Part 49 (1/2)

I was swept with dawning comprehension. Back in the Grantline camp Snap and I had discussed how to use the _Planetara's_ gravity plates.

We had gone to the wreck and secured them, had rigged this little volplane flyer....

The brigands on the rocks saw it now. A flash went up at it. One of the figures crouching on it opened a flexible fabric like a wing over its side. I saw another flash from below, harmlessly striking the insulated s.h.i.+eld.

I gasped to Anita, ”Light your helmet! It's from Grantline! Let them see us!”

I stood erect. The little flying platform went over us, fifty feet up, circling, dropping to the dome top.

I waved my helmet light. The exit lock from below--up which we had come--was near us. The advancing brigands were already in it! I had forgotten to demolish the manuals. And I saw that the darkness down on the rocks was almost gone now, dissipating in the airless night. The brigands down there began firing up at us.

It was a confusion of flas.h.i.+ng lights. I clutched at Anita.

”Come this way--run!”

The platform barely missed our heads. It sailed lengthwise of the dome top, and crashed silently on the central runway near the stern tip.

Anita and I ran to it.

The two helmeted figures seized us, shoved us p.r.o.ne on the metal platform. It was barely four feet wide; a low railing, handles with which to cling, and a tiny hooded cubby in front.

”Gregg!”

”You, Snap!”

It was Snap and Venza. She seized Anita, held her crouching in place.

Snap flung himself face down at the controls.

The brigands were out on the dome now. I took a last shot as we lifted. My bullet punctured one of them: he slid, fell scrambling off the rounded dome and dropped out of sight.

Light rays and silent flashes seemed to envelope us. Venza held the side s.h.i.+elds higher.

We tilted, swayed crazily, and then steadied.

The s.h.i.+p's dome dropped away beneath us. The rocks of the open ledge were beneath us. Then the abyss, with the moving, climbing specks of Miko's lights far down.

I saw, over the side s.h.i.+eld, the already distant brigand s.h.i.+p resting on the ledge with the ma.s.sive Archimedes' wall behind it. A confusion back there of futile flas.h.i.+ng rays.

It all faded into a remote glow as we sailed smoothly up into the starlight and away, heading for the Grantline camp.

x.x.xIII

”Wake up. Gregg! They're coming!”

I forced myself to consciousness. ”Coming--”

I leaped from my bunk, followed Snap with a rush into the corridor.

We had returned safely to the Grantline camp. Anita and I found ourselves exhausted from lack of sleep, our arduous climb of Archimedes and that tense time on the brigand s.h.i.+p. On the flight back, Snap had explained how the landing of the s.h.i.+p on Archimedes was observed through the Grantline telescope. They had read with amazement my signals to the brigands. Snap had rushed to completion the first of our flying platforms. Then he had seen Miko's signals from the crater base, seen the lights and the fight to capture Anita and me, and had come to rescue us.