The flattened past full Earth was up there. I knew that the Western Hemisphere faced the Moon at this hour. I flashed in English, with the open Universal Earth code:

_Help. Grantline._

And again: _Help. Archimedes region near Apennines. Attacked by brigands._

_Send help at once. Grantline._

If only it would be received! I flung off the current. Anita stood watching me intently. "Gregg, look!"

I saw that she had taken some of the gla.s.s globe-bombs which lay by the foot of the ascending ladder. "Gregg, I threw some of them."

At the window we gazed down. The globes she flung had shattered on the deck. They were darkness bombs.

Through the blackness of the deck, the shouts of the brigands came up.

They were stumbling about. But the ramming of our trap went on, and I saw that it was beginning to yield.

"We've got to go, Anita!"

From out of the darkness which hung like a shroud over the deck an occasional flash came up, unaimed, wide of our windows. But the darkness was dissipating. I could see now the dim glow of the deck lights, blurred as through a heavy fog.

I dropped another of the bombs.

"Put on your helmet."

"Yes--yes, I will. You put yours on."

We had them adjusted in a moment. Our Erentz motors were pumping.

I gripped her. "Put out your helmet light."

She extinguished it. I handed her my projector.

"Hold it a moment. I'm going to take that belt of bombs."

The trap door was all but broken under the ramming blows of the men. I leaped over the body of the dead duty man, seized the belt of bombs and strapped it around my waist.

"Give me the projector."

She handed it to me. The trap door burst upward! A man's head and shoulders appeared. I fired a bullet into him--the leaden pellet singing down through the yellow powder flash that spat from the projector's muzzle.

The brigand screamed, and dropped back out of sight. There was confusion at the ladder top. I flung a bomb at the broken trap. A tiny heat ray came wavering up through the opening, but went wide of us.

The instrument room was in darkness. I clung to Anita.

"Hold on to my hand. You go first--here is the ladder!"

We found it in the blackness, mounted it and went through the cubby's roof-trap.

I took another look and dropped another bomb beside us. The four foot s.p.a.ce up here between the cubby roof and the overhead dome, went black. We were momentarily concealed.

Anita located the manual levers of the lock-entrance.

"Here, Gregg."

I shoved at them. Fear leaped in me that they would not operate. But they swung. The tiny port opened wide to receive us. We clambered into the small air-chamber; the door slid closed, just as a flash from below struck at it. The brigands had seen our cloud of darkness and were firing up through it.

In a moment we were out on the dome top. A sleek, rounded spread of gla.s.site, with broad aluminite girders. There were cross ribs which gave us a footing, and occasionally projections--streamline fin-tips, the casings of the upper rudder shafts, and the upstanding stubby funnels into which helicopters were folded.

We moved along the central footpath and crouched by a six-foot casing.

The stars and the glowing Earth were over us. The curving dome top--a hundred feet or so in length, and bulging thirty feet wide beneath us--glistened in the Earthlight. It was a sheer drop and down these curving sides past the ship's hull, a hundred feet to the rocks on which the vessel rested. The towering wall of Archimedes was beside us; and beyond the brink of the ledge the thousands of feet down to the plains.

I saw the lights of Miko's band down there. He had stopped signaling.

His little lights were spread out, bobbing as he and his men advanced up the crater's foothills, coming to join the ship.

I had an instant's glimpse. Anita and I could not stay here. The brigands would follow us up in a moment. I saw no exterior ladder. We would have to take our chances and jump.

There were brigands down there on the rocks. I saw three or four helmeted figures, and they saw us! A bullet whizzed by us, and then came the flash of a hand ray.

I touched Anita. "Can you make the leap? Anita dear...."

Again it seemed that this must be farewell.

"Gregg, dear one, we've got to do it!"

Those waiting figures would pounce on us.

"Anita, lie here a moment."

I jumped up and ran twenty feet toward the bow; then back toward the stern, flinging down the last of my bombs. The darkness was like a cloud down there, enveloping the outer brigands. But up there we were above it, etched by the starlight and Earthglow.

I came back to Anita. "We'll have to chance it now."

"Gregg...."

"Good-bye, dear. I'll jump first, down this side, you follow."

To leap into that black patch, with the rocks under it....

"Gregg--"

She was trying to tell me to look overhead. She gestured, "Gregg, see!"

I saw it, out over the plains, a little speck amid the stars. A moving speck, coming toward us!

"Gregg, what is it?"

I gazed, held my breath. A moving speck out there. A blob now. And then I realized it was not a large object, far away, but small, and already very close--only a few hundred feet off, dropping toward the top of our dome. A narrow, flat, ten foot object, like a wingless volplane. There were no lights on it, but in the Earthlight I could see two crouching, helmeted figures riding it.

"Anita! Don't you remember!"