CHAPTER XXXIII - Besieged!
“Wake up, Gregg! They're coming!"
I forced myself
to consciousness. "Coming—"
"Yes. Wake
up!"
I leaped from my
bunk, followed Snap with a rush into the corridor. We had returned safely to
the Grantline Camp. Anita and I found ourselves exhausted from lack of sleep,
our arduous climb of Archimedes and that tense time on the brigand ship. On the
flight back Snap had explained how the landing of the ship on Archimedes was
observed through the Grantline telescope, using but little of its power for
this local range. They had read with amazement my signals to the brigands. Snap
had rushed to completion the first of our contemplated flying platforms. Then
he had seen Miko's signals from the crater-base, seen the lights of the fight
to capture Anita and me in the cubby, and had come to rescue us.
Back at the camp
we were given food, and Grantline forced me to try and sleep.
"They'll be
on us in a few hours, Gregg. Miko will have joined them by now. He'll lead them
to us. You must rest, for we need everyone at his best."
And surprisingly,
in the midst of the camp's turmoil of last minute activities, I slept soundly,
until Snap called me that the ship was coming.
The corridor
echoed with the tramp of Grantline's busy crew. But there was no confusion now;
a grim calmness had settled upon everyone.
Anita and Venza
rushed up to join us. "It's in sight!"
There was no need of going to the instrument room.
From the windows fronting the brink of the cliff the brigand ship was plainly
visible. It came sailing from Archimedes, a dark shape blurring the stars. All
its lights were extinguished save a single white search-beam in the bow-peak,
slanting diagonally down.
The beam
presently caught our little group of buildings; its glare shone in the windows
as it clung for a moment. I could envisage the triumphant curiosity, of Potan
and his fellows up there, gazing along the beam.
Then it swung
away. The ship was at an altitude of no more than three thousand feet when I
first saw it, coming upon a level keel. Would it circle over us, firing at us?
Or sail past, after inspecting us? Or land, perhaps, boldly crowded upon our
little ledge?
We were ready—as
ready as we could be with our meager equipment. The camp was in a state of
siege. The cliff-lights were extinguished: the interior lights were dim, save
in the workshops of the main building, where the final assembling of Snap's
other flying platforms and their insulated protective shields was still in
progress.
We had dimmed the
lights to conserve our power, and to enable the Erentz motors to run at full
capacity. Our buildings would have to withstand the brigand rays which soon
would be upon us.
Outside on our
dim, Earthlit cliff, the tiny lights showed where our few guards were lurking.
As I stood at the window watching the oncoming ship, Grantline's voice sounded:
"Call in
those men! Ring the call-lights, Franck!"
The siren buzzed
over the camp's interior; the warning call-lights on the roof brought in the
outer guards. They came running to the admission portes, which had been
repaired after Miko disabled them.
The guards came in. We dimmed our lights further.
The treasure sheds were black against the cliff behind us. No need for guards
there—the bulk of the ore was such that we reasoned the brigands would not attempt
to move it until our buildings were captured. But, if they should try it, we
were prepared to sally out with our hand-weapons and defend it.
In the dim lights
we crouched. A silence was upon us, save for the clanging in the workshop down
the corridor. Most of us wore our Erentz suits, with helmets ready, though I am
sure there was not a man of us but who prayed he might not have to go out. At
many of the windows—our weakest points to withstand the rays—insulated fabric
shields were hung like curtains.
The brigand ship
slowly advanced. It was soon over the opposite rim of our little crater. Its
search-beam swung about the rim and down into the valley.
My thoughts ran
like a turgid stream as I stood tensely watching.
Four hours ago I
had sent that flash-signal to Earth. If it were received, a patrol-ship could
come to our rescue and arrive here in another eight hours—or perhaps even less.
Ah, that
"if!" If the signal were received! If the patrol-ship were
immediately available! If it started at once...
Eight hours at
the very least. I tried to assure myself that we could hold out that long...
The brigand ship
crossed the opposite crater-rim. It dropped lower. It seemed poised over the
crater-valley, almost at our own level and less than two miles from us. Its
search-beam vanished. For a moment it hung, a sleek, cylindrical silver shape,
gleaming in the Earthlight.
Snap looked at me
and murmured, "It's descending."
