Leithgow timidly ventured a suggestion. "Why can't we put on our space-suits and rise up in the dome?" Crisply the answer came back: "Hard to maneuver laterally. Never get out ports. Sure death.... _I have it!_" he ended. Tersely he gave the two men orders: "We've a bare chance--if I'm lucky. Now listen, and obey me exactly. Put on your space-suits. Shut them tight. Lie flat. You, Friday, use your ray-guns _and keep the guards from coming close_. Wait here. Do absolutely nothing save keep them off. And keep your suits intact or you're dead!" He grabbed one of the suits from Friday and crept toward the _Scorpion_ on hands and knees. The three coolies from the pursuit at the rear had already cut him off from the ship. Friday could not control his alarm at this apparently crazy act. He called after: "But you can't get to the ship through those guards! And if you did, you couldn't run it yourself--and pick us up!" Carse turned, his face white with cold passion. "When will you learn to obey me implicitly?" he said harshly--and crept on. Old Leithgow trusted his friend a little more. "Get your suit on, Friday," he said gently, and slipped into his own. The negro, ashamed, followed his example; then both were flat on the ground, back to back, sniping--Leithgow also--as best they could under such conditions at the groups of men who now were bellying ever nearer from three directions. The Hawk's plan might well have appeared hair-brained to one who did not know the man, and what he was capable of accomplishing under pressure. The very first step in this plan required the destroying of the three outflanking guards between him and the space-ship. * * * * * As so often in the great adventurer's career, he was lucky. The unthinking have always admitted his luck, but never seen that he forced it--forced it by doing the unexpected--attacking when he was attacked. He was doing that now. The three coolie-guards in his way must have known who he was, so their alarm at finding themselves, the attackers, attacked, will account for their making a move of poor strategy. Instead of scattering and defending the open entrance-port of the space-ship from a short distance, they in their alarm made haste to get inside to defend it from there. The interior was the best place to defend the ship--if they had already been inside--for they could lie in the inner darkness and sweep the open port when the Hawk entered. But to try to pass through the port--that was bad judgment. It was only necessary for Carse to hold bead on it and fire when they passed in line. This was the present "luck" of the adventurer. He might have sniped the guards anyway, but he had it easier. From fifty yards away, prone and carefully sighting, he took the three lives that had been so viciously, so subversively altered by Ku Sui. A moment later, the way cleared, he was inside the ship--and his space-suit lay on the ground outside.