TWO
PLANETS CLASH FOR LUNAR TREASURE
Gregg Haljan was aware that there was a certain danger in having the giant spaceship Planetara
stop off at the moon to pick up Grantline's special cargo of moon ore. For that rare metal—invaluable in keeping Earth's technology running—was the target of many greedy eyes.
But nevertheless he hadn't figured on the special twist the clever Martian brigands would use. So when he found both the ship and himself suddenly in their hands, he knew that there was only one way in which he could hope to save that cargo and his own secret—that would be by turning space-pirate himself and paying the BRIGANDS OF THE MOON back in their own interplanetary coin.
Here is a science-fiction classic, as exciting and ingenious as only a master of super-science could write.
When
RAY CUMMINGS took leave of this planet early in 1957, the
world of modern science-fiction lost one of its genuine founding fathers. For the imagination of this talented writer supplied a great many
of the most basic themes upon which the present superstructure of science-fiction
is based. Following the lead of Jules Veme and H. G. Wells, Cummings
successfully bridged the gap between the early dawning of science-fiction in
the last decades of the Nineteenth Century and the full flowering of the field
in these middle decades of the Twentieth.
Born in 1887, Cummings acquired insight into
the vast possibilities of future science by a personal association with Thomas
Alva Edison. During the 1920's and 1930's, he thrilled millions of readers with
his vivid tales of space and time. The infinite and the infinitesimal were all
parts of his canvas, and past, present, and future, the interplanetary and the
extra-dimensional, all made their initial impact on the reading public through
his many stories and novels.
Previously
published in an ACE edition is his novel, The Man
Who Mastered
Time (D-173).
BRIGANDS of the MOON
+ ♦♦♦♦♦
by
RAY CUMMINGS
ACE
BOOKS, INC. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
brigands of
the moon
Copyright, 1931, by Ray Cummings
An Ace Book, by arrangement with Cabrielle
Wilson Cummings
Our
ship, the space-flyer, Planetara, whose home port was Greater New York, carried
mail and passenger traffic to and from both Venus and Mars. Of astronomical
necessity, our flights were irregular. The spring of 2070, with both planets
close to the Earth, we were making two complete round trips. We had just
arrived in Greater New York, one May evening, from Grebhar, Venus Free State.
With only five hours in port here, we were departing the same night at the zero
hour for Ferrok-Shahn, capital of the Martian Union.
We
were no sooner at the landing stage than I found a code flash summoning Dan
Dean and me to Divisional Detective Headquarters. Dan "Snap" Dean
was one of my closest friends. He was electron-radio operator of the Planetara. A small, wiry, red-headed chap, with a quick,
ready laugh and the kind of wit that made everyone like him.
The
summons to Detective-Colonel Halsey's office surprised us. Dean eyed me.
"You
haven't been opening any treasure vaults, have you, Gregg?"
"He wants you,
also," I retorted.
He
laughed. "Well, he can roar at me like a traffic switchman and my private
life will remain my own."
We
could not think why we should be wanted. It was the darkness of mid-evening
when we left the Planetara
for Halsey's office. It was
not a long trip. We went on the upper monorail, descending into the
subterranean city at Park Circle 30.
We
had never been to Halsey's office before. Now we found it to be a gloomy,
vaultlike place in one of the deepest corridors. The door lifted.
"Gregg
Haljan and Daniel Dean."
The guard stood aside. "Come in."
I own that my heart was unduly thumping as we
entere The door dropped behind us. It was a small
blue-lit apartment—a steel-lined room like a vault.
Colonel
Halsey sat at his desk. And the big, heavy-set, florid Captain Carter—our
commander on the Planetara—
was here. That surprised
us: we had not seen him leave the ship.
Halsey
smiled at us gravely. Captain Carter spoke with an ominous calmness: "Sit
down, lads."
We
took the seats. There was an alarming solemnity about this. If I had been
guilty of anything that I could think of, it would have been frightening. But
Halsey's words reassured me.
"It's
about the Grantline Moon Expedition. In spite of our secrecy, the news has
gotten out. We want to know how. Can you tell us?"
Captain Carter's huge bulk—he was about as
tall as I am— towered over us as we sat before Halsey's desk. "If you lads
have told anyone—said anything—let slip the slightest hint about it . . ."
Snap smiled with relief; but he turned solemn
at once. "I haven't. Not a word!" "Nor have II" I declared.
The Grantline Moon Expedition! We had not
thought of that as a reason for this summons. Johnny Grantline was a close
friend of ours. He had organized an exploring expedition to the Moon.
Uninhabited, with its bleak, forbidding, airless, waterless surface, the
Moon—even though so close to the Earth—was seldom visited. No regular ship ever
stopped there. A few exploring parties of recent years had come to grief.
But there was a persistent rumor that upon
the Moon, mineral riches of fabulous wealth were awaiting discovery. The thing
had already caused some interplanetary complications. The aggressive Martians
would be only too glad to explore the Moon. But the United States of the World,
which came into being in 2067, definitely warned them away. The Moon was Earth
territory, we announced, and we would protect it as such.
There
was, nevertheless, a realization by our government, that whatever
riches might be upon the Moon should be seized at once and held by some
reputable Earth Company. And when John Grantline applied, with his father's
wealth and his own scientific record of attainment, the government was glad to
grant him its writ.
The
Grantline Expedition had started six months ago. The Martian government had
acquiesced to our ultimatum, yet brigands have been known to be financed under
cover of a government disavowal. And so our expedition
was kept secret.
My words need give no offence to any Martian
who comes upon them. I refer to the history of our Earth only. The Grantline
Expedition was on the Moon now. No word had come from it. One could not flash helios even in code without letting all the universe know
that explorers were on the Moon. And why they were there, anyone could easily
guess.
And now Colonel Halsey was telling us that
the news was abroadl Captain Carter eyed us closely; his flashing eyes under
the white bushy brows would pry a secret from anyone.
"You're
sure? A girl of Venus, perhaps, with her cursed, seductive lure! A chance word, with you lads befuddled by alcolite?"
We
assured him that we had been careful. By the heavens, I know that I had been.
Not a whisper, even to Snap, of the name Grantline in six months or more.
Captain
Carter added abruptly, "We're insulated here, Halsey?"
"Yes.
Talk as freely as you like. An eavesdropping ray will never get through to
us."
They
questioned us. They were satisfied at last that, though the secret had escaped,
we had not given it away. Hearing it discussed, it occurred to me to wonder why
Carter
was concerned. I was not aware that he knew of Grantline's venture. I learned
now the reason why the Planetara,
upon each of her last
voyages, had managed to pass fairly close to the Moon. It had been arranged
with Grantline that if he wanted help or had any important message, he was to
flash it locally to our passing ship. And this Snap knew, and had never mentioned
it, even to me.
Halsey
was saying, "Well, apparently we can't blame you: but the secret is
out."
Snap
and I regarded each other. What could anyone do? What would anyone dare do?
Captain
Carter said abruptly, "Look here, lads, this is my chance now to talk
plainly to you. Outside, anywhere outside these walls, an eavesdropping ray may
be upon us. You know that? One may never even dare to whisper since that
accursed ray was developed."
Snap
opened his mouth to speak but decided against it My
heart was pounding.
Captain
Carter went on: "I know I can trust you two more than anyone under me on
the Planetara."
"What do you mean by
that?" I demanded. "What—"
He interrupted me. "Just what I said."
Halsey
smiled grimly. "What he means, Haljan, is that things are not always what
they seem these days. One cannot always tell a friend from an enemy. The Planetara is a public vessel. You have—how many is it,
Carter?—thirty or forty passengers this trip tonight?"
"Thirty-eight,"
said Carter.
"There
are thirty-eight people listed for the flight to Ferrok-Shahn tonight,"
Halsey said slowly. "And some may not be what they seem." He raised
his thin dark hand. "We have information . . ." He paused. "I
confess, we know almost nothing—hardly more than enough to alarm us."
Captain
Carter interjected, "I want you and Dean to be on your guard. Once on the Planetara it is difficult for us to talk openly, but be
watchful. I will arrange for us to be doubly armed."
Vague, perturbing words! Halsey said,
"They tell me George
Prince is listed for the
voyage. I am suggesting, Haljan, that you keep your eye especially on him. Your
duties on the Planetara
leave you comparatively
free, don't they?"
"Yes,"
I agreed. With the first and second officers on duty, and the Captain aboard,
my routine was more or less that of an understudy.
I said, "George
Prince? Who is he?"
"A mechanical engineer," said
Halsey. "An underofficial of the Earth Federated
Catalyst Corporation. But he associates with bad
companions—particularly Martians."
I
had never heard of this George Prince, though I was familiar with the Federated
Catalyst Corporation, of course. A semigovemment trust, which
controlled virtually the entire Earth supply of radiactum, the catalyst
mineral which was revolutionizing industry.
"He
was in the Automotive Department," Carter put in. "You've heard of
the Federated Radiactum Motor?"
We
had, of course. It was a recent Earth discovery and invention. An engine of a new type, using radiactum as its fuel.
Snap
demanded, "What in the stars has this got to do with Johnny
Grantline?"
"Much,"
said Halsey quietly, "or perhaps nothing. But George Prince some years ago
mixed in rather unethical transactions. We had him in custody once. He is known
as unusually friendly with several Martians in Greater New York of bad
reputation."
"Well?"
"What you don't know," Halsey said,
"is that Grantline expects to find radiactum on the Moon." We
gasped.
"Exactly,"
said Halsey. "The ill-fated Ballon Expedition thought they had found it on
the Moon, shortly after its merit was discovered. A new type of ore—a lode of
it is there somewhere, without doubt."
He added vehemently, "Do you understand
now why we should be suspicious of this George Prince? He has a criminal
record. He has a thorough technical knowledge of radium ores. He associates
with Martians of bad reputation. A large Martian company has recently developed
a radiactum engine to compete with our Earth motor, There is very little
radiactum available on Mars, and our government will not allow our own supply
to be exported. What do you suppose that company on Mars would pay for a few
tons of richly radioactive radiactum such as Grantline may have found on the
Moon?"
"But," I objected, "That is a
reputable Martian company. It's backed by the government of the Martian Union.
The government of Mars would not dare—"
"Of course not!" Captain Carter exclaimed sardonically. "Not openlyl But if Martian
Brigands had a supply of radiactum I don't imagine where it came from would
make much difference. The Martian company would buy it, and you know that as
well as I dol"
Halsey
added, "And George Prince, my agents inform me, seems to know that
Grantline is on the Moon. Put it all together, lads. Little sparks show the
hidden current.
"More
than that: George Prince knows that we have arranged to have the Planetara stop at the Moon and bring back Grantline's
ore. . . . This is your last voyage this year. You'll hear from Grantline this
time, we're convinced. Hell probably give you the
signal as you pass the Moon on your way out. Coming back, you'll stop at the
Moon and transport whatever radiactum ore Grantline has ready. The Grantline
Flyer is too small for ore transportation."
Halsey's
voice turned grimly sarcastic. "Doesn't it seem queer that George Prince
and a few of his Martian friends happen to be listed as passengers for this
voyage?"
In
the silence that followed, Snap and I regarded each other. Halsey added
abruptly:
"We
had George Prince typed that time we arrested him four years ago. I'll show him
to you."
He snapped open an alcove, and said to
hisjvaiting attended,
"Flash on the type of
George Prince."
Almost
at once, the image glowed on the grids before us. He stood smiling sourly
before us as he repeated the official formula:
"My name is George Prince. I was bom in
Greater New York twenty-five years ago."
I
gazed at this televised image of George Prince. He stood somber in the black
detention uniform, silhouetted sharply against the regulation backdrop of vivid
scarlet. A dark, aliriDst
femininely handsome fellow,
well below medium height—the rod checking him showed five foot four inches.
Slim and slight. Long, wavy black hair, falling about his
ears. A pale, clean-cut, really handsome face, almost
beardless. I regarded it closely. A face that would have
been beautiful without its
masculine touch of heavy black brows and firmly set jaw. His voice as he spoke was low and soft; but at the end, with the
concluding words, "I am innocent!" it flashed into strong
masculinity. His eyes, shaded with long girlish black lashes, by chance met
mine. "I am innocent." His curving sensuous lips drew down into a
grim sneer. . . .
Halsey
snapped a button. He turned back to Snap and me as his attendant drew the
curtain, hiding the black grid.
"Well,
there he is. We have nothing tangible against him now. But 111 say this: he's a clever fellow, one to be afraid of. I would not blare
it from the newscasters' stadium, but if he is hatching any plot, he has been
too clever for my agents!"
We talked for another half-hour, and then
Captain Carter
dismissed us. We left Halsey's office with Carter's
final words
ringing in our ears. "Whatever comes, lads,
remember I trust »
you. . . .
Snap and I decided to walk part of the way
back to the ship. It was barely more than a mile through this subterranean
corridor to where we could get the vertical lift direct to the landing stage.
We started off on the lower level. Once
outside the insulation of Halsey's office we did not dare talk of this thing.
Not only electrical ears, but every possible eavesdropping device might be upon
us. The corridor was two hundred feet or more below the ground level. At this
hour of the night the business section was comparatively deserted. The stores
and office arcades were all closed.
Our
footfall echoed on the metal grids as we hurried a-long. I felt depressed and
oppressed. As though prying eyes were upon me. We walked for a time in silence,
each of us busy with memory of what had transpired af
Halsey's office.
Suddenly
Snap gripped me. "What's that?" "Where?"
I whispered.
We stopped at a comer. An entryway was here. Snap pulled
me into it. I could feel him quivering with excitement.
"What is it?" I
demanded in a whisper.
"We're being followed.
Did you hear anything?"
"No!"
Yet I thought now that I could hear something. Vague
footfalls. A rustling. And a microscopic whine, as though some device were within range of us.
Snap
was fumbling in his pocket. "Wait! I've got a pair of low-scale
detectors."
He
put the little grids against his ears. I could hear the sharp intake of his
breath. Then he seized me, pulled me down to the metal floor of the entryway.
"Back,
Gregg! Get backl" I could barely hear his whisper. We crouched as far back
into the doorway as we could get. I was armed. My official permit for the
carrying of the pencil heat ray allowed me always to have it with me. I drew
it now. But there was nothing to shoot at. I felt Snap clamping the grids on my
ears. And now I heard something! An intensification of the vague footsteps I
had thought I heard before.
There
was something following us! Something out in the corridor there now! The
corridor was dim, but plainly visible, and as far as I could see it was empty.
But there was something there. Something invisible! I could hear it moving. Creeping toward us. I pulled the grids off my ears.
Snap murmured, "You've
got a local phone?"
"Yes. I'll get them to
give us the street glare!"
I
pressed the danger signal, giving our location to the operator. In a second we
got the light. The street in all this
neighborhood burst into a brilliant actinic glare. The thing menacing us was
revealed! A figure in a black cloak, crouching
thirty feet away across the corridor.
Snap
was unarmed but he flung his hands out menacingly. The figure, which may
perhaps not have been aware of our city safeguard, was taken wholly by
surprise. A human figure, seven feet tall at the least, and therefore, I
judged, a Martian man. The black cloak covered his head. He took a step toward
us, hesitated, and then turned in confusion.
Snap's
shrill voice was bringing help. The whine of a street guard's alarm whistle nearby sounded.
The figure was making off! My pencil ray was in my hand and I pressed its
switch. The tiny heat ray stabbed through the air, but I missed. The figure
stumbled but did not fall. I saw a bare gray arm come from the cloak, flung up
to maintain its balance. Or perhaps my pencil ray had seared his arm. The gray-skinned arm of a Martian.
Snap
was shouting, "Give him another!" But the figure passed beyond the
actinic glare and vanished.
We
were detained in the turmoil of the corridor for ten minutes or more with
official explanations. Then a message from Halsey released us. The Martian who
had been following us in his invisible cloak was never caught.
We
escaped from the crowd at last and made our way back to the Planetara, where the passengers were already assembling
for the outward Martian voyage.
II
I stood
on the turret balcony of
the Planetara with Captain
Carter
and Dr. Frank, the ship surgeon, watching the arriving passengers. It was
close to the zero hour; the level of the stage was a turmoil
of confusion. The escalators, with the last of the freight aboard, were folded back.
But the stage was jammed with incoming passenger luggage, the interplanatery
customs and tax officials with their x-ray and zed-ray paraphanalia and the
passengers themselves, lined up for the export inspection.
At
this height, the city lights lay spread in a glare of blue and yellow beneath
us. The individual local planes came dropping like
birds to our stage. Thirty-eight passengers to Mars for this voyage, but that
accursed desire of every friend and relative to speed the departing voyager
brought a hundred or more extra people to crowd our girders and add to
everybody's troubles.
Carter
was too absorbed in his duties to stay with us long. But here in the turret Dr.
Frank and I found ourselves at the moment with nothing
much to do but watch.
Dr.
Frank was a thin, dark, rather smallish man of fifty, trim in his blue and
white uniform. I knew him well: we had made several flights together. An
American—I fancy of Jewish ancestry. A likable man, and a
skillful doctor and surgeon. He and I had always been good friends.
"Crowded,"
he said. "Johnson says thirty-eight. I hope they're experienced travelers.
