We had her subdued in a moment, but it seemed almost too late. Outside
the opened door a distant shout sounded.
I shoved Meka toward the door. "If you don't do what I say, I'll kill
you," I whispered into her ear.
"What shall I do?"
There came another shout, closer, now. Someone was coming.
"Call out in Martian. Say there's no trouble, nothing wrong. You were
arguing with these girls."
She did as I commanded. The voice down the corridor answered, and then
subsided.
Snap slid the door closed. "Hurry! We'll go by the window. I dropped
those damn shoes."
Anita and Venza tore their dark coats into strips. We bound and gagged
Meka, laid her in a corner of the room. We had dropped the shoes as we
came plunging through the door oval. We found that we could all fasten
their things to our feet. I put Meka's knife in my belt.
"Hurry, all of you!" Snap was saying. "Got to get out of here; jump by
the window."
"Say, look at these wing-shields!" From a recess in a corner of the
room Venza appeared with an armful of the small shields. We thrust our
hands and forearms into their loops. The shields extended from a few
inches beyond our fingers to the elbow.
Snap had slid the window blind. I bent over the prone form of Meka.
"Don't try to move. Molo will release you when he comes back."
We gathered on the starlit balcony. The city stretched around us.
There was as yet no alarm. No swimming figures near here; but a
distance away we saw the towering conclave globe, with its audience
just beginning to emerge, like bees coming from a hive.
"Let me go first." I held Anita and Venza at the rail. "It's like
swimming. I suppose we'll get the way of it pretty quickly."
I balanced on the rail, and then leaped off. With the others after me,
we swam awkwardly upward into the reddish starlight.
The city structures dropped away, showing in a dark blur with winking
lights. Over us were the stars and the cloudless night sky. Behind,
the flashing light beams of radiance at the landing stage, the
figures fluttering, the great globe, all dropped swiftly beneath a
sharply curving horizon.
We had passed the city. A thousand feet below us, a dark forest
stretched. It was beyond this that the control station was located.
The swimming flight became less awkward, but it was an effort in this
abnormal Wandl air. Snap and Venza were behind me. Anita was leading,
a strange, bird-like little figure. White blouse; long parted dark
skirt from which her gray-sheathed legs kicked out as she swam,
sometimes half upon one side, or with a breast stroke. The braids of
her dark hair fell forward over her shoulders.
She was tiring: I could not miss it. How far had we gone? Ten miles,
perhaps. There was only a small vista of this little world visible at
once, it was so sharply convex. A line of distant mountains was to our
left. We had crossed a river at the forest edge.
I suppose we had been half an hour swimming those ten-miles. Was
daylight coming? It seemed that the sideline of mountain-tops had a
little light on them. The opalescent beam from Earth had swept this
portion of the sky and was gone below the horizon.
Apparently there was no pursuit from the city. Behind me, Venza
panted, "Say, I'm about finished. Can't we rest?"
With this altitude we could cease our efforts and drift down. It would
take several minutes.
We gathered together, falling with a slow drift toward the dark forest
under us. The trees seemed huge and spindly, a porous growth something
on the Martian style, with huge leaves and a tangle of matter vines.
They came mounting up at us as we fell with slowly gathering speed.
"Shall we go on?" I suggested.
"Yes." But she was tired, and Anita as well.
"Girls," I asked, "where is the _Star-Streak_?"
They did not know.
Anita said, "Perhaps we can land in the trees, and examine what
devices we have here."
The girls had carefully watched Molo upon several occasions. They
thought we might find we had a hand-globe or a couple of the repulsive
rays. With these we could attain rapid flight without effort.
We sank, fluttering, into a dark and tangled mass of the forest
tree-top growth. I had understood that Wandl was crowded with its
human population, yet this dark and silent forest evidently was
uninhabited. We clung, like awkward birds, to a swaying limb of a
tree-top. The trees were close together.
"Let's see what you've got," Venza demanded.
We handed the girls the various devices we had taken from Wyk. Most of
them were the size of my fist: globular metallic projectors like hand
bombs; ray cylinders; a device with multiple barrels the size of one's
finger, set in a small circumference of a circular grid of wires.
Anita said, "I saw Molo with one of these. He killed an unwilling
worker on the ship."
"I'll take a look around," Snap said anxiously. "Suppose we're being
followed? Give me that weapon."
There was vegetation partly over us, so that the sky was half
obscured. Snap took the weapon, and like a monkey swaying
precariously, he ran and leaped among the upper branches, crashing his
way until he could see back toward the horizon beyond which lay the
city of Wor.
We heard his voice. "All clear. Nothing in sight. You coming up?
Better get started."
I put the weapons in my pocket. Snap had one now in the branches over
us. I was examining an electronic bolt, when suddenly there came
Snap's call. "Gregg! Look out!"
We heard the hiss and saw the flash of his bolt.