Snap shoved Venza behind him; I got myself in front of Anita. We had almost gained our feet. I tried to thrust Anita and myself violently upward. We rose, but only a few feet. And then we were struck by the oncoming body of Wyk, like a huge, light-shelled, three-pound insect lunging in mid-air against us. The two longest tentacle arms wrapped around us. Anita twisted and kicked. The gruesome, goggling face of Wyk thrust itself almost into mine. The hollow voice panted, "I have you fast." One of my arms was free and I struck with my fist at the gaping, upended mouth. There was a crack. My fist sank through the shell; a cold, sticky ooze spurted out. Wyk screamed. His encircling arms fell away. The grisly smashed face was white with ooze and pulp where my fist had gone in. We had sunk back to the rocks. I kicked the dead body of Wyk away. "Anita! Swim up!" "No!" Sinking beside us were the flailing bodies of Molo, Snap and Venza were drifting down. They seemed intermingled. Snap was shouting: "No you don't! Drop that!" I leaped for them. Something long and thin and glowing was dangling from Molo's hand. He broke loose from the struggling Snap and Venza; his feet struck the rocks and he shoved himself backward. My leap had carried me too high. I saw that in his hand was a six-foot length of glowing wire. He whirled it. The weight on its end described an arc, and then he flung the handle. The weighted wire struck Venza and Snap just as their repulsive ray shot down against the rocks and shoved them upward. The whirling wire wrapped itself around them, bound them together. Its glow vanished. Snap had been shouting, "Gregg, come up." But it died in his throat. All this while, in those few seconds, I was vaulting over Molo, trying to get back to the ground to leap again. I saw that Anita was crawling on the rocks. My gravity cylinder was at my belt. I had jammed it there to leave my hands free just as Wyk struck me. I saw that Snap and Venza, wrapped together by the wire, had dropped their gravity projector. Their entwined figures went up some fifty feet and stopped; then began drifting down. Molo was shouting, "You, Gregg Haljan! Now for you!" I struck the rocks and fell twenty feet beyond him. I jerked out my gravity projector, but I did not know what I wanted to do with it. And in that second I saw that the standing Molo was aiming at me. Directly over my head the inert bound bodies of Venza and Snap were falling.