This pressure sickness is a rotten nuisance—keeps me dashing around all night
assuring frightened women they're not going to die. Last voyage, coming out of
the Venus atmosphere—"
He plunged into a lugubrious account of his
troubles with space sick voyagers. But I was in no mood to listen to him. My
gaze was down on the spider incline, up which, over the bend of the ship's
sleek, silvery body, the passengers and their friends were coming in little
groups. The upper deck was already jammed with them.
The
Planetara, as flyers go, was not a large vessel. Cylindrical of
body, forty feet maximum beam, and two hundred and seventy-five feet in length.
The passenger superstructure
—no
more than a hundred feet long—was set amidships. A narrow deck, metallically
enclosed, and with large bull's-eye windows, encircled the superstructure. Some
of the cabins opened directly onto the deck. Others had doors to the interior corridors.
There were half a dozen small but luxurious public rooms.
The rest of the vessel was given to freight
storage and the mechanism and control compartments. Forward of the passenger
structure the deck level continued under the cylindrical dome roof to the bow.
The forward watch tower observatory was here, officers' cabins, Captain
Carter's navigating rooms and Dr. Frank's office. Similarly, under the stem
dome, was the stem watch tower and a series of power
compartments.
Above
the superstructure a confusion of spider bridges, ladders and balconies were
laced like a metal network. The turret in which Dr. Frank and I now stood was
perched here. Fifty feet away, like a bird's nest, Snap's instrument room stood
clinging to the metal bridge. The dome roof, with the glassite windows rolled
back now, rose in a mound peak to cover the highest middle portion of the
vessel.
Below,
in the main hull, blue lit metal corridors ran the entire length of the ship.
Freight storage compartments; gravity control rooms; the air renewal system;
heater and ventilators and pressure mechanisms—all were located there. And the
kitchens, stewards' compartments, and the living quarters of the crew. We
carried a crew of sixteen, this voyage, exclusive of the navigating officers,
the purser, Snap Dean, and Dr. Frank.
The
passengers coming aboard seemed a fair respresenta-tion of what we usually had
for the outward voyage to Fer-rok-Shahn. Most were Earth people—and returning
Martians. Dr. Frank pointed out one. A huge Martian in a grey
cloak. A seven foot fellow.
"His
name is Set Miko," Dr. Frank remarked. "Ever
heard of him?"
"No," I said. "Should I?"
"Well—"
The doctor suddenly checked himself, as though
he
were sorry he had spoken.
"I
never heard of him," I repeated slowly. An awkward silence fell between
us.
There
were a few Venus passengers. I saw one of them presendy coming up the incline,
and recognized her. A girl traveling alone. We had
brought her from Grebhar, last voyage but one. I remembered her. An alluring sort of girl, as most of them are. Her name was
Venza. She spoke English well. A singer and dancer who had
been imported to Greater New York to fill some theatrical engagement.
She'd made quite a hit on the Great White Way.
She
came up the incline with the carrier ahead of her. Gazing up, she saw Dr. Frank
and me at the turret window, smiled and waved her white arm in greeting.
Dr.
Frank laughed. "By the gods of the airways, there's Alta Venzal You saw that look, Gregg? That was for me, not you."
"Reasonable
enough," I retorted. "But I doubt it—the Venza is nothing if not
impartial."
I
wondered what could be taking Venza now to Mars. I was glad to see her. She was
diverting. Educated. Well traveled. Spoke English with
a colloquial, theatrical manner more characteristic of Greater New York than of
Venus. And for all her light banter, I would rather put my trust in her than
any Venus girl I had ever met.
The
hum of the departing siren was sounding. Friends and relatives of the
passengers were crowding the exit incline. The deck was clearing. I had not
seen George Prince come aboard. And then I thought I saw him down on the
landing stage, just arrived from a private tube car. A small,
slight figure. The customs men were around him. I could only see his
head and shoulders. Pale, girlishly handsome face; long,
black hair to the base of his neck. He was bare-headed, with the hood of
his traveling cloak pushed back.
I stared, and I saw that Dr. Frank was also
gazing down. But neither of us spoke.
Then I said upon impulse, "Suppose we go
down to the deck, Doctor?"
He
acquiesced. We descended to the lower room of the turret and clambered down the
spider ladder to the upper deck level. The head of the arriving incline was
near us. Preceded by two carriers who were littered with hand luggage, George
Prince was coming up the incline. He was closer now. I recognized him from the
type we had seen in Halsey's office.
And
then, with a shock, I saw it was not so. This was a girl coming aboard. An arc
light over the incline showed her clearly when she was half way up. A girl with
her hood pushed back; her face framed in thick black hair. I saw now it was not
a man's cut of hair; but long braids coiled up under the dangling hood.
Dr.
Frank must have remarked my amazed expression. "Little beauty, isn't
she?"
"Who is she?"
We
were standing back against the wall of the superstructure. A passenger was
near us—the Martian whom Dr. Frank had called Miko. He was loitering here,
quite evidendy watching this girl come aboard. But as I glanced at him, he
looked away and casually sauntered off.
The
girl came up and reached the deck. "I am in A22," she told the
carrier. "My brother came aboard a couple of hours ago."
Dr. Frank answered my whisper. "That's
Anita Prince."
She
was passing quite close to us on the deck, following the carrier, when she
stumbled and very nearly fell. I was nearest to her. I leaped forward and
caught her as she nearly went down.
With
my arm about her, I raised her up and set her upon her feet again. She had
twisted her ankle. She balanced herself upon it. The pain of it eased up in a
moment.
"I'm all right-thank
you!"
In
the dimness of the blue lit deck I met her eyes. I was holding her with my
encircling arm. She was small and soft against me. Her face, framed in the
thick, black hair, smiled up at me. Small, oval
face-beautiful—yet firm of chin, and stamped with the mark of its own
individuality. No empty-headed beauty, this.
"I'm all right, thank
you very much—"
I
became conscious that I had not released her. I felt her hands pushing at me.
And then it seemed that for an instant she yielded and was clinging. And I met
her startled upflung gaze. Eyes like a purple night with the sheen of misty
starlight in them.
I
heard myself murmuring, "I beg your pardon. Yes, of course!" I
released her.
She
thanked me again and followed the carriers along the deck. She was limping
slightly.
An
instant she had clung to me. A brief flash of something, from her eyes to
mine—from mine back to hers. The poets write that love can be bom of such a
glance. The first meeting, across all the barriers of which love springs unsought,
unbidden—defiant, sometimes. And the troubadours of old would sing: "A
fleering glance; a touch; two wildly beating hearts—and love was
bom."
I think, with Anita and me,
it must have been like that.
I
stood, gazing after her, unconscious of Dr. Frank, who was watching me with his
quizzical smile. And presently, no more than a quarter beyond
the zero hour, the Planetara
got away. With the dome windows battened tightly, we
lifted from the landing stage and soared over the glowing city. The
phosphorescence of the electronic tubes was like a comet's tail behind us as we
slid upward.
Ill
At
six a.m., Earth Eastern time, which we were still carrying, Snap Dean and I were
alone in his instrument room, perched in the network over the Planetara s deck. The bulge of the dome enclosed us; it
rounded like a great observatory window some twenty feet above the ceiling of
this little metal cubbyhole.
The
Planetara was still in Earth's shadow. The firmament
—black, interstellar space with its blazing white, red and yellow stars—lay
spread around us. The Moon, with nearly all its disc illumined, hung, a great
silver ball, over our bow quarter. Behind it, to one side, Mars floated like
the red tip of a smoldering cigar in the blackness. The Earth, behind our
stem, was dimly, redly visible—a giant sphere, etched with the configurations
of its oceans and continents. Upon one limb a touch of sunlight hung on the
mountain tops with a crescent red-yellow sheen.
And
then we plunged from the cone shadow. The Sun with the leaping corona, burst
through the blackness behind us. The Earth lighted into a huge, thin crescent
with hooked Cusps.
To
Snap and me, the glories of the heavens were too familiar to be remarked. And
upon this voyage particularly we were in no mood to consider them. I had been
in the radio room several hours. When the Planetara started, and my few routine duties were over,
I could think of nothing save Halsey's and Carter's admonition: "Be on
your guard. And particularly—watch George Prince."
I
had not seen George Prince. But I had seen his sister, whom Carter and Halsey
had not bothered to mention. My heart was still pounding with the memory.
Dr.
Frank evidently was having little trouble with pressure sick passengers. The Planetara's equalizers were fairly efficient. Prowling through the silent metal
lounges and passages, I went to the door of A22. It was on the deck level,
in a tiny transverse passage just off the main lounging room. Its name-grid
glowed with the letters: Anita Prince. I stood in my short white
trousers and white silk shirt, like a cabin steward staring. Anita Prince! I had never heard the name
until this night. But there was magic music in it now, as I murmured it.
She was here, doubtless asleep, behind this
small metal door. It seemed as though that little oval grid were the gateway to
a fairyland of my dreams.
I
turned away. Thought of the Grantline Moon Expedition stabbed at me. George Prince—Anita's
brother—he whom I had been warned to watch. This renegade—associate of dubious
Martians, plotting God knows what.
I
saw, upon the adjoining door, A20, George Prince. I listened.
In the humming stillness of the ship's interior there was no sound from these
cabins. A20 was without windows, I knew. But Anita's room had a window and a
door which gave upon the deck. I went through the lounge, out its arch and
walked the deck length. The deck door and window of A22 were closed and dark.
The
deck was dim with white starlight from the side ports. Chairs were here but
they were all empty. From the bow windows of the arching dome a flood of
moonlight threw long, slanting shadows down the deck. At the comer where the
superstructure ended, I thought I saw a figure lurking as though watching me. I
went that way, but it vanished.
I
turned the comer, went the width of the ship to the other side. There was no
one in sight save the observer on his spider bridge, high in the bow network,
and the second officer, on duty on the turret balcony almost directly over me.
As I stood and listened, I suddenly heard
footsteps. From the direction of the bow a figure came. Purser
Johnson. He greeted me. "Cooling off,
Gregg?" "Yes," I said.
He passed me and went into the smoking room
door nearby.
I stood a moment at one of the deck windows,
gazing at the stars; and for no reason at all I realized I was tense. Johnson was a great one for his regular sleep—it was wholly
unlike him to be roaming about the ship at such an hour. Had he been watching
me? I told myself it was nonsense. I was suspicious of everyone, everything,
this voyage.
I heard another step. Captain Carter appeared
from his chart room which stood in the center of the narrowing open deck space near the bow. I joined him at
once. "Who was that?" he half whispered. "Johnson."
"Oh,
yes." He fumbled in his uniform; his gaze swept the moonlit deck.
"Gregg—take this." He handed me a small
metal box. I stuffed it at once into my shirt.
"An
insulator," he added swiftly. "Snap is in his office. Take it to him,
Gregg. Stay with him—you'll have a measure of security—and you can help him to
make the photographs." He was barely whispering. "I won't be with
you—no use making it look as though we were doing
anything unusual. If your graphs show anything—or if Snap picks up any message—bring
it to me." He added
aloud, "Well, it will be cool enough presently, Gregg."
He sauntered away toward
his chart room.
"By heavens, what a relief!" Snap murmured as the current went on. We
had wired his cubby with the insulator; within its barrage we could at least
talk with a degree of freedom.
"You've seen George
Prince, Gregg?"
"No.
He's assigned A20. But I saw his sister. Snap, no one ever
mentioned—"
Snap had heard of her, but he hadn't known
that she was listed for this voyage. "A real beauty, so I've heard. Accursed shame for a decent girl to have a brother like that."
I could agree with him there. . . .
It
was now six a.m. Snap had been busy all night with routine
cosmos-radios from the Earth, following our departure. He had a pile of them
beside him.
"Nothing queer
looking?" I suggested.
"No. Not a
thing."
We
were at this time no more than sixty-five thousand miles from the Moon's
surface. The Planetara
presently would swing upon
her direct course for Mars. There was nothing which could cause passenger
comment in this close passing of the Moon; normally we used the satellite's
attraction to give us additional starting speed.
It
was now or never that a message would come from Grantline. He was supposed to
be upon the Earthward side of the Moon. While Snap had
rushed through with his routine, I searched the Moon's surface with our glass.
But
there was nothing. Copernicus and Kepler lay in full sunlight. The heights of
the lunar mountains, the depths of the barren, empty seas were etched black and
white, clear and clean. Grim, forbidding desolation, this
unchanging Moon. In romance, moonlight may shimmer and sparkle to light
a lover's smile; but the reality of the Moon is cold and bleak. There was
nothing to show my prying eyes where the intrepid Grantline might be.
"Nothing at all,
Snap."
And
Snap's instruments, attuned for an hour now to pick up the faintest signal,
were motionless.
"If
he has concentrated any
appreciable amount of ore," said Snap. "We should get an impulse from
its rays."
But
our receiving shield was dark, untouched. Our mirror grid gave the magnified
images; the spectro, with its wave length selection, pictured the mountain
levels and slowly descended into the deepest seas.
There was nothing.
Yet in those Moon caverns—a million million
recesses amid the crags of that tumbled, barren surface—the pin point of
movement which might have been Grantline's expedition could so easily be
hiding! Could he have the ore insulated, fearing its rays would betray its
presence to hostile watchers?
Or might disaster have come to him? He might
not be on this hemisphere of the Moon at all. . . .
My
imagination, sharpened by fancy of a lurking menace which seemed everywhere
about the Planetara
this voyage, ran rife with
fears for Johnny Grantline. He had promised to communicate this voyage. It was
now, or perhaps never.
Six-thirty
came and passed. We were well beyond the Earth's shadow now. The firmament
blazed with its vivid glories; the Sun behind us was a ball of yellow-red
leaping flames. The Earth hung, a huge, dull red half
sphere.
We
were within forty thousand miles of the Moon. A giant white ball—all of its disc visible to the naked eye. It poised over the
bow, and presently, as the Planetara swung
upon its course for Mars, it shifted sidewise. The light of it glared white and
dazzling in our windows.
Snap, with his habitual red celluloid
eyeshade shoved high on his forehead, worked over our instruments.
"Gregg!"
The
receiving shield was glowing a trifle. Rays weTe bombarding it! It glowed, gleamed phosphorescent, and the audible
recorder began sounding its tiny tinkling murmurs.
Gamma
rays! Snap sprang to the dials. The direction and strength were soon obvious. A
richly radioactive ore body was concentrated upon this hemisphere of the Moon!
It was unmistakable.
"He's got it, Gregg!
He's-"
The tiny grids began quivering. Snap exclaimed triumphantly, "Here he
comes! By God, the message at last!" Snap decoded
it.
Success!
Stop for ore on your return voyage. Will give you our
location later. Success beyond wildest hopes.
Snap murmured, "That's
all. He's got the ore!"
We were sitting in darkness, and abruptly I
became aware that across our open window, where the insulation barrage was
flung, the air was faintly hissing. An interference
there! I saw a tiny swirl of purple sparks. Someone —some hostile ray from the
deck beneath us, or from the spider bridge that led to our little room—someone
out there was trying to pry inl
Snap impulsively reached for the absorbers to
let in the outside light. But I checked him.
"Wait!" I cut off our barrage,
opened our door and stepped to the narrow metal bridge.
"You
stay there, Snap I"
I whispered. Then I added
aloud, "Well, Snap, I'm going to bed. Glad you've cleaned up that batch of
work."
I
banged the door upon him. The lacework of metal bridges seemed empty. I gazed
up to the dome, and forward and aft. Twenty feet beneath me was the metal roof
of the cabin superstructure. Below it, both sides of the deck showed. All
patched with moonlight.
No one visible down there. I descended a ladder. The deck was empty. But in the silence something
was moving! Footsteps moving away from me down the deck! I followed; and
suddenly I was running. Chasing something I could hear, but could not see. It
turned into the smoking room.
I burst in. And a real sound smothered the
phantom. Johnson the purser
was sitting here alone in
the dimness. He was smoking. I noticed that his cigar held a long frail ash. It
could not have been him I was chasing. He was sitting there quite calmly. A thick-necked, heavy fellow, easily out of breath. But he
was breathing calmly now.
He
sat up in amazement at my wild-eyed appearance, and the ash jarred from his
cigar.
"Gregg! What in the
devil-"
I
tried to grin. "I'm on my way to bed—worked all night helping Snap."
I went past him, out the door into the main
corridor. It was the only way the invisible prowler could have gone. But I was
too late now—I could hear nothing. I dashed forward into the main lounge. It
was empty, dim and silent, a silence broken presendy by a faint click, a
stateroom door hastily closing. I swung and found myself in a tiny transverse
passage. The twin doors of A20 and A22 were before me.
The invsible eavesdropper had gone into one
of these rooms! I listened at each of the panels, but there was only silence
within.
The interior of the ship was suddenly singing
with the steward's siren—the call to awaken the passengers. It startled me. I
moved swiftly away. But as the siren shut off, in the silence I heard a soft,
musical voice:
"Wake up, Anita,
I think that's the breakfast call."
And her answer, "All right,
George."
IV
I did
not appear at that
morning meal. I was exhausted and drugged with lack of sleep. I had a moment
with Snap to tell him what had occurred. Then I sought out Carter. He had his
little chart room insulated. And we were cautious. I told him what Snap and I
had learned: the rays from the Moon, proving that Grantline had concentrated a
considerable ore body. I also told him of Grantline's message.
"Well
stop on the way back, as he directs, Gregg." He bent closer to me.
