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* * * * *

“I owe you one for that, Jim. Too bad, though, the big fellow escaped; we’ll hear from him again, or I don’t know the breed. Wonder how he got on the planet.”

“The sucker must ‘a’ stowed away on the last recruit ship from Venus, slipped in a case o’ tools or somethin’. Mars has labor agents there, too, you know, for their farms on Ganymede.”

“Possibly. He knew my name, and that I was chief here. He’s rigged up an air-lock out there, though I can’t figure out how he gets the air.”

“That’s easy. While I was repairin’ the barrier I found a pipe runnin’ through. He’s been stealin’ ours. Which, by the same token, is why he was punchin’ holes in the Dome rather than down below, where he would have been safer from discovery.”

“So that’s it. Get anything more on the space-radio?”

“Nope. Angus has kept the ear-flaps on, but the ether is still jammed. Hey, what’re you up to?”

Darl was swinging his bandaged body up from the cot that had been set up in the headquarters tent at his insistence. “Can’t lie on my back,” he panted, “with that devil loose on the planet. Lord knows what he’s up to now. We’re short-handed enough as it is.”

He rose to his feet, staggering with weakness and loss of blood. But his indomitable will drove him on. “I’ll take over the control board. Send Angus up to relieve Ran-los, and you get below and speed up production. Earth will need double quantities of surta for food, now that there’s a war on.”

* * * * *

Jim turned to convey the order to the Scot, but he whirled to the tent-flap instead as a riot of sound exploded outside. He tore aside the canvas, and now there was a burst of shrill, frightened Venusian cries, and a deeper, rattling chorus. Out on the Dome floor, pouring from the shaft-head in a panic torrent, came the Venusians. And among them, leaping, slashing, dragging them down, were countless little yellow men, their fangs and tusks and curving claws crimson with the blood of their victims.

“Darl, Mac, they’ve broken through! The Mercs have broken through!” The brown plain was a blood-spattered battlefield. Here and there little groups of the green men, braver than the rest, fought with spanner and hammer and whatever improvised weapon they may have found. “Come on, give ’em hell!” The three Earthmen dashed out, weapons in hand. But friend and foe were so intermingled that they could not use the devastating ray of their hand-guns. The fighting Venusians were vanishing under a tossing sea of yellow imps. And still the dwarfs poured forth from the mine entrance.

A blue form towered, far back, where all green had vanished, and only Mercurians were left. The Martian’s beak opened in a rattling call. A group of hundreds of pigmies suddenly left the main fight, and came forward with short, swift steps. They dashed straight for the Earth trio and cut them off from the Venusians they were running to aid.

* * * * *

Side by side the three fought. Their weapons grew hot in their hands as the beams cut great swaths in the seething ranks. The attackers halted, gave back, then surged forward again as the roar of their alien commander lashed them on.

The Earthmen faced the frenzied throng. A cleared circle was still around them. Beyond, the Venusians were all down. The Mercurian mob was closing in, the Terrestrians’ rays had lost half their range. In moments now the ray-guns would be exhausted.