Part 48 (2/2)

”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 gla.s.site, 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 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 the 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 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!”

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