"At Ferrok-Shahn I'm going to bring back a cordon of Interplanetary
Police. The secret will be out, of course, when we stop at the Moon. We have no
right, even now, to be flying this vessel as unguarded as it is."
He
was very solemn. And he was grim when I told him of the invisible eavesdropper.
"You
think he overheard Grantline's message? Who was it? You seem to feel it was
George Prince?"
I
told him I was convinced the prowler went into A20. When I mentioned the
purser, who seemed to have been watching me earlier in the night, and again was
sitting in the smoking room when the eavesdropper fled past, Carter looked
startled.
"Johnson is all right, Gregg."
"Does he know anything about this
Grantline affair?" "No—no," said Carter hastily. "You
haven't mentioned it, have you?"
"Of course I haven't. But why didn't
Johnson hear that eavesdropper? And what was he doing there, anyway, at that
hour of the morning?"
The Captain ignored my questions. "I'm
going to have that Prince suite searched—we can't be too careful. ... Go to bed, Gregg, you need rest."
I
went to my cabin. It was located aft, on the stem deck, near the stem watch
tower. A small metal room with a chair, a desk and a bunk.
I made sure no one was in it. I sealed the lattice grill and the door, set the
alarm trigger against any opening of them, and went to bed.
The
siren for the midday meal awakened me. I had slept heavily. I felt refreshed.
I found the passengers already assembled at my
table when I arrived in the dining salon. It was a low vaulted metal room with
blue and yellow tube lights. At its sides the oval windows showed the deck,
with its ports on the dome side, through which a vista of the starry firmament was visible. We
were well on our course
to Mars. The Moon had dwindled to a pin point of light beside the crescent
Earth. And behind them our Sun blazed, visually the largest orb in the heavens.
It was some sixty-eight million miles from the Earth to Mars. A flight, ordinarily, of some ten days.
There
were five tables in the dining salon, each with eight seats. Snap and I had one
of the tables. We sat at the ends, with the passengers on each of the sides.
Snap
was in his seat when I arrived. He eyed me down the length of the table. In a
gay mood, he introduced me to the three men already seated:
"This
is our third officer, Gregg Haljan. Big, handsome fellow, isn't he? And as pleasant as he is good-looking. Gregg, this is Sero Ob
Hahn."
I met the keen, somber gaze of a Venus man of
middle age. A small, slim graceful man, with sleek black
hair. His pointed face, accentuated by the pointed beard, was pallid. He
wore a white and purple robe; upon his breast was a huge platinum ornament, a
device like a star and cross entwined.
"I am happy to meet you, sir." His
voice was soft and deep.
"Ob Hahn," I repeated. "I
should have heard of you, no doubt, but—"
A
smile plucked at his thin, gray lips. "That is an error of mine, not
yours. My mission is that all the universe shall hear
of me."
"He's
preaching the religion of the Venus mystics," Snap explained.
"And
this enlightened gentleman," said Ob Hahn ironically, nodding to the man,
"has just termed it fetishism. The ignorance—"
"Oh,
I sayl" protested the man at Ob Hahn's side. "I mean, you seem to
think I meant something offensive. And as a matter of fact—"
"We've
an argument, Gregg," laughed Snap. "This is Sir Arthur Coniston, an
English gentleman, lecturer and sky-trotter—that is, he will be a sky-trotter;
he tells us he plans a number of voyages."
The
tall Englishman, in his white linen suit, bowed acknowledgement. "My compliments, Mr. Haljan. I hope you have no strong
religious convictions, else we will make your table here very miserable!"
The
third passenger had evidently kept out of the argument. Snap introduced him as
Ranee Rankin. An American —a quiet, blond fellow of
thirty-five or forty.
I ordered my breakfast and
let the argument go on.
"Won't
make me miserable," said Snap. "I love an argument. You said, Sir
Arthur—"
"I
mean to say, I think I said too much. Mr. Rankin, you are more
diplomatic."
Rankin laughed. "I am a magician,"
he said to me. "A theatrical entertainer. I deal
in tricks—how to fool an audience—" His keen, amused gaze was on Ob Hahn.
"This gentleman from Venus and I have too much in common to argue."
"A
nasty one!" the Englishman exclaimed. "By Jove!
Really, Mr. Rankin, you're a bit too cruel!"
I could see we were doomed
to have turbulent meals this voyage. I like to eat in quiet; arguing passengers
always annoy me. There were still three seats vacant at our table; I wondered
who would occupy them. I soon learned the answer—for one seat at least. Rankin
said calmly:
"Where
is the little Venus girl this meal?" His glance went to the empty seat at
my right hand. "The Venza, isn't that her name? She and I are destined for
the same theater in Ferrok-Shahn."
So
Venza was to sit beside me. It was good news. Ten days of a religious argument
three times a day would be intolerable. But the cheerful Venza would help.
"She
never eats the midday meal," said Snap. "She's on the deck, having
orange juice. I guess it's the old gag about diet, eh?"
My
attention wandered about the salon. Most of the seats were occupied. At the
Captain's table I saw the objects of my search: George Prince and his sister,
one on each side of the Captain. I saw George Prince in the life now as a man
who looked hardly twenty-five. He was at this moment evidently in a gay mood.
His clean-cut, handsome profile, with its poetic dark curls, was turned toward
me. There seemed little of the villain about him.
And
I saw Anita Prince now as a dark-haired, black-eyed little beauty, in feature
resembling her brother very strongly. She presently finished her meal. She
rose, with him after her. She was dressed in Earth-fashion—white blouse and
dark jacket, wide, knee-length trousers of gray, with a red sash her only touch
of color. She went past me, flashed me a smile.
My heart was pounding. I answered her
greeting, and met George Prince's casual gaze. He, too, smiled, as though to
signify that his sister had told him of the service I had done her. Or
was his smile an ironical memory of how he had eluded me this morning when I
chased him?
I gazed after his small white-suited figure
as he followed Anita from the salon. And flunking of her, I prayed that Carter
and Halsey might be wrong. Whatever plotting against the Grantline Expedition might
be going on, I hoped that George Prince was innocent of it. Yet I knew in my
heart it was a futile hope. Prince had been the eavesdropper outside the radio
room. I could not doubt it. But that his sister must be ignorant of what he was
doing, I was sure.
My
attention was brought suddenly back to the reality of our table. I heard Ob
Hahn's silky voice. "We passed quite close to the Moon last night, Mr.
Dean."
"Yes," said Snap. "We did,
didn't we? Always do—it's a technical problem of the exigencies of interstellar
navigation. Explain it to them, Gregg. You're an expert."
I
waved it away with a laugh. There was a brief silence. I could not help
noticing Sir Arthur Coniston's queer look, and I have never seen so keen a
glance as Ranee Rankin shot at me. Were all three people aware of Grantline's
treasure on the Moon? It suddenly seemed so. I wished fervently at that instant
that the ten days of this voyage were over. Captain Carter was right. Coming
back we should have a cordon of Interplanetary Police aboard.
Sir
Arthur broke the awkward silence. "Magnificent sight, the Moon, from so
close—though I was too much afraid of pressure sickness to be up to see
it."
I
had nearly finished my hasty meal when another incident shocked me. The two
other passengers at our table came in and took their seats. A
Martian girl and man. The girl had the seat at my left, with the man
beside her. All Martians are tall. The girl was about my own height. That is,
six feet, two inches. The man was seven feet or more. Both wore the Martian
outer robe. The girl flung hers back. Her limbs were encased in pseudomail. She
looked, as all Martians like to look, a very warlike Amazon. But she was a
pretty girl. She smiled at me with a keen-eyed, direct gaze.
"Mr.
Dean said at breakfast that you were big and handsome. You are."
They were brother and
sister, these Martians. Snap intraduced them as Set Miko and Setta
Moa-the Martian
equivalent of
Mr. and Miss.
This
Miko was, from our Earth standards, a tremendous, brawny giant. Not spindly,
like most Martians, this fellow, for all his seven feet in height was almost
heavy set. He wore a plaited leather jerkin beneath his robe and knee pants of
leather out of which his lower legs showed as gray, hairy pillars of strength.
He had come into the salon with a swagger, his sword ornament clanking.
"A
pleasant voyage so far," he said to me as he started his meal. His voice
had the heavy, throaty rasp characteristic of the Martian. He spoke perfect
English—both Martians and Venus people are by heritage extraordinary linguists.
Miko and his sister Moa, had a touch of Martian accent, worn almost away by
living for some years in Greater New York.
The shock to me came within a few minutes.
Miko, absorbed in attacking his meal, inadvertently pushed back his robe to
bare his forearm. An instant only, then it dropped to his wrist. But in that
instant I had seen, upon the gray flesh, a thin sear turned red. A very recent
burn—as though a pencil ray of heat had caught his arm.
My
mind flung back. Only last night in the city corridor, Snap
and I had been followed by a Martian. I had shot at him with a heat ray: I
thought I had hit him on the arm. Was this the mysterious Martian who had
followed us from Halsey's office?
V
Shortly
after that midday meal I
encountered Venza sitting on the starlit deck. I had been in the bow
observatory; taken my routine castings of our position and worked them out. I
was, I think, of the Tlanetards
officers the most expert
handler of the mathematical calculators. The locating of our position and
charring the trajectory of our course was,
31
id it
under
ordinary circumstances, about all I had to do. And it took only a few minutes
every twelve hours.
I had a moment with Carter in the isolation of his chart
room.
"This
voyage I Greg, I'm getting like you—too fanciful.
We've a normal group of passengers apparently, but I don't like the look of any
of them. That Ob Hahn, at your table—" "Snaky looking fellow," I commented. "He and the Englishman are
great on arguments. Did you have Princes' cabin searched?"
My breath hung on his answer.
"Yes.
Nothing unusual among his things. We searched both his
room and his sister's."
I did not follow that up. Instead I told him
about the bum on Miko's thick arm.
He
stared. "I wish we were at Ferrok-Shahn. Gregg, tonight when the
passengers are asleep, come here to me. Snap will be
here, and Dr. Frank. We can trust him."
"He knows about—about
the Grantline treasure?"
"Yes.
And so do Balch and Blackstone." Balch and Black-stone were our first and
second officers.
"Well
all meet here, Gregg—say about the zero hour. We must take some
precautions."
Then he dismissed me.
I found Venza seated alone in a starlit
corner of the secluded deck. A porthole, with the black heavens and the
blazing stars was before her. There was an empty seat nearby.
She greeted me with the Venus form of
jocular, intimate greeting:
"Hola-lo, Gregg! Sit here with me. I
have been wondering when you would come after me."
I
sat down beside her. "Why are you going to Mars, Venza? I'm glad to see
you."
"Many thanks. But I am glad to see you,
Gregg. So handsome a man. Do you know, from Venus to
Earth, and I have no doubt on all of Mars, no man will please me more."
"Glib tongue," I laughed. "Bom to flatter
the male—every
girl of your world."
And I
added seriously, "You don't answer
my question. What takes
you to
Mars?"
"Contract. By
the stars,
what else? Of course, a
chance to make a voyage with
you—"
"Don't be
silly, Venza."
I enjoyed her.
I gazed
at her
small, slim figure reclining in the deck chair. Her
long, gray robe parted by
design, I have no doubt, to
display her shapely, satin-sheathed legs. Her black hair was
coiled in a heavy knot
at the
back of her neck; her carmine
lips were parted with a
mocking, alluring smile. The
exotic perfume of her enveloped
me.
-She glanced at me
sidewise from beneath her sweeping
black lashes.
"Be
serious," I added.
"I am serious.
Sober. Intoxicated by you, but sober." I said,
"What sort of a contract?"
"A theater in Ferrok-Shahn. Good
money, Gregg. Ill be there a
year." She sat up to
face me. "There's a fellow
here on the Planetara,
Ranee Rankin,
he calls
himself. At our
table—a big, good-looking blond American. He says
he is
a magician. Ever hear of him?"
"That's what
he told
me. No,
I never
heard of him."
"Nor did
I. And
I thought
I had
heard of everyone of importance.
He is
listed for the same theater
I am.
Nice sort of fellow."
She paused,
then added, "If
he's a professional entertainer, I'm a motor oiler."
It startled
me. "Why
do you
say that?"
Instinctively my gaze
swept the deck. An Earth
woman and child and a small
Venus man were in sight,
but not
within earshot.
"Why do
you look
so furtive?"
she retorted.
"Gregg, there's something strange
about this voyage. I'm no fooL
nor you, so you must know
it as
well as I do."
"Ranee Rankin—"
I prompted.
She leaned
closer toward me. "He could
fool you. But not me—I've known
too many
magicians." She grinned.
"I challenged him to trick me. You should have
seen him evading!"
"Do you know Ob
Hahn?" I interrupted.
She
shook her head. "Never heard of him. But he told
me plenty at breakfast. By Satan, what a flow of words that devil driver can
muster! He and the Englishman don't mesh very well, do they?"
She
stared at me. I had not answered her grin; my mind was too busy with queer
fancies. Halsey's words: "Things are not always what they seem—" Were
these passengers mas-queraders? Were they put here by
George Prince? And then I thought of Miko the Martian, and the burn upon his
arm.
"Come
back, Gregg! Don't go wandering off like that!" She dropped her voice to a
whisper. "Ill be serious. I want to know what in
hell is going on aboard this ship. I'm a woman and I'm curious. You tell
me."
"What do you
mean?" I parried.
"I
mean a lot of things. What we've just been talking a-bout. And what was the
excitement you were in just before breakfast this morning?"
"Excitement?"
"Gregg,
you may trust me." For the first time she was wholly serious. Her gaze
made sure no one was within hearing. She put her hand on my arm. I could barely
hear her whisper: "I know they might have a ray upon us. Ill be careful."
"They?"
"Anyone. Something's going on. You know it. You are
in it. I saw you this morning, Gregg. Wild-eyed, chasing a phantom—"
"You?"
"And I heard the phantom! A man's footsteps. A magnetic, deflecting,
invisible cloak. You couldn't fool an audience with that, it's too
commonplace. If Ranee Rankin tried—"
I gripped her. "Don't
ramble, Venza! You saw me?"
"Yes. My stateroom
door was open. I was sitting with a cigarette. I saw the purser in the smoking
room. He was visible from—"
"Wait!
Venza, that prowler went through the smoking room!"
"I know he did. I could hear him."
"Did the purser hear him?"
"Of course. The purser looked up, followed the sound with his gaze. I thought that
was queer. He never made a move. And then you came along and he acted innocent.
Why? What's going on, that's what I want to know?"
I
held my breath. "Venza, where did the prowler run to? Can you—"
She
whispered calmly, "Into A20. I saw the door open and close. I even thought
I could see his blurred outline." She added, "Why should George
Prince be sneaking around with you after him? And the purser
acting innocent? And who is this George Prince, anyway?"
The
huge Martain, Miko, with his sister Moa came strolling along the deck. They
nodded as they passed us.
I
whispered, "I can't explain anything now. But you're right, Venza: there
is something going on. Listen! Whatever you leam—whatever you encounter which
looks unusual-will you tell me? I . . . well, I do trust you. Really I do, but
the whole thing isn't mine to tell."
The
somber pools of her eyes were shining. "You are very lovable, Gregg. I
won't question you." She was trembling with excitement. "Whatever it
is, I want to be in on it. Here's something I can tell you now. We've two high
class gold leaf gamblers aboard. Do you know that?"
"Who are they?"
"Shac and Dud Ardley. Every detective in Greater New York knows
them. They had a wonderful game with that Englishman, Sir Arthur, this morning. Stripped him of half a pound of eight-inch
leaves—a neat little stack. A crooked game, of course.
Those fellows are more nimble-fingered than Ranee Rankin ever dared to
be!"
I sat staring at her. She was a mine of
information, this girl.
"And
Gregg, I tried my charms on Shac and Dud. Nice men, but dumb. Whatever's going
on, they're not in it. They wanted to know what land of a ship this was. Why? Because Shac has a cute little eavesdropping microphone of his
own. He had it working last night. He overheard George Prince and that
giant Miko arguing about the Moonl"
I gasped, "Venzal
Softer—"
Against
all propriety of this public deck she pretended to drape herself upon me. Her
hair smothered my face as her hps almost touched my ear.
"Something about treasure on the Moon. Shac couldn't understand what. And they
mentioned you. Then the purser joined them." Her whispered words tumbled
over one another. "A hundred pounds of gold leaf—that's
the purser's price. He's with them—whatever it is. He promised to do
something or other for them."
She stopped.
"Well?" I prompted.
"That's all. Shac's
current was interrupted."
"Tell
him to try it again, Venza! Ill talk with him. No! I'd
better let him alone. Can you get him to keep his mouth shut?"
"I
think he might do anything I told him. He's a man!" "Find out what
you can."
She
drew away from me abruptly. "There's Anita and George Prince."
They came to the corner of the deck, but
turned back. Venza caught my look. And understood it.
"You
do love Anita Prince, Gregg?" Venza was smiling. "I wish you ... I wish some man handsome as you would
gaze after me like that." She turned solemn. "You may be interested
to know, she loves you. I could see it. I knew it when I mentioned you to her
this morning."
"Me? Why we've hardly
spoken!"
"Is it necessary? I
never heard that it was."
I could not see Venza's face; she stood up suddenly. And when I rose
beside her, she whispered, "We should not be seen talking so long. Ill find out what I can."
I stared after her slight robed figure as she
turned into the lounge archway and vanished.
