"Get to your apparatus," I ordered him, "and stay with it until you get through to Earth."
With that I jumped into the main cabin, stepped over Forbes' lifeless body, and caught hold of the nearest of the atomic guns. I was to be a leader, after all.
CHAPTER II
The Cable of Menace
[60] It was dark when we gained the deck; as dark as it had been when I first regained consciousness. Captain Crane was attending to that problem, however. As Koto and I floundered with the gun on the slippery telargeium plates of the outer hull, I heard her moving about. Then she uttered a cry of relief, and there came a faint click. Instantly the darkness all about—the clinging noisome darkness of Orcon at night—was shattered.
The blessed rays of our one good lighting dynamo were loosed!
I saw the girl standing braced beside a stanchion, staring over the ship's side.
"Come on, Koto!" I snapped.
I am no fighting man by trade. Nevertheless, there was a kind of instinct which told me to get the gun set up at any point of vantage along the ship's side. And Koto understood.
"There," he breathed after but a few seconds, and from the experienced way in which he touched the disintegration-release trigger with his one good hand, I knew we were ready.
The flier was still moving, slowly and smoothly. She seemed to be half lifted, half drawn by some colossal force. I leaned far out over the rail.