_Disaster_
The great crystal sphere on the central pedestal was ablaze with the
scarlet warning signal of the Supreme Council. A sonorous voice from
its depths boomed out above the clamor.
"Kill them! Kill the Earth men," it roared. "The Zara is dead and
Ianito has vanished. Denari has mounted the throne, and it is he who
commands you. Kill the traitors!"
But the Llotta and the green-bronze guards needed no command from the
new ruler of Antrid. These devils from Earth had tampered with the last
rocket-tube charge; probably had caused serious damage to the tube
itself. They must die.
Only the guards were armed, and the Llotta swarmed so closely in
pursuit of the fugitives that it was impossible for them to use their
ray pistols. At the great iron gate that now closed the exit stood the
guard who had admitted them. Tommy's pistol spurted blue flame and he
was enveloped by the destroying energy.
Ulana screamed as a Llott grasped her, wrenching the iron bar from her
hands. Blaine covered the intervening distance in a bound and his fist
crashed to the fellow's jaw, snapping back his head and lifting him off
his feet. He crashed to the floor plates an inert heap and the Earth
man recovered the pinch bar.
Pocketing his pistol, he swung the bar with both hands in mighty
circles that took terrible toll of the Llotta. They fell back before
the onslaught of the infuriated Terrestrial, leaving eight of their
number dead or dying with crashed skulls and broken ribs and arms.
* * * * *
"Open the gate, Tommy," he shouted. "Use your pistol on the lock if you
have to." A guard was coming at him and he ducked to the floor as the
blue flame crackled, singeing the hair from his head and blistering the
scalp as it spent its charge in fusing a cross member from one of the
steel columns nearby.
He fired from under his prostrate body and the guard thrashed his arms
wildly in the blue mist, then stiffened to a sparkling vanishing figure
within the dissipating vapor.
A gas grenade burst at his side and Blaine sprang to his feet, running
from the spreading sulphurous cloud. The gate was open and its lock
dropped molten metal. Good old Tommy!
The poison gas hid them from their pursuers for the moment and they
were through the gate, all three.
"Get back!" Blaine shouted: "the gas!" He held his breath and closed
his eyes as he slammed the gate and wedged it with the pinch bar he
still carried. That would hold them for a while.
The gas was upon him and his skin flamed scorching hot from the
contact. He mustn't breathe: mustn't open his eyes. He groped there in
the scalding vapor, blindly. Tommy had him by the wrist then, dragging
him away. Ulana was calling somewhere there in the darkness. His lungs
were bursting. And then he knew the air was pure, and he exhaled the
long pent breath noisily, and inhaled deeply.
Eyes smarting and head reeling, he saw Ulana through a haze of dancing
smoke wisps he knew were illusory. She was safe, thank God! They were
on the moving platform then, on the return side, and his strength was
returning. Narrow escape, he'd had, from that lung-rotting gas. Ulana
smiled happily when his vision cleared.
* * * * *
The speeding platform carried them swiftly toward the lift that had
brought them down. What if the lift would not operate? This Denari
might well have shut off the power or even returned the cage to the
upper end of the shaft.
"Boy, oh boy," Tommy was saying, "you sure did gum up the works. Know
what happened?"
"Plenty, from the look of things," Blaine smiled grimly.
"I'll say. You cut down the dry soil ratio a third. Not sure of the
exact reaction, but the expansion was too rapid. Explosion followed
before the air could be driven from the tube. I'll bet the big cannon
was wrecked somewhere overhead. Boy, what a blast!"
As if the last sentence were a prophecy, there came a terrific jar that
twisted the platform violently from under them. They were thrown
headlong and an awe-inspiring rumbling came up from the vitals of
Antrid. An earthquake! The tortured satellite could not withstand the
strains set up by the tremendous reactive force of the rocket-tube. The
lights snuffed out and the platform came to a grinding stop. One of the
underground power plants was out of commission and they were trapped
here in the stifling darkness.
"Nice fix we're in now!" Tommy grunted where he had fallen.
Blaine, having located Ulana, was relieved to find that she was
unharmed. "Yes," he said slowly; "but there's one thing sure: they
can't follow us here unless they walk."
"Why can't we walk?" Ulana asked with forced cheerfulness. "It isn't
far now."
"Oh, we can walk all right; we'll have to. And here's hoping we get
somewhere." Tommy, at least, was undaunted so far.
* * * * *
It was their only chance now. Blaine held fast to the girl as they felt
their way along the smooth tunnel wall, and Tom Farley, behind them
there in the darkness, kept up a running fire of small talk that was
utterly irrelevant. Nothing could keep that Irishman down.
After what seemed like miles of steady plodding they glimpsed a light
ahead. They quickened their pace. It was the open door at the base of
the shaft, and the cage of the lift was there, fully lighted and
waiting. Denari had not shut off the power after all. But of course! It
came to Blaine in a flash; this was a private shaft, used by Ianito in
his clandestine visits to the palace of the Zara and for his own use in
descending to the sub-surface chamber at the base of the rocket-tube.
Denari did not even know it existed.
Strange they had not been followed. Surely the Llotta could have forced
that gate back there in a comparatively short time. A mass of falling
rock, shaken loose by the temblor that cut off their light and stopped
the moving platform, must have closed the tunnel.
They were in the cage now, shooting aloft with smooth acceleration.
Tommy fidgeted and paced the floor in the narrow confines like a caged
animal.