VI
Captain
Carter was grim. "So they've bought him off,
have they? Go bring him in here, Gregg. Well have it out with him now."
Snap,
Dr. Frank, Balch, our first officer, and I were in the Captain's chart room. It
was four p.m. Earth time. We were sixteen hours upon our
voyage.
I found Johnson in his office
in the lounge. "Captain wants to see you. Close up."
He
closed his window upon an American woman passenger who was demanding the details of Martian
currency, and followed me forward. "What is it, Gregg?"
"I don't know."
Captain
Carter banged the slide upon us. The chart room was insulated. The hum of the
current was obvious. Johnson noticed it. He stared at the hostile faces of the
surgeon and Balch. And he tried to bluster.
"What's this? Something wrong?"
Carter
wasted no words. "We have information, Johnson, that there's some
undercover plot aboard. I want to know what it is. Suppose you tell us."
The
purser looked blank. "What do you mean? We've gamblers aboard, if
that's—"
"To
hell with that," growled Balch. "You had a secret interview with that
Martian, Set
Miko, and with George
Prince!"
Johnson
scowled from under his heavy brows, and then raised them in surprise. "Did
I? You mean changing their money? I don't like your tone, Balch. I'm not your
under-officer!"
"But you're under mel"
roared the Captain. "By God, I'm master here!"
"Well,
I'm not disputing that," said the purser mildly. "This fellow—"
"We're
in no mood for argument," Dr. Frank cut in. "Clouding the issue . .
."
"I won't let it be
clouded," the Captain exclaimed.
I had never seen Carter so
choleric. He added:
"Johnson,
you've been acting suspiciously. I don't give a damn whether I've proof of it
or not. Did you or did you not meet George Prince and that Martian, last
night?"
"No, I did not. And I don't mind telling
you, Captain Carter, that your tone also is offensive!"
"Is it?" Carter seized him. They
were both big men. Johnson's heavy face went purplish red.
"Take
your hands—!" They were struggling. Carter's hands were fumbling at the
purser's pockets. I leaped, flung an arm around Johnson's neck, pinning him.
"Easy there! We've got
you, Johnson!"
Snap
tried to help me. "Go on! Bang him on the head, Gregg. Now's
your chance!"
We
searched him. A heat ray cylinder—that was legitimate. But we found a small
battery and eavesdropping device similar to the one Venza had mentioned that
Shac the gambler was carrying. -
"What are you doing with that?" the
Captain demanded.
"None of your business! Is it criminal? Carter, I'll have the line
officials dismiss you for this! Take your hands off me—all of you!"
"Look at this!"
exclaimed Dr. Frank.
From
Johnson's breast pocket the surgeon drew a folded document. It was a scale
drawing of the Planetara
interior corridors, the
lower control rooms and mechanisms. It was always kept in Johnson's safe. And
with it, another document: the ship's clearance papers—the secret code
passwords for this voyage, to be used if we should be challenged by any
Interplanetary Police ship.
Snap
gasped, "My God, that was in my radio room strong boxl I'm the only one on
this vessel except the Captain who's entitled to know those passwords!"
Out
of the silence, Balch demanded, "Well what about it, Johnson?"
The
purser was still defiant. "I won't answer your questions, Balch. At the
proper time, 111 explain—Gregg
Haljan, you're choking me!"
I eased up. But I shook
him. "You'd better talk."
He was exasperatingly
silent.
"Enough!" exploded Carter. "He
can explain when we get to port. Meanwhile I'll put him where hell do no more
harm. Gregg, lock him in the cage."
We
ignored his violent protestations. The cage—in the old days of sea vessels on
Earth, they called it the brig—was the ship's jail. A
steel-lined, windowless room located under the deck in the peak of the bow. I
dragged the struggling Johnson there, with the amazed watcher looking down from
the observatory window at our lunging starlit forms.
"Shut up, Johnson! If
you know what's good for you—"
He
was making a fearful commotion. Behind us, where the deck narrowed at the
superstructure, half a dozen passengers were gazing in surprise.
"Ill
have you thrown out of the service, Gregg Haljan!"
I
shut him up finally. And flung him down the ladder into the cage and sealed the
deck trap door upon him. I was headed back for the chart room when from the
observatory came the lookout's voice:
"An
asteroid, Haljan!
Officer Blackstone wants you."
I
hurried to the turret bridge. An asteroid was in sight. We had nearly attained
our maximum speed now. An asteroid was approaching, so dangerously close that
our trajectory would have to be altered. I heard Blackstone's signals ringing
in the control rooms; and met Carter as he ran to the bridge with me.
"That scoundrell Well
get more out of him, Gregg. By
God,
111 put the chemicals on him—torture him—illegal or not!"
We
had no time for further discussion. The asteroid was rapidly approaching.
Already, under the glass, it was a magnificent sight. I had never seen this
tiny world before —asteroids are not numerous between the Earth and Mars, or in
toward Venus.
At
a speed of nearly a hundred miles a second the asteroid swept into view. With
the naked eye, at first it was a tiny speck of star-dust unnoticeable in the
gem-strewn black velvet of space. A speck. Then a gleaming dot, silver white, with the light of our Sun upon
it.
I
stood with Carter and Blackstone on the turret bridge,
It was obvious, that unless we altered our course, the asteroid would pass too
close for safety. Already we were feeling its attraction; from the control
rooms came the report that our trajectory was
disturbed by this new mass so near.
"Better
make your calculations now, Gregg," Blackstone urged.
I
cast up the rough elements from the observational instruments in the turret.
When I had us upon our new course, with the attractive and repulsive plates in
the Planetaras hull set in their altered combinations, I
went to the bridge again.
The
asteroid hung over our bow quarter. No more than twenty or thirty thousand
miles away. A giant ball now, filling all that quadrant of the heavens. The
configurations of its mountains, its land and water areas, were plainly visible.
"Perfectly
habitable," Blackstone said. "But I've searched all over the
hemisphere with the glass. No sign of human life —certainly nothing
civilized—nothing in the fashion of cities."
A fair litde world, by the look of it. A tiny globe, come from the region beyond
Neptune. We swept past the asteroid. The passengers were all gathered to view
the passing little world. I saw, not far from me, Anita, standing with her
brother; and the giant figure of Miko with them. Half an hour since this
wandering little world had showed itself, it swiftly passed, began to dwindle
behind us. A huge half moon. A
thinner, smaller quadrant. A tiny crescent, like a
silver barpin to adorn some lady's breast. And then it was a dot, a
point of light indistinguishable among the myriad others hovering in this great
black void.
The
incident of the passing of the asteroid was over. i turned from the deck window. My heart leaped.
The moment for which all day I had been subconsciously longing was at hand.
Anita was sitting in a deck chair, momentarily alone. Her gaze was on me as I
glanced her way, and she smiled an invitation for me to join her.
vii
"But,
Miss Prince, why are you and your brother going to
Ferrok-Shahn? His business—"
Even as I voiced it, I hated myself for such
a question. So nimble in the humble mind that mingled with my rhapsodies of
love, was my need for information of George Prince.
"Oh,"
she said. "This is pleasure, not business, for George." It seemed to
me that a shadow crossed her face. But it was gone in an instant, and she
smiled. "We have always wanted to travel. We are alone in the world, you
know—our parents died when we were children."
I
filled in her pause. "You will like Mars. So many interesting
things to see."
She nodded. "Yes, I understand so. Our
Earth is so much the same all over, cast all in one mould."
"But
a hundred or more years ago, it was not, Miss Prince. I have read how the
picturesque Orient, differing from . . . well, Greater New York or London, for
instance—"
"Transportation
did that," she interrupted eagerly. "Made everything the same—the
people all look alike . . . dress alike."
We
discussed it. She had an alert, eager mind, childlike with its curiosity, yet
strangely matured. And her manner was naively earnest Yet
this was no clinging vine, this Anita Prince. There was a
firmness, a hint of masculine strength in her chin and in her manner.
"If
I were a man, what wonders I could achieve in this marvelous age!" Her
sense of humor made her laugh at herself. "Easy for a girl to say
that," she added.
"You
have greater wonders to achieve, Miss Prince," I said impulsively.
"Yes?
What are they?" She had a very frank and level gaze, devoid of coquetry.
My heart was pounding. "The
wonders of the next generation. A little son, cast in your own gentle
image—"
What madness, this clumsy, brash talk! I
choked it off.
But
she took no offense. The dark rose-petals of her cheeks were mantled deeper
red, but she laughed.
"That
is true." She turned abruptly serious. "I should not laugh. The
wonders of the next generation—conquering humans marching on . . ." Her
voice trailed away. My hand went to her arm. Strange tingling something which
poets call love! It burned and surged through my trembling fingers into the
flesh of her forearm.
The starlight glowed in her eyes. She seemed
to be gazing, not at the silver-lit deck, but away into distant reaches of the
future.
Our moment. Just a breathless moment given us as we sat
there with my hand burning her arm, as though we both might be seeing ourselves
joined in a new individual—a little son, cast in his mother's gentle image and
with the strength of his father. Our moment, and then it was over. A step
sounded. I sat back. The giant gray figure of Miko came past, his great cloak
swaying, with his clanking sword ornament beneath it. His bullet head, with
its close-clipped hair, was hatless. He gazed at us, swaggering past, and
turned the deck comer.
Our
moment was gone. Anita said conventionally, "It has been pleasant to talk
with you, Mr. Haljan."
"But well have many
more," I said. "Ten days—"
"You think well reach
Ferrok-Shahn on schedule?"
"Yes.
I think so. ... As I was saying, Miss
Prince, youll enjoy Mars. A strange, aggressively
forward-looking people."
An oppression seemed on her. She stirred in her chair.
"Yes they are," she said vaguely.
"My brother and I know many Martians in Greater New York." She
checked herself abruptly. Was she sorry she had said that? It seemed so.
Mike was coming back. He stopped this time.
"Your brother would see you, Anita. He sent me to bring you to his
room."
The glance he shot me had a touch of
insolence. I stood up and he towered a head over me. Anita said, "Oh yes.
Ill come."
I
bowed. "I will see you again, Miss Prince. I thank you for a pleasant
half-hour."
The
Martian led her away. Her little figure was like a child with a giant. It
seemed, as they passed the length of the deck, with me staring after them, that
he took her arm roughly. And that she shrank from him in fear.
And they did not go inside. As though to show
me that he had merely taken her from me, he stopped at a distant deck window
and stood talking to her. Once he picked her up as one would pick up a child to
show it some distant object through the window.
Was
Anita afraid of this Martian's wooing? Yet was held to him by some power he
might have over her brother? The vagrant thought struck me.
VIII
The
rest of that afternoon
and evening were a blank confusion to me. Anita's words, the touch of my hand
on her arm, that vast realm of what might be for us, like the glimpse of a
magic land of happiness which I had seen in her eyes, and perhaps she had seen in mine—all this surged within me.
After wandering about the ship, I had a brief
consultation with Captain Carter. He was genuinely apprehensive now. The Flanetara carried only a half-dozen of the heat-ray projectors,
no long range weapons, a few side arms, and some old-fashioned, practically
antiquated weapons of explosives, plus hand projectors with the new Benson
curve light.
The
weapons were all in Carter's chart room, save the few we officers always
carried. Carter was afraid, but of what, he was not sure. He had not thought
that our plan to stop at the Moon could affect this outward voyage. He had
thought that any danger would occur on the way back, and then the Flanetara would have been adequately guarded and manned
with police-soldiers.
But now we were practically defenseless. I
had a moment with Venza, but she had nothing new to communicate. And for half
an hour I chatted with George Prince. He seemed a gay, pleasant young man. I
could almost have fancied I liked him. Or was it because he was Anita's
brother? He told me how he looked forward to traveling with her on Mars. No, he
had never been there before, he said.
He
had a measure of Anita's earnest naive personality. Or was he a very clever
scoundrel, with irony lurking in his soft voice, and a chuckle that could so
befool me?
"Well talk again, Haljan.
You interest me—I've enjoyed it."
He
sauntered away from me, joining the saturnine Ob Hahn, with whom presently I
heard him discussing religion.
The
arrest of Johnson had caused considerable discussion among the passengers. A
few had seen me drag him forward to the cage. The incident had been the
subject of discussion all afternoon. Captain Carter had posted a notice to the
effect that Johnson's accounts had been found in serious error, and that Dr.
Frank for this voyage would act in his stead.
It was near midnight when Snap and I closed
and sealed the radio room and started for the chart room, where we were to meet
with Captain Carter and the other officers.
The passengers had nearly all retired. A game
was in progress in the smoking room, but the deck was almost deserted.
Snap
and I were passing along one of the interior corridors. The stateroom doors
were all closed. The metal grid of the floor echoed our footsteps. Snap was in
advance of me. His body suddenly rose in the air. He went like a balloon to the ceiling, struck it gently, and
all in a heap came floating down and landed on the floor!
"What in the
infernal—"
He was laughing as he picked himself up. But
it was a
brief laugh. We knew what
had happened: the artificial gravity controls in the base of the ship, which by
magnetic force gave us normality aboard, were being tampered with! For just
this instant, this particular small section of this corridor had been cut off.
The slight bulk of the Planetara,
floating in space, had no
appreciable gravity pull on Snap's body, and the impulse of his step as he came
to the un-magnitized area of the corridor had thrown him to the ceiling. The
area was normal now. Snap and I tested it gingerly.
He
gripped me. "That never went wrong by accident, Gregg! Someone—"
We rushed to the nearest descending ladder.
In the deserted lower room the bank of dials stood neglected. A score of dials
and switches were here, governing the magnetism of different areas of the ship.
There should have been a night operator, but he was gone.
Than we saw him lying nearby, sprawled, face
down on the floor! In the silence and dim, lurid glow of the fluorescent tubes,
we stood holding our breaths, peering and listening. No one
here.
The
guard was not dead. He lay unconscious from a blow on the head. A brawny fellow. We had him revived in a few moments. A
broadcast flash of the call buzz brought Dr. Frank from the chart room.
"What's the
matter?"
"Someone
was here," I said hastily, "experimenting with the magnetic switches.
Evidently unfamiliar with them-pulling one or another to test
their workings and so see their reactions on the dials."
We
told him what had happened to Snap in the corridor;
the guard here was no worse off for the episode, save a lump on the head by an
invisible assailant. We left him nursing his head, sitting belligerent at his
post, alert to any danger and armed now with my heat-ray cylinder.
"Strange doings this voyage," he
told us. "All the crew knows it. Ill stick it out
now, but when we get back home I'm done with this star travelin'. I belong on the sea anyway."
We
hurried back to the upper level. We would indeed have to plan something at this
chart room conference. This was the first tangible attack our adversaries had
made.
We
were on the passenger deck headed for the chart room when all three of us
stopped short, frozen with horror. Through the silent passenger quarters a
scream rang out! A girl's shuddering, gasping scream. Terror
in it. Horror. Or a scream of
agony. In the silence of the dully vibrating ship it was utterly
horrible. ... It lasted an instant—a
single long scream; then was abruptly stilled.
And
with blood pounding my temples and rushing like ice through my veins, I
recognized it.
Anital
IX
"Good God, what was that?" Dr. Frank's face had
gone white. Snap stood like a statue of horror.
The
deck here was patched as always, with silver radiance from the deck ports. The
empty deck chairs stood about. The scream was stilled, but now we heard a
commotion inside—the rasp of opening cabin doors; questions from frightened
passengers.
I found my voice.
"Anita! Anita Princel"
"Come
on!" shouted Snap. "In her stateroom,
A22I" He was dashing for the lounge archway.
Dr.
Frank and I followed. I realized that we passed the deck door and window of
A22. But they were dark, and evidently sealed on the
inside. The dim lounge was in a turmoil; passengers
standing at their cabin doors.
I
shouted, "Go back to your rooms! We want order here —keep back!"
We
came to the twin doors of A22 and A20. Both were closed. Dr. Frank was in
advance of Snap and me now. He paused at the sound of Captain Carter's voice
behind us.
"Was it from in there?
Wait a moment!"
Carter
dashed up. He had a large heat-ray projector in his hand. He shoved us aside.
"Let me in first. Is the door sealed? Gregg, keep those passengers
back!"
The
door was not sealed. Carter burst into the room. I heard him gasp, "Good
God!"
Snap
and I shoved back three or four passengers. And in that instant Dr. Frank had
been in the room and out again.
"There's
been an accident! Get back, Gregg! Snap, help me keep the crowd away." He
shoved me forcibly.
From
within, Carter was shouting, "Keep them outl Where are you, Frank? Come
back here! Send a flash for Balch!"
Dr.
Frank went back into the room and banged the cabin door upon Snap and me. I was
unarmed. Weapon in hand, Snap forced the panic-stricken passengers back to
their rooms.
Snap reassured them glibly; but he knew no
more about the facts than I. Moa, with a nightrobe drawn tight around her thin,
tall figure, edged up to me.
"What has happened, Set Haljan?"
I
gazed around for her brother Miko, but did not see him.
"An accident," I said shortly.
"Go back to your room. Captain's orders."
She eyed me and then
retreated. Snap was threatening everybody with his cylinder. Balch dashed up.
"What in hell! Where is Carter?"
"In
there." I pounded on A22. It opened cautiously. I could see only Carter, but I heard the
murmuring voice of Dr. Frank through the interior connecting door to A20.
