Carlyle piloted like a demon, straining the ship until the bulkheads chattered in their steps. Haggard's slightest error meant the gap between them closed that much more. Suddenly something seemed to go wrong. The _Martian_ faltered for a tenth of a second. In the next moment Thaddeus Carlyle swerved until the pirate's rocket tubes were straight before them. "Fire!" he clipped. Larry pulled swiftly at the lever. There was no response. Harder, he tugged. "I said _fire_!" Carlyle shouted at him. "I can't hold this point any longer. They're under way again." Sweat started from Larry's pores. "The thing's jammed, Chief!" he groaned. "They got our gun with that first shot." Carlyle seemed to wilt a little. What it meant was that they were up against a fast, armed vessel with no means of defending themselves. As if Brand Haggard sensed the trouble, too, he put the _Martian_ about and came booming down the line at them, head-on. Carlyle's response was slow. The ship heaved violently as a rear stabilizer melted under Haggard's shot. Only the fact that the shock threw them away from the pirate's line of fire saved them. Now it was the _Friar Bacon_ that dodged and ran. The air boiled all about them. Larry could envision Haggard's grinning, savage countenance hovering over the firing lever, ceaselessly yanking at it. And there was something wrong with the staggering _Friar_. Larry thought for a while that their stabilizers were not functioning. Always they were a fraction of a second late in diving out of range. It was when Haggard was not over a few hundred yards in the rear that Larry glanced over at Carlyle. In a flash he was on his feet.... He saw sunken, shrivelled cheeks and glazing eyes. Gray hair straggling from under the jaunty officer's cap. A scrawny neck going down into a collar many sizes too large. Larry was cold all over. He took Carlyle by the shoulders and hauled him out of the chair, surprised at the lightness of his body. The bony fingers clawed at the controls and then gave them up. Larry let him sag to the floor and grabbed the controls. Haggard was diving again, with throttles wide open. A few miles ahead lay the wreckage of the _Astral_. Larry suddenly saw his chance. He had no gun, nothing to fight back with; but here was where courage and skill might count heavily. With the _Martian_ a hundred yards in the rear, dead on the stern, Larry fired both bow rockets and the port stern rocket. Braces screamed and loose objects toppled, as the _Friar Bacon_ slowed and went into a tight pin-wheel. The _Martian_ roared up alongside. Larry blasted out with the other stern rocket and the two craft jarred together. At the same instant he turned on the boarding magnets, so that the ships were held together as though welded.