A flash leaped over the dark rocks from Molo. There was a split-second when I thought it was the end of me. But I was still alive. The bodies of Venza and Snap struck my head and shoulders; knocked me down. I felt Molo's ray upon me. Not death, but only his gravity ray, like a giant hand pulling me. Apparently he wanted us alive. I was scrambling on the rocks, entangled with Venza and Snap. Molo's radiance clung. All three of us went tumbling forward toward him. I flashed my own ray, but I was rolling end over end, and it went wild. I dropped it, saw Molo's beam vanish, saw his upright standing figure towering above me. Snap, Venza and I were in a heap at his feet. He leaned down and seized me. "Now, Gregg Haljan, I will teach you not to try escaping like this!" With the huge, muscular Martian gripping me, his fist striking for my face but missing and hitting my shoulder, this was a semblance of normality. I could understand fighting like this. I wrapped my legs around him; my fingers reached for his brawny throat as he kicked us into the air free of the entangling bodies of Snap and Venza. We rose a few feet and sank back, gripping each other, lunging and striking. He was very powerful, this Martian. I caught the round pillar of his throat with my hands. For an instant I shut off his wind, but I could not hold the grip. He struck me a glancing blow in the face, then the heel of his hand was under my chin. It forced back my head, broke my hold on his throat. With returning breath, he gasped an inhalation. And I heard his exulting words: "You are not strong enough!" We rolled and bumped over the rocks. I caught a blow from his fists full in my face. It was almost the end; I felt my strength going. He laughed as he struck away my answering swing. I was on my back against the rocks, with his body on top of me. Then beyond and behind his hulking shoulder, silhouetted against the sky, I saw Anita rise up. She was lifting a jagged gray mass of stone, full four feet in diameter. She poised it, then crashed it down on Molo's head. He sank away from me; his arms relaxed. The boulder rolled beside him. It was over now. Wyk was dead; his gruesome body with its smashed face lay near us. Molo was unconscious, breathing heavily, lying motionless, with a wound on the back of his head, the blood welling out, matting his hair. Anita and I were uninjured, victorious--but what a hollow victory. On the rocks here, bound together by that strange wire, Snap and Venza lay inert. We bent over them. The wire was cold to the touch now. It resisted our efforts to untwine it. We pulled frantically as we pleaded: "Snap, speak to us! Venza, can't you speak?" Their eyes were open. I was aware that there was no starlight above us, but instead, a lurid sky of flying clouds, shot with a greenish cast. The darkness here was green. The glow of it struck upon the wide-open staring eyes of Venza and Snap. It seemed that there was intelligence in those eyes.