It slowly
settled, cautiously picked its landing-place amid the crags and pits of the
tumbled scarred valley floor. It came to rest, a vague silver menacing shape
lurking in the lower shadows, close at the foot of the inner opposite
crater-wall.
A few moments of
tense waiting passed. Soon tiny lights were moving down there, some out on the
rocks near the ship, others up under its deck-dome.
A stab of
searchlight shot across the valley, swung along our ledge and clung with its
glaring ten-foot circle to the front of our main building. Then a ray flashed.
The assault had
begun!
CHAPTER XXXIV - The First
Encounters
It seemed, with that first shot from the enemy,
that a great relief came to me—an apprehension fallen away. We had anticipated
this moment for so long, dreaded it. I think all our men felt it. A shout went
up:
"Harmless!"
It was not that.
But our building withstood it better than I had feared. It was a flash from a
large electronic projector mounted on the deck of the brigand ship. It stabbed
up from the shadows across the valley at the foot of the opposite crater-wall,
a beam of vaguely fluorescent light. Simultaneously the search-light vanished.
The stream of
electrons caught the front face of our main building in a six-foot circle. It
held a few seconds, vanished; then stabbed again, and still again. Three bolts.
A total, I suppose, of nine or ten seconds.
I was standing
with Grantline at a front window. We had rigged an oblong of insulated fabric
like a curtain: we stood peering, holding the curtain cautiously aside. The ray
struck some twenty feet away from us.
"Harmless!"
The men in the
room shouted it with derision. But Grantline swung on them.
"Don't think
that!"
An interior
signal-panel was beside Grantline. He called the duty-men in the instrument
room.
"It's over.
What are your readings?"
The bombarding electrons had passed through the
outer shell of the building's double-wall, and been absorbed in the rarefied,
magnetized air-current of the Erentz circulation. Like poison in a man's veins,
reaching his heart, the free alien electrons had disturbed the motors. They
accelerated, then retarded. Pulsed unevenly, and drew added power from the
reserve tanks. But they had normalized at once when the shot was past. The
duty-man's voice sounded from the grid in answer to Grantline's question:
"Five
degrees colder in your building. Can't you feel it?"
The disturbed,
weakened Erentz circulation had allowed the outer cold to radiate through a
trifle. The walls had had a trifle extra explosive pressure from the room-air.
A strain—but that was all.
"It's
probably their most powerful single weapon, Gregg." Grantline said.
I nodded.
"Yes. I think so."
I had smashed the
real giant, with its ten-mile range. The ship was only two miles from us, but
it seemed as though this projector were exerted to its distance limit. I had
noticed on the deck only one of this type. The others, paralyzing-rays and heat
rays, were less deadly.
Grantline
commented: "We can withstand a lot of that bombardment. If we stay
inside—"
That ray,
striking a man outside, would penetrate his Erentz suit within a few seconds,
we could not doubt. We had, however, no intention of going out unless for dire
necessity.
"Even
so," said Grantline. "A hand-shield would hold it off for a certain
length of time."
We had an opportunity a moment later to test our
insulated shields. The bolt came again. It darted along the front face of the
building, caught our window and clung. The double window-shells were our
weakest points. The sheet of flashing Erentz current was transparent: we could
see through it as though it were glass. It moved faster, but was thinner at the
windows than in the walls. We feared the bombarding electrons might cross it,
penetrate the inner shell and, like a lightning bolt, enter the room.
We dropped the
curtain corner. The radiance of the bolt was dimly visible. A few seconds, then
it vanished again, and behind the shield we had not felt a tingle.
"Harmless!"
But our power had
been drained nearly an aeron, to neutralize the shock to the Erentz current.
Grantline said:
"If they
kept that up, it would be a question of whose power supply would last longest.
And it would not be ours... You saw our lights fade down while the bolt was
striking?"
But the brigands
did not know we were short of power. And to fire the projector with a
continuous bolt would, in thirty minutes, perhaps, have exhausted their own
power-reserve.
This strange
warfare! It was new to all of us, for there had been no wars on any of the
three inhabited worlds for many years. Silent, electronic conflict! Not a
question of men in battle. A man at a switch on the brigand ship was the sole
actor so far in this assault. And the results were visible only in the movement
of the needle-dials on our instrument panels. A struggle, so far, not of man's
bravery, or skill, or strategy, but merely of electronic power supply.
