United States or Gabon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The very first step in this plan required the destroying of the three outflanking guards between him and the space-ship. As so often in the great adventurer's career, he was lucky. The unthinking have always admitted his luck, but never seen that he forced it forced it by doing the unexpected attacking when he was attacked. He was doing that now.
On his clumsy way across the saloon floor to the communicator, he felt the peculiar sensation of the booster-current, which should have been a sound, but wasn't. It was the sensation which had preceded the preposterous leap of the space-ship away from Luna, when in a heart-beat of time all stars looked like streaks of light, and the ship traveled nearly two light-centuries.
The people of Dara notice that I don't say blueskins, though they are the people of Dara have made at least one space-ship since Weald threatened them with extermination. There is probably a new food-shortage on Dara now, leading to pure desperation. Most likely it's bad enough to make them risk landing on Orede to kill cattle and freeze beef to help. They've worked out."
Every space-ship within range of her powerful detectors was represented by two brilliant, slowly moving points of light; one upon a great micrometer screen, the other in the "tank" the immense, three-dimensional, minutely cubed model of the entire Solar System. A brilliantly intense red light flared upon a panel and a bell clanged brazenly the furious signals of the sector alarm.
A descent of twenty-five feet, and he was on the floor of a short, level corridor with gray walls and ceiling. Carse clumped along to the door at the other end of the corridor, opened it, and stepped into the hidden underground laboratory of Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow, which, with its storerooms, living quarters and space-ship hangar, had been built into the hollowed-out hill.
Ku's real headquarters and surely before he decides to eliminate us we will be able to learn something of the nature of his space-ship; perhaps how it can be attacked and conquered." Conversation always cheered the naturally social Friday; he seldom had the opportunity for it with his usually curt master.
"But enough of that, we'll have plenty of grief of our own right here," Rodebush changed the subject abruptly as they stepped into a vast room, almost filled by the immense bulk of the Boise the sinister space-ship which, although never flown, had already lined with black so many pages of Triplanetary's roster. She was now, however, the center of a furious activity.
Actually, the human beings on Luna were nearly nocturnal in their habits, because it was easier to run moon-jeeps in frigidity and keep men and machines warm enough for functioning, than it was to protect them against the more-than-boiling heat of midday on the moon. So the activity about the salvaged space-ship increased.
Then the cameras Bell worked them panned down through the ship's blister-ports. There was a planet below. The ship descended toward it. It swelled visibly as the space-ship approached. Cochrane stood out of camera-range and acted as director as well as producer of the opus. He used even Johnny Simms as an offstage voice repeating stern commands. It was corny. There was no doubt about it.
Think I can figure it close enough so that we'll be able to find it in our little telescope, or even on our plate, since we'll be out of this atmosphere. And it might not be a bad idea for us to get away, anyway. I'm afraid of those folks on that space-ship, whoever they were, and they must live around here somewhere.
Word Of The Day