Page:Amazing Stories Volume 07 Number 08.djvu/49

Rh invaders' defenses by direct assault. The need for haste was frantic, and I finally made up my mind to try a very dangerous trick based upon the enemies' suddenly developed curiosity concerning the contents of terrestrial rocket planes. With the best of luck, this scheme would give me possession of one of the scout raindrops, and, I hoped, the secret of atomic disintegration. Unlimited power would make our time machine very simple to operate, and I was convinced that in one way or another, the possession of this secret would make it possible to help this future world, as well as to successfully complete my mission for 1973.

The ambitiousness of these plans, in which I was the key in the welfare of two worlds, did not strike me at the time. I was far too busy with the problem itself to think of the implications of success or failure.

I explained my plan to the girl, advising her to leave the plane and allow me to go through with my wild plan alone. She refused to go, maintaining that two in the plane increased the chance of success, and pointing out that if I failed, death would be just as certain. Of course, this last was not true, for I could come back again, but I could not contradict it without going into my true origin. Taking advantage of my momentary confusion as I tried to work out a counter attack for this argument, she managed to strap on the parachute that was an integral part of the plan. And while we still disputed, the plan initiated itself of its own accord.

The cabin had long ago been darkened and the shutters let up, and now the faint light of early dawn was coming through the windows. We were flying slowly at about 20,000 feet over a white expanse of comparatively level, treeless, snow-covered country. Suddenly my companion, glancing idly out of a rear port, cried, "A scout plane is after us." And the plan I had worked out was our only chance of escape.

"Jump," I said, "and drop as far as you dare before opening the 'chute," and I leaped for the cabin door, stiffness forgotten. The girl stopped only to set the control for an unmaintainable vertical climb, and then went for the door also. The floor pitched violently as the plane lurched into the zoom, but she managed to catch the edge of the open door. I threw her out with a single lunge, and followed myself.

That fall was easily the most unpleasant experience of my stay in the future century. I tumbled from the very start, and never saw anything, plane, or raider, or ice fields. As is usual in a fall, my reflexes went wrong under the unfamiliar conditions, and tried to run the reasoning part of my brain into the same panic they were in. The icy wind tore past my face and body in unbearable torture, and I think I covered my eyes with my hands to keep them from being ripped out of their sockets. Breathing was out of the question, not because there was not air enough, but because my diaphragm, with gravity gone, had forgotten its function. Even the well-trained muscles of my arms were nearly beyond my control. It required almost superhuman effort to maintain a vestige of control over my brain, but I knew that if that was lost, both I and my plan were done for. Calmly, in that one quiet corner, I estimated the distance I had fallen. Stopping too soon meant almost certain discovery, stopping too late, death on the ground below. But when I decided that the time had come, I had to spend precious moments in getting control of my right arm, tearing it away from my face against what seemed a will of its own. Finally, it found the ring and pulled. The 'chute caught the air.

Immediately the harness tightened with a snapping jar that shook me back to ordinary consciousness. There was the parachute bellying above me. Below, the ground was less than 500 feet away. I looked frantically for a sign of the girl. Had she enjoyed similar good fortune? Yes! There, above me and a little to one side, was another parachute. I landed in a snowdrift, and was there to help her when she came down a few moments later.

We were frozen through and through, but quite happy. So far the plan had worked perfectly—the danger from the violet ray and the danger of the delayed parachute opening had been passed safely. But had the raider seen our plane at all? The sudden zoom and the later maneuvers of the plane out of control should have attracted his attention. We searched the sky anxiously. If the raider did not come down at a point reasonably close to our position, we would freeze to death.

We did not see the plane until it was less than 5,000 feet high and almost overhead. The power was still on full, but it drifted straight down, the raindrop flier close to its side holding it firmly against the pull of the rockets. We dug into a snowdrift and watched them land on a level stretch about a quarter mile to one side and about 150 feet apart.

A port of the raider opened, and two figures in air suits emerged. They looked very much as humans would in a similar rig; it was certain that they walked on two legs and had two armlike members. They moved slowly toward the rocket plane, which had landed upright and whose rockets were still going at full blast.

Here was my chance. According to my plan, which had so far worked like a charm, I waited until the figures had entered the rocket ship, and then, leaving the girl hidden, began moving with as much caution as was compatible with haste toward the abandoned raindrop. I was about 200 feet away when both of the raiders emerged from the captured plane and instantly saw me. There was nothing for it but to beat them to the raindrop.

I had covered less than one quarter of the distance when it became plain that I would win by a large margin. Then the two stopped, and each using the left armlike member, produced two regulation long barrelled automatic pistols and started banging away. At the last, the plan had gone wrong. Bullets zipped all about me.

NLY a few more steps to go! Then, someone with a club hit me violently on the back. I looked around—of course there was no one near me. My legs became suddenly weak, but my momentum carried me into the open port of the raindrop. I was in a tiny passage, plainly an airlock, for another door blocked the end. There was a button in the wall. I pushed it and was almost blown out by a rush of scalding hot air as the door opened.

I tumbled into an almost spherical room about eight feet in diameter. The front hemisphere was of dear crystal. Projecting from a flattened region in the rear to a point about three feet from the front crystal wall was a stout column. On the end of this, a slender rod of metal about six inches long was mounted in a ball and socket joint. A foot below the end of the column, a carefully graduated wheel was mounted, turning