Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 06.djvu/80

730 halt their proceedings. Suddenly the globe's movement stopped, the wires were drawn rapidly upward, and the ranks of the enemy parted and left a clear right of way between them. A resonant clang, like the sound of a huge gong, came from the western cliff, and a bright object, flashing along a cable at terrific speed, rushed between the two groups of now silent Martians, and came to a stop directly over the Neutralia.

"What now?" cried Burgoyne. "What devils' game is this?"

Even as he spoke, from this new arrival there was let down, by thick wires, a large cylindrical object. Swaying to and fro, as though being carefully adjusted, it finally came to rest exactly opposite and a few feet from the globe's open door. A speck of bluish flame glowed in the center of its only visible end.

"Look out! Close the door!" screamed the Austrian. "That looks like a bomb, with its fuse lit!"

HE scientist, being nearest, reached the closing-lever before his companions. But even while throwing his weight on it, his scientific instincts compelled him to peer forward to obtain one glimpse of this unknown offensive. That little part of a second's delay was his undoing.

Before the steel rod slid home there came a burst of vivid flame from the pointing cylinder, which seemed to shrivel up and vanish as a vast cloud of coal-black vapor poured from it. A dense, stinking, poisonous fog rushed through the narrowing slit left by the closing door, and Carscadden was for an instant immersed in its strangling folds. As the door thudded softly home, he fell to the floor, gasping and insensible.

Burgoyne, who was nearest him, reeled a step away, coughing and choking, but by a strong effort of will recovered sufficiently to drag the scientist farther back in the chamber. Kobloth and Flint too got a taste of the malignant stuff as it wafted about, but were not seriously affected.

"What's to be done?" cried Burgoyne. "Carscadden, I think, will soon recover—he is breathing quite normally again. But heaven knows we should get out of this instantly; and only Carscadden knows anything about this aerial navigation."

"Yes, we must not delay a minute. I understand the registers—we must chance our direction. You can work the wheel, and Flint attend to the captain," replied Kobloth, his technical and scientific training aiding his natural resolute hardihood.

At that moment a terrific crash, as of some heavy body falling on the cover above, filled the globe with a deafening clamor.

"That settles it!" shouted Burgoyne. "We chance it! Are you ready, Kobloth?"

"Go ahead!" cried the Austrian, already at the registers. "Himmel! over with the cover!" he ordered impatiently.

The great neutralium cover turned, the swinging platform rocked violently, and the fog-obscured windows of the lower half were hidden; while the uncovered upper lights exposed a cloudy sky, barred by a network of gigantic cables along which hundreds of the Martians moving were visible. A pause, as the cover pushed its way through the sand beneath the globe; a shock, as the globe rocked, then righted itself; then Mars was sinking rapidly away from them. Up through the cables, tearing a great gap in the network as though it were mosquito veiling, soared the Neutralia, passing with a roar and a thrill of heat through the Martian atmosphere. And so out into the cold and soundless