by Anthology
"Dead."
"Oh Gregg--"
It forced our hand. I could not wait now for Miko to come. But I could flash the Earth signal now, and then we would have to make our run to escape.
Then I remembered that light down by the base! I kept Anita out of sight down on the floor and went cautiously to a window. The deck was in turmoil with brigands moving about excitedly. Not because of what had happened in our tower signal room: they were unaware of that.
Miko's signals were showing! I could see them now plainly, down at the crater base. A group of hand lights and small waving helio beam.
And they were being answered from the ship! Potan was on the deck--a babble of voices, above which his rose with roars of command. At one of the dome windows a brigand with a hand searchbeam was sending its answering light. And I saw that Potan was working over a deck telescope finder.
It had all come so suddenly that I was stunned. But I did not wait to read the signals. I swung back at Anita, who stared helplessly at me.
"It's Miko! And they are answering him! Get your helmet: I'll try firing the projector."
Or would I instead try and send a brief flash signal to Earth? There would be no time to do both: we must escape out of here. The route up through the dome was the only feasible one now.
This range mechanism of the projector was reasonably familiar, and I felt that I could operate it. The range-finder and the switch were on a ledge at one of the windows. I rushed to it. As I swung the telescope, training it down on Miko's lights, I could see the huge projector on the deck swinging similarly. Its movement surprised the men who were attending it. One of them called up to me, but I ignored him.
Then Potan looked up and saw me. He shouted in Martian at the duty man, whom he doubtless thought was behind me: "Be ready! We may fire on them. I'll give you the word."
The signals were proceeding. It had only been a moment. I caught something like, "Haljan is imposter."
I was aiming the projector. I was aware of Anita at my elbow. I pushed her back.
"Put on your helmet!"
I had the range. I flung the firing switch.
At the deck window the giant projector spat its deadly electronic stream. The men down there leaped away from it in surprise. I heard Potan's voice, his shout of protest and anger.
But down in the Earth glow at the crater base, Miko's lights had not vanished! I had missed! An error in the range? Abruptly I knew it was not that. Miko's lights were still there. His signals still coming. And I noticed now a faint distortion about them, the glow of his little group of hand lights faintly distorted and vaguely shot with a greenish cast. Benson curve lights!
My thoughts whirled in the few seconds while I stood there at the tower window. Miko had feared he might be summarily fired on. He had gone back to his camp, equipped all his lights with the Benson curve. He was somewhere at the crater base now. But not where I thought I saw him! The Benson curve light changed the path of the light rays traveling from him to me, I could not even approximate his true position!
Anita was plucking at me. "Gregg, come."
"I can't hit him," I gasped.
Should I try the flash signal to Earth? Did we dare linger here? I stood another few seconds at the window. I saw Potan down in the confusion of the deck, training a telescope. He had shouted up violently at his duty man here not to fire again.
And now he let out a roar. "I can see them! It's Miko! By the Almighty--his giant stature--Brotow, look! That's not an Earth man!"
He flung aside his telescope finder. "Disconnect that projector! It's Miko down there! This Haljan is a trickster! Where is he? Braile--Braile, you accursed fool! Are Haljan and the girl up there with you?"
But the duty man lay in his blood at our feet.
I had dropped back from the window. Anita and I crouched for an instant in confusion, fumbling with our helmets.
The ship rang with the alarm. And amid the turmoil we could hear the shouts of the infuriated brigands swarming up the tower ladder after us!
XXXII
I was only inactive a moment. I had thought Anita would have on her helmet. But she was reluctant, or confused.
"Anita, we've got to get out of here! Up through the overhead locks to the dome."
"Yes." She fumbled with her helmet. The climbing men on the ladder were audible. They were already nearing the top. The trap door was closed; Anita and I were crouching on it. There was a thick metal bar set in a depressed groove for the grid. I slid it in place; it would seal the trap for a short time.
A degree of confidence came to me. We had a few moments before there could be any hand-to-hand conflict. The giant electronic projector would eventually be used against Grantline; it was the brigands' most powerful weapon. Its controls were here, by Heaven, I would smash them? That at least I could do!
I jumped for the window. Miko's signals had stopped, but I caught a glimpse of his distant moving curve lights.
A flash came up at me, as in the window I became visible to the brigands on the ship's deck. It was a small hand projector, hastily fired, for it went wide of the window. It was followed by a rain of small beams, but I was warned and dropped my head beneath the sill. The rays flashed dangerously upward through the oval opening, hissed against our vaulted roof. The air snapped and tingled with a shower of blue-red sparks, and the acrid odor of the released gases settled down upon us.
