Eagle one, piloted by Second Controller Tanya Aleksandr and assisted by Chief Computer Expert David Kano, slowed as it came over the grassy clearing it had originally landed on when coming to the jungle strewn planet. The craft started to come in lower as it neared the center of the field so as to let Alphan Chief Astronaut Alan Carter into the ship as he was currently clinging to a rope beneath the Eagle. However, neither Tanya nor Kano was aware that not only was Alan suspended from the rope but also four of the arthropodic creatures that had been fighting them since they had landed on this verdant world.
"Don't land!" Helena yelled from the passenger module. "There are three or four of those things on the rope behind Alan. They'll get him if you go down."
"Great!" shouted back Kano in frustration at the situation. "…they are still shooting at us!"
"We'll keep moving forward until no one is shooting," Tanya advised Kano, and she gently continued to nudge the eagle forward over another part of the jungle that covered the planet.
"I'm thinking we will get out of range faster of their weapons if we gain altitude," Kano calculated. "Hopefully they can pull him up back there."
"Okay," replied Tanya succinctly as she pulled up gently on the control sticks, then added: "Please, can you adjust thruster outputs? It is difficult with damage."
"Will do," said Kano.
As Eagle One vertically ascended once more, the occupants of the passenger section tried their best to get their last team member safe and on-board.
"Come on!" coaxed Helena stretching out her hand to Alan who was just a little bit more than out-of-reach.
"Arghhh!," Alan grunted out. He was too tenacious to quit, but being doggedly chased through a jungle, and having climbed the rope as far as he had, had put him on the edge of exhaustion. Now, with the added G-force of the climbing Eagle, not to mention the wind and down thrust upon him, it was too much to pull against and make rapid progress.
"Sandra!" Helena yelled out over the ambient noise. "Can you shoot them off? Then we can pull him up?"
Sandra reached behind herself to the bulkhead wall where the weapons rack was. She picked out a fresh hand laser then bracing her shoulder against the open door frame. With a two handed grasp she fired off a carefully aimed shot set at the closest alien.
For the first time Sandra got to see the effect the ray gun had on an alien. The energy beam zig-zagged through the entire hard shelled body of the alien, and seemed to cook it from inside, even though the weapon was set only on "stun". It gave of an eerie un-earthly scream and fell off the rope instantly, bumping into the second alien just below it and taking both of them to the surface of the planet.
"Wow!" commented Sandra. She hadn't been expecting so much success from her shooting as well as the power of her weapon. She took careful aim again. There was the loud electric zap of the plasma energy beam and the resultant sizzle of the impact on its alien target.
The third creature spasmed, and fell off from the rope promptly. The fourth creature having witnessed the demise of the first two of its comrades had made itself as small as possible, and although impacted by the falling body of the alien of above it managed to cling onto the rope with all of its legs.
"Yes!" Sandra cheered herself and her sharp shooting. "Three down and one to g-"
But this last alien was not going so easily back down to its planet. Far above any height than it had experienced in its arachnoid life the creature realized that it was either a very long drop for it or being zapped by shot from Sandra's laser. Choosing a third option it decided to climb. And climb it did at a rate way beyond what Alan or any other human could have managed. Like a spider up a line of its own web it ascended rapidly up the rope…towards the still hanging-there Alan Carter.
"Oh, snap!" cried Sandra. She fired, but missed. She fired again, but to no avail. She was now roundly missing the alien with every shot as it was moving frenetically up the many meters of rope.
"Alan!," she shouted urgently. "Climb! Climb!"
Alan, having felt and then seen the horrid multi-limbed creature rapidly ascending toward him had been granted an extra boost of adrenaline to his body. He struggled out against the fatigue of his muscles and pulled the last feet of extended rope length to just below the Eagle's undersection. He reached out a hand to Helena who was laying on the floor with her arm outstretched downward. With a last extensive effort from both parties, Helena made contact with Alan's finger tips then with John holding onto her legs she made a firm grasp of his hand and began to pull.
But it was too late. The desperate alien had reached as far up the rope as it could get, and with Alan the only thing between itself and extermination it penetrated his leg with one of its leading pincer-like appendages. Alan yelped in agony and surprise.
"Aieeeeeeaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!"