Yet warfare, however modern, can never transcend
the human element. Before this insult was ended I was to have many
demonstrations of that!
"I won't answer them," Grantline
declared. "Our game is to sit defensive. Conserve everything. Let them
make the leading moves."
We waited half an
hour, but no other shot came. The valley floor was patched with Earthlight and
shadow. We could see the vague outline of the brigand ship backed up at the
foot of the opposite crater-wall. The form of its dome over the illumined deck
was visible, and the line of its tiny hull ovals.
On the rocks near
the ship, helmet-lights of prowling brigands occasionally showed.
Whatever activity
was going on down there we could not see with the naked eye. Grantline did not
use our telescope at first. To connect it, even for local range, drew on our
precious ammunition of power. Some of the men urged that we search the sky with
the telescope. Was our rescue ship from Earth coming? But Grantline refused. We
were in no trouble yet. And every delay was to our advantage.
"Commander,
where shall I put these helmets?"
A man came
wheeling a pile of helmets on a little truck.
"At the
manual porte—other building."
Our weapons and
outside equipment were massed at the main exit-locks of the large building. But
we might want to sally out through the smaller locks also. Grantline sent
helmets there; suits were not needed, as most of us were garbed in them now,
but without the helmets.
Snap was still in the workshop. I went there during
this first half-hour of the attack. Ten of our men were busy there with the
little flying platforms and the fabric shields.
"How is it,
Snap?"
"Almost all
ready."
He had six of the
platforms, including the one we had already used, and more than a dozen
hand-shields. At a squeeze, all of us could ride on these six little vehicles.
We might have to ride them! We planned that, in the event of disaster to the
buildings, we could at least escape in this fashion. Food supplies and water
were now being placed at the portes.
Depressing
preparations! Our buildings uninhabitable, a rush out and away, abandoning the
treasure... Grantline had never mentioned such a contingency, but I noticed,
nevertheless, that preparations were being made.
"Only that
one shot, Gregg?"
Snap's voice was
raised over the clang of the workmen bolting the little gravity-plates of the
last platform.
"Four
blasts. But just the one projector. Their strongest."
He grinned. He
wore no Erentz suit as yet. He stood in torn grimy work-trousers and a
bedraggled shirt, with the inevitable red eyeshade holding back his unruly
hair. Around his waist was the weighted belt and there were weights on his
shoes for gravity stability.
"Didn't hurt
us much."
"No."
"When I get
the tube-panels in this thing I'll be finished. It'll take another half-hour.
I'll join you. Where are you stationed?"
I shrugged. "I was at a front window with
Johnny. Nothing to do as yet."
Snap went back to
his work. "Well, the longer they delay, the better for us. If only your
signal got through, Gregg! We'll have a rescue ship here in a few hours
more."
Ah, that
"if!"
I turned away.
"Can't help you, Snap?"
"No. Take those shields," he added to one
of the men.
"Take them
where?"
"To
Grantline. The front admission porte, or the back. He'll tell you which."
The shields were
wheeled away on a little cart. I followed it. Grantline sent it to the back
exit.
"No other
move from them yet, Johnny?"
"No. All
quiet."
"Snap's
almost finished."
The brigands
presently made another play. A giant heat-ray beam came across the valley. It
clung to our front wall for nearly a minute.
Grantline got the
reports from the instrument room. He laughed.
"That helped
rather than hurt us. Heated the outer wall. Frank took advantage of it and
eased up the motors."
We wondered if
Miko knew that. Doubtless he did, for another interval passed and the heat-ray
was not used again.
Then came a zed-ray. I stood at the window,
watching it, faint sheen of beam in the dimness. It crept with sinister
deliberation along our front building-wall, clung momentarily to our shielded
windows and pried with its revealing glow into Snap's workshop.
"Looking us
over," Grantline commented. "I hope they like what they see."
I knew he did not
feel the bravado that was in his tone. We had nothing but small hand weapons:
heat-rays, electronic projectors, and bullet projectors. All for very
short-range fighting. If Miko had not known that before, he could at least make
a good guess at it after the careful zed-ray inspection. With his ship down
there two miles away, we were powerless to reach him.
