Chapter VI: The Space Men Attack

First stepping to the oxygen supply valve and opening it a trifle wider, Shelby hastened to assist the girl in her quest. Their ears were ringing. The air pressure within the hull was dropping rapidly. Diligently they ransacked every nook and corner, but found nothing more valuable than a can of thick grease. Shelby smeared some of it over the crevice; it helped but did not by any means check the flow of the escaping air entirely.

“It’s a race with time now, Jan,” he said quietly.

She looked at him. Her face was a trifle pale, but her lips and eyes were smiling. “Are we on our way to Mars, Captain?” she enquired.

He nodded. “We are, Admiral. The fuel tanks are full and if our air lasts we’ll get there.”

“And when we do,” she put in, “the best of luck to Hekki and his friends!”

A vision swept through Shelby’s mind--batteries of fantastic machines whose maws spewed flames of faint lavender fire--blinding flashes of light and world-rocking explosions: a hideous thing to dream of--hideous yet glorious, for the civilizations and freedom of two worlds depended upon it. To the Red Planet--they must make it!

Janice Darell had placed her hand lightly on Shelby’s arm. Her expression was serious, almost hard. “Austin,” she said, “tell me truthfully, can we really reach Mars? It is likely that we shall get there before we go out?”

“Certainly, darling,” he replied, putting as much assurance into the words and expression as was possible. “Why do you ask?”

There was something that suggested doubt, perhaps even displeasure in her answer: “We have a duty to perform, Austin--a duty infinitely bigger than our own petty existences. You have not seen what I have seen--small scouting patrols that came to the Selba riding strange round things that must have been machines of some kind. One look at those henchmen of Alkebar, their great black bodies, their quick nervous movements--like eager panthers, their wicked-looking weapons which they carried with such an air of easy assurance, and you would have known what they hoped to do. Most of these devils are within the orbit of Mars for the first time. Certainly Hekki has told you something about them?”

Shelby nodded. “Very little; but I have noticed a few of Alkebar’s remarkable peculiarities,” he said.

“Well,” she continued, “if we can’t get to Taboor, there is one thing we can do--destroy the Selba, and with it Hekki and Alkebar.”

“Destroy the Selba!” Shelby exploded, “with what? Those toy machine guns on the nose of this bus? The bullets wouldn’t even make noticeable scratches in the hide of that tough old girl.”

“Not with the machine guns,” Jan said slowly, “with this flier! A little luck and it would work.”

The idea flashed through Shelby’s brain. Ram the Selba at high speed! Absolutely certain self-murder! A wave of tremendous admiration for the girl came over him. She had something more in her favor than mere beauty and intelligence.

“Your idea is a pretty good one, Jan,” he told her. “But rest assured that unless you can overpower me, it will never be put into execution. However, I’ll tell you the truth: we have about a fifty-fifty chance of reaching the Red Planet alive.”

And so they tore on their way across the void while they watched the dial on the oxygen tank. They were racing with a tiny needle that crept ever nearer to the zero point that was its goal.

By allowing the pressure within the flier to drop to the lowest point that they could endure, they managed to conserve considerable oxygen, for then the rate of escape from the crevice the torpedo fragment had made was naturally not so rapid.

Frequently they examined the sky behind them, expecting momentarily to discover the tiny speck of flitting silver that would be the Selba. But if the ship was pursuing them it had not yet come close enough to be seen.

However, there was another, and perhaps greater menace which kept their eyes turning this way and that, searching for signs of danger. Clusters of dully-glowing specks in any quarter of the heavens would be the first indications of its presence. They would grow larger, come hurtling on like racing meteors in the sun’s glow. Only there would be an odd wobbly motion about their darting flight. Shelby tested the trips of the two machine guns. Spurts of green flame plumed out of the muzzles.

He had set the radio transmitter in operation, and was sending occasional signals for assistance. But he knew that this was practically a useless move. Hekalu had taken them far off the beaten track, and they were still half a million miles from the Terrestro-Martian traffic lane. The range of the transmitter of this craft was only ten thousand miles. Even if they had been much nearer the chances of their signals being picked up were slight.

The Martian disc was growing larger. It had become an ochre sphere delicately ringed and mottled with greens and browns like a cloudy opal. The flier was fairly eating up the distance.

Shelby had just said: “I believe we’re going to make it, Jan,” and then the signs which they had hoped would not appear came. Ahead of them and a little to their right, a vague cluster of specks glimmered into view. It wavered like a wisp of luminous smoke buffeted by a light breeze. This was the one thing that distinguished it from a meteor cluster.

Rapidly the individual points of light grew, becoming tiny stars that glowed by the reflected light of the sun. Within five minutes there was no longer any chance of mistaking their identity, for their flat disc-like shapes and the half-human forms of the things that rode them were already visible through the binoculars. They were approaching at terrific velocity. Both Jan and Austin knew them to be subjects of Alkebar. There was no mistaking their motive. Doubtless orders had been flashed to them from the disabled Selba.

Realizing that these fleet space riders could easily catch up with his flier if they so chose, Shelby made no attempt to elude them. Instead he clung doggedly to the straight course toward Mars.

The twin machine guns, responding obediently to their directing mechanism, swung on their swivel toward the hurtling foes. Shelby peered into the eye-piece of the “sighter,” a complicated arrangement of mirrors and lenses which enabled the pilot to always look directly through the ring-sights regardless of what direction the gun barrels were pointing. He pressed the trips, and soundlessly, out in the vacuum of space, the guns went into action. Flickering green flames of detonating radio-active explosive darted from their muzzles.

Almost immediately there were answering flashes among the approaching shapes, for the high-calibre bullets were also loaded with explosive. One projectile took effect--another! Emerald flares of light, and nothing remained of two bold space men and their queer disc-like vehicles but torn fragments of flesh and metal.

The Space Men were very close now. Jan and Shelby could see the light flashing on their jeweled harnesses and on the weapons which they flourished defiantly. There must have been almost five hundred in the party. Somehow their wild charge was vaguely reminiscent of a band of fierce Bedouin marauders, racing madly across the desert, bent on pillage. Only it was the Arabs who suffered by this comparison, for the desert of these mysterious Space Men was the whole of interstellar emptiness; and their forms and those of the things they rode, were the forms of the forces of Iblees himself.

Apparently these henchmen of Alkebar had some object in view other than the mere destruction of the flier, for they made no move to use their weapons. They were pulling upon levers on their vehicles, checking their headlong flight.

Now they were coursing with the little craft, swarming about it, edging nearer, at the same time taking care to keep out of range of Shelby’s guns.

There was a scraping against the hull and a light jolt as a talon secured a hold on an eyelet ring. A black bulk dropped down on the nose of the craft. A pair of hands gripped the barrels of the machine guns, and with an easy tug, tore them from their mountings. There were shifting scratching sounds coming through the flier’s light shell--heavy bodies moving about, and then a sudden ripping vibration. The control lever felt loose in Shelby’s hand. He could no longer guide the vessel. And there was nothing either he or Jan could do except wait. The rocket motors still purred evenly.