The mêlée that followed was wilder than when we ourselves had captured this same ship; since though we and all our crew flung ourselves forward upon the things without hesitation, we were weaponless and outnumbered by ten to one. As it was, I struck out with all my power at the hideous, writhing beings, feeling some of them collapse beneath my wild blows even as they strove to coil about me; saw Korus Kan, with his triple powerful metal arms, crushing the life from those who leapt upon him, cool and silent as ever even in that wild din of battle; glimpsed the great Spican grasping those about him in his tremendous arms and literally tearing them into fragments as we battled on. But rapidly the members of our crew who battled about us were going down, the life crushed from them by the coiling bodies that overwhelmed us, and then as I strode on I too was gripped from beneath, by a serpent-creature that had wound itself about my feet, and now pulled me down. [Illustration: "We were weaponless and outnumbered ten to one."] Struggling in the grip of a half-dozen of the alien creatures, I heard Jhul Din shouting hoarsely, saw him finally pulled from his feet also by a great mass of the writhing things, and then Korus Kan and the remainder of our crew were overcome too, and within another moment all was over. Scores of the serpent-creatures lay dead about us, but with them lay many of our own crew; not more than a bare score were left to us now of all our party. Gripped tightly still by the serpent-creatures, we were thrust down a narrow stair and into an empty little storeroom beneath the pilot room, in its metal walls but a single space-window giving a view forward. The door snapped shut as the last of us were thrust inside, and then our captors had left us, the lashings that had snared our ship were cast loose by the ships on either side, and as the humming of the generators waxed loud again our ship and those about it began to move once more through space. "They're heading now toward the dying universe!" exclaimed Korus Kan, gazing through the single window into the black gulf outside. "They're going to take us there as prisoners!"