It seemed that
Miko was now testing the use of all his mechanisms. A light-flare went up from
the dome-peak of the ship. It rose in a slow arc over the valley, and burst.
For a few seconds the two-mile circle of crags was brilliantly illumined. I
stared, but I had to shield my eyes against the dazzling actinic glare, and I
could see nothing. Was Miko making a zed-ray photograph of our interiors? We
had no way of knowing.
He was testing
his short-range projectors now. With my eyes again accustomed to the normal
Earthlight in the valley, I could see the stabs of little electronic beams, the
Martian paralyzing-rays and heat-beams. They darted out like flashing swords
from the rocks near the ship.
Then the whole
ship and the crater-wall behind it seemed to shift sidewise as a Benson
curve-light spread its glow about the ship, with a projector curve-beam coming
up and touching the window through which I was peering.
"Haljan,
come look at these damn girls! Commander—shall I stop them? They'll kill
themselves, or kill us—or smash something!"
We followed the man into the building's broad
central corridor. Anita and Venza were riding a midget flying platform! Anita,
in her boyish black garb; Venza with a flowing white Venus-robe. They lay on
the tiny, six-foot oblong of metal, one manipulating its side shields, the
other at the controls. As we arrived, the platform came sliding down the narrow
confines of the corridor, lurching, barely missing a door-grid projection. Up
to skim the low vaulted ceiling, then down to the floor.
It sailed past
our heads, rising over us as we ducked. Anita waved her hand.
Grantline gasped,
"By the infernal!"
I shouted,
"Anita, stop!"
But they only
waved at us, skimming down the length of the corridor, seeming to avoid a smash
a dozen times by the smallest margin of chance, stopping miraculously at the
further end, hanging poised in mid-air, wheeling, coming back, undulating up
and down.
Grantline clung
to me. "By the gods of the airways!"
In spite of my
astonished horror I could not but share Grantline's obvious admiration. Three
of four other men were watching. The girls were amazingly skillful, no doubt of
that. There was not a man among us who could have handled that gravity-platform
indoors, not one who would have had the brash temerity to try it.
The platform
landed with the grace of a humming bird at our feet, the girls dexterously
balancing so that it came to rest swiftly, without the least bump.
I confronted
them. "Anita, what are you doing?"
She stood up,
flushed and smiling.
"Practising."
Imperturbable
girls! The product of their age. Oblivious to the brigand attack, they were in
here practising!
"What
for?" I demanded.
Venza's roguish
eyes twinkled at me. Her hands went to her slim hips with a gesture of
defiance.
She asked,
"Are you speaking for yourself or the commander?"
I ignored her. "What for?" I reiterated.
"Because
we're good at it," Anita retorted. "Better than any of you men. If
you should need us..."
"We don't.
We won't." I said shortly.
"But if you
should..."
Venza put in,
"If Snap and I hadn't come for you, you wouldn't be here, Gregg Haljan. I
didn't notice you were so horrified to see me holding that shield up over
you!"
It silenced me.
She added,
"Commander, let us alone. We won't smash anything."
Grantline
laughed, "I hope you won't!"
A warning call
took us back to the front window. The brigand's search-beam was again being
used. It swept slowly along the length of the cliff. Its circle went down the
cliff steps to the valley floor, and came sweeping up again. Then it went up to
the observatory platform at the summit above us, then back and crept over to
the ore-sheds.
We had no men
outside, if that was what the brigand wanted to determine. The search-beam
presently vanished. It was replaced immediately by a zed-ray, which darted at
once to our treasure sheds and clung.
That stung
Grantline into his first action. We flung our own zed-ray down across the
valley. It reached the brigand ship; this zed-ray and a search-light were our
only two projectors of long range.
The brigand ray
vanished when ours flashed on. I was with Grantline at an image grid in the
instrument room. We saw the deck of the brigand ship and the blurred interior
of the cabins.
"Try the
search-beam, Franck. We don't need the other."
The zed-ray went
off. We gazed down our search-light which clung to the dome of the distant
enemy vessel. We could see movement there.
"The
telescope," Grantline ordered.
