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Updated: May 8, 2025
We lifted, moved slowly out and away from the protective shadows of the building. Grantline led us. We held about level. Five hundred feet beneath us the brigand ship lay, cradled on the rocks. When it was still a mile away from us I could see all its outline fairly clearly in the dimness.
Then he had seen Miko's signals from the crater base, seen the lights and the fight to capture Anita and me, and had come to rescue us. Back at the camp we were given food, and Grantline forced me to try to sleep. "They'll be on us in a few hours, Gregg. Miko wall have joined them by now. He'll lead them to us. You must rest, for we need everyone at his best."
And, seeing the brigand ship landing on Archimedes, had tried to lure him into a trap. I wondered if my explanation was convincing: it did not sound so. But he was flushed now with drink, and Anita added: "Grantline knows the territory near his camp very well. But he is equipped only for short range fighting." I took it up.
A rush of air, probably uncontrollable. How serious the damage was, no one could tell as yet. It would perhaps take hours to repair it. Grantline was shouting, "Get those weapons! That's a Martian outside! The brigand leader, probably! Get into your suits, anyone who wants to go with me! We'll go by the manual emergency exit." But the prowling Martian had found it!
I knew that the Western Hemisphere faced the Moon at this hour. I flashed in English, with the open Universal Earth code: Help. Grantline. And again: Help. Archimedes region near Apennines. Attacked by brigands. Send help at once. Grantline. If only it would be received! I flung off the current. Anita stood watching me intently. "Gregg, look!"
The wild thought swept me. But it was not that. I could see light stabs from the cliff outside the main building. Miko had dared to send some men to attack our almost deserted camp! Grantline realized it. His red helmet light semaphored the command to follow him. His platform soared away, heading for the camp, with the other two behind him. Anita lifted us to follow. But I checked her. "No!
Johnny dictated the message of his location which we received. In his incautious excitement he ignored the secret code. An interval passed. No message had come from us just Snap's routine signal in the weak infra-red, which we hoped Grantline would not get. The men crowding Grantline's instrument room waited in tense silence. Then Grantline tried the television again.
But this plan of mine, if we can do it, Gregg, will mean safety in the end for all of us." And it seemed possible. We crouched, discussing it. So daring a thing! The brigand ship would come down near Archimedes. That was fifty miles from Grantline. The brigands from Mars would not have seen the dark Grantline buildings hidden in the little crater pit.
Grantline said: "If they kept that up, it would be a question of whose power supply would last longer. And it would not be ours.... You saw our lights fade when the bolt was striking?" But the brigands did not know we were short of power. And to fire the projector with a continuous bolt would, in thirty minutes, perhaps, have exhausted their own power reserve.
"Try it again," Snap urged. "Good God, Johnny, we've got to raise some Earth station! Chance it! Use the power run it up full. Chance it!" We were gathered in Grantline's instrument room. The duty man, with blanched grim face, sat at his senders. The Grantline crew shoved close around us.
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