“Michael, you’re a fine sport,” Epworth whispered. “Some day I will find a means of returning this great favor. By your efforts you save the lives of three people.”
“It is enough for me to know that,” Michael replied quietly.
Epworth squeezed his hand, and dropped down the ladder.
They found the supplies where Michael had designated, and returned with them to their cave. Two days later they made another trip, and again Michael aided them. They kept this up for over a week, and during this time Toplinsky and his men were busily engaged in building a large house, which they supposed he would turn into a warehouse as well as a barracks for his men. Another force erected the solar heater on the rim of the northern range of mountains.
At the end of six days, they had enough food and water on hand to last three months, and as a final inspiration Epworth got Michael to send down material to use in the construction of gliders. With this material they worked for another day, building three small gliders propelled with foot-power and elevated by running down hill.
The gliders were, of course, a venture, constructed along original lines, but when Epworth tried them out the night they were finished, he found that he could easily float them in the air against the slight gravity of the moon.
Quite pleased with their idea, and determined to fly over Toplinsky’s camp the next day, they retired in high spirits to sleep like rocks until quite late. They were awakened by loud shouts and the noise of exploding guns. When they rushed to the mouth of their cave a strange spectacle met their gaze.
Swarming across the space north between the Aerolite and the northern range of mountains an army of mammoth cricket-shaped things were approaching. They came in military formation, hopping with steady, persistent leaps, measured to an exactness that enabled each company to land and leave the ground at the same time and in perfect unison. Each cricket was as large as a man, and possessed six legs and two long sharp antennas extending straight out from the eyes. They traveled on the four rear legs, and held long, sharp, steel-pointed lances in their front antennas and two front legs. Their backs were hard and black, and Epworth wondered as he noted the strength of the coating if they were bullet proof.
That they were possessed of a rare degree of intelligence was evidenced by their military approach, and their splendid formation. That they could use these weapons the Americans did not doubt, and congratulated themselves that they were not the objects of attack.
When he turned his eyes toward the Aerolite, Epworth saw that Toplinsky was already fighting. Many of his men were backed against the half-built wall of the house, and were sharp-shooting with their rifles.