Gray nodded. Ward would try to throw a twist around his ankle and trip him. Once his body touched those swarming creatures....
He tensed, watchfully. The rat’s grin was set on Ward’s dark face. The cord licked out.
But it caught Gray’s throat instead of his ankle!
Ward laughed and braced himself. Cursing, Gray caught at the rope. But friction held it, and Ward pulled, hard. His face purpling, Gray could still commend Ward’s strategy. In taking Gray off guard, he’d more than made up what he lost in point of leverage.
Letting his body go with the pull, Gray flung himself at Ward. Blood blinded him, his heart was pounding, but he thought he foresaw Ward’s next move. He let himself be pulled almost within striking distance.
Then, as Ward stepped, aside, jerking the rope and thrusting out a tripping foot, Gray made a catlike shift of balance and bent over.
His hands almost touched that weird, flowing surf as they clasped Ward’s boot. Throwing all his strength into the lift, he hurled Ward backward.
Ward screamed once and disappeared under the blue fire. Gray clawed the rope from his neck. And then, suddenly, the world began to sway under him. He knew he was falling.
Some one’s hand caught him, held him up. Fighting down his vertigo as his breath came back, he saw that it was Jill.
“Why?” he gasped, but her answer was lost in a titanic roar of thunder. Lightning blasted down. Dio’s voice reached him, thin and distant through the clamor.
“We’ll be killed! These damn things will attract the bolts!”
It was true. All his work had been for nothing. Looking up into that low, angry sky, Gray knew he was going to die.
Quite irrelevantly, Jill’s words in the tunnel came back to him. “You’re a fool...lost truth...not true to lie!”
Now, in this moment, she couldn’t lie to him. He caught her shoulders cruelly, trying to read her eyes.
Very faintly through the uproar, he heard her. “I’m sorry for you, Gray. Good man, gone to waste.”
Dio stifled a scream. Thunder crashed between the sounding boards of the cliffs. Gray looked up.
A titanic bolt of lightning shot down, straight for them. The burning blue surf was agitated, sending up pseudopods uncannily like worshipping arms. The bolt struck.
The air reeked of ozone, but Gray felt no shock. There was a hiss, a vast stirring of creatures around him. The blue light glowed, purpled.
Another bolt struck down, and another, and still they were not dead. The fire-things had become a writhing, joyous tangle of tenuous bodies, glowing bright and brighter.
Stunned, incredulous, the three humans stood. The light was now an eye-searing violet. Static electricity tingled through them in eerie waves. But they were not burned.
“My God,” whispered Gray. “They eat it. They eat lightning!”
Not daring to move, they stood watching that miracle of alien life, the feeding of living things on raw current. And when the last bolt had struck, the tide turned and rolled back down the wind-tunnel, a blinding river of living light.
Silently, the three humans went down the rocky slope to where Caron of Mars cowered in the silver ship. No bolt had come near it. And now Caron came to meet them.
His face was pasty with fear, but the old cunning still lurked in his eyes.
“Gray,” he said. “I have an offer to make.”
“Well?”
“You killed my pilot,” said Caron suavely. “I can’t fly, myself. Take me off, and I’ll pay you anything you want.”
“In bullets,” retorted Gray. “You won’t want witnesses to this.”
“Circumstances force me. Physically, you have the advantage.”
Jill’s fingers caught his arm. “Don’t, Gray! The Project....”
Caron faced her. “The Project is doomed in any case. My men carried out my secondary instructions. All the cables in your valley have been cut. There is a storm now ready to break.
“In fifteen minutes or so, everything will be destroyed, except the domes. Regrettable, but....” He shrugged.
Jill’s temper blazed, choking her so that she could hardly speak.
“Look at him, Gray,” she whispered. “That’s what you’re so proud of being. A cynic, who believes in nothing but himself. Look at him!”
Gray turned on her.
“Damn you!” he grated. “Do you expect me to believe you, with the world full of hypocrites like him?”
Her eyes stopped him. He remembered Moulton, pleading for her life. He remembered how she had looked back there at the tunnel, when they had been sure of death. Some of his assurance was shaken.
“Listen,” he said harshly. “I can save your valley. There’s a chance in a million of coming out alive. Will you die for what you believe in?”
She hesitated, just for a second. Then she looked at Dio and said, “Yes.”
Gray turned. Almost lazily, his fist snapped up and took Caron on his flabby jaw.
“Take care of him, Dio,” he grunted. Then he entered the ship, herding the white-faced girl before him.
*
The ship hurtled up into airless space, where the blinding sunlight lay in sharp shadows on the rock. Over the ridge and down again, with the Project hidden under a surf of storm-clouds.
Cutting in the air motors, Gray dropped. Black, bellowing darkness swallowed them. Then he saw the valley, with the copper cables fallen, and the wheat already on fire in several places.
Flying with every bit of his skill, he sought the narrowest part of the valley and flipped over in a racking loop. The stern tubes hit rock. The nose slammed down on the opposite wall, wedging the ship by sheer weight.
Lightning gathered in a vast javelin and flamed down upon them. Jill flinched and caught her breath. The flame hissed along the hull and vanished into seared and blackened rock.
“Still willing to die for principle?” asked Gray brutally.
She glared at him. “Yes,” she snapped. “But I hate having to die in your company!”
She looked down at the valley. Lightning struck with monotonous regularity on the hull, but the valley was untouched. Jill smiled, though her face was white, her body rigid with waiting.
It was the smile that did it. Gray looked at her, her tousled black curls, the lithe young curves of throat and breast. He leaned back in his seat, scowling out at the storm.
“Relax,” he said. “You aren’t going to die.”
She turned on him, not daring to speak. He went on, slowly.
“The only chance you took was in the landing. We’re acting as lightning rod for the whole valley, being the highest and best conductor. But, as a man named Faraday proved, the charge resides on the surface of the conductor. We’re perfectly safe.”
“How dared you!” she whispered.
He faced her, almost angrily.
“You knocked the props out from under my philosophy. I’ve had enough hypocritical eyewash. I had to prove you. Well, I have.”
She was quiet for some time. Then she said, “I understand, Duke. I’m glad. And now what, for you?”
He shrugged wryly.
“I don’t