a peculiar, tubular something toward a helplessly-fettered body. Even as Brandon
snatched away the threatening weapon with a beam of force he recognized the captive.
“Great Cat, there’s Breckenridge!” he gasped, and directed a lifting beam upon
the bound and unconscious prisoner. Rapidly but carefully he was brought through the
double airlock and into the control room, where his shackles were cut away and where
he soon revived under vigorous and skillful treatment.
“Any more of you in there ? Did I hit any of you with that beam ?” demanded
Brandon, intensely, as soon as Breckenridge showed signs of understanding.
“King’s in there somewhere, and there’s a Callistonian human being that you
musn’t kill,” the chief pilot replied, weakly and with great effort in every word. “Don’t
believe that you hit anybody direct, but the shock was pretty bad,” and, having delivered
his message, he lay back, exhausted.
“All x. Crown, gimme a squad . . .”
“Not on your life!” barked the general. “This is my job and I’ll do it myself. Your
job is fighting the Sirius— stay with it!”
“Not in seven thousand years—I’m in on this, too,” Brandon protested, but was
decisively overruled by Newton.
“You belong right here at this board, since no one else can handle it the way you
can. Stay here!” he commanded.
“All x,” grudgingly assented the physicist, and held the Sirius upright, with her
needle-sharp stern buried a few feet deep in the ground.
He watched the wreckage jealously while Crowninshield and forty armored men
issued from the service door in the lower ultra-light compartment and advanced upon
the two halves of the enemy vessel. As no hostile demonstrations ensued, scaling
ladders were quickly placed and with weapons at the alert the police boarded the
hemisphere. There they manacled the still helpless beings visible, and, after laying
down a fog of stupefying gas, vanished into compartments beyond the metal partitions.
After a short time they reappeared and climbed down the scaling ladders, carrying
several inert forms, and Brandon spoke into his transmitter.
“King all x, Crowninshield ?”
“I think so. Not being in the control room he was not as badly shocked by the
passage of the beam as were Breckenridge and those you saw. The things in the other
rooms were about ready to fight, so we gave them a little whiff of tritylamin, but Captain
King will be as good as ever in a few minutes.”
“Fine business!” The police entered the Sirius, the service doors clanged shut,
and Brandon turned to Westfall.
“While they’re coming up guess I’ll pick up Perce and Miss Newton. We’d better
get ’em aboard and beat it, while we’re all in one piece!”
But even before he could send out the exploring beam of his communicator the
voice of Stevens came from the receiver.
“Hi, Brandon and Westfall! We’ve watched the whole show. Congratulations,
fellows! Welcome to Ganymede! You are in our valley—we’re upstream from you about
three hundred meters; just below the falls, on the meadow side.”
“All x,” Brandon acknowledged. “We saw you. Come on out where we can pick
you up. We’ve got to get away from here—fast!”
“We’ll carry off the pieces of that ship, too, Quince— we may be able to get a lot
of pointers from it,” and Brandon swung mighty tractor beams upon the severed halves
of the Jovian vessel, then extended a couple of smaller rays to meet the two little figures
racing across the smooth green meadow toward the Sirius.
CHAPTER 10 Among Friends at Last
The time for the landing of the Sirius was drawing near, and the castaways upon
Ganymede had donned their only suits of Earthly clothing, instead of the makeshifts of
moleskin, canvas, and leather they had been wearing so long. Thorns and underbrush
had pierced and torn their once natty outing costumes, and sparks and flying drops of
molten metal from Stevens’ first crude forges had burned in them many gaping holes.
“I did the best I could with them, Steve, but they look pretty crumby,” Nadia
wrinkled her nose as she studied the anything but invisible seams, darns, and staring
patches everywhere so evident, both in her own apparel of gray silk and in the heavy
whipcord clothing of her companion.
“You did a great job, considering what you had to work with,” he reassured her.
