The bolt struck us midway of the hull in a shower of sparks that mounted up and clouded our instruments. Clinging, full-power beam. Rollins at last striking for the kill! Wildly our guns tried to intercept it. One of our forepeak guns went out of commission with a back-firing burst which shattered it and killed the man at its controls. The fumes of the explosion came wafting up, acrid, choking. There was a sudden panic of confusion here, but Jerome leaped to his feet with his roaring voice steadying his men. Then two of our guns, stem and bow, stabbed beams that struck the patrolship's bow and clung. But still that blast at our hull persisted. Eating, fusing the metallic hull-plate. Weird, transfixed drama as the seconds passed. I knew that Rollins now would never yield. This bolt would cling to the limit of his batteries. The audiphone beside Jerome was screaming with the hull-controlman's panic-stricken voice: "Chief--hull plate is bending--bulging--" Then I saw, through the shower of sparks outside, that Rollins' ship was edging even closer. One of our two bolts had wavered and broken, with exhausted battery. The other, weakened by all Jerome's reckless firing, was futilely clinging to its target with a shower of sparks paling now by diminished voltage. And then from the patrolship, little blobs were popping out. Catapulted bombs, hurtling at us with this close, twenty-mile range. Some exploded in mid-space fired by the free electrons which hung heavy here around us. And then one struck us, exploded with a dull concussion against our stern. And then another, and another. "Jim--Jim dear--goodbye." Brenda's murmured words brought me suddenly to myself. Only sixty seconds had passed since we burst out of the gas-cloud and Rollins had jumped to finish us. Sixty seconds, but it had brought chaos here on the Phantom ship. My chance! Old Professor Carson beside us was in a daze; white-faced, numbly staring. "The exit-porte," I muttered. "Brenda, make your father hurry." Fumes of green-yellow chlorine mingled with oil-smoke, were surging around us as we staggered up the little catwalk from the balcony to the dome-top. Jerome may have seen us. His voice was shouting desperate orders, and curses, but whether at us or not I never knew. A gunner down on the deck fired at us with a hand-ray, but it missed. "Brenda, hurry! Get your father into a space-suit." She and I still were garbed in the space-suits from the _Seven Stars_. In the tiny exit-porte, one of Jerome's crew, himself trying to escape, lunged at me, but I felled him with a blow of my fist into his face. The closing slide-door of the tiny pressure chamber shut away the chaos. Then our suits were inflated; our helmets fixed and we catapulted into the glare of outside space. I flung on my rocket-stream; clung to Brenda and her father. My metal-tipped fingers on the metallic plate of her shoulder made audiphone contact. "Hold tight, Brenda." "Yes, Jim." "I'll tow us."