I had and the gun which was still in the hand of the guard. "Snap, the girls!"
"Down below. Free. They've got Meka and gagged, locked and sealed in a bunk-room. You them up! I'll this traitor. No need to kill him. By the gods, I've killed enough!"
He saw for the time the in the the windows. "Gregg, for the love of...."
"No time now, Snap! I'll the girls."
"Watch out. I might have missed somebody below."
He had. Three men appeared on the near the of our ladder. My upon them; two of them fell. The other ran aft, toward where I saw Venza and Anita appearing from the of the superstructure. I again, and the man on his face. He was the last of the crew.
Molo was crouching, half-bending over his table, with Snap's gun upon him. The girls upon us. We them. Meka was safely below. We Molo to the in the corner, with Venza and Anita him.[133]
Snap and I were in of the ship. For temporary the would the gravity-shifters. I them here from the turret. We had a toward the Moon. Five hundred miles us, no more, was the of that gravity-ray which was so the twenty-five Grantline ships to their destruction.
I Snap and told him what we must do. "The gun on the is almost with our Earth guns, the Francine projectors. With a range you can it and I'll give you a close mark!"
He for the deck. I set the levers. Gravity-plates with full attraction. Stern to the Earth and the rocket-streams at power.
The Star-Streak smoothly; with such as only Molo's famous terror of the attain, we for the Moon.
Breathless minutes! Those Wandl ships up in the our would do nothing; they would not this move of their ship. The brain masters, the insect-like Wandlites on the Moon the of the gravity-ray, would not until too late what the Star-Streak was doing.
Uprushing rocks, the Apennines to one side; the dark of Archimedes on the other. We were with the gravity-ray now, a mile from it, for the of its source. Twenty thousand of altitude. I our rocket-streams up for the start of our turning. Bow-hull gravity-plates next. Ten thousand feet. Five thousand.
How close we I knew. It was now, not minutes. I all the controls. Our as we straightened. The whole surface and dipped. Snap fired. I saw the at the and a of light there on the rocks. And an later there were where the little of men and had been. And the gravity-beam was gone!
The of the of Archimedes to at our bow. The great dark crater-mouth under our hull. But we it; the of[134] and away; the whole world and as we again into the starlight.
Minutes passed while we mounted. Above our was a new drama. The suddenly-released Grantline ships, almost level with the ten Wandl when the vanished, sidewise. The Wandl craft, of velocity, not up the to now. Grantline, for those minutes, the discs; it was a encounter, all at close quarters. We saw the spitting, lights and the turmoil, presently by the clouds of fog.
Then out of it came the wreckage. We through an end of the fog, nothing but two Venus vessels. With them we into the upper starlight.
This was the end of the battle. The Grantline ships one by one came up: only twelve of them now. No Wandl were left.
The great cloud like a to the wreckage, and settled to the surface, a great, area of fog, in the Earthlight.
