She extinguished it. I handed her my 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. I
leaped over the body of the dead duty man, seized the belt of bombs
and strapped it around my waist.
"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 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 my hand. 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 another 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 port 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 cloud of darkness and
were firing up through it.
In a moment we were out on the dome top. A sleek, rounded spread of
glassite, with broad aluminite girders. There were cross ribs which
gave us a footing, and occasionally projections--streamline fin-tips,
the casings of the upper rudder shafts, and the upstanding stubby
funnels into which 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 and 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 the 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
helmeted figures, and they saw us! A bullet whizzed by us, and then
came the flash of a hand ray.