They had learned, too, to take shelter; barricades had been hastily erected, and the men had shields to protect them from the fire of small arms.
Their bodies were enclosed in their gas-tight uniforms whose ugly head-pieces served only to conceal the greater ugliness beneath. They met the ships as they landed with a showering rain of gas that was fired from huge projectors.
"Not so good!" Blake was speaking in the safety of his ship. "We have masks, but great heavens, Mac!—there must be a million of those brutes. We can spray them with machine-gun fire, but we haven't ammunition enough to make a dent in them. And we've got to get out and get to our crashed ships."
He waited for McGuire's suggestions, but it was Althora who replied.
"Wait!" she said imperatively. She seemed to be listening to some distant word. Then:
"Djorn is coming," she exclaimed, and her eyes were brilliantly alight. "He says to you"—she pointed to McGuire—"that you were right, that we must fight like hell sometimes to deserve our heaven—oh, I told him what you said—and now he is coming with all his men!"
"What the devil?" asked Blake in amazement. "How does she know?"
"Telepathy," McGuire explained: "she is talking with her brother, the leader of the real inhabitants of Venus."
He told the wondering man briefly of his experience and of the people themselves, the real owners of this world.
"But what can they do?" Blake demanded.