He unscrewed the man's helmet, tried to pry the jaws open. They would not move; the airless void surrounding the tiny planetoid had frozen the body until now it was as solid as the quartz cave-walls. There was but one thing to do: the other door must be melted down.
He leaped halfway across the room toward the door in the opposite wall. Could it be possible that he was in time? Anxiously he flung a bolt of energy from his heat rod toward the lock, holding a flashlight under the other stump of an arm. The molten metal flowed to the floor like a rivulet of lava.
The door, hanging off balance, screeched open; air swooshed past him in its sudden escape from the room. He squeezed himself through, peered carefully about to see a slim spacesuit start to crumple floorward in a corner. The girl was alive!
He started toward her; the slim figure pulled itself erect again. He saw a drawn, emaciated face behind the helmet. Then, with a fury that unnerved him, she whipped out a heat rod, shot a searing bolt in his direction. He felt the fierce heat of it as it whizzed past his shoulder; in his brain Digger's thoughts of attack came to him, he flung an arm around the spacehound, dragged it back as he withdrew toward the door. The girl continued to fire bolt after bolt straight ahead, her eyes wide and staring.
They made the door, waited outside while the firing within continued. When at last it was still within, he peered around the corner of the room. She lay in a crumpled heap in the corner; quietly he re-entered, picked her up awkwardly. Through the thin, resistant folds of the spacesuit, he could feel the warmth of her, but could not tell whether the heart still beat or not. They would have to take her to one of the ships.
Her limp form was held tightly under his good arm as Nat hurried down the main tunnel. Digger apparently realized the seriousness of the situation, for he received impressions of "must hurry" from the beast and another creature, looking much like him, surrounded by small creatures of the same type, trapped in a crevice. "Aren't you a bit premature, old fellow," he chided.
Halfway there, the globes met them again. The things were not singing; from their many eyes poured a fierce, angry blue light. They rolled with a determination that frightened him. Yet he strode on, until they were barely a foot away.
"Jump, Digger!"
The spheres stopped short, reversed their direction toward the little group at a furious rate, flinging out long, whip-like tentacles. One wrapped itself around Nat's ankle, drew him down. He shifted the limp form over to his shoulder, slipped out his heat-rod. Quickly the tentacle was severed. But now others took their place; he continued firing at them, making each bolt tell, but the numbers were too great.
Digger sprang into action, rending the globes with those claws that were capable of tearing the hulls of spaceships. But tentacles lashed around him from the rear, snaked about him so that he was helpless.