We are hovering at five hundred feet. I can actually see the white edge of the sea beating at the cliff. Mr. Yardo keeps making small corrections; there is a wind out there trying to blow us away. It is cloudy here: I can see neither moons nor stars.
Mr. Yardo checks the radio. Nothing yet.
I stare downwards and fancy I can see a metallic gleam.
Then there is a wordless shout from Mr. Yardo; a bright dot hurtles across the screen and at the same time I see a streak of blue flame tearing diagonally downwards a hundred feet away.
The hopper shudders to a flat concussion in the air, we are all thrown off balance, and when I claw my way back to the screen the moving dot is gone.
So is _Gilgamesh_.
B says numbly, "But it wasn"t a meteor. It can"t have been."
"It doesn"t matter what it was," I say. "It was some sort of missile, I think. They must be even nearer to war than we thought."
We wait. What for, I don"t know. Another missile, perhaps. No more come.
At last Mr. Yardo stirs. His voice sounds creaky.
"I guess," he says, then clears his throat, and tries again. "I guess we have to go back up."
B says, "Lizzie, who was it? Do you know?"
Of course I do. "Do you think M"Clare was going to risk one of us on that job? The volunteering was a fake. He went himself."
B whispers, "You"re just guessing."
"Maybe," says Mr. Yardo, "but I happened to see through that face plate of his. It was the professor all right."
He has his hand on the controls when my brain starts working again. I utter a strangled noise and dive for the hatch into the cargo hold. B tries to grab me but I get it open and switch on the light.
Fifty-fifty chance--I"ve lost.
_No_, this is the one we came in and the people who put in the new cargo did not clear out my fish-boat, they just clamped it neatly to the wall.
I dive in and start to pa.s.s up the package. B shakes her head.
"No, Lizzie. We can"t. Don"t you remember? If we got caught, it would give everything away. Besides ... there isn"t any chance--"
"Take a look at the screen," I tell her.
Sharp exclamation from Mr. Yardo. B turns to look, then takes the package and helps me back.
Mr. Yardo maneuvers out over the sea till the thing is in the middle of the screen; then drops to a hundred feet. It is sticking out of the water at a fantastic angle and the waves are hardly moving it. The nose of a ship.
"The antigrav," whispers B. "The Andite hasn"t blown yet."
"Ten minutes," says Mr. Yardo thoughtfully. He turns to me with sudden briskness. "What"s that, Lizzie girl? A fish-boat? Good. We may need it. Let"s have a look."
"It"s mine," I tell him.
"Now look--"
"Tailor made," I say. "You might get into it, though I doubt it. You couldn"t work the controls."
It takes him fifteen seconds to realize there is no way round it; he is six foot three and I am five foot one. Even B would find it hard.
His face goes grayish and he stares at me helplessly. Finally he nods.
"All right, Lizzie. I guess we have to try it. Things certainly can"t be much worse than they are. We"ll go over to the beach there."
On the beach there is wind and spray and breakers but nothing unmanageable; the cliffs on either side keep off the worst of the force. It is queer to feel moving air after eighteen days in a ship.
It takes six minutes to unpack and expand the boat and by that time it is ten minutes since the missile hit and the Andite has not blown.
I crawl into the boat. In my protective clothing it is a fairly tight fit. We agree that I will return to this same point and they will start looking for me in fifty minutes" time and will give up if I have not returned in two hours. I take two Andite cartridges to deal with all eventualities and snap the nose of the boat into place. At first I am very conscious of the two little white cigars in the pouch of my suit, but presently I have other things to think about.
I use the "limbs" to crawl the last few yards of shingle into the water and on across the sea bottom till I am beyond the line of breakers; then I turn on the motor. I have already set the controls to "home" on _Gilgamesh_ and the radar will steer me off any obstructions. This journey in the dark is as safe as my trip around the reefs before all this started--though it doesn"t feel that way.
It takes twelve minutes to reach _Gilgamesh_, or rather the fragment that antigrav is supporting; it is about half a mile from the beach.
The radar stops me six feet from her and I switch it off and turn to Manual and inch closer in.
Lights, a very small close beam. The missile struck her about one third of her length behind the nose. I know, because I can see the whole of that length. It is hanging just above the water, sloping at about 30 to the horizontal. The ragged edge where it was torn from the rest is just dipping into the sea.
If anyone sees this, I don"t know what they will make of it but no one could possibly think an ordinary s.p.a.ceship suffered an ordinary crash, and very little investigation would show up the truth.
I reach up with the forward set of "limbs" and grapple on to the break. I now have somehow to get the hind set of "limbs" up without losing my grip. I can"t.
It takes several minutes to realize that I can just open the nose and crawl out.
Immediately a wave hits me in the face and does its best to drag me into the sea. However the interior of the ship is relatively sheltered and presently I am inside and dragging the boat up out of reach.
I need light. Presently I manage to detach one of the two from the boat. I turn it down to minimum close beam and hang it round my neck; then I start up the black jag-edged tunnel of the ship.
I have to get to the nose, find the fuse, change the setting to twenty minutes--maximum possible--and get out before it blows--out of the water I mean. The fish-boat is not constructed to take explosions even half a mile away. But the first thing is to find the fuse and I cannot make out how _Gilgamesh_ is lying and therefore cannot find the door through this bulkhead; everything is ripped and twisted. In the end I find a gap between the bulkhead itself and the hull, and squeeze through that.
In the next compartment things are more recognizable and I eventually find the door. Fortunately ships are designed so that you can get through doors even when they are in the ceiling; actually here I have to climb up an overhang, but the surface is provided with rungs which make it not too bad. Finally I reach the door. I shall have to use antigrav to get down ... why didn"t I just turn it on and jump? I forgot I had it.
The door was a little way open when the missile struck; it buckled in its grooves and is jammed fast. I can get an arm through. No more. I switch on antigrav and hang there directing the light round the compartment. No rents anywhere, just buckling. This compartment is divided by a part.i.tion and the door through that is open. There will be another door into the nose on the other side.
I bring back my feet ready to kick off on a dive through that doorway.
Behind me, something stirs.
My muscles go into a spasm like the one that causes a falling dream, my hold tears loose and I go tumbling through the air, rebound from a wall, twist, and manage to hook one foot in the frame of the door I was aiming for. I pull myself down and turn off the antigrav; then I just shake for a bit.