These men, so different from the insect-like workers and the brains of Wandl, were solid in my grip; but we were all so weightless! I felled one, but others gripped me, pounded me. A struggling mass of bodies, arms and legs, we surged up to the superstructure roof and dropped upon it. My weapon was gone. Half a dozen adversaries had me pinioned.
Down on the deck I saw that Venza had lost her weapon; Molo and Meka were clutching her. Snap was fighting with several antagonists. Anita was loose. She dove for the group in which Snap was struggling, hit them, kicked and bounded upward, to be seized by two of my own captors.
"Anita, don't fight! They'll kill you!"
I tried to break loose, but four huge Martians were holding me.
"Oh, Gregg!"
There was horror in Anita's voice. Snap had broken away. At the open deck-port he stood, as though undecided what to do. The deck was almost black around him; he was silhouetted against the outside starlight. From almost at his side, in the darkness, a tiny bolt spat upward at his head. His arms went wildly out; he tumbled backward. At the top of the boarding incline his body seemed spasmodically to kick, and the thrust whirled it down into the darkness.
The end of Snap! A pang went through me. Snap, my best friend!
Molo cursed the unknown man of his crew who had fired the shot. But none would admit who did it.
"Get to your posts," Molo roared in Martian. "Enough of you are here. Lash up the prisoners; we're launching away now." He thumped his brawny sister as she passed him. "Well played, Meka!"
These wily Martians! Molo had planned that Meka was to gather the crew and wait here at the ship for him and Wyk. If they returned with us as captives, it would be here that they would come. But if by chance things went adversely, Molo reasoned we would act just as we did; and Meka and her men were lurking here in ambush, waiting for us.