tance Parr had
made in his own voyage out, all dressed in that loose-plate armor. Parr
wrenched a pistol from a tentacle. Yelling again, he fired through the
open hatchway. Two space-hands ducked out of sight.

"We've won!" yelled Parr, and for a moment he thought they had. But not
all his followers had charged with his own bold immediacy.

Sadau on one side of the ship, Jeffords and Haldocott at the other, had
run in close and were walloping manfully at the nozzles of the rocket
tubes. The outer metal yielded under the blows, threatening to clog the
throats of the blasts. Only at the rear was there no attack--Shanklin,
and with him three or four of the lesser men, had hung back. The few
moments' delay there was enough to make all the difference.

Thinking and acting wisely, even without a leader, the Martian
space-hands met the emergency. They had withdrawn from the open
hatchway, but could reach the mechanism that closed it. Parr was too
late to jump in after them. Then one of them fired the undamaged rear
tubes.

_Swish! Whang!_ The ship took off so abruptly that Parr barely dodged
aside in time, dragging along with him the new Terrestrial whose
shoulder he clutched, and also the surprised Martian skipper. The rocket
blasts, dragging fiery fingers across the plain, struck down Haldocott
and Jeffords, and bowled over two of the laggards with Shanklin's
belated contingent. Then it was away, moving jumpily with its
half-wrecked side tubes, but nevertheless escaping.

Parr swore a great oath, that made the stranger gasp. And then Parr had
time to see that this was a woman, and young. She was briefly dressed in
blouse and shorts, her tawny hair was tumbled, her blue eyes wide. To
her still clung the Martian skipper, and Parr covered him with the
captured pistol. Next instant Shanklin, arriving at last, struck out
with his club and shattered the flowerlike cranium inside the plated
cap. The skipper fell dead on the spot.

"I wanted him for a prisoner!" growled Parr.

"What good would that do?" flung back Shanklin roughly. "The ship's what
we wanted. It's gone. You bungled, Parr."

Parr was about to reply with the obvious charge that Shanklin's own
hesitancy had done much to cause the failure, when Sadau spoke:

"This young lady--miss, are you an exile? Because," and he spoke in the
same fashion that he had once employed to Parr, "then you're our new
chief. The latest comer commands."

"Why--why--" stammered the