The
Captain rasped, "Get out, Haljan! Oh, is that you, Balch? Come in."
He admitted the older officer and slammed the door upon me again. And immediately reopened it.
"Gregg,
keep the passengers quieted. Tell them everything's all right. Miss Prince got
frightened—that's all. Then go to the turret. Tell Blackstone what's
happened."
"But I don't know what's happened."
Carter
was grim and white. He whispered, "I think it may rum out to be murder,
Gregg! No, not dead yet . . . Dr. Frank is trying . . . don't stand there like an ass, man. Get to the
turret! Verify out trajectory—no—wait . . ."
The
Captain was almost incoherent. "Wait a minute. I don't mean that! Tell
Snap to watch his radio room. Arm yourselves and guard our weapons."
I
stammered, "If ... if she dies , . . will you flash us
word?"
He
stared at me strangely. "Ill be there presently, Gregg." He slammed
the door upon me.
I followed his orders but it was like a dream
of horror. The turmoil of the ship gradually quieted. Snap went to the radio
room; Blackstone and I sat in the tiny chart room; how much time passed, I do
not know. I was confused. Anita hurt! She might die . . . murdered. . . . But why? By whom? Had George Prince
been in his own room when the attack came? I thought now I recalled hearing the
low murmur of his voice in there with Dr. Frank.
Where was Miko? It stabbed at me. I had not
seen him among the passengers in the lounge.
Carter came into the chart room. "Gregg,
you get to bed. You look like a ghost."
"But-"
"She's not dead. She may live. Dr. Frank
and her brother are with her. They're doing all they can." He told us what
had happened. Anita and George Prince had both been a-sleep, each in his
respective room. Someone unknown had opened Anita's corridor door.
"Wasn't it
sealed?"
"Yes. But the intruder
opened it."
"Burst it? I didn't
think it was broken."
"It
wasn't broken. The assailant opened it somehow, and assaulted Miss Prince—shot
her in the chest with a heat ray. Her left lung."
"Shot her?"
"Yes.
But she did not see who did it. Nor did Prince. Her
scream awakened him, but the intruder evidently fled out the corridor door of
A22, the way he entered."
I
stood weak and shaken at the chart room entrance. Anita —dying,
perhaps; and all my dreams were fading into a memory of what might have been.
I
was glad enough to get away. I would lie down for an hour and then go to
Anita's stateroom. I'd demand that Dr. Frank let me see her.
I
went to the stem deck where my cubby was located. My mind was confused but some
instinct within me made me verify the seals of my door and window. They were
intact. I entered cautiously, switched on the dimmer of the tube lights, and
searched the room. It had only a bunk, my tiny desk, a chair and clothes robe.
There was no evidence of any intruder here. I set my door and window alarm. Then I audi-phoned to the radio room.
"Snap?"
"Yes."
I
told him about Anita. Carter cut in on us from the chart room. "Stop that,
you fools!"
We
cut off. Fully dressed, I flung myself on my bed. Anita might die. . . .
I
must have fallen into a tortured sleep. I was awakened by the sound of my alarm
buzzer. Someone was tampering with my door! Then the buzzer ceased; the
marauder outside must have found a way of silencing- it. But it had done its
work—awakened me.
I
had switched off the light; my cubby was Stygian black. A heat cylinder was in
the bunk-bracket over my head. I searched for it, pried it loose softly.
I
was fully awake. Alert. I could hear a faint sizzling— someone outside trying
to unseal the door. In the darkness, cylinder in hand, I crept softly from the
bunk. Crouched at the door. This time I would capture
or kill this night prowler.
The
sizzling was faintly audible. My door seal was breaking. Upon impulse I
reached for the door, jerked it open.
No
one therel The starlit segment of deck was empty. But
I leaped and struck a solid body, crouching in the doorway. A
giant man. Mikol
His
electronized metallic robe burned my hands. I lunged against him—I was almost
as surprised as he. I shot, but the stab of heat evidently missed him. The
shock of my encounter, short-circuited his robe; he
materialized in the starlight. A brief, savage encounter.
He struck the weapon from my hand. He had dropped his hydrogen torch, and tried
to grip me. But I twisted away from his hold.
"So it's youl"
"Quiet, Gregg Haljanl
I only want to talk."
Without
warning, a stab of radiance shot from a weapon in his hand. It caught me. Ran
like ice through my veins. Seized and numbed my limbs.
I
fell helpless to the deck. Nerves and muscles paralyzed. My tongue was thick
and inert. I could not speak, nor move. But I could see Miko bending over me,
and hear him:
"I don't want to kill
you, Haljan. We need you."
He
gathered me up like a bundle in his huge arms; carried me swiftly across the
deserted deck.
Snap's
radio room in the network under the dome was diagonally overhead. A white
actinic light shot from it— caught us, bathed us. Snap had been awake; had
heard the commotion of our encounter.
His
voice rang shrilly: "Stop! Ill shoot!" His
warning siren rang out to alert the ship. His spotlight clung to us.
Miko
ran with me a few steps. Then he cursed and dropped me; fled away. I fell like
a sack of carbide to the deck. My senses faded into blackness. . . .
"He's all right
now."
I was in the chart room with Captain Carter,
Snap and Dr. Frank bending over me. The surgeon said, "Can you speak now,
Gregg?"
I
tried it. My tongue was thick, but it moved. "Yes." I was soon revived. I sat up, with Dr. Frank vigorously rubbing me.
"I'm all right."
I told them what had happened.
Captain
Carter said, "Yes, we know that. And it was Miko also who killed Anita
Prince. She told us before she died."
"Died! ..."
I leaped to my feet. "She . . . died . . ."
"Yes,
Gregg. An hour ago. Miko got into her stateroom and
tried to force his love upon her. She repulsed him. He killed her. . . ."
It struck me blank. And then with a rush came
the thought, "He says Miko killed her". . . .
I heard myself stammering, "Why—why we
must get him!" I gathered my wits; a surge of hate swept me; a wild desire
for vengeance.
"Why, by God, where is he? Why don't you
go g%t him? Ill get him-ITl kill him!"
"Easy,
Gregg!"
Dr. Frank gripped me.
The Captain said gently. "We know how
you feel, Gregg. She told us before she died."
"I'll
bring him in here to you! But 111 kill him, I tell you!"
"No you won't, lad. We don't want him
killed, not attacked, even. Not yet. Well explain
later." They sat me down, calming me. . . .
Anita dead. The door of the shining garden was closed. A brief
glimpse given to me and to her of what might have been. And now she was
dead. . . .
X
I had
not been able at first
to understand why Captain Carter wanted Miko left at liberty. Within me there
was that cry of vengeance, as though to strike Miko down would somehow lessen
my own grief. Whatever Carter's purpose, Snap had not known it. But Balch and Dr.
Frank were in the Captain's confidence—all three of them working on some plan
of action.
It
was obvious that at least two of our passengers were plotting with Miko and
George Prince; trying on this voyage to learn what they could about Grantline's
activities on the Moon—scheming doubtless to seize the treasure when the Planetara stopped at the Moon on the return voyage. I
thought I could name those masquerading passengers. Ob Hahn, supposedly a Venus
mystic. And Ranee Rankin, who called himself an American
magician. Those two, Snap and I agreed, seemed most suspicious. And
there was the purser.
I
sat for a time on the deck outside the chart room with Snap. Then Carter
summoned us back, and we sat listening while he, Balch and Dr. Frank went on
with their conference. Listening to them, I could not but agree that our best
plan was to secure evidence which would incriminate all who were concerned in
the plot. Miko, we were convinced, had been the Martian who followed Snap and
me from Halsey's office in Greater New York. George Prince had doubtless been
the invisible eavesdropper outside the radio room. He knew, and had told the
others that Grantline had found that priceless metal on the Moon and that the Planetara would stop there on the way home.
But we could not incarcerate George Prince
for being an eavesdropper. Nor had we the faintest possible evidence against Ob
Hahn or Rankin. And even the purser would probably be released by the
Interplanetary Court of Ferrok-Shahn when it heard our evidence.
There was only Miko. We could arrest him for
the murder of Anita. But if we did that now, the others would be put on their
guard. It was Carter's idea to let Miko remain at liberty for a time and see if
we could identify and incriminate his fellows. The murder of Anita obviously
had nothing to do with any plot against Grantline Moon treasure.
"Why,"
exclaimed Batch, "there might be—probably are —huge Martian interests
concerned in this thing. These men aboard are only emissaries, making this
voyage to learn what they can. When they get to Ferrok-Shahn, they'll make
their report, and then well have a real danger on our hands. Why, an outlaw
ship could be launched from Ferrok-Shahn that would beat us back to the
Moon—and Grantline is entirely without warning of any dangerl"
It
seemed obvious. Unscrupulous criminals in Ferrok-Shahn would be dangerous
indeed, once these details of Grantline were given them. So now it was decided
that in the remaining nine days of our outward voyage, we would attempt to
secure enough evidence to arrest all these plotters.
"Ill
have them all in the cage when we land," declared Carter grimly.
"They'll make no report to their principals!"
Ah, the futile plans of
men!
Yet,
at the time, we thought it practical. We were all doubly armed now. Bullet
projectors and heat ray cylinders. And we had several eavesdropping microphones
which we planned to use whenever occasion offered.
Only twenty-eight hours of this eventful voyage
had passed. The Planetara
was some six million miles
from the Earth; it blazed behind us, a tremendous giant.
The
body of Anita was being made ready for buriaL George Prince was still in his
stateroom. Glutz, effeminate little hairdresser, who waxed rich acting as
beauty doctor for the women passengers, and who, in his youth, had been an
undertaker, had gone with Dr. Frank to prepare the body.
Gruesome details. I tried not to think of them. I sat, numbed, in the chart room.
An
astronomical burial—there was little precedent for it. I dragged myself to the stem deck where, at
five a.m., the ceremony took place.
We
were a solemn little group, gathered there in the checkered starlight with the
great vault of the heavens around us. A dismantled electronic projector—necessary
when a long range gun was mounted—had been rigged up in one of the deck ports.
They
brought out the body. I stood apart, gazing reluctantly at the small
bundle, wrapped like a mummy in a dark metallic screen-cloth. A patch of black
silk rested over her face. Four cabin stewards carried her; and beside her
walked George Prince. A long black robe covered him, but his head was bare. And
suddenly he reminded me of the ancient play-character of Hamlet. His black, wavy hair; his finely chiseled, pallid face, set now in
a stem patrician cast. And staring, I realized that however much of the villain
this man might be, at this instant, walking beside the body of his dead sister,
he was stricken with grief. He loved that sister with whom he had lived since
childhood; and to see him now no one could doubt it.
The little procession stopped in a patch of
starlight by the port. They rested the body on a bank of chairs. The
black-robed chaplain, roused from his bed and still trembling from excitement
of this sudden, inexplicable death on board, said a brief, solemn little
prayer. An appeal: That the Almighty Ruler of all these blazing worlds might
guard the soul of this gentle girl whose mortal remains were now to be returned
to Him.
Ah,
if ever God seemed hovering close, it was now at this instant, on this starlit
deck floating in the black void of space.
Then
Carter for just a moment removed the black shroud from her face. I saw her brother gaze silently; saw him stoop and implant a kiss—and turn
away. I did not want to look, but I found myself moving slowly forward.
She
lay, so beautiful. Her face, white and calm and peaceful in
death. My sight blurred.
"Easy
Gregg," Snap was whispering to me. He had his arm around me. "Come on
away."
They
tied the shroud over her face. I did not see them as they put the body in the
tube, sent it through the exhaust chamber and dropped it.
But
a moment later I saw it, a small black, oblong bundle hovering beside us. It
was perhaps a hundred feet away, circling us. Held by the Planetara's bulk, it had momentarily become our satellite. It swung around us like a
moon. Gruesome satellite, by nature's laws forever to follow us.
Then
from another tube at the bow, Blackstone operated a small zed-co-ray projector.
Its dull light caught the floating bundle, neutralizing its metallic
wrappings.
It
swung off at a tangent. Speeding. Falling
free in the dome of the heavens. A rotating black
oblong. But in a moment distance dwindled it
to a speck. A dull silver dot with the sunlight on it.
A speck of human Earth dust, falling free. . . .
It vanished. Anita—gone.
XI
I turned
from the deck. Miko was
near me! So he had dared show himself here among us! But I realized he could
not be aware we knew he was the murderer. George Prince had been asleep, had
not seen Miko with Anita. Miko, with impulsive rage had shot the girl and
escaped. No doubt now he was cursing himself for having done it. And he could
very well assume that Anita had died without regaining consciousness to tell
who had killed her.
He gazed at me now. I thought for an instant
he was coming over to talk with me. Though he probably considered he was not
suspected of the murder of Anita, he realized, of course, that his attack on me
was known. He must have wondered what action would be taken.
But
he did not approach me. He moved away and went inside. Moa had been near him;
and as though by prearrange-ment with him she now accosted me.
"I want to speak to
you, Set Haljan."
"Go ahead."
I
felt an instinctive aversion to this Martian girl. Yet she was not
unattractive. Over six feet tall, straight and slim. Sleek blond hair. Rather a handsome face;
not gray, like the burly Miko, but pink and white; stern lipped, but feminine,
too. She was smiling gravely now. Her blue eyes regarded me keenly. She said
gently:
"A sad occurrence, Gregg Haljan. And mysterious. I would not question you—"
"Is that all you have
to say?" I demanded.
"No.
You are a handsome man, Gregg—attractive to women—to any Martian woman."
She
said it impulsively. Admiration for me was on her face, in her eyes—a man
cannot miss it.
"Thank you."
"I
mean, I would be your friend. My brother Miko is so sorry about what happened
between you and him this moming. He only wanted to talk to you, and he came to
your cubby door—"
"With a torch to break its seal," I
interjected,
She
waved that away. "He was afraid you would not admit him. He told you he
would not harm you."
"And so he struck me with one of your
Martian paralyzing rays I"
"He is sorry. . .
."
She
seemed gauging me, trying, no doubt, to find out what reprisal would be taken
against her brother. I felt sure that Moa was as active as a man in any plan
that was under way to capture the Grantline treasure. Miko, with his ungovernable
temper, was doing things that put their plans in jeopardy.
I
demanded, "What did your brother want to talk to me about?"
"Me,"
she said surprisingly. "I sent him. A Martian girl goes after what she
wants. Did you know that?"
She
swung on her heel and left me. I puzzled over it. Was that why Miko struck me
down and was carrying me off? I did not think so. I could not believe that all
these incidents were so unrelated to what I knew was the main undercurrent They wanted me, had tried to capture me for something else.
Dr.
Frank found me mooning alone. "Go to bed, Gregg. You look awful."
"I don't want to go to bed."
"Where's Snap?"
"I don't know. He was here a little
while ago." I had not seen him since the burial of Anita. "The
Captain wants him," he said.
Within
an hour the morning siren would arouse the passengers. I was seated in a
secluded comer of the deck, when George Prince came along. He went past me, a
slight, somber, dark-robed figure. He had on high, thick boots. A hood was over
his head, but as he saw me he pushed it back and dropped down beside me.
For a moment he did not speak. His face
showed pallid in the dim starlight.
"She said you loved her." His soft
voice was throaty with emotion.
"Yes." I said it almost against my
will. There seemed a bond springing between this bereaved brother and me. He
added, so softly I could barely hear him: "That makes you, I think, almost
my friend. And you thought you were my enemy."
I held my answer. An incautious tongue
running under emotion is a dangerous thing. And I was sure of nothing.
He
went on, "Almost my friend. Because—we both loved her, and she loved us
both." He was hardly more than whis-
pering. "And Ihere is aboard one whom we both
hate." "Mikol" It burst from me. "Yes. But do not say
it."
Another
silence fell between us. He brushed back the black curls from his forehead.
"Have you an eavesdropping microphone, Haljan?"
I hesitated.
"Yes."
"I
was thinking . . ." He leaned closer. "If, in half an hour, you could
use it upon Miko's cabin—I would rather tell you than anyone else. The cabin
will be insulated, but I shall find a way of cutting off that insulation so
that you can hear."
So
George Prince had turned with us. The shock of his sister's death—himself
allied with her murderer—had been too much for him. He was with usl
Yet
his help must be given secretly. Miko would ldll him instantly if it became
known. He had been watchful of the deck. He stood up now.
"I think that is
all."
As he turned away, I
murmured, "But I do thank you. . . ."
The name Set Miko glowed upon the door. It was in a transverse corridor similar to
A22. The corridor was forward of the lounge: it opened off the small circular
library.
The
library was unoccupied and unlighted, dim with only the reflected lights from
the nearby passages. I crouched behind a cylinder case. The door of Miko's
room was in sight.
I
waited perhaps five minutes. No one entered. Then I realized that doubtless the
conspirators were already there. I set my tiny eavesdropper on the library
floor beside me; connected its little battery; focused its projector. Was
Miko's room insulated? I could not tell. There was a small ventilating grid
above the door. Across its opening, if the room was insulated, a blue sheen of
radiance would be showing. And there would be a faint hum. But from this
distance I could not see or hear such details, and I was afraid to approach
closer. Once in the transverse corridor, I would have no place to hide, no way
of escape. If anyone approached
Miko's
door, I would be trapped.
