Part 3

Zuggoth hesitated. Then he flung the knife down on the small table. "Keep guard over the Earthians, Cuzzvi," he snapped to the head scientist. "I will see what's causing the trouble!"

Hammond's tightened muscles relaxed: the sweat on his forehead felt cool. Unexpectedly, he had been given a breathing spell. But for how long?

Instinctively he tested the flexible, silken straps that held him to the table. They did not give, though his muscles bunched and strained. There was a silken thong about his neck, holding his head down. He turned his head, slowly, till he faced Storm.

"Looks like our friend Zuggoth never heard of an anesthetic," he muttered, with an attempt at casualness he did not feel. "Funny thing, Pete, it still doesn't seem real. All this, I mean. Just a few hours ago we were in a skiff, fishing for blues. Now--"

Pete managed a grin. "Now we're still in the boat. Only it isn't--"

Looking toward Hammond, he was facing the laboratory door, and he saw them first. Hybrids, armed with shield and electronic rifles. Two of them. One of them carried red and green insignia on its dwarfed right arm.

Hammond turned his head, warned by the look on Storm's face. The laboratory head, Cuzzvi, saw the intruders a moment later. He drew up stiffly, evidently noting the rank of the foremost hybrid. Then, all at once, he whirled, gave a short cry of warning to his assistants, and reached for an electronic rifle in a wall rack.

The rifles in the hands of the strange hybrids lanced their electronic bolts. Cuzzvi staggered against the fluoroscope, his green face fused into black mess. The other two assistants made a dash for a door in the far end of the room. Neither reached it.

A moment later the hybrid officer was bending over Hammond, releasing him. The other hybrid was doing the same for Storm.

Hammond's mind whirled. He said: "Thanks, boys. We sure--"

He gasped, his fingers tightening on the hybrid's huge arm. The scraggy bearded face had been pushed back, revealing beneath the disguise Gena's beautiful features.

"Come!" she said sharply, drawing forth a similar hybrid disguise from within the garment. "Get into this, Earthman. We have no time to lose. We must get away from here before Zuggoth returns."

Hammond and Storm obeyed with alacrity. They got into the hybrid costumes Zuggoth's Sediphrons had used to plant themselves in Gena's ship. They padded out the huge left arm with a soft, cottonlike material they found in the laboratory. Ardiné helped them in the task.

In the meantime Gena disappeared in a closet-like room at the far end of the laboratory. When she returned she held two strange-looking metal objects, like long, dull tubes with a dial face and a knob. She tucked these away under her costume without explaining.

Ardiné, also, had been foraging. She came back to them with what seemed like two small flashlights. Her voice was hurried. "The size reducing and expanding ray guns. Perhaps we'll have use for them."

Gena nodded. Her voice was quick, determined. "Earthmen, Ardiné and I are going to make an attempt to capture Zuggoth's ship, and escape back to Mars. The _Vandar III_ is being repaired, but it will take hours. Our only hope is the unharmed Sediphron craft."

Hammond caught up one of the electronic rifles. "We're with you, Gena," he said grimly. "Lead the way!"

* * * * *

The door dilated open as they approached. A moment later they were marching stiffly down a long corridor.

Hammond gripped the electronic rifle he had taken from Cuzzvi, his eyes hard under the strange optical openings in the hybrid mask. The ship was swarming with Sediphrons, searching for the girls who had escaped from Zuggoth's harem. At any moment--

As if in answer to his worst fears a Sediphron squad appeared from a side corridor. They halted abruptly. The leader eyed the insignia on Gena's arm. Then he raised his huge left arm at a diagonal across his chest, evidently in salute.

Gena's thoughts rasped: "The engine rooms. The First One orders. The escaped Metiphrons have been sighted."

The Sediphron guard wheeled, went down the corridor at a shuffling gait. Hammond relaxed, feeling sweat in the palms of his hands, on his brow.

"This way!" Gena ordered. They cut down the side corridor from which the guard had emerged, and took a long ramp downward. Several times they met squads of the ugly crustaceans, but their disguise and Gena's harsh commands got them by.

