to the navigation room. Hurriedly I set the controls as I had been shown and pulled over the ignition switch.
With my fingers above the first bunch of firing keys, I looked once more out of the windows. The Captain was pounding across the beach, followed by the others. How he had guessed that there was anything wrong I cannot say. Perhaps his glasses enabled him to see that I was in the control room. Anyway, he meant business.
He passed out of my line of sight and a moment later I pressed the firing keys. The Nuntia trembled, lurched and began to slither forward across the sand. I saw the other two wave despairing arms. It was impossible to tell whether the Captain had managed to scramble aboard or not.
I turned the rising ship towards the sea. Again I looked back, just in time to see the others running towards a form which lay huddled on the sand. Close beside it they stopped and looked up. They shook wild, impotent fists in the direction of my retreating Nuntia.
THE MYSTERIOUS VALLEY
After a few hours I began to grow seriously worried. There must be other land on this planet but I had seen none as yet. I began to have a nasty feeling that it would end with the Nuntia dropping into the sea, condemning me to eventual death by starvation should I survive the fall.
She was not intended to be run singlehanded. In order to economize weight many operations which could easily have been automatic were left to manual control on the assumption that there would always be one or more men on engine room duty. The fuelpressure gauge was dangerously low, but the controls required constant attention, preventing me from getting aft to start the pressure pumps.
I toyed with the idea of fixing the controls while I made a dash to the engine room and back but since it was impossible to find a satisfactory method of holding them the project had to be abandoned. The only thing I could do was to hold on and hope land would show up before it was too late.
In the nick of time it did—a rockbound inhospitablelooking coast but one which for all its ruggedness was fringed to the very edges of the harsh cliffs with a closepressed growth of jungle. There was no shore such as we had used for a landing ground on the island.
The water swirled and frothed about the cliffbottom as the great breakers dashed themselves with a kind of ponderous futility against the mighty retaining wall. No landing there. Above, the jungle stretched back to the horizon, an undulating, unbroken plain of tree tops.
Somewhere there I would have to land, but where? A few miles in from the coast the Nuntia settled it for me. The engines stopped with a splutter. I did not attempt to land her. I jumped for one of the spring acceleration hammocks and trusted that it would stand the shock.
I came out of that rather well. When I examined the wrecked Nuntia, her wings torn off, her nose crumpled like tinfoil, her smooth body now gaping in many places from the force of the impact, I marvelled that anyone could sustain only a few bruises —acquired when the hammock mountings had weakened to breaking point—as I did.
There was one thing certain in a very problematical future— the Nuntia's flying days were done. I had carried out Metallic Industries' instructions to the full and the telescopes of I.C. would nightly be searching the skies for a ship which would never return.
Despite my predicament (or perhaps because I had not fully appreciated it as yet) I was full of a savage joy. I had struck the first of my vengeful blows at the men who had caused my family such misery. The only shadows across my satisfaction was that they could not know that it was I, not Fate, who was against them.
It would be tedious to tell in detail of my activities during the next few weeks. There is nothing surprising about them. My efforts to make the Nuntia habitable—my defences against the larger animals—my cautious hunting expeditions—my search for edible greenstuffs—were such as any man
With my fingers above the first bunch of firing keys, I looked once more out of the windows. The Captain was pounding across the beach, followed by the others. How he had guessed that there was anything wrong I cannot say. Perhaps his glasses enabled him to see that I was in the control room. Anyway, he meant business.
He passed out of my line of sight and a moment later I pressed the firing keys. The Nuntia trembled, lurched and began to slither forward across the sand. I saw the other two wave despairing arms. It was impossible to tell whether the Captain had managed to scramble aboard or not.
I turned the rising ship towards the sea. Again I looked back, just in time to see the others running towards a form which lay huddled on the sand. Close beside it they stopped and looked up. They shook wild, impotent fists in the direction of my retreating Nuntia.
THE MYSTERIOUS VALLEY
After a few hours I began to grow seriously worried. There must be other land on this planet but I had seen none as yet. I began to have a nasty feeling that it would end with the Nuntia dropping into the sea, condemning me to eventual death by starvation should I survive the fall.
She was not intended to be run singlehanded. In order to economize weight many operations which could easily have been automatic were left to manual control on the assumption that there would always be one or more men on engine room duty. The fuelpressure gauge was dangerously low, but the controls required constant attention, preventing me from getting aft to start the pressure pumps.
I toyed with the idea of fixing the controls while I made a dash to the engine room and back but since it was impossible to find a satisfactory method of holding them the project had to be abandoned. The only thing I could do was to hold on and hope land would show up before it was too late.
In the nick of time it did—a rockbound inhospitablelooking coast but one which for all its ruggedness was fringed to the very edges of the harsh cliffs with a closepressed growth of jungle. There was no shore such as we had used for a landing ground on the island.
The water swirled and frothed about the cliffbottom as the great breakers dashed themselves with a kind of ponderous futility against the mighty retaining wall. No landing there. Above, the jungle stretched back to the horizon, an undulating, unbroken plain of tree tops.
Somewhere there I would have to land, but where? A few miles in from the coast the Nuntia settled it for me. The engines stopped with a splutter. I did not attempt to land her. I jumped for one of the spring acceleration hammocks and trusted that it would stand the shock.
I came out of that rather well. When I examined the wrecked Nuntia, her wings torn off, her nose crumpled like tinfoil, her smooth body now gaping in many places from the force of the impact, I marvelled that anyone could sustain only a few bruises —acquired when the hammock mountings had weakened to breaking point—as I did.
There was one thing certain in a very problematical future— the Nuntia's flying days were done. I had carried out Metallic Industries' instructions to the full and the telescopes of I.C. would nightly be searching the skies for a ship which would never return.
Despite my predicament (or perhaps because I had not fully appreciated it as yet) I was full of a savage joy. I had struck the first of my vengeful blows at the men who had caused my family such misery. The only shadows across my satisfaction was that they could not know that it was I, not Fate, who was against them.
It would be tedious to tell in detail of my activities during the next few weeks. There is nothing surprising about them. My efforts to make the Nuntia habitable—my defences against the larger animals—my cautious hunting expeditions—my search for edible greenstuffs—were such as any man
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