The trajectory controls of the projector were beside me. I seized them, ripped and tore at them. There was a roar down on the deck. The projector had exploded. A man's agonizing scream split the confusion of sounds.
It silenced the brigands on the deck. Under our floor grid, those on the ladder had been pounding at the trap door. They stopped, evidently to see what had happened. The bombardment of our windows stopped momentarily.
I cautiously peered out the window again. In the wreck of the projector, three men were lying. One of them was screaming horribly. The dome side was damaged. Potan and other men were frantically investigating to see if the ship's air was hissing out.
A triumph swept over me. They had not found me so meek and inoffensive as they might have thought!
Anita clutched me. She still had not donned her helmet.
"Put on your helmet!"
"But Gregg--"
"Put it on!"
"I.... I don't want to put it on until you put yours on."
"I've smashed the projector! We've stopped them coming up for a while."
But they were still on the ladder under our floor. They heard our voices: they began thumping again. Then pounding. They seemed now to have heavy implements. They rammed against the trap.
The floor seemed holding. The square of metal grid trembled, yielded a little. But it was good for a few minutes longer.
I called down, "The first one who comes through will be shot!" My words mingled with their oaths. There was a moment's pause, then the ramming went on. The dying man on the deck was still screaming.
I whispered, "I'll try an Earth signal."
She nodded. Pale, tense, but calm. "Yes, Gregg. And I was thinking--"
"It won't take a minute. Have your helmet ready."
"I was thinking--" She hurried across the room.
I swung on the Botz signaling apparatus. It was connected. Within a moment I had it humming. The fluorescent tubes lighted with their lurid glare; they painted purple the body of the giant duty man who lay sprawled at my feet. I drew on all the ship's power. The tube lights in the room quivered and went dim.
I would have to hurry. Potan could shut this off from the main hull control room. I could see, through the room's upper trap, the primary sending mirror mounted in the peak of the dome. It was quivering, radiant with its light energy. I sent the flash.
The flattened past full Earth was up there. I knew that the Western Hemisphere faced the Moon at this hour. I flashed in English, with the open Universal Earth code:
Help. Grantline.
And again: Help. Archim
edes region near Apennines. Attacked by brigands.
Send help at once. Grantline.
If only it would be received! I flung off the current. Anita stood watching me intently. "Gregg, look!"
I saw that she had taken some of the glass globe-bombs which lay by the foot of the ascending ladder. "Gregg, I threw some of them."
At the window we gazed down. The globes she flung had shattered on the deck. They were darkness bombs.
Through the blackness of the deck, the shouts of the brigands came up. They were stumbling about. But the ramming of our trap went on, and I saw that it was beginning to yield.
"We've got to go, Anita!"
From out of the darkness which hung like a shroud over the deck an occasional flash came up, unaimed, wide of our windows. But the darkness was dissipating. I could see now the dim glow of the deck lights, blurred as through a heavy fog.
I dropped another of the bombs.
"Put on your helmet."
"Yes--yes, I will. You put yours on."
We had them adjusted in a moment. Our Erentz motors were pumping.
I gripped her. "Put out your helmet light."
She extinguished it. I handed her my projector.
"Hold it a moment. I'm going to take that belt of bombs."
The trap door was all but broken under the ramming blows of the men. I leaped over the body of the dead duty man, seized the belt of bombs and strapped it around my waist.
"Give me the projector."
She handed it to me. The trap door burst upward! A man's head and shoulders appeared. I fired a bullet into him--the leaden pellet singing down through the yellow powder flash that spat from the projector's muzzle.
The brigand screamed, and dropped back out of sight. There was confusion at the ladder top. I flung a bomb at the broken trap. A tiny heat ray came wavering up through the opening, but went wide of us.
The instrument room was in darkness. I clung to Anita.
"Hold on to my hand. You go first--here is the ladder!"
We found it in the blackness, mounted it and went through the cubby's roof-trap.
I took another look and dropped another bomb beside us. The four foot space up here between the cubby roof and the overhead dome, went black. We were momentarily concealed.
Anita located the manual levers of the lock-entrance.
"Here, Gregg."
I shoved at them. Fear leaped in me that they would not operate. But they swung. The tiny port opened wide to receive us. We clambered into the small air-chamber; the door slid closed, just as a flash from below struck at it. The brigands had seen our cloud of darkness and were firing up through it.
In a moment we were out on the dome top. A sleek, rounded spread of glassite, with broad aluminite girders. There were cross ribs which gave us a footing, and occasionally projections--streamline fin-tips, the casings of the upper rudder shafts, and the upstanding stubby funnels into which helicopters were folded.
