Part 19 (1/2)

Hilary was conscious of a faint envy. His automatic seemed like a harmless popgun against that deadly weapon. But he drew another bead and fired again. With bated breath he awaited the result. Nothing.

Hilary groaned, made as if to throw the useless gun away, when the flier he had aimed at wabbled, tried to right itself, and crashed in a swift erratic loop.

By now the pitifully few weapons of the Earthmen were popping. Two more of the enemy fliers hurtled to destruction. But as at a given signal, the air above them seemed suddenly to flame destruction. With the noise of a thousand thunderbolts the ma.s.sed rays struck.

The groaning Earth tossed and heaved in billowing waves to escape its torture. The trees were blazing pyres. It seemed impossible for anything that lives within that area to escape instant destruction.

Hilary felt a wave of blinding heat envelop him, and he was thrown flat to the quaking ground. Frightful cries, screams of agony, came to his dulled ears as from a great distance. He heaved himself up wearily, scorched, smoldering, but otherwise unhurt.

”Grim,” he whispered through thick cracked lips. ”Grim, where are you?”

”Here.” Strange how tranquil he sounded. A scarecrow of a figure arose almost at his right from a smoldering bush, a giant clothed in smoking rags. In the strange illumination of the search beams he seemed the wraith of a scarecrow.

”Thank G.o.d you're alive,” Hilary croaked. ”The others...?”

Figures were staggering up from the holocaust about them.

Grim's practised eyes counted. ”About fifty left,” he said, ”just one half.”

Hilary's voice rose suddenly, strongly. ”Keep on firing, men.” Once again his pistol barked defiance.

A faint, ragged cheer answered him. A few guns flamed; there were only a handful left.

”G.o.d!” someone cried.

The ma.s.sed s.h.i.+ps above were gleaming faintly. Little s.h.i.+mmering sparkles ran over the hulls. They were going to ray again. Hilary went berserk, screamed strange oaths, fired again and again. Grim fired, more slowly. Two of the enemy s.h.i.+ps left the formation, plunged headlong. But the s.h.i.+mmering grew brighter. In seconds the terrible bolts would be loosed. It was the end. The Earthmen knew it. They could not survive a second raying.

Grim shouted. Never before had Hilary heard him raise his voice to that pitch. His great arm was upflung. ”Look!” he screamed.

CHAPTER XII

_The Vagabond_

High up, a dark blob against the feeble starlight, something was dropping; dropping with the speed of a plummet, straight for the ma.s.sed Mercutian fliers. From outer s.p.a.ce it seemed to come, a plunging ripping meteor.

A search beam must have swung hurriedly aloft, for it flamed into startling being; a spheroid, compact, purposeful, dropping with breathtaking velocity.

Something seemed to explode in Hilary's brain. A great cry wrenched out of his torn throat.

”The _Vagabond_.”

Unbelievable, impossible. Yet he could not be mistaken. The _Vagabond_ was coming home again!

By this time the Mercutians had seen it too. It meant suicide, that rus.h.i.+ng projectile from outer s.p.a.ce, but it would take along with it in the crash of its flight a goodly number of the Mercutian fliers.

The Mercutians were no cowards, but death stared them openly in the face.