[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] of smoke from the erupting volcanoes filled the air. Winds were shrieking like fiends, and the sickening heave and fall of the solid ground beneath them continued. T Choking and gasping as he breathed the superheated, sulphurous fumes, Curt Newton struggled to the side of Joan. "Lie down!" he yelled to her over the tumult. "This will soon pass." Grag's tremendous voice shouted through the infernal uproar. "Chief, the ship's framework is going to break loose!" A new and appalling sound had entered the symphony of destruction. It was the heavy rumbling and thumping of a great mass rocking on the ground. The heavy metal framewrk of the Phoenix was rocking wildly in its rough cradle as the quakes continued. It threatened to roll free entirely, to roll down the knoll and crush out their camp and themselves. "Get away!" shrieked a scared mutineer. "She'll 58 THE FACE OF THE DEEP come loose on us any minute!" "No!" blared Captain Future's voice. "We've got to pin her dow ! Grag, get the sledges and some of the smaller beams for stakes! Otho, grab those sledge-cables and bring them!" Not even the terrifying nature of their situation could temper the instant loyalty and obedience of the Futuremen. They sprang to obey. And Curt found big Kim Ivan beside him as he ran to help Otho unfasten the tough, strong cables by which they had drawn the ore-sledges. "If she goes when we're beside her, we'll never see the Moon again!" gasped Otho as they ran toward the ship with the cables. Clang! Clang! Grag towered like an incredible metal giant in the storm, using the heaviest of the sledges to drive small, straight metal beams deep into the ground beside the Phoenix. The torpedo-shape:d framework, upon which they had expended such tremendous toil and thought, was leaning toward them threateningly with each new heave of the quake. If it broke loose, it would smash itself and them, too. Curt and Otho fumbled furiously in the darkness to tie their cables to the stakes and then to the lower beams of the frame. Kim Ivan had found a sledge and was helping Grag drive more stakes, while George McClinton had groped his way to them to help. "Tighten those cables! Put two more on each side!" Curt shouted. The framework was securely lashed down to the stakes. Now the tremors seemed subsiding a little. But now the buffeting winds were rising to a gale of hurricane force. For two hours, they all lay flat upon the ground while the raging gale swept over them. By the end of that time, the quakes had ceased except for an occasional quiver. The disastrophic roar of shifting rock beneath had stopped, and the eruption of the volcanoes seemed lessening. AWN came as the gale died down. The feeble, murky light disclosed a scene of destruction in their camp. The grimed, haggard castaways surveyed it in mute dismay. D The framework of the Phoenix was undamaged, except for a bent beam which could soon be straightened. The huge barrel-like cacti still towered unharmed at the high central point of the clearing. But nearly everything else was wrecked. Most of the stockade was down, all the huts but one had collapsed, and their cyclotrons, tools and supplies were covered with debris. Captain Future discovered that none of them had been seriously injured, though there were many bruises and minor hurts. "By the Sun, I never thought I'd see another day," declared Kim Ivan feelingly. "I sure thought the cursed planetoid was cracking up." "This is a warning," Curt told them urgently. "We can expect more and heavier cataclysms as Astarfall draws nearer the System. This unstable little world is starting to respond to the gravitational perturbations that in a couple of weeks will shatter it completely." "Can we finish the Phoenix in time?" Joan asked breathlessly. "We've got to," Curt said tightly. "And we've got to find the calcium which will enable us to operate it." He detailed a small number of the men to clear up the battered camp. The rest he drove throughout the day with unremitting energy. Grag and George McClinton straightened the few bent beams of the ship-frame, by softening the metal with atomic welders and exerting pressure upon it with improvised jacks. Meanwhile, Captain Future and Otho supervised the ceaseless operation of the big smelters. They toiled all through that day casting the big beryllium alloy plates for the hull. The work parties of the mutineers brought constant new loads of ore upon their makeshift sledges. There was a quality of scared desperation in the way the convicts worked this day. They had been thoroughly impressed by the catastrophic outbreak of the night. The Brain, returning that evening from his ceaseless search for calcium, reported that the whole volcanic area was in violent activity. "New craters have broken out in the eastern section, and the Canyon of Chaos has partly collapsed on itself and is now a large lake of lava, " he stated. Curt nodded grimly. "The increasing shocks are allowing the radioactive hellfire at Astarfall's core to gush to the surface. It'll get rapidly worse. But what about the calcium?" "Curtis, I haven't seen a sign of the element," Simon Wright confessed. "It and certain related elements like potassium and scandium just do not seem to exist upon this world." 59 THE FACE OF THE DEEP "If we can only find a few pounds of the stuff, it'll be enough," Captain Future sweated. "Even a pound or so would at least allow us to use the cycs long enough to take off." That night Grag stood watch over the camp. But since the tireless robot could not alone keep watch over all the sleepers, young Rih Quili shared his guard. But the next morning Rih Quili himself was missing. 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