"Can you get a shot at him?" Nils asked. "I'll try," Newcomb said. "He's coming straight for me. Lord, what a monster. I think I--No, damn it, I missed. Here, let me--Damn it! He's--" And then came that peculiar deadness in Nils's eardrums that meant the radio wire had been severed. Nils jumped to his feet and waved wildly to the crew at the drums. They began frantically to pull Newcomb up. Soon he broke surface and was helped up the ladder. He stood, bewildered, until one of the men led him into the bubble. "His radio wire snapped," Nils explained to Kerr. They wouldn't send Newcomb down again today--not after a narrow shave like that. His nerve would be gone. Nils stood up. "I'm going down after that baby," he told the crewmen. He began to work his way out of the complicated radio equipment, which snapped on over his helmet to take advantage of the built-in radio in his suit. "Petrone, you take the radio." * * * * * Petrone came lumbering over and accepted the rig. Nils sat on the ready bench and let the other crewmen adjust the equipment he needed. The rope hooked into the back of his suit; the air hose was connected to the suit oxygenerator, which was strong enough to support a man in airlessness but could not stand the pressure of the Uranian atmosphere and thus needed assistance from the powerful pump on the raft; and the radio wire attached to his light helmet rig. And then he was going over the side. He went down--way, way down--and then he saw Kerr. "How is it?" Nils asked. Kerr gestured. "He's off that way. He took a swipe at me, and I tried to get a shot at him. I think I took his ear off, but that's all. Anyway, he lit out like a jet. I expect he'll be back, though; probably he's too mad to think straight." They watched. While they watched, the harpoon was lowered to them. Minutes passed, dragging by with interminable slowness while their eyes searched the murky depths, the headlamps making strange patterns, looking for the air lion. And then Nils spotted him--too late. "Look out behind you!" he shouted desperately. But he was too late. The air lion's powerful flippers forced him through the atmosphere with astonishing speed, and he struck Kerr with tremendous force and impact before the other diver could even turn around. "God!" Nils muttered into his mouthpiece, horrified, as the lines snapped with the lion's onslaught and Kerr began to hurtle down toward the bottom of the sea of atmosphere, down to where the Uranian air was frozen solid. "Did it get him?" Petrone's voice sounded in the earphones. "Cut him off like a knife," Nils said. "We're going to pull you up. That baby's too rough to handle." "I'm staying down," Nils said. And the tone of his voice showed that he meant it. "Well, we'll send Newcomb down again," Petrone said. "Let him get his rest," Nils said. "I just got here."