"Stand aside, please! I'm taking him below."
And again Blacky Jordan backed down! As before, his manner toward the girl was baffling. It was peremptory, yet at the same time conciliatory; at once truculent and submissive! He gave in with a graceless shrug.
"Oh, all right! Take 'em all below. I can't waste any more time on 'em right now. But I'll see 'em again later. Especially you—" He jerked his head toward Salvation, then stared thoughtfully at Chip—"and you, too, bucko. Yeah. Me and you is goin' to have a nice little talk later on."
And he stalked away. Hope flared in Chip that now he might find a chance to improve their lot. Not one of the men was guarding them. Only this girl, and she was preoccupied with Salvation—
But—his hope was vain. No gaoler needs guard prisoners immured on a desert isle. Their weapons had been stripped from them, their ship was a tangled heap of wreckage. And there was no other space vessel in sight.
Chip looked at Syd. Palmer's shake of the head confessed an equal bewilderment. Perhaps the answer to this mad situation lay where the girl led. The two spacemen followed.
Their way took them into a tunnel which sloped for a few hundred yards into the earth, then debouched into a small cavern. Into the far wall of this was set a grilled gateway which, when opened by the girl, revealed—an elevator. Into this she helped Salvation. Chip and Syd, delayed by the same doubt, held back. The girl, noting their hesitation, addressed them directly for the first time.
"This way," she said. "Come on! Quickly!"
Chip said suspiciously, "Just a minute, sister. How do we know this isn't a trick of some kind—"