"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by ganet, the tough little two headed pack animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy jagua canoes.