that the Venusian chief was present; the
air-car, that all his men were gathered in the barracks, and not, as
was their custom, in Port o' Porno for a night of revelry!

All waiting--all gathered here--all ready! All grouped for a strong
defense! Did it mean what it would appear to--that he, the Hawk, was
expected?

He could not know. He could not know if a trap was lying prepared
there against his coming. He could but go ahead, and find out.

The only plan of attack he could think of had grown in his mind. Down
and up: that was the essence of it: but the details were difficult. He
had worked them out as far as he could with typical thoroughness. He
had to reach the heart of the fort lying before him: had to reach the
central house, Lar Tantril's own. The precious papers would be there,
if anywhere.

The Hawk was ready.

He gathered his muscles. His face was cold and hard, his eyes mists of
gray. There was no least sign in the man that, in the next few
all-deciding minutes, death would lick close to him.

He poised where he was precariously balanced. His ray-gun was in his
bare left hand; his face-plate was locked partly open. He raised his
fingers to the direction rod on the suit's breast, gazed straight at
the guard on the nearest watch-platform and snapped the direction rod
out, pointing it at that guard.

* * * * *

What happened then struck so fast, so unexpectedly, that it took only
thirty seconds to plunge the quiet ranch into chaos.

The Hawk came like a thunder-bolt, using to its full power his only
weapon, the space-suit. The sight of him might alone have been enough
to strike terror. From the dark arms of the tree he hurtled, his
bloated monstrous shape of metal and fabric dull in the glow of the
watch-beacon, and crashed with a clang of metal into the platform he
aimed at. Nothing there could withstand him. One second the guard on
it was calmly gazing off into the sky: the next, like a nine-pin he
was bowled over, to topple heels and head whirling to the ground sixty
feet beneath. He lived, he kept consciousness, but he was sorely
injured; and he never saw the outlandish projectile that struck him,
nor saw it streak to the second watch-platform, bowling its guard out
and to the ground likewise, and then repeating at the third and last!

A crash; a pause; a crash; a pause; then a third crash, and the thing
of metal had completed the circuit, and all three watch-platf