"Lord, man," he said, after a while, "what I wouldn't give for a
cigarette!"
"Is that all you can think of?" Blaine was sarcastic. His own nerves
were on edge. They were nearing the upper end of the shaft. "Try to do
a little thinking about what's going to happen up there above Ilen-dar.
We've got to do some tall figuring and some swift scrapping before
we're through."
"Sure." Tommy shrugged his shoulders. "There'll be a lot of fireworks,
I guess. But I wish I had a smoke just the same."
Ulana pouted. They spoke in English and she did not understand. But the
expression of their faces forced a laugh to her lips, one of those
silvery tinkles that caught at Blaine's heart strings. All that
mattered now was to see her to safety--and happiness.
* * * * *
The cage slowed up and came to rest as the automatic control of its
gravity energy functioned. The door rolled back and Blaine thrust his
head through the opening, pistol in hand.
There on the floor of the corridor that led to the great dome room was
a crumpled figure. Dantor! It couldn't be that they had slain him!
Blaine was on his knees by the body, raising the blood-smeared head
with gentle hands. A deep gash extended from over the right temple up
into the scalp and the skull was crushed; a mortal wound. But the
doughty heart of the aged scientist still beat on, weakly, but with
determination. He opened his eyes and smiled.
"Ah, you have come at last," he sighed. "I have waited here to warn you
and advise you."
"Easy now." Blaine straightened the helpless limbs and cradled the
drooping head on his knees. Ulana was beside him, bravely holding back
the sobs that were in her throat.
"I saw--in the crystal," Dantor whispered. "And Denari struck me down
when I expressed relief at your escape. Carson--Ulana--Farley--you can
escape if you do as I say. Antrid is doomed; the incorrectly
proportioned charge burst the rocket-tube in several places and tore
the muzzle asunder where it projected from the copper shell of our
world. With the explosion at the muzzle a huge section of the copper
casing was blown away and the atmosphere of Antrid is now escaping
rapidly into the vacuum of space...."
Dantor closed his eyes, and a spasm of pain twisted his features.
Tommy expelled a shuddering breath, solemnly expressive.
* * * * *
The aged scientist fought off the grim spectre valiantly. He patted
Ulana's hand as his weak voice resumed. "You will take care of her I
know, Carson. Take her with you to your own world; make her happy." He
fell silent once more.
"But how?" Blaine whispered.
"Oh yes, I am forgetting. The side passage--next one on the right--it
leads to a storeroom of the oxygen helmets and vacuum-tight suits in
which you can step forth from the adjoining airlock. Your space ship is
there ... unharmed.... In it you will be able to return ... and...."
But Dantor's spirit had fled the pain-racked body. Blaine closed his
lids and stretched him on the hard metal floor, crossing the thin hands
on his breast. Ulana sobbed openly for a moment and then bowed her head
in silence.
"The last of the Rulans," Blaine said softly, looking down at all that
was mortal of the Rulan scientist.
"No," Ulana whispered, "I am the last, my Carson."
"You'll become a good American, sweetheart," he said gently. "That is,
if we get away from here." There was no time to be lost, at that. At
any moment this Denari might find them. "Come," he begged, drawing her
from the body, "we must hurry."
Following the passage indicated by Dantor they came at last to an open
door. A noticeable draft blew outward and Blaine thought grimly of the
scenes that were being enacted throughout all Antrid. The air that made
life possible was escaping. And the news broadcasts from Ilen-dar would
have notified the entire population by this time. There would be
rioting, panics, murder and suicide in the cities of the accursed
Llotta and in their subject countries. A frantic effort of the
scientists to stop the gap would avail them nothing: it was an
impossible task now. The construction of the great shell had been a
different matter; there was some natural atmosphere remaining in those
days. And, finally, they would suffocate, every last one of them.
They'd die miserably, purple of face and with swollen tongues
protruding.
* * * * *
The open door led to a railed-in balcony that looked out over the dome
room. Machines still hummed there but the place was deserted save for a
few scattered corpses: probably those of the Llotta who had objected
when Denari usurped the throne.
A second door opened from the balcony into the store room of the
moon-suits. At least these helmeted contraptions resembled the
so-called moon-suits used by inhabitants of the inner planets when they
visited a body having no atmosphere.
Ulana needed some assistance with the bulky equipment, and then Blaine
climbed into another of the suits and locked his helmet. A moment later
they were in the air-lock with Tommy, who had attired himself more
quickly and was operating the controls.
At the outer hatch they waited until the air pressure reduced to a
practically complete vacuum. Their suits distended ludicrously now by
the pressure within, they unclamped the hatch and stepped out to the
surface of the great copper shell. It vibrated under their feet to the
blast from the huge gap that was not five miles distant.
The RX8 was there as Dantor had said, a slim tapered, cylinder that
gleamed, a thing of beauty, in the reflected light of Jupiter which now
was millions of miles distant. The sun was not visible and the light of
the mother planet cast long shadows on the copper plates. Pelting ice
particles clattered resoundingly against the metal helmets: frozen
moisture from the escaping air of Antrid.
Blaine cried out in surprise; then remembered his companions could not
hear him. There were moving shadows over there, four of them, nearing
the hull of the RX8. The Llotta had beat them to it. Denari, no doubt,
intending to escape with a chosen few of his subjects. He broke into a
run through the now blinding hail storm. He would have to head them
off; else, Ulana was lost, they all were lost.