I
threw the current into my apparatus. I prayed, if it met interference, that the
slight sound would pass unnoticed. George Prince had said that he would make
opportunity to disconnect the room's insulation. He had evidently done so. I
picked up the interior sounds at once; my headphone vibrated with them. And
with trembling fingers on the little dial between my knees as I crouched in the
darkness behind the cylinder case, I synchronized.
"Johnson
is a fool." It was Miko's voice. "We must have the passwords."
"He
got them from the radio room." A man's voice: I puzzled over it at first, then recognized it. Ranee Rankin.
Miko
said, "He is a fool. Walking around this ship as though with letters
blazoned on his forehead, 'Watch me ...
I need watching.' Hahl No wonder they apprehended him!"
Rankin's
voice said: "He would have turned the papers over to us. I would not blame
him too much. What harm—"
"Oh,
111 release him," Miko declared. "What harm? That
braying ass did us plenty of harm. He has lost the passwords. Better he
had left them in the radio room."
Moa
was in the room. Her voice said, "We've got to have them. The Planetara, upon such an important voyage as this, might
be watched."
"No
doubt it is," Rankin said quietly. "We ought to have the passwords.
When we are in control of this ship . . ."
It
sent a shiver through me. Were they planning to try and seize the Planetara? Now? It seemed so.
"Johnson
undoubtedly memorized them," Moa was saying. "When we get him
out—"
"Hahn is to do that, at the
signal." Miko added, "George could do it better, perhaps."
And then I heard George
Prince for the first time, "111 try."
"No need," Miko
said unexpectedly.
I could not see what had
happened. A look, perhaps, which Prince could not avoid giving this man he had
come to hate. Miko doubtless saw it,
and the Martian's hot anger leaped.
Rankin said hurriedly,
"Stop thatl"
And Moa, "Let him
alone, you fooll Sit down!"
I
could hear the sound of a scuffle. A blow—a cry, half suppressed, from George
Prince.
Then
Miko: "I will not hurt him. Craven coward! Look at him! Hating
me—frightened!"
I
could fancy George Prince sitting there with murder in his heart, and Miko
taunting him:
"Hates
me now, because I shot his sister!"
Moa: "Hush!"
"I will not! Why should I not say it? I
will tell you something else, George Prince. It was not Anita I shot at, but
youl I meant nothing for her but love. If you had not interfered-"
This
was different from what we had figured. George Prince had come in from his own
room, had tried to rescue his sister, and in the scuffle, Anita had taken the
shot instead of George.
"I
did not even know I had hit her," Miko was saying. "Not until I heard
she was dead." He added sardonically, "I hoped it was you I had hit,
George. And I will tell you this: you hate me no more than I hate you. If it
were not for your knowledge of ores—"
"Is
this to be a personal wrangle?" Rankin interrupted. "I thought we
were here to plan—"
"It
is planned," Mike said shortly. "I give orders, I do not plan. I am
waiting now for the moment—" He checked himself.
Moa
said, "Does Rankin understand that no harm is to come to Gregg
Haljan?"
"Yes,"
Rankin said. "And Dean. We need them, of course.
But you cannot make Dean send messages if he refuses,
nor make Haljan navigate."
"I know enough to check on them,"
Miko said grimly.
"They will not fool me. And they will
obey me, have no fear. A little touch of sulphuric—" His laugh was
gruesome. "It makes the most stubborn, very willing."
"I
wish," said Moa, "we had Haljan safely hidden. If he is
hurt—killed—"
So
that was why Miko had tried to capture me? To keep me safe so
that I might navigate the ship.
It
occurred to me that I should get Carter at once. A plot to
seize the Planetara— but
when?
I froze with startled
horror.
The diaphragms at my ears rang with Miko's
words: "I have set the time for now—two minutes—"
It
seemed to startle Rankin and George Prince as much as it did me. Both
exclaimed: "Nol"
"No? Why not? Everyone
is at his post!"
Prince repeated,
"Nol"
And
Rankin, "But can we trust them? The stewards—the
crew?"
"Eight
of them are our own menl You didn't know that, Rankin?
They've been aboard the Planetara
for several voyages. Oh,
this is no quickly planned affair, even though we let you in on it so recently.
You and Johnson. ...
By God!"
There
was a commotion in the stateroom. I crouched, tense. Miko had discovered that
his insulation had been cut off! He had evidently leaped to his feet. I heard a
chair overturn. And the Martian's roar: "It's off] Did
you do that, Prince? By God, if I thought-"
My apparatus went suddenly dead as Miko flung
on his insulation. I lost my wits in the confusion: I should have instantly
taken off my vibrations. There was interference: it showed in the dark space of
the ventilator grid over Miko's doorway: a snapping in the air, there—a swirl
of sparks.
I
heard with my unaided ears Miko's roar over his insulation: "By God,
they're listening!"
The scream of hand sirens sounded from his
stateroom. It rang over the ship. His signal! I heard it answered from some
distant point. And then a shot: a commotion in the lower corridors. . . .
The attack upon the Planetara had begun!
I
was on my feet. The shouts of startled passengers sounded, a turmoil beginning
everywhere.
I
stood momentarily transfixed. The door of Miko's stateroom burst open. He
stood there, with Rankin, Moa and George Prince crowding him.
He saw me.
"You, Gregg Haljanl"
He came leaping at me.
XII
I WAS taken wholly by surprise. There was an instant when
I stood numbed, fumbling for a weapon at my belt, undecided whether to run or
stand my ground. Miko was no more than twenty feet from me. He checked his
forward rush. The light from an overhead tube was on him: I saw in his hand the
cylinder projector of his paralyzing ray.
I
plucked my heat cylinder from my belt, and fired without taking aim. My tiny
heat beam flashed. I must have grazed Miko's hand. His roar of anger and pain
rang out over the turmoil. He dropped his weapon; then stooped to pick it up.
But Moa forestalled him. She leaped and seized it.
"Careful! Fool, you
promised not to harm him!"
A confusion of swift action. Rankin had turned and darted away. I saw
George Prince stumbling half in front of the struggling Miko and Moa. And I
heard footsteps beside me. A hand gripped me, jerked at me.
Over the turmoil, Prince's
voice sounded: "Gregg Haljan!"
I
recall that I had the impression that Prince was frightened; he had half
fallen in front of Miko. And there was Miko's voice: "Let go of me!"
It
was Balch gripping me. "Gregg! This way—run] Get out of here! He'll kill
you with that ray!"
Miko's ray flashed, but
George Prince had knocked his arm.
I
did not dare fire again. Prince was in the way. Balch, who was unarmed, shoved
me violently back. "Greggl The chart room!"
I
turned and ran, with Balch after me. Prince had fallen or been felled by Miko.
A flash followed me from Miko's weapon, but again it missed. He did not pursue
me. Instead he ran the other way, through the portside door of the library.
Balch
and I found ourselves in the library. Shouting, frightened passengers were
everywhere. The place was in wild confusion, the whole ship ringing now with
shouts.
"To the chart room,
Greggl"
I called to the passengers,
"Go back to your roomsl"
I
followed Balch. We ran through the archway to the deck. In the starlight I saw
figures scurrying aft, but none were near us. The deck forward was dim with
heavy shadows. The oval windows and door of the chart room were blue-yellow
from the tube fights inside. No one seemed on the deck there. And then as we
approached, I saw further forward in the bow, the trap door to the cage
standing open. Johnson had been released.
From
one of the chart room windows a heat ray sizzled. It barely missed us. Balch
shouted, "Carter—don'tl"
The Captain called,
"Oh you, Balch—and Haljan—"
He
came out on the deck as we rushed up. His left arm was dangling limp.
"God—this—"
He got no further. From the turret overhead a tiny
search beam came down and disclosed us. Blackstone was supposed to be on duty
up there, with a course master at the controls. But, glancing up, I saw,
illumined by the turret lights, the figure of Ob Hahn in his purple-white robe,
and Johnson, the purser. And on the turret balcony, two fallen men—Blackstone
and the course master.
Johnson
was training the spotlight on us. And Hahn fired a Martian
ray. It struck Balch beside me. He dropped.
Carter was shouting,
"Inside—Greggl Get inside!"
I
stopped to raise up Balch. Another beam came down. A heat ray this time. It caught the fallen Balch full on the
chest, piercing him through. The smell of his burning flesh rose to sicken me.
He was dead. I dropped his body. Carter shoved me into the chart room.
In
the small, steel-lined room, Carter and I slid the door closed. We were alone
here. The thing had come so quickly it had taken Captain Carter, like us all,
wholly unawares. We had anticipated spying eavesdroppers, but not this open
brigandage. No more than a minute or two had passed since Miko's siren in his
stateroom had given the signal for attack. Carter had been in the chart room.
Blackstone was in the turret. At the outbreak of confusion, Carter dashed out
to see Hahn releasing Johnson from the cage. From the forward chart room
window now I could see where Hahn with a torch had broken the cage seal. The
torch lay on the deck. There had been an exchange of shots; Carter's arm was
paralyzed; Johnson and Hahn had escaped.
Carter
was as confused as I. There had simultaneously been an encounter up in the
turret. Blackstone and the course master were killed. The lookout had been shot
from his post in the forward observatory. The body dangled now, twisted half in
and half out the window.
We
could see several of Miko's men—erstwhile members of our crew and steward
corps—scurrying from the turret along the upper bridge toward the dark and
silent radio room. Snap was up there. But was he? The radio room glowed suddenly
with dim light, but there was no evidence of a fight there. The fighting seemed
mostly below the deck, down in the hull corridors. A blended horror of sounds
came up to us. Screams, shouts and the hissing and snapping
of ray weapons. Our crew—such of them as were loyal—were making a stand
below. But it was brief. Within a minute it died away. The passengers,
amidships in the superstructure, were still shouting. Then above them Miko's
roar sounded.
"Be quietl Go in your
rooms—you will not be harmed."
The
brigands in these few minutes were in control of the ship. All
but this little chart room, where, with most of the ship's weapons, Carter and
I were entrenched.
"God, Gregg, that this
should come upon us!"
Carter
was rumbling with the chart room weapons. "Here, Gregg. Help me. What have
you got? Heat ray? That's all I had ready."
It
struck me then as I helped him make the connections that Carter in this crisis
was at best an inefficient commander. His red face had gone splotchy purple;
his hands were trembling. Skilled as Captain of a peaceful liner, he was at a
loss now. But I could not blame him. It is easy to say we might have taken
warning, done this or that, and come triumphant through the attack. But only
the fool looks backward and says, "I would have done better."
I
tried to summon my wits. The ship was lost to us unless Carter and I could do
something. Our futile weapons! They were all here—four or five heat ray hand
projectors that could send a pencd ray a hundred feet or so. I shot one
diagonally up at the turret where Johnson was leering down at our rear window,
but he saw my gesture and dropped back out of sight. The heat beam flashed
harmlessly up and struck the turret room. Then across the turret window came a
sheen of radiance—an electrobarrage. And behind it, Hahn's suave, evil face
appeared. He shouted down:
"We
have orders to spare you, Gregg Haljan—or you would have been killed long
ago!"
My
answering shot hit his barrage with a shower of sparks, behind which he stood
unmoved.
Carter handed me another
weapon. "Gregg, try this."
I
leveled the old explosive projector; Carter crouched beside me. But before I
could press the trigger, from somewhere down the starlit deck an electro beam
hit me. The little rifle exploded, broke its breech. I sank back to the floor,
tingling from the shock of the hostile current. My hands were blackened from
the exploded powder.
Carter seized me. "No
use. Hurt?"
"No."
The
stars through the dome windows were swinging. A long swing—the shadows and
patterns on the starlit deck were all shifting. The Planetara was turning. The heavens revolved in a great
round sweep of movement, then settled as we took our new course.
Hahn at the turret controls had swung us. The Earth and
the Sun showed over our bow quarter. The sunlight mingled
red-yellow with the brilliant starlight. Hahn's signals were
sounding; I heard them answered from the mechanism rooms
down below. Brigands there—in full control. The
gravity
plates were being set to the new positions: We were on our
new course. Headed a point or two off the Earthline.
Not
headed for the Moon? I wondered. /
Carter and I were planning nothing. What was
there to plan? We were under observation. A Martian paralyzing ray —or an
electronic beam, far more deadly than our own puny weapons—would have struck us the instant we tried to leave the chart room.
My
thoughts were interrupted by a shout from down the deck. At a corner of the
cabin superstructure some fifty feet from our windows the figure of Miko
appeared. A radiance barrage hung about him like a shimmering mantle. His
voice sounded: "Gregg Haljan, do you yield?"
Carter
leaped up from where he and I were crouching. A-gainst all reason of safety he
leaned from the low window, waving his hamlike fist.
"Yield? No I I am in command here, you piratel Brigand
—murderer!"
I dragged him back sharply.
"For God's sake—"
He
was spluttering; and over it Miko's sardonic laugh sounded. "Shall we
argue about it?"
I stood up. "What do
you want to say, Miko?"
Behind
him the tall, thin figure of his sister showed. She was plucking at him. He
turned violently. "I won't harm him! Gregg Haljan—is this a truce? You
will not shoot?" He was
shielding Moa.
"No,"
I called. "For a moment, no. A
truce. What is it you want to say?"
I could hear the babble of
passengers who were herded in the cabin with brigands guarding them. George
Prince, bareheaded, but shrouded in his cloak, showed in a patch of light
behind Moa. He looked my way and then retreated.
Miko called, "You must yield. We want
you, Haljan."
"No doubt," I jeered.
"Alive. It is easy to
kill you."
I
could not doubt that. Carter and I were little more than rats in a trap. But
Miko wanted to take me alive: that was not so simple. He added persuasively:
"We want you to
navigate us. Will you?"
"No."
"Will
you help us, Captain Carter? Tell your cub, this Haljan, to yield."
Carter roared, "Get
back from there. There is no trucet"
I
shoved aside his leveled projector. "Wait a minute, Miko. Navigate
where?"
"That
is our business. When you come out here, I will give you the course."
I
realized that all this parley was a ruse of Miko's to
take me alive. He had made a gesture. Hahn, watching him from the turret
window, doubtless flashed a signal down to the hull corridors. The magnetizer
control under the chart room was altered, our artificial gravity cut off. I
felt the sudden lightness: I gripped the window casement and clung. Carter was
startled into incautious movement. It flung him out into the room, his arms and
legs flailing.
And
across the chart room, in the opposite window, I felt rather than saw the shape
of something. A figure, almost invisible but not quite, was trying to climb inl
I flung the empty rifle I was holding. It hit something solid in the window. In
a flare of sparks a blackhooded figure materialized. A man climbing in! His
weapon spat. There was a tiny electronic flash, deadly silent. The intruder had
shot at Carter: struck him. Carter gave one queer scream. He had floated to the
floor; his convulsive movement when he was hit hurled him to the ceiling. His
body struck; twitched;
bounced
back and sank inert on the floor grid almost at my feet.
I
clung to the casement. Across the room of the weightless room the hooded
intruder was also clinging. His hood fell back. It was Johnson.
"Killed him, the bully! Now for you, Mr. Third
Officer Haljan!"
But
he did not dare fire at me. Miko had forbidden it. I saw him reach under his
robe, doubtless for a low-powered paralyzing ray. But he never got it out. I
had no weapon within reach. I leaned into the room, still holding the casement,
and doubled my legs under me. I kicked out from the window.
The
force catapulted me across the space across the room like a volplane. I struck
the purser. We gripped. Our locked, struggling bodies
bounced out into the room. We struck the floor, surged up like balloons to the
ceiling, struck it with a flailing arm or leg and floated back.
Grotesque,
abnormal combat! Like fighting in weightless water.
Johnson clutched his weapon, but I twisted his wrist, held his arm outstretched
so that he could not aim it. I was aware of Miko's voice shouting on the deck
outside.
Johnson's
left hand was gauging at my face, his fingers digging at my eyes. We lunged
down.
I
twisted his wrists. He dropped the weapon and it sank away. I tried to reach it
but could not. . . . Then I had him by the throat. I was stronger than he, and
more agile. I tried choking him, I had his thick bull
neck within my fingers. He kicked, scrambled, tore and gouged at me. Tried to
shout, but it ended in a gurgle. And then, as he felt his breath stopped, his
hands came up in an effort to tear mine loose.
We sank again to the floor. We were momentarily
upright. I felt my feet touch. I bent my knees. We sank further. And then I
kicked violently upward. Our locked bodies shot to the ceiling. Johnson's head
was above me. It struck the steel roof of the chart room. A
violent blow. I felt him go suddenly limp. I cast him off and, doubling
my body, I kicked at the ceiling. It sent me diagonally downward to the'
window, where I clung.
And
I saw Miko standing on the deck with a weapon leveled at met
XIII
"HaljanI Yield or III fire! Moa, give me the smaller one."
He
had in his hand too large a projector. Its ray would kill me. If he wanted to
take me alive, he would not fire. I chanced it.
"No!"
I tried to draw myself beneath the window. An automatic projector was on the
floor where Carter had dropped it. I pulled myself down. Miko did not fire. I
reached the weapon. The bodies of the Captain and Johnson had. drifted together on the floor in the center of the room.
I hitched myself back to the window. With
upraised weapon I gazed cautiously out. Miko had disappeared. The deck within
my line of vision, was empty.
But
was it? Something told me to beware. I clung to the casement, ready upon the
instant to shove myself down. There was a movement in a shadow along the deck.
