Chapter 16

Over us was turmoil, that screaming siren. Then suddenly it was checked and we heard the thump and swish of what on Earth would have been called running footsteps and shouts.

Snap shoved me. “Don’t stay there, you fool!”

We lunged up the passage. Figures barred it but they scattered; a bolt hissed at us, but missed. At the kiosk a group of workers and several peering little brains leaped away in terror to let us pass.

We gained the open air. With the small gravity rays darting down with repulsion upon the rocks we mounted like rockets out of the cauldron. The upper plateau lay silent in the starlight, but the cauldron behind us was ringing with alarm, and again the danger siren was blaring.

I changed my way of direction, swung it to the plateau rocks ahead. The arc of my flight was sharply bent as I went hurtling down. Over me, I saw Snap use the same tactics. I tried to aim for where we had left the girls and Molo. I could not see them down there amid the starlit crags; and suddenly a wild apprehension filled me. How had we dared leave them to Molo’s trickery?

Then, ahead and below me, I saw the slight figure of one of the girls, standing on a rock with arms outstretched to signal us. I changed my ray to repulsion barely in time to avoid crashing. The landing flung me in a heap. Twenty feet away, Snap came whirling down. We picked ourselves up, saw Anita waving from the rock, and bounded to her.

The girls were safe. Venza sat intent, with unwavering watchful gaze across the intervening space to where Molo had flattened himself against his rock, not daring to move.

“Still got him,” Venza exulted. “He wasn’t willing to take any chances with us. You did it, Snap?”

“I’m a motor-oiler if we didn’t. Come on; got to get out of this. They’re after us! We wrecked the whole damn place, Venza. Wandl’s a normal planet now. No more of this accursed dislocation of Earth.”

We learned later that our hope and our assumption that we had irretrievably wrecked the entire gravity control system of Wandl was proven to be a fact. Wandl was, in effect, a normal celestial body now. The beams planted in Greater New York, Ferrok-Shahn and Grebhar still streamed across space. But there was no giant beam from Wandl to seize them, and Wandl now could not move through space of her own volition. Like Earth, and all other known planets, satellites, comets and asteroids, she was subject now to all the normal natural laws of celestial mechanics. We had done a thorough job of it.

Now I shoved at Snap. “No time to talk. You tow the girls; I’ll take Molo. Got to get to the Star-Streak.”

I lunged over and seized Molo. “We did it. Now for your vessel! It will be ill for you if she is not where you say she is.”

“She will be there, Gregg Haljan.”

He docilely put himself in position for me to hook my forearm under his crossed, bound wrists and carry him. Snap rose up past us, towing the girls. Over the nearby cauldron a figure mounted to gaze and see the nature of this strange attacking enemy, and then sank back.

With Molo hanging to me, I mounted with my ray, following Snap and the girls into the starlight, with the turmoil of the cauldron receding until in a moment or so it was gone behind our horizon.

We headed now, not toward Wor, whence we had come, but over at an angle to the side. Our great bounding arcs soon left the mountains behind. We crossed the river, another portion of the forest, and came over undulating lowlands.

It was a flight of under half an hour. The pursuit, if indeed anyone followed us, remained below our little segment of curving horizon. Everywhere there was evidence of the storm; the forest trees were laid flat, strewn like driftwood over the area. The river had in several places lashed over its banks. The lowlands were dotted thick with globe-dwellings. Some were hanging awry on their stems; others were pulled from their place, cracked and piled into a litter.

We kept well aloft. The surface scenes were only glimpses of wreckage, moving lights and people. And there were areas which the wind had seemingly spared.

The confusion from the storm was mingled now with the spreading alarm from the gravity station; the sound of the danger siren there was still audible behind us. As we advanced into what now seemed the outskirts of a city like Wor, with a pile of solid-looking metal structures ranging the horizon ahead, I saw a distant spaceship rise up and wing away. Wandl was proceeding with the dispatching of her space navy to oppose the distantly gathering ships of Earth, Venus, and Mars. No doubt with the wrecking of the control station, the masters of Wandl immediately recognized the paramount importance of the coming battle.

The huge, globular, disc-like ship sailed high over us, rotating with the impulse of its rocket-streams. In a moment it was lost in the stars. And then another rose and followed it.

There were many human figures in the air around us now. I mounted higher, and Snap with the girls followed me. The figures, intent upon their own affairs, did not seem to heed us.

Molo’s vessel lay alone upon a low metal cradle. No other ship was near it; but half a mile away on both sides we could see others resting on their stages. Lights were moving around and upon them, but the Star-Streak was dark and neglected.