Yes, the Director of Earth might be up there dropping toward certain doom.
Ward leaped to the shortwave transceiver. Simultaneously, it burst into life.
"Sounds as if there's a large ship dropping in towards the mountain. What're your orders?"
"Leave the beam on and get to hell out of there. You've only got about two minutes!"
Silence. Sixty seconds of silence broken only by the receding thunder of the two ships.
Underjets flaring redly, making rosy-hued the fog, the destroyer eased down toward the lights which told its commander that here lay Pali-Vanyi. Down, down on the glide path beam.
Commands spat from the commander's fleshless mouth.
Keying in the rear underjets he zoomed the ship.
The concussion of the unleashed bombs tore across the night, shattering ten thousand windows in nearby Pali-Vanyi. Martians in dehydrated chambers drowned as the heavy fog poured in; Earthmen choked and grew ecstatically oxy-drunk; Venusians leaped in hordes out into their natural element to see the flames licking against the Hump.
"We have destroyed the city!" the Martian commander cried, for in the churning chaos of atomic bomb explosions no details can be seen. "The Leader will bless us. He will--
"_Oh, Zabir, Holy Father of the Deserts, what looms ahead? A mountain here? Oh, Zabir, no! Blast all underjets! Blast!_
The great destroyer's jets flamed futilely. It ground in against the Hump, splitting like a pod. From its halved entrails flames roared forth to further bloody the swirling tortured fog. The sound of the crash reverberated against the range station.
[Illustration: _There was a spatter of brilliance as it crashed into the hill. "Hurry with the warning," he called._]
Simultaneously Ward cut in the microphone and screamed over the beam frequency:
"_Climb, ship of Earth, climb. You're on the Hump!_"
Peering out into the crimson-hued fog to the east, Ward saw spitting jet flames swerving upward, sweeping up and over in an Immelmann turn to safety.
"Ship of Earth," Ward continued, "proceed about fifteen miles west, make a one-hundred-eighty degree turn and come in for a normal landing. The beam courses were reversed because of an emergency; we are now correcting the variations."
"PV, Pali-Vanyi. Notice to all spacemen: Due to an emergency the range was rotated ninety degrees counter-clockwise during the past half hour. Any ships following the western leg into PV should be on the southern leg. Come into the field from the south and swing around for normal landings in accordance with regulations. The beam is now in normal operation."