Then a figure rose up.
"Don't fire, Haljanl"
The
sharp command, half appeal, stopped the pressure of my finger. It was the tall,
lanky Englishman. Sir Arthur Coniston, he as called himself. So he too, was one
of Miko's band! The light through a dome window fell
full on him.
"If
you fire, Haljan, and loll me—Miko will kill you then, surely."
From where he had been crouching he could not
command my window. But now, upon the heels of his placating words, he abruptly
shot. The low-powered ray, had it struck, would have felled me without killing
me. But it went over my head as I dropped. Its aura made my senses reel.
Coniston shouted, "Haljan!"
I
did not answer. I wonder if he would dare approach to see if I had been hit. A minute passed. Then another. I
thought I heard Miko's voice on the deck outside. But it was an aerial,
microscopic whisper close beside me.
"We see you, Haljan. You must
yield!"
Their
eavesdropping vibrations, with audible projection, were upon me. I retorted
loudly, "Come and get me! You cannot take me alive!"
I
do protest if this action of mine in the chart room may seem bravado. I had no
wish to die. There was within me a very healthy desire for life. But I felt, by
holding out, that some chance might come wherewith I might turn events against
these brigands. Yet reason told me it was hopeless. Out
loyal members of the crew
were killed, no doubt. Captain Carter and Balch were dead. The lookouts and
course masters, also. And Blackstone.
There
remained only Dr. Frank and Snap. Their fate I did not yet know. And there was
George Prince. He, perhaps, would help me if he could. But, at best, he was a
dubious ally.
"You
are very foolish, Haljan," murmured Miko's voice. And then I heard
Coniston:
"See
here, why would not a hundred pounds of gold leaf tempt you? The code words
which were taken from Johnson —I mean to say, why not tell us where they
are?"
So
that was one of the brigands' new difficulties! Snap had taken the code word
sheet that time we sealed the purser in the cage.
I
said, "You'll never find them. And when a police ship sights us, what will
you do then?"
The
chances of a police ship were slight indeed, but the brigands evidently did not
know that. I wondered again what had become of Snap. Was he captured or still
holding them off?
I
was watching my windows; for at any moment, under the cover of talk, I might be
assailed.
Gravity came suddenly to the room. Miko's
voice said: "We mean well by you, Haljan. There is your normality. Join
us. We need you to chart our course."
"And
a hundred pounds of gold leaf," urged Coniston. "Or
more. Why, this treasure—"
I
could hear an oath from Miko. And then his ironic voice.
"We will not bother you, Haljan. There is no hurry. You will be hungry in
good time. And sleepy. Then we will come and get you.
And a little acid will help you to think differendy about us. . . ."
His
vibrations died away. The pull of gravity in the room was normal. I was alone
in the dim silence, with the bodies of Carter and Johnson huddled on the grid.
I bent to examine them. Both were dead.
My isolation was not ruse
this time. The outlaws made no further attack. Half an hour passed. The deck
outside, what I could see of it, was vacant. Balch lay dead close outside the
chart room door. The bodies of Blackstone and the course master had been
removed from the turret window. As a forward lookout, one of Miko's men was on
duty in the nearby tower. Hahn was at the turret's controls. The ship was under
orderly handling, heading back upon a new course. For the
Earth? The Moon? It did not seem so.
I
found, in the chart room, a Benson curve light projector which poor Captain
Carter had nearly assembled. I worked on it, trained it through my rear window
along the empty deck; bent it into the lounge archway. Upon my grid the image
of the lounge interior presently focused. The passengers in the lounge were
huddled in a group. Disheveled, frightened, with Moa standing watching them.
Stewards were serving them with a meal.
Upon
a bench, bodies were lying. Some were dead. I saw Ranee Rankin. Others were
evidently only injured. Dr. Frank was moving among them, attending them. Venza
was there, unharmed. And I saw the gamblers, Shac and Dud, sitting white-faced,
whispering together. And Glutz's litde berib-boned, becurled figure on a stool.
George Prince was there, standing against the
wall, shrouded in his mourning cloak, watching the scene
with alert, roving eyes. And by the opposite doorway, the huge towering figure of Miko stood on
guard. But Snap was missing.
A brief glimpse. Miko saw my Benson light. I could have equipped a heat ray and fired
along the curved Benson light into that lounge. But Miko gave me no time.
He
slid the lounge door closed, and Moa leaped to close the one on my side. My
grid showed only the blank deck and door.
Another interval. I had made plans. Futile plans! I could get
into the turret perhaps, and kill Hahn. I had the invisible cloak which
Johnson was wearing. I took it from his body. Its mechanism could be repaired.
Why, with it I could creep about the ship, kill these
brigands one by one, perhaps. George Prince would be with me. The brigands who
had been posing as the stewards and crew members were unable to navigate; they
would obey my orders. There were only Miko, Coniston and Hahn to kill.
From
my window I could gaze up to the radio room. And now, abruptly, I heard Snap's
voice: "No! I tell you—nol"
And
Miko, "Very well, then. Well try this."
So
Snap was captured but not killed. Relief swept me. He was in the radio room and
Miko was with him. But my relief was short-lived. After a brief interval, there
came a moan from Snap. It floated down the silence overhead and made me
shudder.
My
Benson beam shot into the radio room. It showed me Snap lying there on the
floor. He was bound with wire. His torso had been stripped. His livid face was
ghastly plain in my light.
Miko
was bending over him. Miko with a heat cylinder no longer
than a finger. Its needle beam played upon Snap's naked chest. I could
see the gruesome little trail of smoke rising; and as Snap twisted and jerked,
there on his flesh was the red and blistered trail of the violet ray.
"Now will you telir
"Nol"
Miko
laughed. "No? Then I shall write my name a little deeper. . . ."
A
black sear now—a trail etched in the quivering flesh. "Oh!" Snap's
face went white as chalk as he pressed his lips together.
"Or a little acid? This fire-writing does not really hurt? Tell
me what you did with those code words!" "No!"
In
his absorption Miko did not notice my light. Nor did I have the wit to try and
fire along it. I was trembling. Snap under torture!
As the beam went deeper. Snap suddenly screamed. But he ended, "Nol I will send no message for you—"
It
had been only a moment. In the chart room window beside me again a figure
appeared! No image. A solid, living person, undisguised by
any cloak of invisibility. George Prince had chanced my fire and crept
upon me.
"Haljan! Don't attack me."
I
dropped my light connections. As impulsively I stood up, I saw through the
window the figure of Coniston on the deck watching the result of Prince's
venture.
"Haljan—yield."
Prince
no more than whispered it. He stood outside on the deck; the low window casement
touched his waist. He leaned over it.
"He's torturing Snap!
Call out that you will yield."
The
thought had already been in my mind. Another scream from Snap filled me with
horror. I shouted, "Miko! Stop!"
I rushed to the window and
Prince gripped me. "Louder!"
I
called louder: "Miko! Stop!" My upflung
voice mingled with Snap's agony of protest. Then Miko heard me. His head and
shoulders showed up there at the radio room oval.
"You-Haljan?"
Prince shouted, "I have made him yield.
He will obey you if
you stop that torture."
I
think that poor Snap must have fainted. He was silent. I called, "Stop! I
will do what you command."
Miko
jeered, "That is good. A bargain, if you and Dean obey me. Disarm him,
Prince, and bring him out."
Miko
moved back into the radio room. On the deck, Coniston was advancing, but
cautiously mistrustful of me.
"Gregg."
George
Prince flung a leg over the casement and leaped lightly into the dim chart
room. His small slender figure stood beside me, clung to me.
A
moment, while we stood there together. No ray was upon us. Coniston could not
see us, nor could he hear our whispers.
"Gregg."
A different voice; its throaty, husky quality gone. A soft pleading.
"Gregg—Gregg, don't you know me? Gregg, dear . . ."
Why, what was this? Not George Prince? A masquerader, yet so like George Prince. "Gregg don't
you know me?"
Clinging to me. A soft touch upon my arm. Fingers,
clinging. A surge of warm, tingling current was flowing between us.
My sweep of instant thoughts. A speck of human Earth
dust falling free. That was George Prince who had been killed. George
Prince's body, disguised by the scheming Carter and Dr. Frank, buried in the
guise of his sister. And this black-robed figure who was
trying to help me . . .
"Anita! Anita
darling—"
"Gregg,
dear one!"
"Anita!"
My arms went around her, my hps pressed hers, and felt
her tremulous eager answer.
The
form of Coniston showed at our window. She cast me off. She said, with her
throaty swagger of amused, masculinity;
"I have him, Sir
Arthur. He will obey us."
I sensed her warning
glance. She shoved me toward the window. She said ironically, "Have no
fear, Haljan. You will not be tortured, you and Dean, if you obey our commands."
Coniston
gripped me. "You fooll You caused us a lot of
trouble. Move along there!"
He
jerked me roughly through the window. Marched me the length of the deck, out to
the stem space, opened the door of my cubby, flung me in and sealed the door
upon me.
"Miko will come
presently."
I
stood in the darkness of my tiny room, listening to his retreating footsteps.
But my mind was not upon him.
All the
universe, in that instant, had changed for me. Anita was alive!
XIV
The
giant Mnco stood
confronting me. He slid my cubby door closed behind him. He stood with his head
towering close against my ceiling. His cloak was discarded. In his leather
clothes, and with his clanking sword ornament, his aspect carried the swagger
of a brigand of old. He was bare-headed; the light from one of my tubes fell
upon his grinning, leering gray face.
"So, Gregg Haljan? You have come to your senses at last. You do not wish me to write my
name on your chest? I would not have done that to Dean; he forced me. Sit
back."
I
had been on my bunk. I sank back at the gesture of his huge hairy arm. His
forearm was bare now; the sear of a bum on it was plain to be seen. He remarked
my gaze.
"True.
You did that, Haljan, in Greater New York. But I bear you no malice. I want to
talk to you now."
He cast about for a seat, and took the little
stool which stood by my desk. His hand held a small cylinder of he Martian paralyzing ray. He rested it beside him on
the desk.
"Now we can
talk."
I
remained silent. Alert. Yet my thoughts were whirling. Anita was alive. Masquerading as her brother. And, with the joy of it, came a
shudder. Above everything, Miko must not know.
"A great adventure we
are upon, Haljan."
My
thoughts came back. Miko was talking with an assumption of friendly comradeship. "All is well—and we need you, as
I have said before. I am no fool. I have been aware of everything that went on
aboard this ship. You, of all the
officers, are most clever at the routine mathematics. Is that so?"
"Perhaps."
"You
are modest." He fumbled at a pocket of his jacket, produced a
scroll-sheaf. I recognized it. Blackstone's figures.
The calculation Blackstone made of the asteroid we had passed.
"I
am interested in these," Miko went on. "I want you to verify them. And this." He held up another scroll. "This is the calculation of our present position and our course. Hahn claims he
is a navigator. We have set the ship's gravity plates —see, like this."
He
handed me the scrolls. He watched me keenly as I glanced over them.
"Well?" I said.
"You
are sparing of words, Haljan. By the devils of the airways, I could make you
talk! But I want to be friendly."
I
handed him back the scrolls. I stood up. I was almost within reach of his
weapon, but with a sweep of his great arm he knocked me back to my bunk.
"You dare?" Then he smiled.
"Let us not come to blows!"
In
truth, physical violence could get me nothing. I would have to try guile. And I
saw now that his face was flushed and his eyes unnaturally bright. He had been
drinking alcolite; not enough to befuddle him, but enough to make him
triumphantly talkative.
"Hahn may not be much
of a mathematician," I suggested.
"But there is your Sir Arthur Coniston." I managed a sarcastic grin.
"Is that his name?"
"Almost. Haljan, will you verify these figures?"
"Yes. but why?
Where are we going?"
He
laughed. "You are afraid I will not tell youl Why should I? This great
adventure of mine is progressing perfectly. A tremendous
stake, Haljan. A hundred million dollars in gold leaf.
There will be fabulous riches for all of us—"
"But where are we going?"
"To
that asteroid," he said. "I must get rid of these passengers. I am
no murderer."
With a half-dozen killings in the recent
fight this was hardly convincing. But he was obviously wholly serious. He
seemed to read my thoughts.
"I
kill only when necessary. We will land upon the asteroid. A
perfect place to maroon the passengers. Is it not so? I will give them
the necessities of life. They will be able to signal. And in a month or so,
when we are perfectly safe and finished with our adventure, a police ship no
doubt will rescue them."
"And
then, from the asteroid," I suggested, "we are going-"
"To the Moon, Haljan. What a clever guesser you arel Coniston and Hahn are calculating our
course. But I have no great confidence in them. And so I want you."
"You have me."
"Yes.
I have you. I would have killed you long ago—I am an impulsive fellow—but my
sister restrained me."
He
gazed at me slyly. "Moa seems strangely to like you, Haljan."
"Thanks," I said.
"I'm flattered."
"She
still hopes I may really win you to join us," he went on. "Gold leaf
is a wonderful thing; there would be plenty for you in this affair. And to be
rich, and have the love of a woman like Moa . . ."
He paused. I was trying cautiously to gauge
him, to get from him all the information 1 could.
I said, with another smile, "That is premature, to talk of Moa. I will help you chart your course. But this venture, as you call it, is
dangerous. A police ship—"
"There
are not many," he declared. "The chances of our encountering one are
very slim." He grinned at me. "You know that as
well as I do. And we now have those code passwords—I forced Dean to tell
me where he had hidden them. If we should be challenged, our password answer
will relieve suspicion."
"The
Planetara," I objected, "being overdue at
Ferrok-Shahn, will cause alarm. You'll have a covey of patrol ships after
you."
"That will be two weeks from now,"
he smiled. "I have a ship of my own in Ferrok-Shahn. It lies there waiting
now, manned and armed. I am hoping that, with Dean's help, we may be able to flash them a
signal. It will join us on the Moon. Fear not for the danger, Haljan. I have
great interests allied with me in this thing. Plenty of
money. We have planned carefully."
He
was idly fingering his cylinder; he gazed at me as I sat docile on my bunk. "Did you think
George Prince was a leader of this? A mere boy. I
engaged him a year ago—his knowledge of science is valuable to us."
My
heart was pounding but I strove not to show it. He went on calmly.
"I
told you I am impulsive. Half a dozen times I have nearly killed George Prince,
and he knows it." He frowned. "I wish I had killed him instead of his
sister. That was an error."
There
was a note of real concern in his voice. He added, "That is done—nothing
can change it. George Prince is helpful to me. Your friend Dean,
is another. I had trouble with him, but he is docile now."
I
said abruptly, "I don't know whether your promise means anything or not,
Miko. But Prince said you would use no more torture."
"I won't. Not if you
and Dean obey me."
"You tell Dean I have agreed to that.
You say he gave you the code words he took from Johnson?"
"Yes.
There was a fool, for youl That Johnson! You blame me, Haljan, for the death of
Carter? You need not. Johnson offered to try and capture you, take you both
alive. He killed Carter because he was angry with him. A stupid, vengeful fool!
He is dead and I'm glad of it."
My
mind was on Miko's plans. I ventured, "This treasure on the Moon—did you
say it was on the Moon?"
"Don't
play the fool," he retorted. "I know as much about Grantline as you
do."
"That's very
little."
"Perhaps."
"Perhaps
you know more, Miko. The Moon is a big place. Where, for instance, is Grantline
located?"
I
held my breath. Would he tell me that? A score of questions—vague plans were in
my mind. How skilled at mathematics were these brigands? Miko,
Coniston, Hahn— could I fool them? If I could learn
Grantline's location on the Moon, and keep the Planetara away from it.
A pretended error of charting. Time lost—and perhaps
Snap could find an opportunity to signal Earth, get help.
Miko
answered my question as bluntly as I asked it. "I don't know where
Grantline is located. But we will find out. He will not suspect the Planetara so when we get close to the Moon, we will
signal and ask him. We can trick him into telling us. You think I do not know
what is on your mind, Haljan? There is a secret code of signals arranged
between Dean and Grantline. I have forced Dean to confess it. Without torture!
Prince helped me in that. He persuaded Dean not to defy me. A
very persuasive fellow, George Prince. More diplomatic
than I am. I give him credit for that."
I strove to hold my voice calm. "If I
should join you, Miko —my word, if I ever gave it, you would find dependable— I
would say George Prince is very valuable to us. You should rein your temper. He
is half your size—you might some time, without intention, do him injury."
He laughed. "Moa says so. But have no
fear—"
"I
was thinking," I persisted. "I'd like to have a talk with George
Prince."
Ah,
my pounding, tumultuous heart! But I was smiling calmly. And I tried to put
into my voice a shrewd note of cupidity. "I really know very litde about
this treasure, Miko. I£ there were a million or two of gold leaf in
it for me—"
"Perhaps there would be."
"Suppose
you let me have a talk with Prince? I have some scientific knowledge myself
about the powers of this catalyst. Prince's knowledge and mine—we might be able
to come to a calculation on the value of Grantline's treasure. You don't know.
You are only assuming."
I
paused after this glib outburst. Whatever may have been in Miko's mind, I
cannot say. But abruptly he stood up. I had
left my bunk but he waved me back.
"Sit
down. I am not like Moa. I would not trust you just because you protested you
would be loyal." He picked up his cylinder. "We will talk
again." He gestured to the scrolls he had left upon my desk. "Work on
those. I will judge you by the results."
