"Dump your ore," repeated the Martian guard, coldly.
"To hell with you!" snarled Bormon, and blasted with the tube.
He missed the Martian. Still weakened by the ordeal he had just passed through, and overwrought as an effect of Calbur's last despairing act, his aim was not true. Nevertheless, that coruscating shaft was fraught with far-reaching consequence. Passing three feet to the left of the Martian, it snapped two of the rods which braced the catwalk in position over the cyclotron drum. Thus released at the far end, the metal ribbon—for the catwalk was little more than that—curled and twisted like a tirhco spring, pitching Bormon, as from a catapult, straight along the path so recently chosen by Calbur.
Destiny had indeed provided them both with a strange exit from Echo, for in that split second Bormon realized that he was being hurled squarely into the gaping orifice of the cyclotron.
Far out in the vacuity between Echo and Mars, Captain Dunstan sat in his cabin aboard the Patrol Ship Alert—most powerful and, therefore, speediest craft possessed by the Earth-Mars Space Police.
On his desk lay two jagged pieces of ore, whitish-gray in color, which he had been examining.