Part 10 (2/2)

Lura sped out like a frightened deer with Damis in close pursuit. The attention of the sentry was fixed on some distant object in the sky and he did not see the oncoming pair until Lura was only a few yards from him. The sound of her footsteps attracted his attention and he glanced down at her. An expression of surprise came over his heavy features and he reached for a weapon. His gesture was never finished, for Damis' fist caught him under the ear and he dropped in his tracks. Damis looked in the direction in which the sentry had been staring and a cry broke from his lips.

”The fleet of Tubain!” he cried.

A thousand yards in the air and a scant five miles to the west was a clump of half a dozen Jovian s.p.a.ce flyers. Ma.s.sed behind them were a hundred more. They were approaching with tremendous velocity.

Damis gave a mighty bound and leaped through the airlock of the s.h.i.+p.

Hardly had he cleared the door than Lura pulled down the starting lever.

The s.h.i.+p flew up from the ground. Hardly had it left its ways than a momentary flash came from the hill east of the palace. The air grew black around them and a cold as of interstellar s.p.a.ce penetrated their very bones. In an instant the s.h.i.+p had flashed up into the sun above the zone of influence of the Martian weapon. The shouting from the palace was suddenly stilled. Damis looked down, but nothing could be seen save a pall of intense blackness over the ground where the building stood.

”The port motor, Lura!” cried Damis. The Jovian fleet was approaching so rapidly that a collision with the nearest flyer seemed inevitable. There was a roar from the air as Lura threw in the port blast with its maximum power. Damis was hurled against the side of the s.h.i.+p.

From the hill where the Martian weapons had been placed came a second flash of light and a beam of jetty blackness shot through the air. An edge of it brushed the s.h.i.+p for an instant and Lura stiffened. A terrible cold bit through the flyer and the side where the Martian ray had touched crumpled into powder. The s.h.i.+p sped on, and the friction of the air and the bright rays of the sun dissipated the extreme cold.

Through the terrific storm which was raging, the black ray stabbed again and again. Back and forth it played and s.h.i.+p after s.h.i.+p of the Jovians was momentarily caught in the beam. When the beam pa.s.sed on there was nothing left of the s.h.i.+p save a cloud of dust which the terrific wind dissipated in all directions.

Damis glanced at the Earth below him. It seemed to be flying past the s.h.i.+p at a velocity which he could hardly comprehend. He made his way against the pressure of the movement to the control levers and strove to check the speed. As the Earth ceased to revolve beneath them, the wind rose to a terrible force.

”What has happened, Damis?” shrieked Lura in his ear.

”I don't know,” he shouted in reply. ”I am trying to keep away from the neighborhood of the palace for a while until the Jovian fleet is destroyed. Toness and your father might not be able to tell us from one of Tubain's s.h.i.+ps and they might turn the ray on us.”

He bent over the control levers of the s.h.i.+p, but they refused to obey his touch. The stern motor still roared with enough force to keep them three thousand feet above the ground, but none of the side motors responded to the controls. The s.h.i.+p was helpless and was tossed about, a plaything of the terrific wind which howled through the heavens. Damis watched the ground below them.

”Look, Lura!” he cried.

They swept over the site of the palace. The black ray was no longer playing on it, but the whole palace glistened like crystal.

”What is it?” she asked.

”Frost!” he shouted. ”The Martian weapon did its work well. Everything in that palace is frozen. In the name of Tubain!”

The Jovian e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n had burst from his lips, unbidden, at the sight which met his gaze. Racing over the land was a solid wall of water, hundreds of feet high and moving with enormous speed. On toward the palace it swept. Below they could see the Earthmen on the hill striving to fly, but there was no place of safety. The oncoming wall of water was higher by a hundred feet than the top of the hill and it was the highest bit of land for many miles.

Nearer and nearer came the water until with a roar and a crash which they could plainly hear in the crippled s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p, it swept over the hill and the palace, burying them under a hundred feet of brine.

”Father!” cried Lura in anguish.

Damis made his way across the s.h.i.+p and folded her in his arms.

”He was chosen as one of the lives needed to buy the freedom of the Earth,” he murmured to her. ”It is hard, for I loved him as a father; but it was the end which he would have chosen. He died at the head of his followers battling for freedom.”

”What happened, Damis?” asked Lura an hour later as she looked down on the seething tumult of water under them.

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