They clambered quickly out. Far across the void between seats the "big ones" loomed. Nearer, coming toward them along the heaving boat side, clattered the Sediphron war tanks. For a brief moment Gena's eyes mirrored a deep regret. Then she set the adjustment on her ray gun, and turned it on Hammond, while Ardiné did the same to Storm. The familiar, whirling darkness, the bitter cold, claimed Hammond. The darkness faded. He found himself facing Storm on the boat seat. The skiff was rocking crazily. Hammond teetered, stumbled back into the stern, and at the same moment Ardiné and Gena appeared. A wave shipped over the side, washing tiny, antlike things that a moment before had loomed as colossal war tanks, into the bottom of the boat. And at the same moment Gena stiffened. Thrusting from a turret in the Sediphron space craft appeared a small, glinting tube, similar to the one Gena had used to change them to tiny mites. In another moment they would experience again the sickening change to ultra-smallness. The twin reports, like small firecrackers going off inside the "big ones," cut across Hammond's instinctive yell to dive overboard. The space cruisers on the boat seat, with the degravitators gone, seemed suddenly sucked down with irresistible force. They crashed through the seat, through the bottom of the skiff, and vanished in a swirl of water. * * * * * The _Crawfish_ foundered, precipitating Hammond and his companions into the Sound. Hammond stroked instinctively to Gena's side, but the girl was as good a swimmer as he. Ardiné and Storm swam alongside, and together they idled, looking back to where the _Crawfish_ barely showed between swells, her thwarts awash. "That's the end of Zuggoth and his crustacean horde!" Storm remarked with relief. "Both ships must be buried deep in the muck and rock of the Sound!" Gena's eyes clouded. Hammond had the sudden knowledge she was thinking of the Amazon warriors that had gone down with the _Vandar III_. Yet he knew, too, that it was better this way, than the more horrible fate that had been in store for them. Gena stroked closer, her shoulder brushing his. She was still staring at the bobbing skiff, a strange half-fearful doubt tightening her wet face. Hammond sensed the trend of her thoughts. The occupants of the pursuing war tanks, unfitted for water travel, must have surely drowned. But the huge space craft were water tight. It might be that Zuggoth and his crustacean horde, buried in the muck of the Sound, by their tremendous weight relative to their size, would yet succeed in repairing the degravitator of his ship and win free before death overtook them. Hammond thrust the chill apprehension from him. He grinned reassuringly as Gena looked up at him, eyes dark with uncertainty--with sudden loneliness. She was no longer master of a million warriors--commander of a mighty ship of space. She was just a girl, now, soft and lovely and somewhat afraid.