"No!” said the glowing man. “That raging crowd of doomed ones would tear you to pieces if you tried to make your way through them. For very many of my fellow-sufferers on this world are crazed, made mad by our horrible existence."
"We've got to get Lana and the radite out of there quickly!” Thorn cried. “Cheerly and his men can't hold that mob off much longer!"
Cheerly and his two men were plainly being hard pressed. Only by snatching up shining rocks that lay strewn on the narrow ledge, and dashing them down at their attackers, could they keep the radioactive men from winning up to them,
"You run out of rocks soon and that'll be the end of them!” Sual Av exclaimed.
"Why the devil don't they use their atom-pistols?” Gunner demanded.
"They would be useless against such men as myself,” Clymer Nison declared sadly. ‘I know a way to get onto that ledge farther back along the chasm. Follow me!"
The Planeteers raced back along the chasm after Nison and his companion. The glowing men swerved and started climbing up a narrow crack in the shimmering cliff.
Thorn and his comrades struggled to follow. By tremendous effort, they hoisted their heavy figures up after the two glowing men. They found themselves on a precariously narrow shelf of the rock wall.
Nison and the glowing Martian led the way now back along the chasm to the battle, following this narrow shelf. There were places where it was hardly a yard wide. But in a few minutes, they had followed it to a point where it connected with the ledge upon which Cheerly and his men were defending themselves.
Cheerly turned, appalled, as the Planeteers and their two glowing guides appeared. The Uranian, unrecognizable in his shapeless spacesuit and coated helmet, made himself known by the cry that vibrated from him as he saw them.