"Four hours!" Gena replied. "Four hours until the degravitator of the
_Vandar III_ blows up." There was regret in her voice.
Hammond kept his silence. But the need for haste now, dogged them as
they followed ramp after ramp down into the ship.
"Hurry!" Gena said again and again.
Some of the route was familiar to Hammond, who remembered being led
along it on his way to Gena's navigation room. He was sure of it when
they stepped into the huge garage where row upon row of war tanks stood
dark and unmoving along the walls.
There was no guard about. Across the room a tank was just rumbling
in, its eight legs clanking metallically. Evidently it was one of the
Sediphron scouts that had been combing the boat for any of Gena's tanks
that might have escaped the surprise attack.
Gena led the way swiftly. They clambered into one of the squat parked
vehicles. A moment later it clanked out, passing the larger one that
was sidling into parking position nearer the door.
They weren't stopped. A moment later they were climbing down the side
of the "big one" to the boat seat, and scurrying across the ridges and
gullies that were strewn with the wrecks of Sediphron and Metiphron war
vehicles.
Through the observation prow Hammond could see the vague maroon cliff
that was the near boat side. For a moment longing assailed him--longing
to be in his own world again, to be out of this fantastic world of
ultra-smallness. His thoughts turned to the ray guns Ardiné carried,
then he dismissed the thought that came to him.
He owed Gena and Ardiné his life; and for what it would be worth he
was with them in this suicidal attempt to wrest from Zuggoth and his
crustacean horde the huge battle craft that had followed the _Vandar
III_ across space.
Zuggoth's ship finally loomed up, like a colossus over the small
tank. Unhesitatingly Gena sent the ambulatory vehicle up the spiny
side. The Sediphron craft was an exact copy of Gena's ship, and the
girl-commander guided the small tank unerringly to one of the dilating
doors that opened to a telepathic command.
The huge room they entered was an exact duplicate of that which they
had left in the _Vandar III_. A Sediphron guard watched them slide the
small tank into parking space. Then his telepathic order crackled into
their thoughts.
"Who enters the flagship of the First One? Answer."
Hammond kept his mind blank. He saw Gena's brow furrow slightly. The
words seemed to sound in his ears. "Volkzv, second in command of hybrid
Intelligence. Searching flagship on order of Zuggoth, the First One.
Gena, commander of the _Vandar III_, and her sub-commander, Ardiné,
have escaped with the two Earthmen. All squads dispatched to the
search. Zuggoth orders!"
There was a moment of hesitation. The hideous Sediphron squad leader's
eyes swayed gently. Then his reply came. "Proceed, Volkzv. We stay to
guard the tank room."
Hammond kept a grip on his thoughts. Stiff-legged, marching with the
shuffling gait of the hybrids, he followed Gena and Ardiné and Storm
out of the war tank, and across the vast chamber to the corridor.
Zuggoth's ship was practically deserted. Evidently only a skeleton
guard had been left behind. All others had been ordered out to battle,
and were now concentrated in the captured Metiphron space cruiser.
Hammond breathed a sigh of relief. It looked as if Gena's desperate
plan might succeed.
The sudden clanging of a huge bell somewhere in the ship's bowels
stiffened them. Storm's quick voice sounded. "The alarm signal! The
tank room guard must have suspected--"
"Come!" Gena snapped. "The control room. If we can take over, and seal
ourselves in--"
* * * * *
They hurried along the corridor, ducking into side rooms to avoid being
sighted by squads of the green crustaceans that suddenly sprouted into
being.
Thus, playing a grim game of hide and seek, they finally made their way
up to the control room. But here they ran into a huge, massed group of
the Sediphrons, who had evidently been ordered to await any such move
on the part of the desperate fugitives.
The lurid crackle of electronic bolts fused against the corridor
walls. Storm and Hammond worked their rifles with grim methodicalness,
blasting a half dozen of the green crustaceans into oblivion. But there
were too many of them. They had to fall back along the corridor.
Then Ardiné received a partial shock from a glancing bolt that dropped
her. Storm sprang for her, heedless of the bursting bolts, and caught
her up in his strong arms. Gena and Hammond covered him under a steady
flare of bolts.
With Storm ahead of them they turned and ran.
It was up to Gena. The Earthmen followed blindly, lost in the
bewildering maze of ramps, rooms and corridors.
As if in a grim nightmare they fought their way back through the ship,
escaping annihilation many times by Gena's unerring knowledge of
dilating doors that gave temporary safety.
Once Hammond saw Gena glance down at her chronometer, and he felt
the rise of alarm in her thoughts before she blanked them out. And
the chemist remembered then the time-bomb she had planted in the
degravitator room of the _Vandar III_.
They crossed a momentarily deserted corridor, Storm still carrying the
unconscious Ardiné, and went into a long room that held a maze of long
metal pipe overhead and squat machinery with smaller feeders leading up
to the huge conductors.
Gena's thoughts came to Hammond as they paused here. "If we _must_ die,
let us at least take Zuggoth and his hideous horde with us. I can't let
them get back to Mars now."