Suddenly it disappeared, and Roger knew it had reached Tara. He slumped back in his chair. His eyes were glassy, his ears deaf to the roar of triumph from below as Loring and Mason, watching the flight of the jet boat on the control deck teleceiver screen, saw it explode. Roger couldn't move. He had fired a reactant bomb at Tom and Astro.
"By the craters of Luna," roared Connel, "we've been attacked!"
The four Earthmen, exploring a valley several miles north of the Polaris, had been thrown to the ground when the bomb landed. Connel's reaction was immediate and decisive.
"Get into the jet boat! All of you! We've got to get back to the Polaris! If our ship is smashed, we'll spend the rest of our lives fighting this jungle!"
In a matter of seconds the four spacemen were rocketing over the jungle toward the Polaris. Presently they came to an enormous dust cloud that had mushroomed out over the trees. It was so thick Tom found it difficult to pilot the small craft.
"Any danger of radioactivity in this dust, sir?" asked Astro.
"Always that possibility, Astro," answered Connel. "We'll know soon enough!" He flipped on a built-in Geiger counter on the dashboard of the jet boat, and immediately the cabin was filled with a loud ticking that warned of danger.
"The count is up to seven fifty, sir," said Astro. "Not enough to bother you unless you're in it a long time."
"There's the Polaris, sir," yelled Tom. "She's still on her directional fins! They missed her! She's O.K.!"
"By the blessed rings of Saturn, she is!" exclaimed Connel. "Go on, Tom, give this baby the gun! If we have to die, let's die like spacemen, in space, fighting with spaceman's weapons, not crawling around here in the jungle like worms!"