Hopeless! It looked like the end. Hawk Carse's face was in its old, emotionless mold as he waited, his gun sharp on the spot where the hand must reappear if they would fire the deadly projector. He had to get that hand--and any others that took its place. An almost impossible shot. He couldn't rush it and get it too. Not in time. A moment passed. The hand flashed out; Carse shot and again missed. Then a narrow cone was along the corridor, a blinding orange streak. Instantly, with a rasp of thunder, it was gone, and the air was stifling. The Hawk was untouched; Friday, too, he saw. The bolt had been taken by the door--and one of the door's two halves was ajar! * * * * * At once Hawk Carse acted. "Inside!" he yelled, then was through, the negro right behind. Carse's eyes swept the laboratory. It was a place of shadows, the sole light being a faint gleam from a tiny bulb-tipped surgical tool which glimmered weirdly from the bank of instruments waiting by the operating table. Carse saw no one. "Hold the door!" he ordered. "I don't think it'll lock!" Friday obeyed. He found the inner bolt melted and the lock inoperative; and, placing his forearms on either side of the middle crack of the door, he stood bracing it. A furious pounding shook the door. A heavy pressure bent it inward. "Quick!" the big black gasped. "Somethin' to wedge it!" "A minute, Friday," the Hawk answered. "Hold it!" He was already dragging a metal table there; and, upended under the knob, making an angle with the floor, it held stoutly closed the door, now thumping and quivering with blows given it from outside. The panting negro fell back from the door exhausted, but rose to help his master at the need for placing additional barricades. That finished, the Hawk wheeled, and at once, pantherlike, ray-guns at the ready, stalked the room. There was no sign of the enemy. He approached the operating table. A great relief flooded his grim face as he sighted Eliot Leithgow lying there, apparently untouched and still conscious. The elderly scientist was strapped down tight, but he was smiling. "I knew you'd come, Carse, if you could," he said simply. There was no time for visiting. "Where's Ku Sui?" the adventurer asked. "Gone," Leithgow answered. "I heard a door open and close--which one I couldn't see. He went as soon as that bell began to ring. The assistants, too." Through the shouts and batterings at the barricaded door came a new sound--from another direction. Like a streak the Hawk was at one of the three other doors, throwing its inside hand bolt; and by the time he had shot over the second, Friday had taken the cue and secured the remaining one. The negro let out a vast breath. "Umph!" he said. "I'll tell the universe that was close!" * * * * *