The staggering ship began some hours later to buck and lurch in the grip of strong currents. Gordon realized they must be entering the great dust-whorl in the nebula, to which Linn Kyle had referred.
More and more violent grew the bucking until the Dendra seemed shaking itself apart. Then came a loud crash, and a singing sound that lasted for minutes.
"The air has all leaked out from the ship now," Lianna murmured. "Without our space-suits, we'd all be dead."
Death seemed close to John Gordon, in any case. The crippled ship was now in the full grip of the mighty nebula dust-current that was bearing it on toward a crash on the star-world ahead.
Hours passed. The Dendra was now using the scant power of its two remaining generators again, to keep from being drawn into the coppery sun they were nearing.
Gordon and Lianna could get only occasional glimpses of their destination, through the porthole. They glimpsed a planet revolving around that copper-colored star-a yellow, tawny world.
Durk Undis' voice rang in a final order. "Strap in for crash-landing!"
The guard who watched Gordon and Lianna strapped himself into a recoil-chair beside them. Air began to scream through the wreck.
Gordon had a flashing glimpse of weird ocher forests rushing upward. The generators roared loud in a brief deceleration effort. Then came a crash that hurled Gordon into momentary darkness.
18: Monster Men
Gordon came to himself, dazed and shaken, to find that it was Lianna's anxious voice that had aroused him.
The girl was leaning toward him from the chair in which she was bound. Her face was worried.
"Zarth, I thought for a moment you were really hurt! Your recoil-chair almost broke loose completely."
"I'm all right," Gordon managed to answer. His eyes swung to take in the scene. "We've landed, all right!"
The Dendra was no longer a ship. It was now a twisted, wrecked mass of metal whose voyaging was forever ended.
Walls had bulged like paper, metal girders and struts had been shorn away like cardboard, by the impact of the crash. Hot coppery sunlight streamed through a gaping rent in the cabin wall. Through that opening, Gordon could glimpse the scene outside.
The wreck lay amid towering ocher jungles of strange trees whose broad leaves grew directly from their smooth yellow trunks. Trees and brush and strange shrubs of yellow-and-black flowers had been crushed by the fall of the wreck. Golden spore-dust drifted in the metallic sunlight, and strange webbed-winged birds or creatures flew through the ocher wilderness.
To Gordon's ears came the ragged hum of atomic turbines and generators, close to them in the wreck.
"Durk Undis' men have been working to start the two generators," Lianna said. "They were not badly damaged, it seems."
"Then they're going to send a call back to the Cloud," Gordon muttered. "And Shorr Kan will send another ship here!"
The officer Linn Kyle came into their cabin, no longer wearing a space-suit.
"You can take the suits off the prisoners," Linn Kyle told their guard. "Keep them fettered in the chairs, though."
Gordon was relieved to get rid of the heavy suit and helmet. He found the air breathable but laden with strange, spicy scents.
Just across the corridor from their prison was the stereo room. They heard a transmitter there soon begin its high-pitched whine. Then the taut voice of Durk Undis reached them.
"Calling headquarters at Thallarna! Dendra calling!"
Lianna asked, "Won't their call arouse attention? If it's heard by Empire warships, it will."
Gordon had no hope of that. "No, Durk Undis mentioned a secret wave they would use. No doubt that means they can call Thallarna without being overheard."
For minutes, the calls continued. Then they heard Durk Undis order the transmitter turned off.
"We'll try again," they heard him say. "We've got to keep trying until we reach headquarters."
Gordon hitched his recoil-chair around by imperceptible jerks of his body. He could now look across the shattered corridor into the stereo-room, whose door sagged from its frame.
In there, two hours later, he saw Durk Undis and his operator again try to reach Thallarna with a call. As the generators astern began humming, the operator closed the switches of his transmitter and then carefully centered a series of vernier dials on his panel.
"Be careful to keep exactly on the wave," Durk Undis cautioned. "If the cursed Empire ships get even a whisper of our call, they'll run a direction-fix on it and be here to hunt us."
Then, again, began the series of calls. And this time, Durk Undis succeeded in obtaining a response.
"Dendra calling, Captain Durk Undis speaking!" he exclaimed eagerly into the transmitter. "I can't go stereo, for lack of power. But here's my identification."
He uttered a series of numbers, evidently a prearranged identification code. Then he rapidly gave the space coordinates of the planet inside the nebula where the wreck lay, and reported the battle and its sequel.
Shorr Kan's ringing voice came from the receiver of the apparatus.
"So Zarth Arn tried to sabotage the mission? I didn't think he was such a fool! I'll send another phantom-cruiser for you at once. Maintain silence until it arrives, for the Empire fleet mustn't suspect you're in their realm."
"I assume that we will not now be continuing the mission to Earth?" said Durk Undis.
"Of course not!" snapped Shorr Kan. "You'll bring Zarth Arn and the girl back to the Cloud. Above all, he mustn't get away to carry any news to Throon!"
Gordon's heart chilled, as he heard. Lianna looked mutely at him.
Durk Undis and the other Cloud-men were jubilant. Gordon heard the fanatic young captain give his orders.
"We'll maintain sentries around the wreck. We don't know what kind of creatures are in these jungles. Linn Kyle, you command the first watch."
Night swept upon the ocher jungles as the coppery sun sank. The dank breath of the forest became stronger.
The night was like one of wondrously glowing moonlight, for the flaring nebula sky dripped strange radiance upon the brooding jungles and the wreck.
Out of the nebula-illuminated jungle there came a little later the echo of a distant cry. It was a throaty, bestial call, but with a creepy human quality in its tones.
Gordon heard Durk Undis' sharp voice. "That must be a beast of some size! Keep your eyes open."
Lianna shivered slightly. "They tell strange tales of some of these lost worlds in the nebula. Few ships ever dare to enter these dust-whorls."
"Ships are going to enter this one, if I can bring it about," muttered Gordon. "We're not going back to the Cloud!"
He had discovered something that gave him a faint hope. The recoil-chair in which he was fettered had suffered like the rest of the wreck from the shock of the crash-landing. The metal frame of the chair was slightly cracked along the arm to which his wrist was fettered.
The crack was a slight one, not affecting the strength of the chair. But it presented a slightly raised and ragged edge. Against this roughened edge, Gordon began secretly rubbing the plastic fetter on his wrist.
Gordon realized the improbability of this small abrasion severing the plastic. But it was at least a possibility, and he kept it up by imperceptible movements until his muscles ached.
Toward morning, they were awakened from doze by a repetition of the weird, throaty call in the distant forests. The next day, and the next, passed as the Cloud-men waited. But on the third night, horror burst upon them.