_A Speck Amid the Stars_
I was only inactive a moment. I had thought Anita would have on her
helmet. But she was reluctant, or confused.
"Gregg."
"We've got to get out of here! Up through the overhead locks to the
dome."
"Yes--" She fumbled with the helmet. Under the floor-grid the climbing
men on the ladder were audible. They were already nearing the top. The
trap door was closed: Anita and I were crouching on it. There was a
thick metal bar set in a depressed groove of the grid. I slid it in
place--it would seal the trap for a time, at any rate.
A degree of confidence came to me. We had a few moments before there
could be any hand-to-hand conflict. That giant electronic projector
would eventually be used against Grantline: it was the brigands' most
powerful weapon. Its controls were here--by Heaven, I would smash
them! That at least I could do!
I jumped for the window. Miko's signals had stopped, but I caught a
glimpse of his distant moving curve-lights.
A flash came up at me, as in the window I became visible to the
brigands on the ship's deck. It was a small hand-projector, hastily
fired, for it went wide of the window. It was followed by a rain of
small beams, but I was warned and I dropped my head beneath the high
sill. The rays flashed diagonally upward through the oval opening,
hissed against our vaulted roof. The air snapped and tingled with a
shower of blue-red sparks, and the acrid odor of the released gases
settled down upon me.
* * * * *
The trajectory controls of the projector were beside me. I seized
them, ripped and tore at them. There was a roar down on the deck. The
projector had exploded. A man's agonized scream split the confusion of
sounds.
It silenced the brigands on the deck. Under our floor-grid those on
the ladder had been pounding at the trap-door. They stopped, evidently
to see what had happened. The bombardment of our windows ceased
momentarily.
I cautiously peered out the window again. In the wreck of the
projector three men were lying. One of them was screaming horribly.
The dome-side was damaged. Potan and other men were frantically
investigating to see if the ship's air were hissing out.
A triumph swept me. They had not found me so meek and inoffensive as
they might have thought!
Anita clutched at me. She still had not donned her helmet.
"Put it on!"
"But Gregg--"
"Put it on!"
"I--I don't want to put it on until you put yours on."
"I've smashed the projector! We've stopped them coming up for a
while."
But they were still on the ladder under our floor. They heard our
voices; they began thumping again. Then pounding. They seemed now to
have some heavy implement. They rammed with it against the trap.
But the floor seemed holding. The square of metal grid trembled,
yielded a little. But it was good for a few minutes longer.
I called down, "The first one who comes through will be shot." My
words mingled with their oaths. There was a moment's pause, then the
ramming went on. The dying man on the deck was still screaming.
* * * * *
I whispered, "I'll try an Earth-signal."
She nodded. Pale, tense, but calm. "Yes, Gregg. And I was thinking--"
"It won't take a minute. Have your helmet ready."
"I was thinking--"
She hurried across the room. I swung on the Botz signaling apparatus.
It was connected. Within a moment I had it humming. The fluorescent
tubes lighted with their lurid glare; they painted purple the body of
the giant duty-man who lay sprawled at my feet. I drew on all the
ship's power. The tube-lights in the room quivered and went dim.
I would have to hurry. Potan could shut this off from the main hull
control room. I could see, through the room's upper trap, the primary
sending mirror mounted in the peak of the dome. It was quivering,
radiant with its light-energy. I sent the flash.
The flattened, past-full Earth was up there. I knew that the western
hemisphere faced the Moon at this hour. I flashed in English, with the
open Universal Earth-code:
"_Help! Grantline._"
And again: "_Send help! Archimedes region near Apennines. Attacked by
brigands. Send help at once! Grantline!_"
If only it would be received! I flung off the current. Anita stood
watching me intently. "Gregg, look!"
She had taken some of the glass globe-bombs which lay by the foot of
the ascending ladder. She held some of them now.
"Gregg. I threw some."
* * * * *
At the window we gazed down. The globes she flung had shattered on the
deck. They were occulting darkness bombs.[5]
[Footnote 5: Filled with an odorless, harmless gas, these bombs were
used in warfare, taking the place of the old-fashioned smoke screens.
The diffusing gas was of such a nature that, when released, it
absorbed within itself all the color inherent to the light-rays
striking it, thus creating a temporary darkness.]
Through the blackness of the deck, the shouts of the brigands came up.
They were stumbling about. But the ramming of our trap went on, and I
saw that it was beginning to yield. One corner of it was bent up.
"We've got to go, Anita!"
"Yes."
From out of the darkness which hung like a shroud over the deck an
occasional flash came up, unaimed--wide of our windows. But the
darkness was dissipating. I could see now the dim glow of the deck
lights, blurred as through a heavy fog.
I dropped another of the bombs.
"Put on your helmet."
"Yes--yes, I will. You put on yours."
We had them adjusted in a moment. Our Erentz motors were pumping.
I gripped her. "Put out your helmet-light."
She extinguished it. I handed her my bullet projector.
"Hold it a moment. I'm going to take that belt of bombs."
The trap-door was all but broken under the ramming blows of the men on
the ladder. I leaped over the body of the duty-man, seized the belt of
bombs and strapped it about my waist.
Anita stood with me.
"Give me the projector."
She handed it to me. The trap-door burst upward! A man's head and
shoulders appeared. I fired a bullet into him--the little leaden
pellet singing down through the yellow powder-flash that spat from the
projector's muzzle.
* * * * *
The brigand screamed, and dropped back out of sight. There was
confusion at the ladder-top. I flung a bomb at the broken trap. A tiny
heat-ray came wavering up through the opening, but went wide of us.
The instrument room was in darkness. I clung to Anita.
"Hold on to me! You go first--here is the ladder."
We found it in the blackness, mounted it and went through the cubby's
roof-trap.
I took a hasty look and dropped another bomb beside us. The four-foot
space up here between the cubby roof and the overhead dome went black.
We were momentarily concealed.
Anita located the manual levers of the lock-entrance.
"Here, Gregg."
I shoved at them. Fear leaped in me that they would not operate. But
they swung. The tiny porte 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 little cloud of darkness
and were firing up through it.
We were through the locks in a moment, out on the open dome-top. A sleek,
rounded spread of glassite, with broad aluminite girders. There were
cross-ribs which gave us footing, and occasional projections--streamline
fin-tips, the casings of the upper rudder shafts, and the upstanding
stubby funnels into which the 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 down these
curving sides past the ship'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 their ship.
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
skulking 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--oh, 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 here we were
above it, etched by the starlight and Earthglow.
I came back to Anita.
"We'll have to chance it now."
"Gregg...."
"Good-by, 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 that 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!"
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 shield.
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 flashing 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 prone 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, with banks of
controls.
"Gregg!"
"Snap!"
It was Snap and Venza. She seized Anita, held her crouching in place.
Snap flung himself face down at the controls.
The brigands in the lock were out on the dome now. I took a last shot
as we lifted. My bullet punctured one of them; he fell, slid
scrambling off the rounded dome and dropped out of sight.
Light-rays and silent flashes seemed to envelop us. Venza held the
side-shields higher.
We tilted, swayed crazily, and then steadied.
The ship's dome dropped away beneath us. The rocks of the open ledge
were under us. Then the abyss, with the moving climbing specks of
Miko's lights far down.
I saw, over the side-shield, the already distant brigand ship resting
on the ledge with the massive Archimedes' wall behind it. A confusion
back there of futile flashing rays.
It all faded into a remote glow as we sailed smoothly up into the
starlight and away, heading for the Grantline camp.