"These were the old stamp mills," the girl said, and her voice seemed to be swallowed to a whisper in the vast, echoing darkness.
Between two rows of sentinel ruins they came suddenly on two slim Venusian atmospheric ships. Dim light spilled over them from a ragged gash in the wall of the cavern. Brian followed Crystal into the smaller of the two ships and the rest of the rebels manned the other.
"Wait a minute, how do we get out of here?" Brian demanded.
"Through that hole up there," the girl said matter-of-factly.
"You're crazy, you can't get through there."
"Oh, yeah? Just watch this." The ship thundered to life beneath them and leaped off in a full-throttled take-off.
"We're going to crash! That gap isn't wide enough!"
The sides of the gap rushed in on the tips of the stubby wings. Brian braced himself for the crash, but it didn't come. At the last possible second, the ship rolled smoothly over. At the moment it flashed through the opening it was stood vertically on edge.
Crystal held the ship in its roll and completed the maneuver outside the mountain while Brian struggled to get his internal economy back into some semblance of order.