Part 22 (1/2)

I scrambled from the floor. Now, with the need for powerful action, the lack of gravity was a tremendous handicap. I went up with flailing arms into the air. Wyk fired his weapon, but it missed me, a soundless, dimly-white bolt. It hissed along the curving wall of the room. The smell of it was a stench in my nostrils.

I hit the concave ceiling, shoved down, and like a swimmer in water struck against the struggling bodies of Snap and the guard. The waving little shoulder arm with the weapon came at me.

Snap shouted, ”Gregg, look out!”

I seized the little arm; it felt like the sh.e.l.l of a huge crab. For a moment we were all three entangled, floundering, unable to find a foothold. Then suddenly I felt Snap pulling me loose.

”We've got him!”

The brown-sh.e.l.led body of Wyk sank away from us, hit the floor and lay still. I felt the floor under me, and Snap clutching at me.

In my hand I was clutching Wyk's little shoulder arm, with fingers still gripping the weapon. I had jerked it out of his shoulder socket.

With a shudder I cast the noisome thing away. Whether Wyk was dead or not we did not know. He lay on his back; the hideous face stared upward.

”I cracked the sh.e.l.l,” Snap gasped. ”We've got to get out of here.

Better try and get the girls loose now.”

We wasted no further time on Wyk. Snap s.n.a.t.c.hed several of his weapons and mechanical devices. We stowed them hastily in our pockets. One was like another to us; we could only guess at their uses.

”His shoes, Gregg. I can't get the d.a.m.n things off him.”

”Here are shoes.”

A small pile of shoes was in a corner of the room; wide, resilient suction soles, built like sandals. They were very large, but the things were so placed that it seemed we could fasten them to our boots.

”But not now, Snap.”

We s.n.a.t.c.hed up four pairs of the shoes.

There seemed nothing else to do. Could we get the door open? Snap was already fumbling at it. ”Accursed thing! It won't give.”

Then it slid open. The dim corridor was visible. No one, nothing, out there. ”Come on, Gregg! In a rus.h.!.+”

We went like bouncing rubber figures up the incline ladder.

”Snap, watch out!” He all but cracked his head with an upward leap.

Every instant we expected to be set upon. There was a terraced upper hall, black with shadow; dark ovals of doorways led into rooms.

No one here. As yet we were not discovered.

We stood at the intersection of two corridors. One went almost vertically up, like a chimney extending into the dome peak of the globe. Its sides were latticed; we could go up it hand over hand, like monkeys. The other sloped at an angle downward.

”Which way?” Snap whispered. ”What do you think? Got to find them.”

It still lacked about five minutes of our designated time, but it would not do to burst in upon the girls, perhaps to find Molo and guards there.

”Let's wait a minute, listen, see if we can't get some idea.”