"It sounded like a girl. It did, didn't it? Bob, if they got Torrence that quickly—an arrow in him—"
I peered, tense. The rock shadows were all motionless. In the heavy blank silence there was only my startled breathing, and Jan's; and the thumping of my own heart against my ribs. Had this weird enemy gotten Torrence so swiftly, so silently? Something not human, that had so quickly seized him and dragged him away? Or one of those metal arrows in his back, so that his body was lying around here somewhere, masked by the darkness. Jan and I had certainly not been inside the ship more than a minute or two—
A sharp clattering ping against the alumite side of the wrecked ship struck away my thoughts. A metal arrow! It bent against the hull-plate and dropped almost beside me! The still-hidden sniper had seen us, that was evident, for the arrow had whizzed only a foot or so over our heads.
"Jan—lower—"
We almost flattened ourselves against the bulge of the hull, with a little pile of boulders in front of us. My gun was leveled, but there was nothing to shoot at. Then from diagonally across the gully again there came a sharp human cry! A girl's voice? It was soft this time, a bursting little cry, half suppressed.
Thoughts are instant things. I was aware of the cry and with it there was another whizz. Another arrow. This one was wider of the mark; it hit far to one side of us, up near the bow of the ship.
"Jan! Wait!" His little flash gun was up in the crevice of the rocks in front of us. In another second he would have fired. I saw his target—two dim blobs across the gully. For just that second they were visible as they rose up out of a hollow. A man; and the slighter figure with him seemed that of a girl. Her hair, glistening like spun metal in the dim light, hung over her shoulders.
The two figures were struggling. There was the sound of the girl's low cry, and a grunt from the man.... My low admonition stopped Jan from firing and in another second the shapes across the gully had vanished.
"That girl," I murmured. "She tried to keep him from killing us. Seemed that way, don't you think?"
"Well—"