United States or Vatican City ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And Snap and I had worked out an idea which we thought might be of service. We needed some of the Planetara's smaller gravity plate sections. Those in Grantline's wrecked little Comet had stood so long that their radiations had gone dead. But the Planetara's were still working. Our hope that Miko might have perished was dashed. He too had returned to the Planetara!
Back in the Grantline camp Snap and I had discussed how to use the Planetara's gravity plates. We had gone to the wreck and secured them, had rigged this little volplane flyer.... The brigands on the rocks saw it now. A flash went up at it. One of the figures crouching on it opened a flexible fabric like a wing over its side.
Righted itself. Then swayed again, drunkenly. The watching men were stricken in horrified silence. The Planetara's image momentarily, horribly, grew larger. Swaying. Then turning completely over, rotating slowly end over end. The Planetara, out of control, was falling! On the Planetara, in the radio room, Snap and I stood with Moa's weapon upon us. Miko held Anita. Triumphant, possessive.
"The Planetara wrecked? Miko dead?" "And Hahn and Coniston. George Prince too. We are the only survivors." While we divested ourselves of the Erentz suits, at his command, I told him briefly of the Planetara's fall. All had been killed on board, save Anita and me. We had escaped, awaited his coming. The treasure was here; we had located the Grantline camp, and were ready to lead him to it.
I saw that the turret had fallen over to the Planetara's deck. It lay dashed against the dome side. The deck was aslant. A litter of wreckage! A broken human figure showed one of the crew who, at the last, must have come running up. The forward observation tower was down on the chart room roof: in its metal tangle I thought I could see the legs of the tower lookout.
We climbed from the slanting, fallen turret, over the wreckage of the littered deck. It was not difficult. A lightness was upon us. The Planetara's gravity-magnetizers were dead; this was only the light Moon gravity pulling us. "Careful, Anita. Don't jump too freely." We leaped along the deck. The hiss of the escaping pressure was like a clanging gong of warning to tell us to hurry.
The Planetara's respiratory controls started; the pressure equalizers began operating; and the gravity plates began shifting into lifting combinations. The ship was hissing and quivering with it, combined with the grating of the last of the dome ports. And Miko's command: "Lift, Haljan!" Hahn had been mingling with the confusion of the deck though I had hardly noticed him.
The Planetara was hanging poised. A sudden gasp went about the room. The men stood with whitening faces, gazing at the Planetara's image. And at the altimeter's needle. It was moving now. The Planetara was descending. But not with an orderly swoop. The grid showed the ship clearly. The bow tilted up, then dipped down. But then in a moment it swung up again. The ship turned partly over.
Shortly after that midday meal I encountered Venza sitting on the starlit deck. I had been in the bow observatory; taken my routine castings of our position and worked them out. I was, I think, of the Planetara's officers the most expert handler of the mathematical calculators.
With the dome windows battened tightly, we lifted from the landing stage and soared over the glowing city. The phosphorescence of the electronic tubes was like a comet's tail behind us as we slid upward. At six A.M., Earth Eastern time, which we were still carrying, Snap Dean and I were alone in his instrument room, perched in the network over the Planetara's deck.
Word Of The Day