Jerry, who, though he could play football of course, did not go out for it since he was too busy captaining the hockey team, as well as captaining the fencing and chess teams. Since John was new to the team and not enrolled in the school, he smilingly settled for ninety-nine.
'We need weapons,' Chuck said, taking command of the team. 'I'll use the ax from the rescue kit.'
'Heat is their enemy, so the oxyhydrogen torch is mine,' Jerry added.
'If I use the alcohol from the first-aid kit, I can clean all the lubrication from my submachine gun, and it will fire at two hundred degrees below zero,' John concluded.
'Here we go, team,' Chuck said. 'Lock the door behind us, Sally, and only open it if we knock three times.'
'Good luck, boys,' Sally said, and patted each rugged shoulder as it rushed by her into the fight.
The battle was joined. Evidently the smell of hot oxygen drove the Titanians into a frenzy of lust, and they hurled themselves to the attack with a terrible fury. Back to back the Americans faced them and coolly wreaked havoc in their hideous ranks. Tirelessly the great arm of Chuck rose and fell like a butcher's over the block, and tentacles and eye-bulging heads flew in all directions, green ichor spurting like rain. Nor was Jerry being sluggard. His torch cut through the advancing ranks of the enemy like a sword of victory, sizzling them into dismembered and cooked fragments. Coolly, John sighted his gun and fired only single shots, yet every single shot went true, right between the second and third eye of a hideous head and into the malformed brain behind it. And still they came. And still they died. To face the enemy the comrades had to climb the mounting pile of dead bodies that grew about them, and so the slaughter went on until the last of the vile attackers met his well-deserved fate. Smoke curled from the hot barrel of the gun, ichor dripped from the nowlowered ax, and the oxyhydrogen torch was turned off to save the gas.
'Well done, men,' Chuck said, and they clambered and slipped down the forty-foot-high mountain of corpses to the ground. 'Anyone hurt?'
'A few scratches.' The others laughed. 'Nothing that counts.'
'Then let's go get that oxygen. During the battle I noticed that most of the Titanians were coming from that direction, and if you look closely at that ridge, you will see a kind of white band toward the bottom. I'll bet my bottom dollar that that is frozen oxygen!'
They hurried toward the ridge, but before they could reach it, tragedy struck.
A shrill scream pierced the thin Titanian atmosphere, and they stopped as one and spun about on their heels. To see a sight so awful that it would be branded in their memories forever.
The cabin door stood open, and dropping down from the wing were a dozen of the hideous Titanians.
And carried in their midst, wrapped about by slimy tentacles, was the screaming, struggling, lovely form of Sally Goodfellow.
5
DEFEAT RUDELY SNATCHED FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY
Paralysis gripped them, but only momentarily. Before the enemy had slithered another foot with the captive girl, the vengeful Americans were hot on their trail, weapons awave.
'Chin up, Sally!' Chuck bellowed. 'Here we come!'
'I don't think . . . she can hear you,' Jerry answered between gasping breaths. 'She has no oxygen tank, so she is already unconscious.'
And so she was, her screams were silenced, and she hung limply down the repulsive back of her captor. The fleeing Titanians looked back, easy enough to do since it could be seen now that they had four more eyes in the backs of their heads, and upon spotting the rushing avengers, they took defensive action. Half their number stopped and waited, frigid grasping tentacles raised for the attack. The battle was quickly joined. Heads flew right and left, and sundered tentacles littered the ground like so many salamis, and the Earthmen barely slowed in their rush. But more were waiting for them, and they were dispatched just as neatly. Now the coast was clear, the last of the rear guard dead, and only the fleeing Titanian with the unconscious girl across its shoulders remained.
But the holding action had succeeded in gaining this disgusting creature needed time, and just as they were onto the thing, it darted down a gaping trench in the ground. Without a thought, other than to save Sally, the three companions instantly followed it into the unknown. This was raw courage, the spirit that built the frontier and put men on the Moon. Unhesitatingly they went to whatever fate faced them ahead.
As it twisted. the trench deepened and then plunged into a black cave mouth. This cave was dimly illuminated by some sort of natural growth on the waIls, apparently a plant or vegetable of some kind that gave off a ghastly greenish glow just as do some forms of plankton in the seas of Earth. There was just enough light ro make out the fleeing figure of the kidnapper, and they went after it at full speed. It darted into a side tunnel before they could catch up with it, and then into another, always just outside their reach as though toying with them, leading them on. Give them credit, they did not consider their own peril for an instant but instead plunged on. They were just upon the fleeing Titanian when it emerged into a larger cave and scuttled slitheringly across its rough floor. After it they went, and they were just about to seize and render it when a burst of illumination flooded down upon them. By reflex they shielded their eyes, and when they could look up, they saw the source of this unexpected light.
From floor to rough ceiling high above the great chamber in the rock was covered with the light-emitting plants. Ledges ran about the walls, and on the ledges stood numberless Titanians with whips, and upon a given signal they had begun to whip the simple vegetable life. Apparently this abuse stirred the hapless plants to unusual activity, and they burned with cold light, rippling in agony beneath the merciless assault. But the Titanians had no pity, even if they had had the capacity for pity, and lashed on. With their eyes now accustomed to the light the Earthmen saw a sight that made their blood run cold.
Against the far wall, on a dais or throne of crudely carved stone, sat a Titanian at least twice as big as all the others, twice as ugly too, outdoing them in loathsomeness. A rough crown of some shining metal sat on its head, and there was a tremendous but crudely cut diamond set into the front of it. But these facts they were scarcely aware of, for what froze their gaze and raised their hearts into the throats was the sight of Sally held in the thing's tentacles while other of its tentacles caressed her ivory limbs revealed through the rents in her thin summer frock that was partially torn away from her fair body. Yet, under this repulsive embrace, Sally was strangely unmoving. In fact her ivory limb was looking a lot more like ivory all the time since, on second glance it could be seen that it was frozen solid.
'She's frozen solid,' Jerry gasped.
'She was the best,' Chuck gulped and took off his helmet and held it before his chest.
'Don't give up hope yet,' John whispered. 'If we can get her out of this, we can. . . .'
'Eef you attempt too reesist, you vill all die!' the creature on the throne hissed, laying off caressing his prisoner long enough to signal with a tentacle. Instantly all of the entrances to the cave were filled with Titanians carrying long, curved daggers, shaped very much like Arab scimitars except for a lack of a guard of any kind. Bubbling laughter came from the king as he saw their looks of astonishment.
'You are surprised, no? Beefore thees you faced only my oxygen workers driven mad by your hot oxygen. Now you see my finest troops.'
'But – you speak our language?' Jerry said.
'Naturally. We have crystal detector radios of immense power, and we listen to your radio broadcasts and have learned your tongue. Always we wait for the rockets to land, the first explorers to arrive. Our plans are made. We kill, capture the ship and leave this barren world, where we are trapped with an ever-diminishing supply of oxygen. At last we have done this! You will be held prisoner and tortured to tell us everything you know about how to operate your flying ship and then you will die horribly. Seize them!'
At this command the minions surged forward and the light plants writhed under increased whipping. But their prey was not that easy to capture! With a single voice the Earthmen shouted 'Geronimo!' and attacked the king in unison. It seized four immense blades from behind its throne, but before it could wield them, a single well-placed bullet found its target between its third and fourth eye, and it slumped in death, and Sally slid from its nowloosened embrace.