They were well down in the ship, cutting across a big machine room, deserted by the Metiphron workers who tended the whirring machines when Gena halted. Ardiné and the Earthmen waited while she darted down a long aisle and vanished into a smaller room beyond where a huge, turbine-like thing of glinting metal spun with high-pitched hum.

The girl-commander had withdrawn one of the dull metal tubes before leaving them. She turned the knob, which moved the dial hand, evidently setting it to desired position.

Several minutes later she was back without the tube.

Ardiné's voice was shaken. "Gena--how long?"

"Four hours!" Gena replied. "Four hours until the degravitator of the _Vandar III_ blows up." There was regret in her voice.

Hammond kept his silence. But the need for haste now, dogged them as they followed ramp after ramp down into the ship.

"Hurry!" Gena said again and again.

Some of the route was familiar to Hammond, who remembered being led along it on his way to Gena's navigation room. He was sure of it when they stepped into the huge garage where row upon row of war tanks stood dark and unmoving along the walls.

There was no guard about. Across the room a tank was just rumbling in, its eight legs clanking metallically. Evidently it was one of the Sediphron scouts that had been combing the boat for any of Gena's tanks that might have escaped the surprise attack.

Gena led the way swiftly. They clambered into one of the squat parked vehicles. A moment later it clanked out, passing the larger one that was sidling into parking position nearer the door.

They weren't stopped. A moment later they were climbing down the side of the "big one" to the boat seat, and scurrying across the ridges and gullies that were strewn with the wrecks of Sediphron and Metiphron war vehicles.

Through the observation prow Hammond could see the vague maroon cliff that was the near boat side. For a moment longing assailed him--longing to be in his own world again, to be out of this fantastic world of ultra-smallness. His thoughts turned to the ray guns Ardiné carried, then he dismissed the thought that came to him.

He owed Gena and Ardiné his life; and for what it would be worth he was with them in this suicidal attempt to wrest from Zuggoth and his crustacean horde the huge battle craft that had followed the _Vandar III_ across space.

Zuggoth's ship finally loomed up, like a colossus over the small tank. Unhesitatingly Gena sent the ambulatory vehicle up the spiny side. The Sediphron craft was an exact copy of Gena's ship, and the girl-commander guided the small tank unerringly to one of the dilating doors that opened to a telepathic command.

The huge room they entered was an exact duplicate of that which they had left in the _Vandar III_. A Sediphron guard watched them slide the small tank into parking space. Then his telepathic order crackled into their thoughts.

"Who enters the flagship of the First One? Answer."

Hammond kept his mind blank. He saw Gena's brow furrow slightly. The words seemed to sound in his ears. "Volkzv, second in command of hybrid Intelligence. Searching flagship on order of Zuggoth, the First One. Gena, commander of the _Vandar III_, and her sub-commander, Ardiné, have escaped with the two Earthmen. All squads dispatched to the search. Zuggoth orders!"

There was a moment of hesitation. The hideous Sediphron squad leader's eyes swayed gently. Then his reply came. "Proceed, Volkzv. We stay to guard the tank room."

Hammond kept a grip on his thoughts. Stiff-legged, marching with the shuffling gait of the hybrids, he followed Gena and Ardiné and Storm out of the war tank, and across the vast chamber to the corridor.

Zuggoth's ship was practically deserted. Evidently only a skeleton guard had been left behind. All others had been ordered out to battle, and were now concentrated in the captured Metiphron space cruiser.

Hammond breathed a sigh of relief. It looked as if Gena's desperate plan might succeed.

The sudden clanging of a huge bell somewhere in the ship's bowels stiffened them. Storm's quick voice sounded. "The alarm signal! The tank room guard must have suspected--"

"Come!" Gena snapped. "The control room. If we can take over, and seal ourselves in--"

* * * * *

They hurried along the corridor, ducking into side rooms to avoid being sighted by squads of the green crustaceans that suddenly sprouted into being.

Thus, playing a grim game of hide and seek, they finally made their way up to the control room. But here they ran into a huge, massed group of the Sediphrons, who had evidently been ordered to await any such move on the part of the desperate fugitives.

