Adventure stories; Science fiction; Space warfare -- Fiction
Of the moment following, while we rushed thus down to death, flung
into a corner of the pilot room by the ship's splitting, I remember
most clearly the rush of cold air that shrieked through our falling
half. Had our ship broken in empty space instead of in the air of that
great world's atmosphere, we would have met instant annihilation;
since even the gaseous Andromedans, as I was later to find, could not
live save in air, like ourselves, their gaseous bodies disintegrating
in any other element. For the moment, though, as we flashed down
toward the surface of the world beneath, it seemed that death for
us had been delayed but a moment. We were whirled crazily around as
our wrecked half of the ship fell, and through the window I had a
glimpse of the ground beneath, rushing up to meet us with appalling
speed. I tensed for the crash, and for death, as it leapt up toward
us--nearer--nearer----
There was a hoarse cry from Jhul Din, and I glimpsed in the next
instant a dark, great shape that swooped down past and beneath us from
above. The next instant, just as I waited for the annihilating impact
with the ground, there was a slight jar, a clang of metal against
metal from beneath, and then swiftly, miraculously, our wild fall was
slackening. In another moment the ground was just beneath us, and
smoothly and slowly we sank downward, coming to rest upon it without a
jar! I staggered up to the window, gazing forth, stunned by that sudden
escape from inescapable annihilation, and then saw the explanation of
it. Our half of the wrecked ship was resting upon the back of one of
the great, flat Andromedan ships, that had flashed down under it and
caught it upon itself, bearing us down to the ground and saving us from
the crash and from death!
A moment more and we were stumbling out of the pilot room, down to the
ground from the Andromedan ship on which we rested. As we reached it I
saw that the other falling half of our ship had been saved in the same
way by another Andromedan craft, lying close beside us on that craft
with the members of our crew in it pouring out to join us. Another
instant and they stood with us, a vast mass of the gliding, gaseous
Andromedans that swarmed on this world's surface having collected
about us, a strange, silent horde that I knew were contemplating us
with their alien sense of sight. Quickly toward us, though, came the
half-dozen Andromedans who had been with us in the ship and had escaped
with us, leading us now through the throngs of gaseous figures about us
toward some destination of their own.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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