They went down to the observatory, but found that they were still too far away and began taking notes. Crane’s mind was not upon his work, however, but was filled with thoughts of the girl at his side. The intervals between comments became longer and longer, until the two were standing in silence.
The Skylark lurched a little, as she had done hundreds of times before. As usual, Crane put out a steadying arm. This time, however, in that highly charged atmosphere, the gesture took on a new significance. Both blushed hotly; and, as their eyes met, each saw what they had both wanted most to see.
Slowly, almost as though without volition, Crane put his other arm around her. A wave of deeper crimson flooded her face; but her lips lifted to his and her arms went up around his neck.
“Margaret—Peggy—I had intended to wait—but why should we wait? You know how much I love you, my dearest!”
“I think I do . . . I know I do . . . my Martin!”
Presently they made their way back to the engine-room, hoping that their singing joy was inaudible, their new status invisible. They might have kept their secret for a time had not Seaton promptly asked, “What did you find, Mart?”
The always self-possessed Crane looked panicky; Margaret’s fair face glowed a deeper and deeper pink.
“Yes, what did you find?” Dorothy demanded, with a sudden, vivid smile of understanding.
“My future wife,” Crane answered, steadily.
The two girls hugged each other and the two men gripped hands, each of the four knowing that in these two unions there was nothing whatever of passing fancy.
A planet was located and the Skylark flew toward it.
“It’s pretty deep in, Mart. DuQuesne and I haven’t got enough dope yet to plot this mess of suns, so we don’t know exactly where any of them really are, but that planet’s somewhere down in the middle. Would that make any difference?”
“No. There are many closer ones, but they are too big or too small or lack water or atmosphere or have some other drawback. Go ahead.”
When they neared atmosphere and cut the drive, there were seventeen great suns, scattered in all directions in the sky.
“Air-pressure at the surface, thirty pounds per square inch. Composition, approximately normal except for three-tenths of one per cent of a fragrant, non-poisonous gas with which I am not familiar. Temperature, one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Surface gravity, four-tenths Earth,” came the various reports.
Sexton let the vessel settle slowly toward the ocean beneath them; the water was an intensely deep blue. He took a sample, ran it through the machine, and yelled.
“Ammoniacal copper sulphate! Hot dog! Let’s go I ” Sexton laid a course toward the nearest continent.
Chapter 16
AS THE SKYLARK approached the shore its occupants heard a rapid succession of detonations, apparently coming from the direction in which they were traveling.
“Wonder what that racket is,” Seaton said. “Sounds like big guns and high explosive—not atomic, though.”
“Check.” DuQuesne said. “Even allowing for the density of this air, that kind of noise is not made by pop-guns.”
Seaton closed the lock to keep out the noise, and advanced the speed lever until the vessel tilted sharply under the pull of the engine.
“Go easy, Seaton,” DuQuesne cautioned. “We don’t want to stop one of their shells—they may not be like ours.”
“Easy it is. I’ll stay high.”
As the Skylark closed up, the sound grew heavier and clearer. It was one practically continuous explosion.
“There they are,” said Seaton, who, from his board, could scan the whole field of vision. “From port six, five o’clock low.”
While the other four were making their way to the indicated viewpoint Seaton went on. “Aerial battleships, eight of ’em. Four are about the shape of ours—no wings, act like ‘copters—but I never saw anything like the other four.”
Neither had either Crane or DuQuesne.
“They must be animals,” Crane decided, finally. “I do not believe that any engineer, anywhere, would design machines like that.”
Four of the contestants were animals. Here indeed was a new kind of animal—an animal able and eager to engage a first-class battleship.
Each had an enormous, torpedo-shaped body, with scores of long tentacles, and a dozen or so immense wings. Each had a row of eyes along each side and a sharp, prow-like beak. Each was covered with scale-like plates of transparent armor; wings and tentacles were made of the same substance.
That it was real and highly effective armor there was no doubt, for each battleship bristled with guns and each gun was putting out an almost continuous stream of fire. Shells bursting against the creatures filled the region with flame and haze, and produced an uninterrupted roll of sound appalling in its intensity.
In spite of that desperate concentration of fire, however, the animals went straight in. Beaks tore yards-wide openings in hulls; flailing wings smashed superstructures flat; writhing, searching tentacles wrenched guns from their mounts and seized personnel. Out of action, one battleship was held while tentacles sought out and snatched its crew. Then it was dropped, to crash some twenty thousand feet below. One animal was blown apart. Two more battleships and two more animals went down.
The remaining battleship was half wrecked; the animal was as good as new. Thus the final duel did not last long.
The monster darted away after something, which the observers in the Skylark saw for the first time—a fleet of small airships in full flight away from the scene of battle. Fast as they were, the animal was covering three miles to their one.
“We can’t stand for anything like that!” Seaton cried, as he threw on power and the Skylark leaped ahead. “When I yank him away, Mark, sock him with a Mark Ten!”
The monster seized the largest, most gaily decorated plane just as the Skylark came within sighting distance. In four almost simultaneous motions Seaton focused the attractor on the huge beak of the thing, shoved on its power, pointed the engine straight up and gave it five notches.
There was a crash of rending metal as the monster was torn loose from its prey. Seaton hauled it straight up for a hundred miles, while it struggled so savagely in that invisible and incomprehensible grip that the thousands of tons of mass of the Skylark tossed and pitched like a row-boat in a storm at sea.
Crane fired. There was a blare of sound that paralyzed their senses, even inside the vessel and in the thin air of that enormous elevation. There was a furiously-boiling, furiously expanding ball of . . . of what? The detonation of a Mark Ten load cannot be described. It must be seen; and even then, it cannot be understood. It can scarcely be believed.
No bit large enough to be seen remained of that mass of almost indestructible armor.
Seaton reversed the bar and drove straight down, catching the crippled flagship at about five thousand feet. He focused the attractor and lowered the plane gently to the ground. The other airships, which had been clustering around their leader in near suicidal attempts at rescue, landed nearby.
As the Skylark landed beside the wrecked plane, the Earthmen saw that it was surrounded by a crowd of people—men and women identical in form and feature with themselves. They were a superbly-molded race. The men were almost as big as Seaton and DuQuesne; the women were noticeably taller than the two Earth-women. The men wore collars of metal, numerous metallic ornaments, and heavily-jeweled belts and shoulder straps which were hung with weapons. The women were not armed, but were even more highly decorated than the men. They fairly scintillated with jewels.
The natives wore no clothing, and their smooth skins shone a dark, livid, utterly strange color in the yellowish-bluish-green glare of the light. Their skins were green, undoubtedly; but it was no green known to Earth. The “whites” of their eyes were a light yellowish-green. The heavy hair of the women and the close-cropped locks of the men were a very dark green—almost black—as were also their eyes.
“What a color.” Seaton said, wonderingly. “They’re human, I guess . . . except for the color . . . but Great Cat, what a color!”
“How much of that is pigment and how much is due to this light is a question,” said Crane. “If we were outside, away from our daylight lamps, we might look like that, too.”
“Horrors, I hope not !” Dorothy exclaimed. “If I’m going to I won’t take a step out of this ship, so there!”
“Sure you will,” Seaton said. “You’ll look like a choice piece of modern art and your hair will be jet black. Come on and give the natives a treat.”
“Then what color will mine be?” Margaret asked.
“I’m not quite sure. Probably a very dark and very beautiful green,” he grinned gleefully. “My hunch is that this is going to be some visit. Wait ’til I get a couple of props . . . Shall we go? Come on, Dot.”