The little dynamos hummed. The telescope-finder
glowed and clarified. On the deck of the ship we saw the brigands working with
the assembling of ore-carts. A deck landing-porte was open. The ore-carts were
being carried out through a porte-lock and down a landing incline. And on the
rocks outside, we saw several of the carts—and rail-sections and the sections
of an ore-shute.
Miko was
unloading his mining apparatus! He was making ready to come up for the
treasure!
The discovery,
startling as it was, nevertheless was far overshadowed by an imperative danger
alarm from our main building. Brigands were outside on our ledge! Miko's
search-beam, sweeping the ledge a moment before, had carefully avoided
revealing them. It had been done just for that purpose, no doubt—making us sure
that the ledge was unoccupied and thus to guard against our own light making a
search.
But there was a
brigand group here close outside our walls! By the merest chance the radiating
glow from our search-ray had shown the helmeted figures scurrying for shelter.
Grantline leaped
to his feet.
We rushed for the
rear exit-porte which was nearest us. The giant bloated figures had been seen
running along the outside of the connecting corridor, in this direction. But
before we ever got there, a new alarm came. A brigand was crouching at a front
corner of the main building! His hydrogen heat-torch had already opened a rift
in the wall!
CHAPTER XXXV - Desperate
Offensive
In with you!" ordered Grantline. "Get
your helmets on! How many? Six? Enough—get back there, Williams—you were last.
The lock won't hold any more."
I was one of the
six who jammed into the manual exit lock. We went through it: in a moment we
were outside. It was less than three minutes since the prowling brigands had
been seen.
Grantline touched
me just as we emerged. "Don't wait for orders! Get them!"
"That fellow
with the torch, the most dangerous—"
"Yes! I'm
with you."
We went out with
a rush. We had already discarded our shoe and belt weights. I leaped,
regardless of my companions.
The scurrying
Martians had disappeared. Through my visor bull's-eye I could see only the
Earthlit rocky surface of the ledge. Beside me stretched the dark wall of our
building.
I bounded toward
the front. The brigand with the torch had been at this front corner. I could
not see him from here: he had been crouching just around the angle.
I had a tiny
bullet projector, the best weapon for short range outdoors. I was aware of
Grantline close behind me.
It took only a
few of my giant leaps. I landed at the corner, recovered my balance, and
whirled around to the front.
The Martian was
here, a giant misshapen lump as he crouched. His torch was a little stab of
blue in the deep shadow enveloping him. Intent upon his work, he did not see
me. Perhaps he thought his fellows had broken our exits by now.
I landed like a leopard upon his back and fired, my
weapon muzzle ramming him. His torch fell hissing with a silent rain of blue
fire upon the rocks.
As my grip upon
him made audiphone contact, his agonized scream rattled the diaphragms of my
ear-grids with horrible, deafening intensity.
He lay writhing
under me, then was still. His scream choked into silence. His suit deflated
within my encircling grip. He was dead; my leaden, steel-tipped pellet had
punctured the double surface of his Erentz-fabric, penetrated his chest.
Grantline's
following leap landed him over me.
"Dead?"
"Yes."
I climbed from
the inert body. The torch had hissed itself out. Grantline swung on our
building corner, and I leaned down with him to examine it. The torch had fused
and scarred the surface of the wall, burned almost through. A pressure-rift had
opened. We could see it, a curving gash in the metal wall-plate like a crack in
a glass window-pane.
I went cold. This
was serious damage! The rarefied Erentz-air would seep out. It was leaking now:
we could see the magnetic radiance of it all up the length of the ten-foot
crack. The leak would change the pressure of the Erentz system, constantly
lower it, demanding steady renewal. The Erentz motors would overheat; some
might go bad from the strain.
Grantline stood
gripping me.
"Damn
bad!"
"Yes. Can't
we repair it, Johnny?"
"No. Have to
take that whole plate-section out, shut off the Erentz plant and exhaust the
interior air of all this bulkhead of the building. Day's job—maybe more."
And the crack would get worse, I knew. It would
gradually spread and widen. The Erentz circulation would fail. All our power
would be drained struggling to maintain it. This brigand who had unwittingly
committed suicide by his daring act had accomplished more than he perhaps had
realized. I could envisage our weapons, useless from lack of power. The air in
our buildings turning fetid and frigid: ourselves forced to the helmets. A rush
out to abandon the camp and escape. The buildings exploding—scattering into a
litter on the ledge like a child's broken toy. The treasure abandoned, with the
brigands coming up and loading it on their ship.