The lurid crackle of electronic bolts fused against the corridor walls. Storm and Hammond worked their rifles with grim methodicalness, blasting a half dozen of the green crustaceans into oblivion. But there were too many of them. They had to fall back along the corridor.

Then Ardiné received a partial shock from a glancing bolt that dropped her. Storm sprang for her, heedless of the bursting bolts, and caught her up in his strong arms. Gena and Hammond covered him under a steady flare of bolts.

With Storm ahead of them they turned and ran.

It was up to Gena. The Earthmen followed blindly, lost in the bewildering maze of ramps, rooms and corridors.

As if in a grim nightmare they fought their way back through the ship, escaping annihilation many times by Gena's unerring knowledge of dilating doors that gave temporary safety.

Once Hammond saw Gena glance down at her chronometer, and he felt the rise of alarm in her thoughts before she blanked them out. And the chemist remembered then the time-bomb she had planted in the degravitator room of the _Vandar III_.

They crossed a momentarily deserted corridor, Storm still carrying the unconscious Ardiné, and went into a long room that held a maze of long metal pipe overhead and squat machinery with smaller feeders leading up to the huge conductors.

Gena's thoughts came to Hammond as they paused here. "If we _must_ die, let us at least take Zuggoth and his hideous horde with us. I can't let them get back to Mars now."

Hammond said: "Gena! Wait!"

But the lithe, young Amazon was already running along a row of banked machinery, withdrawing the second time-bomb from under her hybrid disguise. In the far wall a green light glowed as she approached. A door dilated open, and a Sediphron appeared in the opening.

For a moment he hesitated, stalk eyes swaying toward Gena. Then suspicion fused to purpose, and he swung his electron to target her.

Hammond's rifle lashed out first. Gena scarcely slowed in her run. She stepped over the crustacean's green body, and vanished into the degravitator room.

Sweat gathered on Hammond's brow as he waited, rifle held tight in his right hand. Storm was stroking Ardiné's forehead, his face grim. The high-pitched hum of the giant degravitator filled the room.

Then Gena returned, swiftly, tearing off her hybrid disguise. "One hour, Earthmen!" she said, unevenly, her eyes dark with the terrible strain. "One hour, and then we go down with Zuggoth and his hideous horde!"

"No!" Hammond's voice was rough. He ripped the disguise from him, flung it aside. Bronzed and rangy, his square jaw set, he faced the girl-commander. "You've handled this so far, Gena. But we're not giving up. We're getting out of here if we have to blast our way through every foot!"

* * * * *

His ringing cry seemed to whip hope into Gena. The strain in her white face seemed to ease, and a strange smile touched her full lips.

"Earthman, I think I shall like your breed. It does not easily give up!"

They turned away, crossed the huge room just as a squad of Sediphrons burst in at the other end. Hammond dropped behind, his rifle covering the burdened Storm and Gena, the girl he loved.

In a swift rearguard engagement, they fought their way out of the room. Gena's aimed electronic bolt fused the hidden mechanism of the dilating door through which they escaped, momentarily holding up the rush of the hideous crustaceans.

"The tank rooms!" Hammond barked, taking command. "You know how to reach one of them, Gena?"

The girl nodded. Tensed, grim-faced, Hammond followed the girl, keeping Storm and Ardiné between them, electronic rifle held ready.

A small Sediphron squad patrolled the area, evidently on the alert for such a break. But the sudden appearance of the Earthmen and the girls caught them by surprise.

There were eight of them, and four went down to the combined fire of Gena and Hammond before they could train their rifles. Then Storm, laying Ardiné on the hard floor, took a hand.

Only one of that crustacean squad emerged from that withering fire. He succeeded in reaching a huge wall switch. A moment later the huge bell clanged its harsh alarm through the ship.

Hammond killed him, without regret.

They took the nearest war tank, a small, fast scout vehicle. Gena sent it clattering toward the far wall just as Zuggoth and a horde of Sediphrons burst into the room.

The electronic rifle bolts splattered harmlessly against the armor of the speeding tank. Unharmed the fugitives passed through the dilating door, and dipped down the side of the huge space craft.

