Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 Part 32

At the window we gazed down. The globes she flung had shattered on the deck. They were occulting darkness bombs.[5]

[Footnote 5: Filled with an odorless, harmless gas, these bombs were used in warfare, taking the place of the old-fas.h.i.+oned smoke screens.

The diffusing gas was of such a nature that, when released, it absorbed within itself all the color inherent to the light-rays striking it, thus creating a temporary darkness.]

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. One corner of it was bent up.

"We've got to go, Anita!"

"Yes."

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 on yours."

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 bullet 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 on the ladder. I leaped over the body of the duty-man, seized the belt of bombs and strapped it about my waist.

Anita stood with me.

"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 little 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 me! 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 a hasty look and dropped another bomb beside us. The four-foot s.p.a.ce 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 porte 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 little cloud of darkness and were firing up through it.

We were through the locks in a moment, out on the open dome-top. A sleek, rounded spread of gla.s.site, with broad aluminite girders. There were cross-ribs which gave us footing, and occasional projections--streamline fin-tips, the casings of the upper rudder shafts, and the upstanding stubby funnels into which the 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 down these curving sides past the s.h.i.+p'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 their s.h.i.+p.

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 skulking 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--oh, 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 here we were above it, etched by the starlight and Earthglow.

I came back to Anita.

"We'll have to chance it now."

"Gregg...."

"Good-by, 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!