Page:Astounding Stories of Super Science (1930-05).djvu/66

208 I had not intended to tell her. "Hurry, Anita!"

"Why?" She stood stock still. Through the visors I could see her white face gazing at me rebelliously.

"Why should I hurry, Gregg?"

"Because I want to leave you at the porte. I'm going after Miko—try and locate where he and his men are camping."

I had indeed no specific plan as yet. But it seemed useless for me to sit at the porte waiting to be let in.

"But he's gone, Gregg."

She was right on that. Miko was all ready a mile or more away, down on the outer surface, making off. He would soon be out of sight. It would be impossible to follow him.

"Gregg, let me go with you."

She jerked away from me and bounded back up the staircase. I caught her on the summit.

"Anita!"

"I'm going with you."

"You're going to stay here."

"I'm not!"

This exasperating controversy! And time was so precious!

"Anita, please."

"I'll be safer with you than waiting here, Gregg."

T almost decided me. Perhaps she would. It was only my intention to follow Miko at a distance. And with much more of this delay here, he would be lost to me.

And she added, "Besides, I won't stay, and you can't make me."

We ran along the crater-top. At its distant edge the lower plain spread before us. Far down, and far away on the distant broken surface, the leaping figure of Miko showed.

We plunged down the broken outer slope, reached the level. Soon, as we ran, the little Grantline crater faded behind us.

Anita ran more skillfully than I. Ten minutes or so passed. We had seen Miko, and the direction he was taking, but down here on the plain we could no longer see him. It struck me that this was purposeless—and dangerous. Suppose Miko were to see us following? Suppose he stopped and lay in ambush to fire at us as we came leaping heedlessly by?

"Anita, wait," I said, checking her.

I drew her down amid a group of tumbled boulders. And then abruptly she clung to me.

"Gregg, I know what we can do! Gregg, don't tell me you won't let me try it!"

LISTENED to her plan. Incredible! Incredibly dangerous! Yet, as I pondered it, the very daring of the thing seemed the measure of its possible success. The brigands would never imagine we could be so rash!

"But Anita—"

"Gregg, you're stupid!" It was her turn to be exasperated. In truth, I was indeed in no mood for daring, for my mind was obsessed with Anita's safety. I had been planning that we might see the glow of Miko's encampment, and then return to Grantline and hope that he would have the portes repaired.

"But Gregg—the safety of the treasure—of all the Grantline men"

"To the infernal with that! It's you—your safety."

"My safety, then! If you put me in the camp and the brigands attack it and I am killed—what then? But this plan of mine, if we can do it, Gregg safety, in the end, for all of us."

And it seemed possible. We crouched, discussing it. So daring a thing!

The brigand ship would come down near Archimedes. That was fifty miles from Grantline. The brigands from Mars would not have seen the dark Grantline buildings hidden in the little crater-pit. They would wait for Miko and his men to make their whereabouts known.

IKO'S encampment was ahead of us now, undoubtedly. We had been following him toward the Mare Imbrium; we were at its borders now.