Hammond hung on to the hand grips, watching Storm. The blond American held Ardiné in the curve of his strong arm, anxiety in his face. Only when the brunette began to stir, open her eyes, did relief finally ease the grimness of Storm's face.

The girl smiled up at him, her arms tightening. Hammond took his gaze away from the oblivious pair, and peered through the observation windows.

Gena was guiding the small tank along the huge ledge that was the boat side.

Back of them a score of bigger war tanks were following. Huge rays were blasting at them, burning scars in the ledge about them.

The small tank finally dipped down the boat side onto the far seat. For a moment they were safe, out of range of the bigger tank batteries.

Gena brought the tank to an abrupt halt. "Our only chance!" she snapped. "We must use the size-expanding ray!"

They clambered quickly out. Far across the void between seats the "big ones" loomed. Nearer, coming toward them along the heaving boat side, clattered the Sediphron war tanks.

For a brief moment Gena's eyes mirrored a deep regret. Then she set the adjustment on her ray gun, and turned it on Hammond, while Ardiné did the same to Storm.

The familiar, whirling darkness, the bitter cold, claimed Hammond.

The darkness faded. He found himself facing Storm on the boat seat. The skiff was rocking crazily. Hammond teetered, stumbled back into the stern, and at the same moment Ardiné and Gena appeared.

A wave shipped over the side, washing tiny, antlike things that a moment before had loomed as colossal war tanks, into the bottom of the boat. And at the same moment Gena stiffened.

Thrusting from a turret in the Sediphron space craft appeared a small, glinting tube, similar to the one Gena had used to change them to tiny mites. In another moment they would experience again the sickening change to ultra-smallness.

The twin reports, like small firecrackers going off inside the "big ones," cut across Hammond's instinctive yell to dive overboard. The space cruisers on the boat seat, with the degravitators gone, seemed suddenly sucked down with irresistible force. They crashed through the seat, through the bottom of the skiff, and vanished in a swirl of water.

* * * * *

The _Crawfish_ foundered, precipitating Hammond and his companions into the Sound. Hammond stroked instinctively to Gena's side, but the girl was as good a swimmer as he.

Ardiné and Storm swam alongside, and together they idled, looking back to where the _Crawfish_ barely showed between swells, her thwarts awash.

"That's the end of Zuggoth and his crustacean horde!" Storm remarked with relief. "Both ships must be buried deep in the muck and rock of the Sound!"

Gena's eyes clouded. Hammond had the sudden knowledge she was thinking of the Amazon warriors that had gone down with the _Vandar III_. Yet he knew, too, that it was better this way, than the more horrible fate that had been in store for them.

Gena stroked closer, her shoulder brushing his. She was still staring at the bobbing skiff, a strange half-fearful doubt tightening her wet face. Hammond sensed the trend of her thoughts.

The occupants of the pursuing war tanks, unfitted for water travel, must have surely drowned. But the huge space craft were water tight. It might be that Zuggoth and his crustacean horde, buried in the muck of the Sound, by their tremendous weight relative to their size, would yet succeed in repairing the degravitator of his ship and win free before death overtook them.

Hammond thrust the chill apprehension from him. He grinned reassuringly as Gena looked up at him, eyes dark with uncertainty--with sudden loneliness. She was no longer master of a million warriors--commander of a mighty ship of space. She was just a girl, now, soft and lovely and somewhat afraid.

"Frank," she said softly, tremulously. "What is it like--on Earth? We are lost, Ardiné and I--"

"Not lost, Gena," Frank answered, his voice serious. Over the girl's wet shoulder, in the west, he could see the swollen red orb of sun setting behind the wooded island. He saw farther, into tomorrow, and after. To his friends in the lab--to a story he knew would be incredulously received--to a world he and Storm would have to try to explain to these girls from across the star hung void.

"You'll be with me, Gena," he said, his voice gentle. "As my wife. And perhaps some day, with your knowledge, and Ardiné's--"

The girl smiled, and followed the line of his upward glance. The shadows were lengthening across the heaving Sound. But in the still, flushed sky a pin point of light beckoned, like a smiling answer--the brilliant disc of glowing Mars.

End of Project Gutenberg's Meteor Men of Mars, by Harry Cord and Otis A. Kline