Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 Part 22

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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p 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 ma.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+elds.

"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-s.h.i.+elds. 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 fas.h.i.+on. 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 s.h.i.+rt, 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 s.h.i.+p here in a few hours more."

Ah, that "if!"

I turned away. "Can't help you, Snap?"

"No. Take those s.h.i.+elds," 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 s.h.i.+elds 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+elded 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p. 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 flas.h.i.+ng swords from the rocks near the s.h.i.+p.

Then the whole s.h.i.+p and the crater-wall behind it seemed to s.h.i.+ft sidewise as a Benson curve-light spread its glow about the s.h.i.+p, with a projector curve-beam coming up and touching the window through which I was peering.

"Haljan, come look at these d.a.m.n 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 s.h.i.+elds, 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!"