Grant picked up the broken end of the wire.
"That," he said grimly, "is what we're going to find out. At the other end of this wire is the source of power for these traps. And that's where we'll find the person or being who's setting them! Let's go!"
The spacemen nodded, faces tense behind their helmets. Leaving the trail, they struck out across the rough terrain, following the thin thread of wire. The scenery grew wilder and wilder as they progressed, until they seemed spectres in some gehenna of weird, jagged rocks, grasping shadows. Suddenly Grant, in the lead, drew a sharp breath.
Ahead, the copper wire passed between two basalt walls, less than four feet wide. And at the other end of this passage was a portable radite lamp, its bluish beams revealing a small motor, a row of tall oxygen flasks, wires, metal plates, the missing equipment from the Comet's storehold. And bent over the motors was a powerful space-suited figure!
"Quick!" Grant roared. "We've got him!" Fingers fumbling for his heat-gun, he sprang forward.
Grant's leap, in the light gravity, carried him clear of the ground, and at that precise instant the dark figure before him threw a switch. A sudden shock hit Grant; he felt as if his hands and feet had been lashed by invisible bonds. He glanced down, gasped. He was standing on empty air, some two feet above the rocky floor of the corridor!