Our defeat. In a
few hours now—or minutes. This crack could slowly widen, or it could break
suddenly at any time. Disaster, come now so abruptly upon us at the very start
of the brigand attack...
Grantline's voice
in my audiphone broke my despairing rush of thoughts. "Bad. Come on,
Gregg; nothing to do here."
We were aware
that our other four men had run along the building's other side. They emerged
now—with the running brigands in front of them, rushing out toward the
staircase on the ledge. Three giant Martian figures in flight, with our four men
chasing.
A bullet
projector spat, with its queer stab of exploding powder fed by the burning
oxygen fumes of its artificial air-chamber—one of our men firing. A brigand
fell to the rocks by the brink of the ledge. The others reached the descending
staircase, tumbled down it with reckless leaps.
Our men turned
back. Before we could join them, the enemy ship down in the valley sent up a
cautious search-beam which located its returning men. Then the beam swung up to
the ledge, landed upon us.
We stood confused,
blinded by the brilliant glare. Grantline stumbled against me.
"Run, Gregg!
They'll be firing at us."
We dashed away.
Our companions joined us, rushing back for the porte. I saw it open,
reinforcements coming out to help us—half a dozen figures carrying a ten-foot
insulated shield. They could barely get it out through the porte.
The Martian search-ray abruptly vanished. Then
almost instantly the electronic ray came with its deadly stab. Missed us at
first, as we ran for the shield. It vanished, and stabbed again. It caught us,
but now we were behind the shield, carrying it back to the porte, hiding behind
it.
The ray stabbed
once or twice more.
Whether Miko's
instruments showed him how serious that damage was to our front wall, we never
knew. But I think that he realized. His search-beam clung to it, and his
zed-ray pried into our interiors.
The brigand ship
was active now. We were desperate: we used our telescope freely for
observation. And used our zed-ray and search-light. Miko's ore-carts and mining
apparatus were unloaded on the rocks. The rail-sections were being carried a
mile out, nearly to the center of the valley. A subsidiary camp was being
established there, only a mile from the base of our cliff, but still far beyond
reach of our weapons. We could see the brigand lights down there.
Then the
ore-shute sections were brought over. We could see Miko's men carrying some of
the giant projectors, mounting them in the new position. Power tanks and
cables. Light-flare catapults—little mechanical cannons for throwing the bombs.
The enemy
search-light constantly raked our vicinity. Occasionally the giant electronic
projector flung up its bolt as though warning us not to dare leave our
buildings.
Half an hour went by. Our situation was even worse than
Miko could know. The Erentz motors were running hot—our power draining, the
crack widening. When it would break we could not tell; but the danger was like
a sword over us.
An anxious thirty
minutes for us, this second interlude. Grantline called a meeting of all our
little force, with every man having his say. Inactivity was no longer a
feasible policy. We recklessly used our power to search the sky. Our rescue
ship might be up there; but we could not see it with our disabled instruments.
No signals came. We could not—or, at least, did not—receive them.
"They
wouldn't signal," Grantline protested. "They'd know the Martians
would be more likely to get the signal than us. Of what use to warn Miko?"
But he did not
dare wait for a rescue ship that might or might not be coming! Miko was playing
the waiting game now—making ready for a quick loading of the ore when we were
forced to abandon our buildings.
The brigand ship
suddenly moved its position! It rose up in a low flat arc, came forward and
settled in the center of the valley where the carts and rail-sections were
piled, and the outside projectors newly mounted on the rocks. But the
projectors only shot at us occasionally.
The brigands now
began laying the rails from the ship toward the base of our cliff. The chute
would bring the ore down from the ledge, and the carts would take it to the
ship.
The laying of the
rails was done under cover of occasional stabs from the electronic projector.
And then we
discovered that Miko had made still another move. The brigand rays, fired from
the depths of the valley, could strike our front building, but could not reach
all our ledge. And from the ship's new and nearer position this disadvantage
was intensified. Then abruptly we realized that under cover of darkness-bombs
an electronic projector and search-ray had been carried to the top of the
crater-rim, diagonally across and only half a mile from us. Their beams shot
down, raking all our vicinity from this new angle.
