The mouth of the passage was only a few feet away, now. Behind them the howling phosphorescent figures were closing in swiftly. All at once Barger, in the lead, gave a cry, pointed through the passage entrance. In the dark sky high above, something huge, glowing, was exploding into a rain of white-hot dots.
"Meteors!" he shouted. "A big one's broken up, and the magnetism is pulling the pieces this way! There'll be hell out there in a moment!"
"Got to risk it!" Steve took one glance at the onrushing sub-men, leaped through the opening. "Come on!"
Hardly a dozen steps had they taken when the storm broke. Easy to understand now, why the pirates of the asteroid had burrowed underground for their dwellings. The meteor storm was a rain of death.
Screaming through the thin atmosphere, white-hot from the explosion, the first great stone struck the asteroid. The ground shook as if from an earthquake, a shower of shattered rock rose in a deadly spray. Now another, and another, in a terrifying cosmic bombardment. Fiery missiles, hurtling from the heavens, tearing great gaps in the rough terrain.
Staggering over the heaving, shifting bed of stone, Haller felt as though he were in an inferno. The heat was overpowering, on all sides the ground was churned like a twentieth-century battlefield. Blinding light, the shriek of descending meteors, the earth-shaking roar and rumble as they struck. Barger glanced back; the sub-men were huddled in the entrance of their caverns, shouting with rage, yet not daring to go out.
"Free of them for the time being!" Barger shouted to make himself heard above the roar. "But if one of these chunks of rock hits us...."
Haller, supporting the girl, nodded grimly, plodded on. The rain of meteors was at its height now, and the entire plain seemed to be exploding. A great liner, lying ahead, disappeared in a shower of débris as a great stone struck it; another, beside it, was completely buried under the rubble and wreckage. A scene of sheer horror, the plain, shrouded in dust, lit by incessant flashes of light, the loose stones of its surface sliding and rumbling with each new shock. As the three fugitives reeled onward, one of the missiles landed nearby in a blinding flash, a gust of heat. Hurled to the ground, Haller was half-buried by a hail of splintered stone. Blindly, groggily, he picked himself up, pulled Fay to her feet, and, aided by the bruised and bloody Barger, pushed on.