Splinter went up the ladder first, climbing with one hand, firing with the other. Kerry Blane hooked his good arm through the ladder, braced his feet on a bottom loop, was hauled instantly upward. At the port, both turned and fired with a desperate, accurate fire.
The entire world seemed to have come alive. Sinuous creepers flashed from the jungle, growing, uncurling with a fantastic speed, each capturing a dead crab, then pulling it back to the parent plant in the jungle. Scaly monsters bored up from within the sand, feasted on the shattered bodies of the sea beasts, pausing now and then to fight away the crabs that attacked them. From somewhere came a flying creature that appeared to be half fish, half animal, which swooped, then mounted sluggishly into the air, a crab's phosphorescent body dangling from its claws.
Kerry Blane shifted on his feet slightly, cleared four crabs from beneath the ladder, turned a sweating face toward his companion.
"How long will it take to fix the control panel?" he gasped.
"Thirty minutes, at least."
"Get in there and fix it."
"And leave you here, alone? To hell with you!"
Kerry Blane drew the ray of his single gun like a hose across a horde of attackers, grinned mirthlessly as they fell in convulsive heaps.
"I'm your superior," he grated. "Get in there!"