"Have you any idea of which direction to go?" he asked. I shook my head.
"Have you a radio beacon?" I asked.
He withered me with a glance.
"We're beyond the heaviside layer," he reminded me.
For a moment I was stunned.
"We can't be very far from the hole," he said consolingly as he fumbled with the controls. "But before we try to find it, we had better disconnect one of the stern motors and rig it as a disintegrating ray so that we will have one bearing in each direction. We may meet more denizens of space who like our looks, and we haven't much ammunition left."
We landed on the plain and in an hour had a second disintegrating ray ready for action. Thus armed, we rose from the blue plain and started at random on our way. For ten minutes we went forward. Then Jim stopped the flyer and turned back. We had gone only a short distance when I called to him to stop.
"What is it?" he demanded as he brought the flyer to a standstill.
"There's another creature ahead of us," I replied. "A red one."