"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: _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!"
I saw that she had taken some of the glass globe-bombs which lay by
the foot of the ascending ladder. "Gregg, I threw some of them."
At the window we gazed down. The globes she flung had shattered on the
deck. They were darkness bombs.
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.
"We've got to go, Anita!"
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.