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"I, myself, saw that. I saw with these eyes the first crude engine-bearing kites; I saw them from 1914 to 1918 tempered and perfected in the furnace of war; I saw the coming of detonite and the beginning of our air-transport of to-day.
Another closure in the outer shell made an air-lock. He took time for one grip at the hand of Spud O'Malley, one grin of excited, adventurous joy that wrinkled about his eyes behind the window of his helmet then he picked up a detonite pistol, examined again its charge of tiny shells, jammed it firmly into the holster at his waist and swung the big door shut behind him.
He had regained his grip upon one of those slender hands and was preparing to swing her up to the top of an incredibly high rock. Her scream checked him and sent his one free hand to the detonite pistol at his waist. "Behind you!" she cried. "Look back! They have come out!" The crater-pit behind and below them was black with the inky blackness of smooth, fire-formed rock.
There were flashes from the cruisers above, and flashes of red on the ice behind with fountains of shattered ice and rock; detonite works its most terrible destruction on a surface that is brittle and hard.
And then, with that first touch, Spud O'Malley, who had not only seen strange creatures but had fought with them, came to himself and the hand that rested upon a detonite pistol moved like the head of a striking snake. The roar of detonite was strained and thin in the light atmosphere of this globe; it seemed futile compared with its usual thunderous report.
In that subterranean chamber of the Moon, where the angry red of still deeper fires flared fitfully; where winged demons, like evil creatures of a drug-crazed dreamer's mind, darted shrieking through the sulphurous air, it was a slender, blue-eyed girl who took control of events. She it was who, when the explosions of detonite had ceased, saw the fall of a body from high above.
"Saints be praised!" the pilot was saying over and over. "Saints be thanked! even the Devil's imps can't stand up to detonite shells! And Chet, the poor lad! his gun must have been knocked from his hand; he was fightin' in the dark, too! And they took him down there, they did! down where I'm goin' to see if the lad is still livin'."
Thick walls, these of the space ship, and insulated well; and the thin atmosphere of this wild world could cut a blast of sound to a mere fraction of its volume! But the walls were admitting a fragmental echo of what must have been a reverberating voice. They were quivering to the roar of exploding detonite! It was Chet! He was fighting, he was in trouble!
But of what avail are detonite shells against a craft whose speed builds up to something greater than the muzzle velocity of a shell? a silvery craft that sweeps out and out toward a black mountain range; then swings slowly up in a curve of sheer beauty that bends into banked masses of clouds and ends.
And with that came the swift disintegration of the vaulted arches where the one central supporting point of their intricate maze had been shattered; till, with a crashing avalanche of sound that obliterated the thundering echoes of the detonite charge, the entire ceiling, that seemed now like the roof of a mighty world, roared down to destruction. The pyramidal rostrum was at one side.
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