Davidson's jaw stiffened and he glanced behind him. There were two supply chests aboard the hydro-terra, which would allow him to remain away from the planet-plane for several weeks, and he need never touch the ground in that time, since he could set the plane to continue automatically in a circle aloft while he slept.
He decided to use the little H-T in scouting for the missing men, as it would be far less conspicious than the great planet-plane. Rushing below and seeing that Chang and Chow (the cat and dog mascots aboard the planet-plane) had a liberal supply of food and water, he pressed the key that closed every ingress to the plane but the foredeck door, so that no one unfamiliar with the plane could gain an entrance. He then returned to the foredeck, closing the door after him and setting the secret combination from the outside which fastened this door.
Missing!
STEPPING into the Veda scout plane he shot up into the bright air, recalling as he did that the days of this colossal planet were each equal to six months of earth time, and he had little cause to be anxious about the coming night, still many weeks distant.
He headed in the direction from which the distress parachute had approached, and flew rather low, straining every nerve to locate the missing men, or some clew to their whereabouts. Shortly he made out two radiocycles[1] stacked against a tree. The men had probably left them to go on for a ways afoot and reconnoiter, and had been captured. He dropped lower, sized up the situation, considered it worth the chance of attack to regain the radiocycles. Nosing down and avoiding the tree branches, he grappled the machines with the automatic tongs and shot upwards with the two light but powerful wheels clutched safely underneath the plane. He hoisted them aboard. They showed no evidence that the men had been attacked while riding. Evidently they had been caught afoot after heedlessly leaving their machines.
A little further on he came upon evidence that made him groan. His binoculars showed him all the clothing of the two missing men scattered along the ground over an area of not more than fifteen square meters. Had they been stripped naked and taken on from here as prisoners, or had they fought to their death, and until every garment had been torn from their bodies?
Landing, he recovered the clothing, but found no message from the men. He ran the plane slowly along the ground and succeeded in distinguishing some faint footprints, which continued about ten meters. Then these footprints ceased as abruptly as if the two naked prisoners had been lifted up into the air, or carried down into the earth.
He could find no evidence of any entrance into the earth, and he questioned if this planet possessed airplanes, for he had not seen any bird or living thing capable of flying since he had landed on this great scarlet world. And it had long been postulated by no less an authority than Ramey, that the super-intelligence of any planet of the third myriad could not rise in mechanics above the mechanical suggestion of the animal creatures and vegetable growth, or mineral formation, of that planet. So if the two men had not been carried into the air or underground, they must have been lifted into some form of vehicle propelled along the ground.
He now came on four separate indentations in the ground, which he judged must have been made by four unicycles, or similar conveyances. He found he must take a chance and continue running along the ground, as these tracks were too faint to be distinguished from a height no greater than the low tree-tops.
He had proceeded some distance across a rolling and slightly wooded country, when he sighted four sphere-like objects, three of which were about four meters in diameter, while the fourth was half again as large. These spheres were gliding, not rolling, along at the slow pace of not over fifteen miles an hour. He had all along been distressed with the fear that perhaps he had taken the wrong direction and had followed the tracks coming and not going, but it now appeared luck had favored him.
For a moment he was almost persuaded to retreat, speed back to the planet-plane, and returning in that great super-machine,[2] swoop down on these spheres and scoop them up like four marbles. But should he let them from his sight five minutes he might not again be able to locate them, as they could disappear into some secret underground passage. Then, too, it might prove a foolish piece of business to take these spheres aboard the planet-plane till he was better informed of their power.
He decided to remain in the little H-T and make an attack from the air. Rising, he ripped the silence with a scream from the siren, then shot away to a distance of about two hundred meters, and, without landing, scanned the spheres through his binoculars to learn the effect of the siren on the ears of the enemy.
He gave a shout. The spheres had come to a sudden stop, no doubt to seek the cause of the noise. Immediately they formed into a square, each about ten meters distant from the other, then Davidson's jaw fell in utter amazement. He could not credit it. He examined his binoculars and looked again. It was true! Out in the open, on the level ground, the four spheres, three of them at least four meters in diameter, and the fourth larger, had totally disappeared.
CHAPTER II
The Struggle Against Darkness
DAVIDSON shot ahead and hung at a height of about thirty meters directly above where he had last seen the four spheres, but they had vanished like bursted bubbles.
"Must have dropped through a trap in the
