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He took his arm from Spud's shoulder to point toward the great doors, beyond which was a rising clamor of shrill sound. "They will break in here soon; they would have been here before had they known of the old lost entrance of the priests that Anita and I found. We're as bad off as ever, I am afraid. There will be no holding them now." "I can hold some," said Chet, and touched his weapon.
Spud's tongue was lively with good-natured raillery as he fell into step and drew the officer with him through the pilots' gate, while Chet, from his shadow, saw with satisfaction the apparent desertion. He had known Spud O'Malley of old. Spud was square and Spud had wanted time for thinking.
Spud's trembling hands steadied upon the metal control; he lifted the ship as smoothly as even Chet might have done, and he drove it out and down into a throat too narrow for safety, but where the tiny, red flash of a weapon had called with an S O S as plain as any lettered call a message to which brave men have everywhere responded. He saw Chet but once.
Both were stained and smeared with grease; they were amply large. Chet did not bother to strip off his own blouse; he pulled on the other clothes over his own, and his face was alight with a grin of appreciation of Spud's attention to details as he took a daub of the grease, rubbed it on his hands, then passed them through his hair. "Yellah," Spud had said, but the description was no longer apt.
And Spud's incredulous: "Oh, the poor, beautiful darlin'!" rose unconsciously to his lips to die away in a quick-drawn breath. For, from the mass of bodies, another figure was tossed up into the air to be gripped by black, waiting claws and Spud knew that he was seeing Chet Bullard, fighting, struggling, in the grasp of these demons from the Pit. The fumes from that inferno rose straight up.
Only his eyes turned slowly in their sockets to stare wildly at the three who drew near; who glimpsed his awe-stricken eyes behind his helmet glass; and who uttered shrill, screaming cries that brought the rest of the unholy crew leaping and flapping across the rocks. And, within that helmet, Spud's lips moved unconsciously to repeat prayers he would have sworn were forgotten these many years.
As the shuffling figures closed about him and led him away he found relief in the thought of his ship, of Spud's safety, and of his return to the world that they both knew as home. "Never again for me!" said Chet softly beneath his breath. "But Spud will get there. Perhaps he is there now no telling how long I have slept!"
The command was no less imperative for being spoken beneath Spud's breath, and for the first time Chet's hopes soared high within him. It had all been so hopeless, the prospect of actual escape from the net that was closing about him. And now ! He unrolled the tight package of cloth to find a small can of black graphite lubricant done up in a jacket and blouse.
Spud drove the ship up another five thousand feet, and still that darkness spread out in inky pools where only an occasional mountain peak caught the flat rays of the sun. And what had Chet called these dark areas? "Lake of Dreams" and "Lake of Death." Spud's superstitious mind was a-quiver with dread and an ominous premonition to which the empty, frozen wastes below him gave added force.
The next man was put out with ease, and the side retired with the score reading: Roxley 7, Brill 8. "Now, if we can only hold them," was Spud's comment, as he glanced at Bob and then at Tom. "How about it?" he demanded, of the pitcher. "I'll do what I can," was Tom's simple answer. Nearly all the spectators in the grandstand and on the bleachers were now on their feet.
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