He leaped to Phipps' body, snatched the Moeller from the dead man's hand, then sprang to the door, locked it. It was a feeble defense, he knew, but it offered him at least a moment of respite. Came the grate of Jordan's feet in the corridor outside, then a hammering on the door, and the pirate's querulous roar. "Hey, what's going on in there? Phipps! Open up!" And then--a miracle occurred. For when Chip deserted the control panel, he had released the telaudio key. And theoretically all communication between himself and his friends was broken. But now sounded a high, singing note in the air, a note that took on cadence, a cadence forming itself into words, words that were the excited voice of Syd Palmer! "Chip, boy! Can you hear me? You all right! The heat _is_ on! _That's the answer!_ For God's sake, find a bulger, quick! Climb into it!" * * * * * There were cabinets in the room. To these Chip Warren raced, tearing at their handles with avid fingers, wrenching them open with violent disregard for whatever precious manuscripts, intricate and valuable apparatus, tumbled out to mingle in damaged heterogeneity on the floor. In the fourth cabinet he found that which he sought, a quartzofabricoid bulger. Into this he flung himself, keeping a wary eye upon the door, about whose lock was already glowing a smoky circle of scarlet as Blacky Jordan, belatedly realizing there was something amiss, melted the lock with his Moeller. With a final _zzzp!_ Chip closed the seam of his space suit, with a final twist of the hand screwed into place its transparent helmet. Thus, like some bloated and grotesque denizen of ocean depths, Moeller leveled and ready, he stood waiting to meet Blacky Jordan in their third, and this time necessarily final, encounter. But Blacky Jordan never stepped into that room! The door never opened. What happened outside Chip Warren did not know nor could he guess, but that it was something fearful and beyond belief he could tell by the cry which in that moment ripped from the outlaw's throat. "_Oh, Lord! Fire! I'm on fire!_" And suddenly the clamor of his footsteps beat _away_ from the door, down the hallway! Chip heard the big man hurl himself into the elevator, heard the spiraling whine of the lift rising. Wondering, yet cautious, he stepped to the door, eased it open. His hearing had not beguiled him. The corridor was empty and the elevator gone. Even as he stood there, dazed and uncomprehending, that eerie voice from nowhere again smote his ears. This time the cadence resolved itself into the reverberant tones of Salvation Smith, roaring in throaty triumph. "Lo, with Thy lightnings Thou hast destroyed them, O Lord! Chip, lad--you hear me? The hour of retribution has come! They cower like craven lice on the flesh of the sphere that hid them. Go to the control panel, boy; press the studs numbered 1 and 12. Haste, while we have them at our mercy!"