“Well, sir,” said Correy, when we had come to the dead end of the passage, “now what?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “If we had two ray machines, we could make it. But if I remember correctly, it’s seven hundred yards, yet, to the first of the tunnels leading to the surface—and that means several hundred side passages from which they can attack. We can’t make it.”
“Well, we can try again, anyway, sir,” Correy replied stoutly. “Better to go down fighting than stay here and starve, eh?”
“If you’ll pardon me, gentlemen,” put in Inverness, “I’d like to make a suggestion. We can’t return the way we came in; I’m convinced of that. It was the sheerest luck that Commander Hanson wasn’t brought down a moment ago—luck, and excellent work on the part of the two ray operators.
“But an analysis of our problem shows that our real objective is to reach the surface, and that need not be done the most obvious way, by returning over the course by which we entered.”
“How, then?” I asked sharply.
“The disintegrator ray you have there should be able to cut a passage for us,” said Inverness. “Then all we need do is protect our rear while the operators are working. Once on the surface, we’ll be able to fight our way to the ship, will we not?”
“Of course! You should be in command, Inverness, instead of myself.” His was the obvious solution to our difficulty; once proposed, I felt amazingly stupid that the thought had not occurred to me.
I gave the necessary orders to the ray men, and they started immediately, boring in steadily at an angle of about forty-five degrees.
The reddish dust came back to us in choking clouds, and the Aranians, perhaps guessing what we were doing—at least one of their number had seen how the ray could tunnel in the ground—started working around the angle of the passage.
At first they came in small groups, and our pistols readily disposed of them, but as the dust filled the air, and it became increasingly difficult to see their spidery bodies, they rushed us in great masses.
Correy and I, shoulder to shoulder, fired at the least sign of movement in the cloud of dust. A score of times the rushes of the Aranians brought a few of them scuttling almost to our feet; inside of a few minutes the passage was choked, waist high, with the riddled bodies—and still they came!
“We’re through, sir!” shouted one of the ray operators. “If you can hold them off another fifteen minutes, we’ll have the hole large enough to crawl through.”
“Work fast!” I ordered. Even with Inverness, Brady, and the three of the Ertak’s crew doing what they could in those narrow quarters, we were having a hard time holding back the horde of angry, desperate Aranians. Tipene was useless; he was cowering beside the ray operators, chattering at them, urging them to hurry.
Had we had good light, our task would have been easy, but the passage was choked now with dust. Our ethon lamps made little more than a dismal glow. The clattering Aranians were almost within leaping distance before we could see them; indeed, more than one was stopped in mid-air by a spray from one pistol or another.
“Ready, sir,” gasped the ray man who had spoken before. “I think we’ve got it large enough, now.”
“Good!” I brought down two scuttling Aranians, so close that their twitching legs fell in an untidy heap almost at my feet. “You go first, and protect our advance. Then the rest of you; Mr. Correy and I will bring up the—”
“No!” screamed Tipene, shouldering aside the ray men. “I....” He disappeared into the slanting shaft, and the two ray men followed quickly. The three members of the crew went next; then Brady and Inverness.
Correy and I backed toward the freshly cut passage.
“I’ll be right behind you,” I snapped, “so keep moving!”
Correy hesitated an instant; I knew he would have preferred the place of danger as the last man, but he was too good an officer to protest when time was so precious. He climbed into the slanting passage the ray had cut for us, and as he did so, I heard, or thought I heard, a cry from beyond him, from one of those ahead.
I gave Correy several seconds before I followed; when I did start, I planned on coming fast, for in that shoulder-tight tube I would be utterly at the mercy of any who might attack from behind.
Fairly spraying the oncoming horde, I drove them back, for a moment, beyond the angle in the corridor; then I fairly dived into the tunnel and crawled as fast as hands and knees could take me toward the blessed open air.
I heard the things clatter into the space I had deserted. I heard them scratching frantically in the tunnel behind me, evidently handicapped by their long legs, which must have been drawn up very close to their bodies.
Light came pouring in on me suddenly, and I realized that Correy had won free. Behind me I could hear savage mandibles snapping, and cold sweat broke out on me. How close a terrible death might be, I had no means of knowing—but it was very close.
My head emerged; I drew my body swiftly out of the hole and snatched a grenade from my belt. Instantly I flung it down the slanting passage, with a shout of warning to my companions.
With a muffled roar, the grenade shook the earth; sent a brown cloud spattering around us. I had made a desperate leap to get away, but even then I was covered by the shower of earth.
I looked around. Trapdoors were open everywhere, and from hundreds of these openings, Aranians were scuttling toward us.
But the ray operators were working; not only the little portable machine, but the big projectors on the Ertak, five or six hundred yards away; laying down a deadly and impassable barrage on either side of us.
“They got Tipene, sir!” said Correy. “He dodged out ahead of the ray men, and two of them pounced on him. They were dragging him away, tearing him. The ray men wiped them out. Tipene was already dead—torn to fragments, they said. Back to the ship now, sir?”
“Back to the ship,” I nodded, still rather breathless. “Let the ray men cover our retreat; we can take care of those between us and the ship with our pistols—and the Ertak’sprojectors will attend to our flanks. On the double, men!”
We fought every step of the way, in a fog of reddish dust from the big disintegrator rays playing on either side of us—but we made it, a torn, weary, and bedraggled crew.
“Quite an engagement, sir,” gasped Correy, when we were safely inside the Ertak. “Think they’ll remember this little visit of ours, sir?”
“I know we’ll remember it, anyway,” I said, shaking some of the dust of disintegration from my clothes. “Just at the moment, I’d welcome a tour of routine patrol.”
“Sure, sir,” grinned Correy. “So would I—until we were a day or two out from Base!”
Song in a minor key, by C.L. Moore
BENEATH him the clovered hill-slope was warm in the sun. Northwest Smith moved his shoulders against the earth and
