Roverton sprang to his feet and broke off a bough from one of the trees. This he waved at the swarm, which retreated a little but did not disperse. An idea came to him, and he thrust the bough into Deming’s hand, saying:
“If you can keep them off, I’ll try to build a fire”
While Deming waved his ineffectual weapon at the hesitating army Roverton broke off more of the dead, tentacle-like boughs, piled them, and crushed others into a heap of fine dust with his heel. Then, in the twilight, he found two small fragments of the metallic stone from which the buildings had been wrought; and striking the fragments together, he obtained a spark which fell into the dust-pile and ignited it. The stuff was highly combustible, for in less than a minute the heap of boughs was burning brightly. Terrified by the blaze, the insects fell back; and their stridulation soon diminished and sank away in the distance.
Deming’s hand was now painfully swollen and throbbing from the sting he had received.
“Those brutes would have finished us if they had been nervy enough to attack in force,” he observed.
Roverton piled more fuel on the fire, in case the swarm should return.
“What a world !” he ejaculated. “I wish Volmar were here, confound him!”
As he spoke, there was a far-off droning in the crepuscular sky. For a moment, the men thought that the insect swarm was coming back to assail them again. Then the droning deepened to a great roar. The roar was somehow familiar, though neither could determine at first the memory which it tended to evoke. Then, where stars were beginning to pierce the vague heavens, they saw the indistinct bulk that descended toward them.
“My God! Is that the space-flier?” cried Deming.
With a final roaring and screeching of its propellers, the bulk came to rest within fifty feet of the fire. The light flickered on its metal sides and revealed the well-known ladder down which the three mutineers had climbed in an alien darkness.
A figure descended the ladder and came toward the fire, it was Captain Volmar. His face was drawn and livid in the firelight, and looked older than the two men remembered it. He greeted them stiffly, with an odd trace of embarrassment in his manner,
“I’m certainly glad to have located you,” he announced, without waiting for Roverton or Deming to return too his salutation. “I’ve been flying around this damn planet all day, hoping there was one chance in a trillion of finding you again. I didn’t take any bearings when I put you off in the night, so of course I had no idea where to look. I was about to give it up, when I saw the fire and decided to investigate.”
“If you’ll come back with me,” he continued, “we’ll let bygones be bygones. I’m short-handed now, and am going to give up the trip and start back for the solar system. We began to develop engine-trouble not long after we put you off; and two of the men were electrocuted by a short-circuit before the trouble was remedied. Their bodies are floating somewhere in mid-ether now — I gave them a space-burial. Then Jasper fell ill, and I’ve been running the flier single-handed for the past twenty-four hours. I’m sorry I was so hasty with you — I certainly put you off on an impossible sort of world. I’ve been all over it today, and there’s nothing anywhere but seas, deserts, marshes, mud-flats, jungles of crazy-looking vegetation, a lot of equally desolate ruins, and no life except overgrown insects, reptiles, and a few cliff-dwelling pygmies in the sub-polar regions. It’s a wonder that even two of you have managed to survive. Come on — you can tell me your story when we’re aboard the flier.”
Roverton and Deming followed him as he turned and re-ascended the
ladder. The manhole closed behind them with a clang that was more grateful
to their ears than music. A minute more, and the flier was climbing the
heavens along the crepuscular curve of the planet, till it soared into the
daylight of Delta Andromedae. Then it rushed on through the sidereal gulfs,
till the great sun became a star and began to resume its wonted place in an
ever-receding constellation.