We moved along the central footpath and crouched by a six-foot casing. The stars and the glowing Earth were over us. The curving dome top--a hundred feet or so in length, and bulging thirty feet wide beneath us--glistened in the Earthlight. It was a sheer drop and down these curving sides past the ship's hull, a hundred feet to the rocks on which the vessel rested. The towering wall of Archimedes was beside us; and beyond the brink of the ledge the thousands of feet down to the plains.
I saw the lights of Miko's band down there. He had stopped signaling. His little lights were spread out, bobbing as he and his men advanced up the crater's foothills, coming to join the ship.
I had an instant's glimpse. Anita and I could not stay here. The brigands would follow us up in a moment. I saw no exterior ladder. We would have to take our chances and jump.
There were brigands down there on the rocks. I saw three or four helmeted figures, and they saw us! A bullet whizzed by us, and then came the flash of a hand ray.
I touched Anita. "Can you make the leap? Anita dear...."
Again it seemed that this must be farewell.
"Gregg, dear one, we've got to do it!"
Those waiting figures would pounce on us.
"Anita, lie here a moment."
I jumped up and ran twenty feet toward the bow; then back toward the stern, flinging down the last of my bombs. The darkness was like a cloud down there, enveloping the outer brigands. But up there we were above it, etched by the starlight and Earthglow.
I came back to Anita. "We'll have to chance it now."
"Gregg...."
"Good-bye, dear. I'll jump first, down this side, you follow."
To leap into that black patch, with the rocks under it....
"Gregg--"
She was trying to tell me to look overhead. She gestured, "Gregg, see!"
I saw it, out over the plains, a little speck amid the stars. A moving speck, coming toward us!
"Gregg, what is it?"
I gazed, held my breath. A moving speck out there. A blob now. And then I realized it was not a large object, far away, but small, and already very close--only a few hundred feet off, dropping toward the top of our dome. A narrow, flat, ten foot object, like a wingless volplane. There were no lights on it, but in the Earthlight I could see two crouching, helmeted figures riding it.
"Anita! Don't you remember!"
I was swept with dawning comprehension. Back in the Grantline camp Snap and I had discussed how to use the Planetara's gravity plates. We had gone to the wreck and secured them, had rigged this little volplane flyer....
The brigands on the rocks saw it now. A flash went up at it. One of the figures crouching on it opened a flexible fabric like a wing over its side. I saw another flash from below, harmlessly striking the insulated shield.
I gasped to Anita, "Light your helmet! It's from Grantline! Let them see us!"
I stood erect. The little flying platform went over us, fifty feet up, circling, dropping to the dome top.
I waved my helmet light. The exit lock from below--up which we had come--was near us. The advancing brigands were already in it! I had forgotten to demolish the manuals. And I saw that the darkness down on the rocks was almost gone now, dissipating in the airless night. The brigands down there began firing up at us.
It was a confusion of flashing lights. I clutched at Anita.
"Come this way--run!"
The platform barely missed our heads. It sailed lengthwise of the dome top, and crashed silently on the central runway near the stern tip. Anita and I ran to it.
The two helmeted figures seized us, shoved us prone on the metal platform. It was barely four feet wide; a low railing, handles with which to cling, and a tiny hooded cubby in front.
"Gregg!"
"You, Snap!"
It was Snap and Venza. She seized Anita, held her crouching in place. Snap flung himself face down at the controls.
The brigands were out on the dome now. I took a last shot as we lifted. My bullet punctured one of them: he slid, fell scrambling off the rounded dome and dropped out of sight.
Light rays and silent flashes seemed to envelope us. Venza held the side shields higher.
We tilted, swayed crazily, and then steadied.
The ship's dome dropped away beneath us. The rocks of the open ledge were beneath us. Then the abyss, with the moving, climbing specks of Miko's lights far down.
I saw, over the side shield, the already distant brigand ship resting on the ledge with the massive Archimedes' wall behind it. A confusion back there of futile flashing rays.
It all faded into a remote glow as we sailed smoothly up into the starlight and away, heading for the Grantline camp.
XXXIII
"Wake up. Gregg! They're coming!"
I forced myself to consciousness. "Coming--"
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. They had read with amazement my signals to the brigands. Snap had rushed to completion the first of our flying platforms. Then he had seen Miko's signals from the crater base, seen the lights and the fight to capture Anita and me, and had come to rescue us.
Back at the camp we were given food, and Grantline forced me to try to sleep.
"They'll be on us in a few hours, Gregg. Miko wall 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, telling me the ship was coming.
The corridor echoed with the tramp of Grantline's busy crew. But there was no confusion; a grim calmness had settled on 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 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 men up there, gazing along the beam.
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 brigands' 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 incoming 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 ports, 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--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 defend it.