FullReads

It was rank folly to press on; the party would be annihilated.

“Down this passage, men,” I ordered the two ray operators. “We’ll have to think up a better plan.”

They turned off into the passage they had swept clean with their ray, and the rest of the party followed swiftly. A few yards from the main corridor the passage turned and ran parallel to the corridor we had just left. Doors opened off this passage on both sides, but all the doors were open, and the cubicles thus revealed were empty.

* * * * *

“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.