"Are you boys all ready?" I asked, creeping to a position opposite the door and drawing my hand-gun. Again there was a chorus of assent. "Then on the count of three, shoot up those repellor rays--all of them--and for God's sake, don't miss." And I counted. I think my "three" was a bit weak. I know it took all the courage I had to utter it. For an agonizing instant nothing happened, except that the landing party from the ship strolled into my range of vision. Then startled, they turned their eyes upward. For an instant they stood frozen with horror at whatever they saw. One hurled his knife at me. It grazed my cheek. Then a couple of them made a break for the doorway. The rest followed. But I fired pointblank with my hand-gun, pressing the button as fast as I could and aiming at their feet to make sure my explosive rockets would make contact and do their work. The detonations of my rockets were deafening. The spot on which the Hans stood flashed into a blinding glare. Then there was nothing there except their torn and mutilated corpses. They had been fairly bunched, and I got them all. I ran to the door, expecting any instant to be hurled into infinity by the sweep of a disintegrator ray. Some eighth of a mile away I saw one of the ships crash to earth. A disintegrator ray came into my line of vision, wavered uncertainly for a moment and then began to sweep directly toward the ship in which I stood. But it never reached it. Suddenly, like a light switched off, it shot to one side, and a moment later another vast hulk crashed to earth. I looked out, then stepped out on the ground. The only Han ships in the sky were two of the scouts to the south which were hanging perpendicularly, and sagging slowly down. The others must have crashed down while I was deafened by the sound of the explosion of my own rockets. Somebody hit the other repellor ray of one of the two remaining ships and it fell out of sight beyond a hilltop. The other, farther away, drifted down diagonally, its disintegrator ray playing viciously over the ground below it. I shouted with exultation and relief. "Take back the command, Boss!" I yelled. His commands, sending out jumpers in pursuit of the descending ship, rang in my ears, but I paid no attention to them. I leaped back into the compartment of the Han ship and knelt beside my Wilma. Her padded helmet had absorbed much of the blow, I thought; otherwise, her skull might have been fractured. "Oh, my head!" she groaned, coming to as I lifted her gently in my arms and strode out in the open with her. "We must have won, dearest, did we?" "We most certainly did," I reassured her. "All but one crashed and that one is drifting down toward the south; we've captured this one we're in intact. There was only one member of the crew aboard when we dove in." [Illustration: As the American leaped, he swung his legs up in front of him, catching the Han full in the stomach.]