Part 51 (1/2)

I shrugged. ”I was at a front window with Johnny. Nothing to do as yet.”

Snap went back to his work. ”Well, the longer they delay, the better for us. If only your signal got through, Gregg, we'll have a rescue s.h.i.+p here in a few hours more!”

Ah, that _if_!

I turned away. ”Can't help you, Snap?”

”No.... Take those s.h.i.+elds,” he added to one of the men.

”Take them where?”

”To Grantline. He'll tell you where to put them.”

The s.h.i.+elds were wheeled away on a little cart. I followed it.

Grantline sent it to the back exit.

”No other move from them yet, Johnny?”

”No. All quiet.”

”Snap's almost finished.”

The brigands presently made another play. A giant heat-ray beam came across the valley. It clung to our front wall for nearly a minute.

Grantline got the report from the instrument room. He laughed.

”That helped rather than hurt us. Heated the outer wall. Franck took advantage of it and eased up the motors.”

We wondered if Miko knew that. Doubtless he did, for the heat-ray was not used again.

Then came a zed-ray. I stood at the window, watching it, faint sheen of beam in the dimness; it crept with sinister deliberation along our front wall, clung momentarily to our s.h.i.+elded windows, and pried with its revealing glow into Snap's workshop.

”Looking us over,” Grantline commented. ”I hope they like what they see.”

I knew that he did not feel the bravado that was in his tone. We had nothing but small hand weapons: heat-rays, electronic projectors, and bullet projectors. All for very short range fighting. If Miko had not known that before, he could at least make a good guess at it after the careful zed-ray inspection. With his s.h.i.+p down there two miles away, we were powerless to reach him. It seemed that Miko was now testing all his mechanisms. A light flare went up from the dome peak of the s.h.i.+p. It rose in a slow arc over the valley, and burst. For a few seconds the two mile circle of crags was brilliantly illumined. I stared, but I had to s.h.i.+eld my eyes against the dazzling actinic glare, and I could see nothing. Was Miko making a zed-ray photograph of our interiors? We had no way of knowing.

He was testing his short range projectors now. With my eyes again accustomed to the normal Earthlight in the valley, I could see the stabs of electronic beams, the Martian paralyzing rays and heat beams.

They darted out like flas.h.i.+ng swords from the rocks near the s.h.i.+p.

Then the whole s.h.i.+p and the crater wall behind it seemed to s.h.i.+ft sidewise as a Benson curve light spread its glow about the s.h.i.+p, with a projector curve beam coming up and touching the window through which I was peering.

”Haljan, come look at these d.a.m.n girls! Commander--shall I stop them?

They'll kill themselves, or kill us--or smash something!”

We followed the man into the building's broad central corridor. Anita and Venza were riding a midget platform! Anita, in her boyish black garb; Venza, with a flowing white Venus-robe. They lay on the tiny six foot long oblong of metal, one manipulating its side s.h.i.+elds, the other at the controls. As we arrived, the platform came sliding down the narrow confines of the corridor, lurching, barely missing a door projection. Up to the low vaulted ceiling, then down to the floor.

It sailed over our heads, rising over us as we ducked. Anita waved her hand.

Grantline gasped, ”By the infernal!”