Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 Part 24

I landed like a leopard upon his back and fired, my weapon muzzle ramming him. His torch fell hissing with a silent rain of blue fire upon the rocks.

As my grip upon him made audiphone contact, his agonized scream rattled the diaphragms of my ear-grids with horrible, deafening intensity.

He lay writhing under me, then was still. His scream choked into silence. His suit deflated within my encircling grip. He was dead; my leaden, steel-tipped pellet had punctured the double surface of his Erentz-fabric, penetrated his chest.

Grantline's following leap landed him over me.

"Dead?"

"Yes."

I climbed from the inert body. The torch had hissed itself out.

Grantline swung on our building corner, and I leaned down with him to examine it. The torch had fused and scarred the surface of the wall, burned almost through. A pressure-rift had opened. We could see it, a curving gash in the metal wall-plate like a crack in a gla.s.s window-pane.

I went cold. This was serious damage! The rarefied Erentz-air would seep out. It was leaking now: we could see the magnetic radiance of it all up the length of the ten-foot crack. The leak would change the pressure of the Erentz system, constantly lower it, demanding steady renewal. The Erentz motors would overheat; some might go bad from the strain.

Grantline stood gripping me.

"d.a.m.n bad!"

"Yes. Can't we repair it, Johnny?"

"No. Have to take that whole plate-section out, shut off the Erentz plant and exhaust the interior air of all this bulkhead of the building. Day's job--maybe more."

And the crack would get worse, I knew. It would gradually spread and widen. The Erentz circulation would fail. All our power would be drained struggling to maintain it. This brigand who had unwittingly committed suicide by his daring act had accomplished more than he perhaps had realized. I could envisage our weapons, useless from lack of power. The air in our buildings turning fetid and frigid: ourselves forced to the helmets. A rush out to abandon the camp and escape. The buildings exploding--scattering into a litter on the ledge like a child's broken toy. The treasure abandoned, with the brigands coming up and loading it on their s.h.i.+p.

Our defeat. In a few hours now--or minutes. This crack could slowly widen, or it could break suddenly at any time. Disaster, come now so abruptly upon us at the very start of the brigand attack....

Grantline's voice in my audiphone broke my despairing rush of thoughts. "Bad. Come on, Gregg; nothing to do here."

We were aware that our other four men had run along the building's other side. They emerged now--with the running brigands in front of them, rus.h.i.+ng out toward the staircase on the ledge. Three giant Martian figures in flight, with our four men chasing.

A bullet projector spat, with its queer stab of exploding powder fed by the burning oxygen fumes of its artificial air-chamber--one of our men firing. A brigand fell to the rocks by the brink of the ledge. The others reached the descending staircase, tumbled down it with reckless leaps.

Our men turned back. Before we could join them, the enemy s.h.i.+p down in the valley sent up a cautious search-beam which located its returning men. Then the beam swung up to the ledge, landed upon us.

We stood confused, blinded by the brilliant glare. Grantline stumbled against me.

"Run, Gregg! They'll be firing at us."

We dashed away. Our companions joined us, rus.h.i.+ng back for the porte.

I saw it open, reinforcements coming out to help us--half a dozen figures carrying a ten-foot insulated s.h.i.+eld. They could barely get it out through the porte.

The Martian search-ray abruptly vanished. Then almost instantly the electronic ray came with its deadly stab. Missed us at first, as we ran for the s.h.i.+eld. It vanished, and stabbed again. It caught us, but now we were behind the s.h.i.+eld, carrying it back to the porte, hiding behind it.

The ray stabbed once or twice more.

Whether Miko's instruments showed him how serious that damage was to our front wall, we never knew. But I think that he realized. His search-beam clung to it, and his zed-ray pried into our interiors.

The brigand s.h.i.+p was active now. We were desperate: we used our telescope freely for observation. And used our zed-ray and search-light. Miko's ore-carts and mining apparatus were unloaded on the rocks. The rail-sections were being carried a mile out, nearly to the center of the valley. A subsidiary camp was being established there, only a mile from the base of our cliff, but still far beyond reach of our weapons. We could see the brigand lights down there.

Then the ore-shute sections were brought over. We could see Miko's men carrying some of the giant projectors, mounting them in the new position. Power tanks and cables. Light-flare catapults--little mechanical cannons for throwing the bombs.

The enemy search-light constantly raked our vicinity. Occasionally the giant electronic projector flung up its bolt as though warning us not to dare leave our buildings.

Half an hour went by. Our situation was even worse than Miko could know. The Erentz motors were running hot--our power draining, the crack widening. When it would break we could not tell; but the danger was like a sword over us.

An anxious thirty minutes for us, this second interlude. Grantline called a meeting of all our little force, with every man having his say. Inactivity was no longer a feasible policy. We recklessly used our power to search the sky. Our rescue s.h.i.+p might be up there; but we could not see it with our disabled instruments. No signals came. We could not--or, at least, did not--receive them.

"They wouldn't signal," Grantline protested. "They'd know the Martians would be more likely to get the signal than us. Of what use to warn Miko?"

But he did not dare wait for a rescue s.h.i.+p that might or might not be coming! Miko was playing the waiting game now--making ready for a quick loading of the ore when we were forced to abandon our buildings.

The brigand s.h.i.+p suddenly moved its position! It rose up in a low flat arc, came forward and settled in the center of the valley where the carts and rail-sections were piled, and the outside projectors newly mounted on the rocks. But the projectors only shot at us occasionally.

The brigands now began laying the rails from the s.h.i.+p toward the base of our cliff. The chute would bring the ore down from the ledge, and the carts would take it to the s.h.i.+p.

The laying of the rails was done under cover of occasional stabs from the electronic projector.

And then we discovered that Miko had made still another move. The brigand rays, fired from the depths of the valley, could strike our front building, but could not reach all our ledge. And from the s.h.i.+p's new and nearer position this disadvantage was intensified. Then abruptly we realized that under cover of darkness-bombs an electronic projector and search-ray had been carried to the top of the crater-rim, diagonally across and only half a mile from us. Their beams shot down, raking all our vicinity from this new angle.

I was on the little flying platform which sallied out as a test to attack these isolated projectors. Snap and I and one other volunteer went. He and I held the s.h.i.+eld; Snap handled the controls.

Our exit-porte was on the lee side of the building from the hostile search-beam. We got out un.o.bserved and sailed upward; but soon a light from the s.h.i.+p caught us. And the projector bolts came up....

Our sortie only lasted a few minutes. To me, it was a confusion of crossing beams, with the stars overhead, the swaying little platform under me, and the s.h.i.+eld tingling in my hands when the blasts struck us. Moments of blurred terror....

The voice of the man beside me sounded in my ears: "Now, Haljan, give them one!"

We were up over the peak of the rim with the hostile projectors under us. I gauged our movement, and dropped an explosive powder bomb.

It missed. It flared with a puff on the rocks, twenty feet from where the two projectors were mounted. I saw that two helmeted figures were down there. They tried to swing their grids upward, but could not get them vertical to reach us. The s.h.i.+p was firing at us, but it was far away. And Grantline's search-beam was going full-power, clinging to the s.h.i.+p to dazzle them.

Snap circled us. As we came back I dropped another bomb. Its silent puff seemed littered with flying fragments of the two projectors and the bodies of the men.

We flew swiftly back and got in.

It decided Grantline. For an hour past Snap and I had been urging our plan to use the gravity platforms. To remain inactive was sure defeat now. Even if our buildings did not explode--if we thought to huddle in them, helmeted in the failing air--then Miko could readily ignore us and proceed with his loading of the treasure under our helpless gaze.