With the words our half-dozen cruisers zoomed upward and outward at such tremendous velocity that the deadly bolts from the thousands of cubes beneath fell short of us in our wild upward rush. Up--up--upward from that great central world we shot, and outward. The cube-ships beneath, taken by surprize for the moment, then massed also and leapt up after us. And now, a scant six cruisers remaining of all the thousands that had been our force a few minutes before, we raced out from that central world, toward the darker circle in the distant coma's wall that was the one passage to outside space. Out over the ring of revolving disk-worlds we shot, out toward that opening, out---- But what was that? That swarm of tiny, square shapes, of gleaming little cube-shapes, which even at that distance we could see had darted suddenly from one side across the dark circle of the single opening? Close-massed in a compact swarm, they had shot out from the side to halt _across_ that opening, hanging motionless there. Cube-ships, hundreds in number, that had flashed toward that opening from one side, to hang motionless there across it, while behind us there raced after us in deadly pursuit the other cube-ship thousands! Cube-ships that hung motionless, ready, across that round opening through the great coma, and at sight of which I cried aloud once more. "They've cut us off--they're ahead of us!" I cried. "_They've barred the one way to outside space and we're trapped here at the comet's heart!_" 3 The moment that followed, as our ships slowed and hung motionless, with doom ahead and doom behind, was one in which the death that we had dared a score of times since reaching the comet loomed full before us. The cube-ships that barred the way ahead, the thousands racing toward us from behind--these were like death's great jaws closing upon us, and for an instant I felt myself surrendering to utter despair. But then, as my eyes dropped downward, toward the ring of outer smaller disk-worlds over which we had been flashing and above which we now hung, a flicker of hope shot through me and I turned swiftly to the speech-instrument. "Down to those worlds below!" I cried. "There's a chance that we can hide on one of them until we can get out of the comet!"