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With a muffled roar, the grenade shook the earth; sent a brown cloud spattering around us. I had made a desperate leap to get away, but even then I was covered by the shower of earth.

I looked around. Trapdoors were open everywhere, and from hundreds of these openings, Aranians were scuttling toward us.

But the ray operators were working; not only the little portable machine, but the big projectors on the Ertak, five or six hundred yards away; laying down a deadly and impassable barrage on either side of us.

“T

“Back to the ship,” I nodded, still rather breathless. “Let the ray men cover our retreat; we can take care of those between us and the ship with our pistols—and the Ertak’sprojectors will attend to our flanks. On the double, men!”

We fought every step of the way, in a fog of reddish dust from the big disintegrator rays playing on either side of us—but we made it, a torn, weary, and bedraggled crew.

“Quite an engagement, sir,” gasped Correy, when we were safely inside the Ertak. “Think they’ll remember this little visit of ours, sir?”