"Good girl," Grant said approvingly. "One--two--th-r-ee-ee!"
They flexed their legs in perfect unison. And shoved off.
* * * * *
Out into the blackness of space they shot, lost to all sense of
motion: yet the hull of the space-flier, dimly gleaming in the thin
light of the far off sun, retreated from them with terrifying
swiftness.
They were alone in space! It was an uncanny, a horribly helpless
sensation. All about them was infinity, a vast void out of which
peered at them the cold, unwinking stars. They were like swimmers in
mid-ocean, without even the buoyant feel of the salt water to comfort
them.
Nona's grip on Grant's arm was agonizing in its intensity.
"Scared?" Grant queried.
"A--a little," she admitted; "but don't bother about me. I'm all
right."
She could be depended upon to keep up her end, Grant thought
admiringly.
On and on they floated in the welter of space. And still there was no
ray, nothing but unrelieved blackness. Pemberton was somewhat worried.
Had the saving ray been quenched at the source? Were they too late? If
so, they were doomed to a frightful obliterating fall to the surface
of the planet, or worse still, they were destined to swing endlessly
in space. Already the liner was far away, out of their grasp, even
had they desired to return.
His breath was coming in quick gasps now. "Scared?" he once more asked
the silent figure beside him.
"Frightfully--but carry on. We'll get there, wherever it is."
Her gay determination strengthened him wonderfully. On and on they
floated.
Suddenly the dim, dark bulk of the girl caught the uncanny orange
light. The next instant the creatoid fabric of his own suit caught it,
too.
"Thank God," he cried joyously. "It's still on. Just relax, Nona, the
ray will take care of us now."
He felt a powerful tug at his body, he was whirled completely around,
and then there was a steady pull. He was being catapulted down the ray
to the mysterious point of brilliance in the Great Red Spot. The girl
was right beside him. The space-liner was passed with a smooth rush,
and soon receded to a dwindling speck.
* * * * *
"Now will you explain?" asked Nona impatiently, after she had caught
her breath in sudden relief.
Grant stretched luxuriously before he began.
"Certainly. There's nothing for us now to do but wait until we get
pulled down to Jupiter, and that'll take some time. I hope we look
like Ganymedans."
"Will you get on with your story!" she cried.
He obeyed. He started from the beginning and went right up to the time
when he had so rudely thrust her out into space.
"You see," he explained. "I had put the puzzle together a bit, but
there were still pieces missing. For instance, those chaps down there
know that every space-liner is equipped with emergency space-suits.
Why pull the ship down with live men on board? That would naturally
mean a fight, and we have no mean weapons, what with disintegrator
ray-projectors and explosive electro-bullets." Then, again, for some
reason, there were Ganymedans on board. They would very likely be
whiffed out in the melee. The ship might be destroyed also, and they
evidently are very careful about getting the ship down intact. The
little meteor holes can easily be plugged up, and the liner made as
good as new. At least that was my guess.
"I was trying to puzzle it out, rather hopelessly," he continued,
"when I saw the ray out in space pick up those floating figures. That
was the last little piece in the jigsaw.
"The Ganymedans evidently had to leave the ship because, as it
approaches the planet, something will be done to kill off any
unfortunates who are still alive, waiting their chance to fight the
invisible enemy. Possibly a penetrating lethal gas that will be forced
into the interior. So they evolved the ray to carry the Ganymedan
passengers down gently, safely. And we are stowaways," he concluded
grimly.
Nona had listened intently to the long recital.
"But why," she expostulated, "was it necessary to have their own
people on board? The meteors that riddled the ship were projectiles
shot from their station on Jupiter. So was the attraction-ray that
pulls the ship down."
"Because they required a sufficient force to disable the radio
apparatus. All radio waves used on interplanetary liners are shielded
from interference. It is impossible to blank them out. And with the
radio intact, every battle flier in space would be on their trail in a
hurry."
* * * * *
Several hours passed, and still they fell endlessly through space,
unaware of their motion except that Jupiter was now a huge orb
blotting out the universe. The grim face of the giant planet was
enswathed in endless billowing clouds. No one had ever penetrated to
the real core. But what held their eager, straining attention was a
vast blood red disk, cyclonic in character, directly beneath them. The
Great Red Spot! And immediately in the center of it was the tiny,
blindingly brilliant yellow orange oval, winking up at them with
quick, steady pulsations.
"What can it be?" Nona wondered.
"The source of their power, evidently. But what interests me more just
now is where the Ganymedans have their hangout in those clouds, and
what they're doing with the ships they capture."
Jupiter was now a flat level stretch that reached on all sides as far
as the eye could see. Grant felt a sudden sensation of weight again,
as though something was pressing with crushing force against his
chest.
"Hello," he said, "our fall is being checked. They're making sure
their friends come to no harm." And he laughed bitterly, thinking of
the men and women lying with lungs ruptured, cold and stiff, in the
interior of the _Althea_; of the possible few wretches who had managed
to huddle into space-suits, ignorant of the deadly gas that was soon
to search out their seemingly impenetrable habiliments.
Slowly, ever more slowly, they fell. Thin wisps of reddish vapor
rushed upward toward them, and then they were enveloped in vast swirls
of cloud masses. They were within the Great Spot!
Then the lurid clouds parted suddenly, revealing a deep hole, at the
bottom of which flamed and flared the mysterious yellow-orange
brilliance. Down the long shaft they fell, while all around its
invisible walls dark red cyclones stirred and beat in vain.
* * * * *
Just as it seemed as if they were doomed to fall headlong into the
blaze, they were swerved violently into an opening that angled off
from the main shaft. Down this branching shaft they continued to
fall--interminably--when suddenly it widened, and they were dropping
through the interior of a great dome of which the arched roof was the
swirling clouds they had just penetrated. Directly beneath floated a
flat island of smooth rock, supported and upheld by a shining sea of
vapors.
The girl exclaimed sharply, but Grant only nodded to himself with grim
satisfaction. He had expected something like this. For, clustered in
serried rows at the end of the island directly beneath them were
sleek, stream-lined grayhounds of the interplanetary traffic lanes,
now resting immovably on the smooth gray stone--the missing
space-liners!
The island was bisected by a huge forbidding wall, over which, at
their angle, Grant was unable to see.
The ground was encumbered too with clumps of intricate machinery, all
of the same polished gray stone; Ganymedan stone, Ganymedan machinery,
Pemberton recognized at once. Hundreds of figures were scurrying
awkwardly around, clad in the inevitable space-suit. Several were
working desperately at a huge concave glass reflector. Others were
pointing a stone nozzle, extending out of a pit, directly upward.
"I'm afraid." Nona shuddered and pressed closer to Grant.
"Don't be," he assured her. "Just say nothing when we land. Let me do
the talking."
All this while they had been floating gently downward toward what they
now saw to be a miniature replica of the vaster orange brightness at
the bottom of the main shaft from which they had been diverted. It was
a pool of liquid fire, so intense in its brilliance that their eyes
were dazzled staring at it. It rose and fell in regular pulsations.
They were not far above it now, and still no one on the strange island
seemed to be aware of their coming.