I was on the little flying platform which sallied
out as a test to attack these isolated projectors. Snap and I and one other
volunteer went. He and I held the shield; Snap handled the controls.
Our exit-porte
was on the lee side of the building from the hostile search-beam. We got out
unobserved and sailed upward; but soon a light from the ship caught us. And the
projector bolts came up...
Our sortie only
lasted a few minutes. To me, it was a confusion of crossing beams, with the
stars overhead, the swaying little platform under me, and the shield tingling
in my hands when the blasts struck us. Moments of blurred terror...
The voice of the
man beside me sounded in my ears: "Now, Haljan, give them one!"
We were up over
the peak of the rim with the hostile projectors under us. I gauged our movement,
and dropped an explosive powder bomb.
It missed. It
flared with a puff on the rocks, twenty feet from where the two projectors were
mounted. I saw that two helmeted figures were down there. They tried to swing
their grids upward, but could not get them vertical to reach us. The ship was
firing at us, but it was far away. And Grantline's search-beam was going
full-power, clinging to the ship to dazzle them.
Snap circled us.
As we came back I dropped another bomb. Its silent puff seemed littered with
flying fragments of the two projectors and the bodies of the men.
We flew swiftly
back and got in.
It decided Grantline. For an hour past Snap and I
had been urging our plan to use the gravity platforms. To remain inactive was
sure defeat now. Even if our buildings did not explode—if we thought to huddle
in them, helmeted in the failing air—then Miko could readily ignore us and
proceed with his loading of the treasure under our helpless gaze. He could do
that now with safety—if we refused to sally out—for we could not fire our
weapons through our windows.[1]
To remain defensive would end inevitably in our
defeat. We all knew it now; it was obvious. The waiting game was Miko's—not
ours! And he was playing it.
The success of
our attack upon the distant isolated projectors heartened us. Yet it was a
desperate offensive indeed upon which we now decided!
We prepared our
little expedition at the larger of the exit portes. Miko's zed-ray was watching
all our interior movements. We made a brave show of activity in our workshop
with abandoned ore-carts which were stored there. We got them out, started to
recondition them.
It seemed to fool
Miko. His zed-ray clung to the workshop, watching us. And at the distant porte
we gathered the little platforms, the shields, helmets, bombs, and a few
hand-projectors.
There were six
platforms—three of us upon each. It left four people to remain indoors.
I need not describe the emotion with which Snap and
I listened to Venza and Anita pleading to be allowed to accompany us. They
urged it upon Grantline, and we took no part. It was too important a decision.
The treasure—the life or death of all these men—hung now upon the fate of our
venture. Snap and I could not intrude our personal feelings.
And the girls
won. Both were undeniably more skilful at handling the midget platforms than
any of us men. Two of the six platforms could be guided by them. That was a
third of our little force! And of what use to go out and be defeated, leaving
the girls here to meet death almost immediately afterward?
We gathered at
the porte. A last minute change made Grantline order six of his men to remain
guarding the buildings. The instruments—the Erentz system—all the appliances
had to be attended.
It left four
platforms, each with three men, with Grantline at the controls of one of them.
And upon the other two of the six Venza rode with Snap, and I with Anita.
We crouched in
the shadows outside the porte. So small an army, sallying out to bomb this
enemy vessel or be killed in the attempt! Only sixteen of us. And thirty or so
brigands.
I envisaged then
this tiny Moon-crater, the scene of this battle we were waging. Struggling
humans, desperately trying to kill. Alone here on this globe. Around us, the
wide reaches of Lunar desolation. In all this world, every human being was
gathered here, struggling to kill!
Anita drew me
down to the platform. "Ready, Gregg."
The others were
rising. We lifted, moved slowly out and away from the protective shadows of the
building.
In a tiny queue
the six little platforms sailed out over the valley toward the brigand ship.
[1] To fire a projector through
the walls or windows would at once wreck the protective Erentz system. The
enemy ship has pressure portes, constructed for the emission of the
weapon-rays. Grantline's only weapons thus mounted were his search-beam and
zed-ray.