“Besides, who cares about a few patches ? I feel a lot more civilized in my own clothes,
don’t you?”
“Well . . . yes,” she admitted. “They’re silk, anyway, even if they don’t look like
much, and I’m just reveling in the feel of them next to me after the horrible, rough,
scratchy things I’ve been wearing. See anything yet ?”
“Not yet.” Stevens had been scanning the heavens with a pair of binoculars.
“That doesn’t mean much, though, as they’ll be just about in the sun and they’ll be
coming like a scared dog. Might as well put away these glasses—we probably won’t be
able to see them until they’re right on top of us.”
“What shall we take with us ?”
“Don’t know—nothing, probably, since they must have a campaign already
mapped out. I’d like to salvage a lot of this junk, but I’m afraid we won’t be able to. I’m
going to take my bow and arrows, though, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely! That’s one thing that’s better than anything I ever had on Earth. This
bow of mine is perfect.”
“There they are! Three rousing cheers! Say, but that old hulk looks good to me!”
“Doesn’t she, though!” cried Nadia, vibrant with excitement. “You know, Steve,
I’ve hardly dared really to believe it until this very minute. Oh look! What’s that?”
The Sirius had stopped in midair and they could see, far in the distance, the tiny
sphere of the Jovians, rushing to the attack.
“Oh, how horrible!” cried the girl, her voice breaking. “I’m afraid, Steve . . .”
“You needn’t be, ace. I’ve told you they won’t go off half-cocked as long as
Westfall is on the job. They’re ready for anything, or they wouldn’t be here—but I wish
that they had that Titanian mirror and a couple of those bombs, just the same!”
In a moment more the Jovian plane of force was launched, the powerful ray-
screens flared into white-hot, sparkling defense, and the battle was on. Held spellbound
as the castaways were by that spectacular duel, yet Stevens’ trained mind warned him
of the perils of their position.
“Grab your bow and we’ll beat it!” and he rapidly led her away from the steel
structures to an open hillside, well away from any projection, tree, or sharp point of rock.
“If that keeps up very long we’re going to see some real fireworks, and the chances are
that our plant here will be a total loss. Everything is grounded, of course, but ordinary
grounds won’t amount to much in what’s coming.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Nadia.
“Look!” he replied, pointing, and as he spoke a terrific bolt of lightning launched
itself from the incandescent screen of the Jovian vessel upon their slender ultra-radio
tower, which subsided instantly into a confused mass of molten and twisted metal.
As the power of the beams was increased and as the combatants drew nearer
and nearer the ground the lightning display grew ever more violent. Well below the
canyon as the warring vessels were, the power-plant and penstock did not suffer and
only a few discharges struck the Forlorn Hope —discharges which were carried easily
to ground by the enormous thickness of her armor — but every prominent object for
hundreds of yards below the Hope was literally blasted out of existence. Radio tower,
directors, and fittings ; trees, shrubs, sharp points of rock—all were struck again and
again; fused, destroyed, utterly obliterated by the inconceivable energy being dissipated
by those impregnable screens of force. Even almost flat upon the ground as the
spectators were, each individual hair upon their heads strove fiercely to stand erect, so
heavily charged was the very air. Stevens’ arm was blue for days, such was Nadia’s grip
upon it, and she herself could scarcely breathe in that mighty arm’s constriction—but
each was conscious only of that incredibly violent struggle, of that duel to the death
being waged there before their eyes with those frightful weapons, hitherto unknown to
man. They saw the Sirius triumphant, and Stevens led the dancing girl back into their
dwelling of steel.
“Danger’s all over now. Radio’s gone, but we should fret about that. It has done
its stuff—we can use the communicators. And now, sweetheart, I’m going to kiss you—
for the first time in seven lifetimes.” His voice was unsteady as he swept both arms
around her and pressed her close. “I’m shaking like a leaf. It was the only possible way
out, of course, but good Lord, how hard it has been not even to touch your hand for the
last six months!”