and observers dropped before their flashing screens; central
operators of communications dropped under the winking lights of their
panels. Observers and centrals in the outlying sections of the city
wondered briefly at the unwonted universal motionlessness and
stagnation; then the racing taint in water and in air reached them, too,
and they ceased wondering--forever.

Then through those quiet halls Costigan stalked to a certain storage
room, where with all due precaution he donned his own suit of
Triplanetary armor. Making an ungainly bundle of the other Solarian
equipment stored there, he dragged it along behind him as he clanked
back toward his prison, until he neared the dock at which was moored the
Nevian space-speedster which he was determined to take. Here, he knew,
was the first of many critical points. The crew of the vessel was
aboard, and, with its independent air-supply, unharmed. They had
weapons, were undoubtedly alarmed, and were very probably highly
suspicious. They, too, had ultra-beams and might see him, but his very
closeness to them would tend to protect him from ultra-beam observation.
Therefore he crouched tensely behind a buttress, staring through his
spy-ray goggles, waiting for a moment when none of the Nevians would be
near the entrance, but grimly resolved to act instantly should he feel
any touch of a spying ultra-beam.

"Here's where the pinch comes," he growled to himself. "I know the
combinations, but if they're suspicious enough and act quick enough they
can seal that door on me before I can get it open, and then rub me out
like a blot; but ... ah!"

The moment had arrived, before the touch of any revealing ray. He
trained the key-tube, the entrance opened, and through that opening in
the instant of its appearance there shot a brittle bulb of glass, whose
breaking meant death. It crashed into fragments against a metallic wall
and Costigan, entering the vessel, consigned its erstwhile crew one by
one to the already crowded waters of the lagoon. He then leaped to the
controls and drove the captured speedster through the air, to plunge it
down upon the surface of the lagoon beside the door of the isolated
structure which had for so long been