The menace to themselves seemed doubled, to Gordon. Almost, to assure Lianna's safety from the nightmare terrors of this planet, he would have gone willingly back to the Cloud.
But his determination returned. They'd get away, but not to go back to the hands of Shorr Kan if he could help it.
He forced himself to continue the slow, squirming movements that rubbed his plastic fetter against the rough crack in the chair-frame. Finally in weariness he slept, to awaken hours after dawn.
In the coppery sunlight, the ocher jungles were deceptively peaceful looking. But captives and captors alike knew now what weird horror brooded out in those golden glades.
Gordon, through the long day, continued to squirm and hitch to increase the abrasion on the fetter. He desisted only when the eyes of their guard were upon him.
Lianna whispered hopefully, “Do you think you can get free?”
“By tonight I should be able to wear it through,” he murmured.
“But then? What good will it do? We can't flee out there into the jungle.”
“No, but we can call help,” Gordon muttered. “I've thought of a way.”
Night came, and Durk Undis gave his men sharp orders. “Two men on each of those jet-projectors, ready to repel the creatures if they come. We'll keep the generators running continuously.”
That was welcome news, to Gordon. It made more possible the precarious scheme he had evolved.
He felt that by now the tough plastic must be abraded halfway through. But it still felt too strong to break.
The generators had begun humming. And the worried Cloudmen had not long to wait for the attack they dreaded. Once more from the nebula-illumined jungles came the weird, throaty shouts.
“Be ready the minute they appear,” called Durk Undis.
With a chorus of throaty cries, the rubbery horde rolled in a fierce wave out of the jungle. Instantly the jet projectors released beams of the powerful pressure rays upon them.
“It's holding them back. Keep it up!” Durk Undis said.
“But they don't die!” cried another man. “They just melt down and flow away.”
Gordon realized this was his opportunity. The Cloudmen were all engaged out there in defending the wreck, and the generators were running.
He expanded his muscles in an effort to break his fetter. But he had misjudged its strength. The tough plastic held.
Again he tried, straining wildly. This time the fetter snapped. Hastily, he unfastened the other fetters.
He got to his feet and quickly freed Lianna. Then he hurried across the corridor toward the stereo-room just opposite.. “Watch and warn me if any of the Cloudmen come back in here!” he told the woman. “I'm going to try to start the transmitter.”
“But do you know enough about it to send out a call?” asked Lianna.
“No, but if I can start it up, any untuned wave will direct instant attention to this planet,” Gordon explained swiftly.
He fumbled in the dimness of the room for the switches he had observed the operator use to start the transmitter.
Gordon closed them. The transmitter remained dead. There was no whine of power, no glow of big tubes. A baffled feeling grew in him as he realized the failure of his plan.
Chapter XIX. World of Horror
GORDON forced himself to remain calm despite the wild din of struggle outside the wreck. He went over the switches he had seen the operator use to start the transmitter.
He had missed one. As he closed it, the motor-generators in the stereo-room broke into loud life, and the big vacuum tubes began glowing.
“The generators must be failing. Our jets are losing power!” came a cry from one of the Cloudmen outside the wreck.
“Zarth, you're drawing so much power from the two generators that it's cutting their ray-jets!” warned Lianna. “They'll be in here to find out what's wrong.”
“I only need a moment!” Gordon sweated, bending tensely over the bank of vernier dials.
It was impossible, he knew, for him to try sending any coherent message. He knew almost nothing about this complicated apparatus of future science.
But if he could send out any kind of untuned signal, the very fact of such a signal coming from a supposedly uninhabited planet would surely arouse the suspicion of the Empire cruisers searching out there.
Gordon spun the verniers at random. The equipment sputtered, hummed and faltered, beneath his ignorant handling.
“The brutes are getting through!” Durk Undis' voice yelled. “Linn, get in there and see what's wrong with the generators.”
The battle outside was closer, fiercer. Lianna uttered a cry of warning.
Gordon whirled around. Linn Kyle stood, wild and disheveled, in the door of the stereo-room.
The Cloudman uttered an oath and grabbed out his atom-pistol. “By God, I might have known-”
Gordon dived for him, tackled him and brought him to the floor with a crash. They struggled furiously.
Through the increasing din, Gordon heard Lianna's horror-laden scream. And he glimpsed weird figures pouring into the room from astern and seizing the terrified woman.
The rubbery attackers! The spawn of this crazy nebula world had broken through Durk Undis' weakened defenses and were inside the wreck.
“Lianna!” Gordon yelled hoarsely, as he saw the woman borne swiftly from her feet by clutching hands.
The blank faces, the ghastly eyes of the rubbery aliens were close to him as he tore free from Linn Kyle and tried to rise.
He couldn't. The rubbery bodies were piling on him and on the Cloudman. Arms that felt like tentacles grasped and lifted them. Linn Kyle's wild shot hit one and it melted to crawling jelly, but the others seized the Cloudman.
Crash of atom-pistols thundered through the corridors of the wreck. Durk Undis' high voice rang over the wild uproar.
“Drive them out of the ship and hold the doors until we can get the ray-jets going again.”
Gordon heard Linn Kyle's yell choked off in his throat as he himself and the Cloudman were swung swiftly up off their feet. The rubbery horde was retreating out of the shattered stern of the wreck, and were taking the two and Lianna with them.
Gordon fought to free himself of the clutching rubbery arms, and couldn't. He realized with horror that his weakening of the Cloudmen's defense to send his desperate call had exposed Lianna and himself to a more ghastly peril.
“Durk, they have us!” screeched Linn Kyle. Through the crash of guns and yells, Gordon heard the other's startled cry.
But they were out of the wreck now, and their captors were bounding with them through the towering jungle. The whole rubbery horde was retreating into the nebula-lit forest as Durk Undis and his remaining men got their ray-jets in action again.
Gordon's senses swam. These hideous captors hurtled through the jungle with him like preternaturally agile apes. Lianna and Linn Kyle were borne along as swiftly. Down from the flaming nebula sky dripped a glowing radiance that silvered the unearthly forest.
The pace of their strange captors quickened, after some minutes of travel through the jungle. Now rock slopes began to lift from the thick forest.
The weird horde swept with them into a deep stony gorge. It was a place more awesome than the jungle. For its rock cliffs gleamed with a faint light that was no reflection of the nebula sky, but was intrinsic.
“Radioactive, those cliffs,” Gordon thought numbly. “Maybe it explains these unholy freaks-”
Speculation was swept from his mind by the hideous clamor that arose. There were hordes of the rubbery creatures here in the gorge. They greeted the captives with throaty, deafening cries.
Gordon found himself held tightly beside Lianna. The woman's face was deathly white.
“Lianna, you're not hurt?”
“Zarth, no. But what are they going to do to us?”