They hurried along the corridor, ducking into side rooms to avoid being sighted by squads of the green crustaceans that suddenly sprouted into being. Thus, playing a grim game of hide and seek, they finally made their way up to the control room. But here they ran into a huge, massed group of the Sediphrons, who had evidently been ordered to await any such move on the part of the desperate fugitives. The lurid crackle of electronic bolts fused against the corridor walls. Storm and Hammond worked their rifles with grim methodicalness, blasting a half dozen of the green crustaceans into oblivion. But there were too many of them. They had to fall back along the corridor. Then Ardiné received a partial shock from a glancing bolt that dropped her. Storm sprang for her, heedless of the bursting bolts, and caught her up in his strong arms. Gena and Hammond covered him under a steady flare of bolts. With Storm ahead of them they turned and ran. It was up to Gena. The Earthmen followed blindly, lost in the bewildering maze of ramps, rooms and corridors. As if in a grim nightmare they fought their way back through the ship, escaping annihilation many times by Gena's unerring knowledge of dilating doors that gave temporary safety. Once Hammond saw Gena glance down at her chronometer, and he felt the rise of alarm in her thoughts before she blanked them out. And the chemist remembered then the time-bomb she had planted in the degravitator room of the _Vandar III_. They crossed a momentarily deserted corridor, Storm still carrying the unconscious Ardiné, and went into a long room that held a maze of long metal pipe overhead and squat machinery with smaller feeders leading up to the huge conductors. Gena's thoughts came to Hammond as they paused here. "If we _must_ die, let us at least take Zuggoth and his hideous horde with us. I can't let them get back to Mars now." Hammond said: "Gena! Wait!" But the lithe, young Amazon was already running along a row of banked machinery, withdrawing the second time-bomb from under her hybrid disguise. In the far wall a green light glowed as she approached. A door dilated open, and a Sediphron appeared in the opening. For a moment he hesitated, stalk eyes swaying toward Gena. Then suspicion fused to purpose, and he swung his electron to target her. Hammond's rifle lashed out first. Gena scarcely slowed in her run. She stepped over the crustacean's green body, and vanished into the degravitator room. Sweat gathered on Hammond's brow as he waited, rifle held tight in his right hand. Storm was stroking Ardiné's forehead, his face grim. The high-pitched hum of the giant degravitator filled the room. Then Gena returned, swiftly, tearing off her hybrid disguise. "One hour, Earthmen!" she said, unevenly, her eyes dark with the terrible strain. "One hour, and then we go down with Zuggoth and his hideous horde!"