He was no fool, this brigand leader.
"Yes," I agreed. "You want a
true course to the asteroid?" "Yes. And by the gods, I warn you, I
can check up on you!"
I said meekly, "Very well. But you ask
Prince if he wants my calculations on Grantline's possibilities."
I shot Miko a foxy look as he stood by the
door. I added, "You think you are clever. There is plenty you don't know.
Our first night out from Earth—Grantline's signals—didn't it ever occur to you
that I might have some figures on his treasure?"
It startled him. "Where are they?"
I tapped my forehead. "You don't suppose
I was foolish enough to record them. You ask Prince if he wants to talk to me.
A hundred million, or two hundred million—it would make a big difference,
Miko."
"I
will think about it." He backed out and sealed the door upon me.
But
Anita did not come. I verified Hahn's figures, which were very nearly correct.
I charted a course for the asteroid; it was almost the one which had been set.
Coniston
came for my results. "I say, we are not so bad as
navigators, are we? I think we're jolly good, considering our inexperience. Not bad at all, eh?"
"No."
I did not think it wise to ask him about
Prince.
"Are you hungry, Haljan?"
"Yes."
A
steward came with a meal. The saturnine Hahn stood at my door with a weapon
upon me while I ate. They were taking no chances and they were wise not to.
The
day passed. Day and night, all the same of aspect here in the
starry vault of space. But with the ship's routine it was day. And then another time of sleep. I slept fitfully, worrying,
trying to plan. Within a few hours we would be nearing the asteroid.
The
time of sleep was nearly passed. My chronometer marked five a.m. original Earth starting time. The seal of
my cubby door hissed. The door slowly opened.
Anita!
She stood there with her cloak around her. A
distance away on the shadowed deck Coniston was loitering. "Anita!" I
whispered it. "Gregg, dear!"
She
turned and gestured to the watching brigand. "I will not be long,
Coniston."
She
came in and half closed the door upon us, leaving it open enough so that we
could make sure that Coniston did not advance
I stepped back where he could not see us.
"Anital" She flung herself into my opened arms.
A moment
when, beyond the thought
of the nearby brigand —or the possibility of an eavesdropping ray trained now
upon my cubby-a moment while Anita and I held each other, and whispered those
things which could mean nothing to the world, but which were all the world to
us!
Then
it was she whose wits brought us back from the shining fairyland of our love,
into the sinister reality of the Planetara.
"Gregg, if they are
listening—"
I
pushed her away. This brave little masqueraded Not for
my life, or for all the lives on the ship, would I consciously have endangered
her.
"But Grantline's findings!" I said aloud. "In his message —see
here, Prince—"
Coniston
was too far away on the deck to hear us. Anita went to my door again and waved
at him reassuringly. I put my ear to the door opening and listened at the space
across the grid of the ventilator over my bunk. The hum of a vibration would
have been audible at those two points. But there was nothing.
"It's
all right," I whispered, and she clung to me—so small beside me. With the
black robe thrown aside, it seemed that I could not miss the curves of her
woman's figure. A dangerous game she was playing. Her hair had been cut short
to the base of her neck, in the fashion of her dead brother." Her eyelashes
had been clipped: the line of her brows altered. And now, in the light of my
tube as it shone upon her earnest face, I could remark other changes. Glutz,
the little beauty specialist, was in this secret. With plastic skill he had
altered the set of her jaw—put masculinity here.
She
was whispering: "It was—was poor George whom Miko shot."
I had now the true version of what had
occurred. Miko had been forcing his wooing upon Anita. George Prince was a
weakling whose only good quality was his love for his sister. Some years ago he
had fallen into evil ways. Been arrested, .and then been discharged from his
position with the Federated Corporation. He had taken up with evil companions
in Greater New York. Mostly Martians. And Miko had met
him. His technical knowledge, his training with the Federated Corporation, made
him valuable to Miko's enterprise. And so Prince had joined the brigands.
Of
all this, Anita had been unaware. She had never liked Miko. Feared
him. But it seemed that the Martian had some hold upon her brother,
which puzzled and frightened Anita.
Then
Miko had fallen in love with her. George had not liked it. And that night on
the Planetara, Miko had come and knocked upon Anita's door,
and incautiously she had opened it. He forced himself in. And when she repulsed
him, struggled with him, George had been awakened.
She
was whispering to me now. "My room was dark. We were all three struggling.
George was holding me—the shot came—and I screamed."
And
Miko had fled, not knowing whom bis shot had hit in the darkness.
"And
when George died, Captain Carter wanted me to impersonate him. We planned it
with Dr. Frank to try and leam what Miko and the others were doing; because I
didn't know that poor George had fallen into such evil ways."
She
whispered, "But I love you, Gregg. I want to be the first to say it: I
love you—I love you."
We had the sanity to try
and plan.
"Anita, tell Miko we discussed the
multiple powers of the catalyst. Discussed how carefully it would have to be
transported-, how to gauge its worth. YouTl have to be careful, clever. Don't
say too much. Tell him we estimate the value at about a hundred and thirty
millions."
I
repeated what Miko had told me of his plans. She knew all that. And Snap knew
it. She had a few moments alone with Snap and gave me now a message from him,
"Well pull out of this, Gregg."
With
Snap she had worked out a plan. There were Snap and I; and Shac and Dud Ardley
upon whom we could doubtless depend. And Dr. Frank.
Against us were Miko and his sister, and Coniston and Hahn. Of course, there
were the members of the crew. But we were numerically the stronger when it came
to true leadership. Unarmed and guarded now. But if we could break
loose—recapture the ship . . .
I
sat listening to Anita's eager whispers. It seemed feasible. Miko did not
altogether trust George Prince; Anita was now unarmed.
"But I can make opportunity! I can get
one of their ray cylinders, and an invisible cloak
equipment."
That
cloak, that had been hidden in Miko's room when Carter
searched for it in A20 was now in the chart room by Johnson's body. It had been
repaired now. Anita thought she could get possession of it.
We
worked out the details of the plan. Anita would arm herself, and come and
release me. Together, with a paralyzing ray, we could creep about the ship, overcome these brigands, one by one. There were so few
of the leaders. With them felled, and with us in control of the turret and the
radio room, we could force the crew to stay at their posts. There were, Anita said,
no navigators among Miko's crew. They would not dare oppose us.
"But it should be done at once, Anita.
In a few hours we will be at the asteroid."
"Yes. I will go now
and try to get the weapons."
"Where is Snap?"
"Still in the radio
room.
One of the crew guards him."
Coniston
was roaming the ship. He was still loitering on the deck, watching my door.
Hahn was in the turret. The morning watch of the crew were
at their posts in the hull corridors. The stewards were preparing a morning
meal. There were nine members of subordinates altogether, Anita
had
calculated. Six of them were in Miko's pay. The other three—our own men who had
not been killed in the fighting —had joined the brigands. "And Dr. Frank, Anita?"
He
was in the lounge. All the passengers were herded there, with Miko and Moa
alternating on guard.
"I
will arrange it with Venza," Anita whispered swiftly. "She will tell
the others. Dr. Frank knows about it now. He thinks it can be done."
The
possibility of it swept me anew. The brigands were of necessity scattered
singly about the ship. One by one, creeping under cover of an invisible cloak,
I could fell them, and replace them without alarming others. My thoughts leaped
to it. We would strike down the guard in the radio room. Release Snap. At the
turret we could assail Hahn, and replace him with Snap.
Conistons voice outside
broke in upon us. "Prince."
He
was coming forward. Anita stood in the doorway. "I have the figures,
Coniston. By God, this Haljan is with us! And clever! We think it will total a
hundred and thirty millions. What a stake!"
She whispered, "Gregg dear, 111 be back soon. We can do it—be ready!"
"Anita—be careful of yourself! If they should suspect
_ >»
you .
. .
"I'll be careful. In an hour, Gregg, or
less, 111 come back. . . . All right, Coniston. Where is Miko? I want to see
him. Stay where you are, Haljan. In good time Miko will trust you with your
liberty. You'll be rich like all of us. Never fear."
She swaggered out upon the deck, waved at the
brigand, and banged my cubby door in my face.
I
sat upon my bunk. Waiting. Would she come back? Would
she be successful?
She came. I suppose it was no more than an hour: It
seemed an eternity of apprehension. There was the slight hissing of the seal of
my door. The panel slid. I had leaped from my bunk where in the darkness I was
lying tense.
"Prince?" I did not dare say "Anita."
"Gregg."
Her voice. My
gaze swept the deck as the panel opened. Neither Coniston nor anyone else was
in sight, save Anita's dark-robed figure which came into my room.
"You got it?" I
asked in a low whisper.
I
held her for an instant, kissed her. But she pushed me away with quick hands.
She was breathless.
"Yes, I have it. Give
us a little light—we must hurry!"
In
the blue dimness I saw that she was holding one of the Martian cylinders. The
smaller size: it would paralyze but not kill.
"Only
one, Anita?"
"Yes. And this-"
The invisible cloak. We laid it on my grid, and I adjusted its mechanism. I donned it and
drew its hood, and threw on its current.
"All right,
Anita?"
"Yes."
"Can you see me?"
"No."
She had stepped back a foot or two. "Not from here. But you must let no
one approach too close."
Then
she came forward, put out her hand, fumbled until she found me.
It
was our plan to have me follow her out. Anyone observing us would see only the
robed figure of the supposed George Prince, and I would escape unnoticed.
The situation about the ship was almost
unchanged. Anita had secured the weapon and the cloak and slipped away to my cubby without being observed.
"You're sure of that?"
"I think so, Gregg. I was careful."
Moa
was now in the lounge, guarding the passengers. Hahn was asleep in the chart
room. Coniston was in the turret. Coniston would be off duty presently, Anita
said, with Hahn taking his place. There were lookouts in the forward and stern
watch towers, and a guard upon Snap in the radio room.
"Is he inside the
room, Anita?"
"Snap? Yes."
"No—the
guard."
"The guard was sitting
on the spider bridge at the door."
This
was unfortunate. That guard could see all the deck clearly. He might be
suspicious of George Prince wandering around: it would be difficult to get near
enough to assail him. This cylinder, I knew, had an effective range of only
some twenty feet.
"Coniston
is the sharpest, Gregg. He will be the hardest to get near."
"Where is Miko?"
The
brigand leader had gone below a few moments ago, down into the hull corridor.
Anita had seized the opportunity to come to me.
"We
can attack Hahn in the chart room first," I whispered. "And get the
other weapons. Are they still there?"
"Yes. But the forward
deck is very bright, Gregg."
We were approaching the asteroid. Already its
light, like a brilliant moon, was brightening the forward deck space. It made
me realize how much haste was necessary.
We
decided to go down into the hull corridors. Locate Miko. Fell him and hide him.
His nonappearance back on deck would very soon throw the others into confusion,
especially now with our impending landing upon the asteroid. And, under cover
of this confusion, we would try to release Snap.
We were ready. Anita slid my door open. She
stepped through, with me soundlessly scurrying after her. The empty, silent
deck was alternately dark with shadow patches and bright with blobs of
starlight. A sheen of the Sun's corona was mingled
with it; and from forward came the radiance of the asteroid's mellow silver
glow.
Anita
turned to seal my door; within my faintly humming cloak I stood beside her. Was
I invisible in this light? Almost directly over us, close under the dome, the
lookout sat in his little tower. He gazed down at Anita.
Amidships,
high over the cabin superstructure, the radio room hung dark and silent. The
guard on its bridge was visible. He too, looked down.
A tense instant. Then I breathed again. There was no alarm. The two guards answered
Anita's gesture.
Anita
said aloud into my empty cubby: "Miko will come for you presently, Haljan.
He told me that he wants you at the turret controls to land us on the
asteroid."
She finished sealing my door and turned away;
started forward along the deck. I followed. My steps were soundless in my
elastic-bottomed shoes. Anita swaggered with a noisy tread. Near the door of
the smoking room a small incline passage led downward. We went into it.
The
passage was dimly blue lit. We descended its length, came to the main corridor,
which ran the length of the hull. A vaulted metal passage, with doors to the
control rooms opening from it. Dim lights showed at intervals.
The
humming of the ship was more apparent here. It drowned the light humming of my
cloak. I crept after Anita; my hand under the cloak clutched the ray weapon.
A steward passed us. I
shrank aside to avoid him.
Anita spoke to him.
"Where is Miko, Ellis?"
"In the ventilator room, Mr. Prince. There was difficulty with the air
renewal."
Anita
nodded and moved on. I could have felled that steward as he passed me. Oh, if I
only had, how different things might have beenl
But
it seemed needless. I let him go, and he turned into a nearby
door which led to the galley.
Anita moved forward. If we could come upon
Miko alone! Abruptly she turned and whispered, "Gregg, if other men are
with him, I'll draw him away. You watch your chance."
What
little things can overthrow one's careful plans! Anita had not realized how
close to her I was following. And her turning so unexpectedly caused me to
collide with her sharply.
"Oh!"
She exclaimed it involuntarily. Her outflung hand had unwittingly gripped my
wrist, caught the electrode there. The touch bumed her, and short-circuited my
robe. There was a hiss. My current bumed out the tiny fuses.
My
invisibility was gone! I stood, a tall, black-hooded figure, revealed to the
gaze of anyone who might be near!
The
futile plans of humans I We had planned so carefully! Our calculations,
our hopes of what we could do, came clattering now in a
sudden wreckage around us.
"Anita! Run!"
If
I were seen with her, then her own disguise would probably be discovered. That
above everything, would be disaster.
"Anita, get away from
me! I must try it alone!"
I
could hide somewhere, repair the cloak perhaps. Or, since now I was armed, why
could not I boldly start an assault?
"Gregg,
we must get you back to your cubby!" She was clinging to me in panic.
"No. You run! Get away from me! Don't
you understand? George Prince has no business here with me! They'll kill
you!"
"Gregg, let's get back
to the deck."
I pushed at her, both of us
in confusion.
From
behind me there came a shout. That accursed steward! He had returned, to
investigate perhaps what George Prince was doing in this corridor. He heard our
voices. His shout in the silence of the ship sounded horribly loud. The
white-cloaked shape of him was in the nearby doorway. He stood stricken with surprise
at seeing me. And then turned to run.
I fired my paralyzing cylinder through my
cloak. Got him! He fell. I shoved Anita violently.
"Run!
Tell Miko to come—tell him you heard a shout. He won't suspect you!"
^But, Gregg-"
"You
mustn't be found out. You're our only hope, Anita! Ill hide, fix the cloak, or
get back to my cubby. Well try again."
It
decided her. She scurried down the corridor. I whirled the other way. The
steward's shout might not have been heard.
Then
realization flashed to me. That steward would be revived. He was one of Miko's
men. He would be revived and tell what he had seen and heard. Anita's disguise
would be revealed.
A
cold-blooded killing, I do protest, went against me. But it was necessary. I
flung myself upon him. I beat his skull with the metal of my cylinder.
I
stood up. My hood had fallen back from my head. I wiped my bloody hands on my
useless cloak. I had smashed the cylinder.
"Haljan!"
Anita's
voice! A sharp note of horror and warning. I became
aware that in the corridor, forty feet down its dim length, Miko had appeared
with Anita behind him. His bullet projector was leveled. It spat at me. But
Anita had pulled at his arm.
The explosive report was sharply deafening in
the confined space of the corridor. With a spurt of flame the leaden pellet
struck over my head against the vaulted ceiling.
Miko was struggling with Anita. "Prince, you idiot!"
"Miko, it's Haljan! Don't kill him-"
The
turmoil brought members of the crew. From the shadowed oval near me they came
running. I flung the useless cylinder at them. But I was trapped in the narrow
passage.
I might have fought my way out. Or Miko might
have shot me. But there was the danger that, in her horror, Anita would betray
herself.
I
backed against the wall. "Don't kill mel See, I
will not fight!"
I
flung up my arms. And the crew, emboldened and courageous under Miko's gaze,
leaped on me and bore me down.
The
futile plans of humans! Anita and I had planned so carefully. And in a few
brief minutes of action it had come only to this!
XVII
"So,
Gregg Haljan, you are not as loyal as you pretend!"
Miko
was livid with suppressed anger. They had stripped the cloak from me, and flung
me back in my cubby. Miko was now confronting me: at the door Moa stood
watching. And Anita was behind her. I sat outwardly defiant and sullen on my
bunk. But I was tense and alert, fearful still of what Anita's emotion might
betray her into doing.
"Not so loyal,"
Miko repeated. "And a fool!"
"How did he get out of
here? Prince, you came in here!"
My
heart was wildly thumping. But Anita retorted with a touch of spirit, "I
came to tell him what you commanded. To check Hahn's latest
figures—and to be ready to take the controls when we approached the
asteroid."
"Well, how did he get
out?"
"How should I know?" she parried.
Little actressl Her spirit helped to allay my fear.
She held her cloak close around her in the fashion they had come to expect from
the George Prince who had just buried his sister. "How should I know,
Miko? I sealed his door."
"But did you?"
"Of course he
did," Moa put in.
"Ask your lookouts," Anita said.
"They saw me—I waved to them just as I sealed the door."
I ventured, "I have been taught to open
doors." I managed a sly, lugubrious smile. "I shall not try it
again, Miko."
Nothing
had been said about my killing of the steward. I thanked my constellations now
that he was dead. "I shall not try it again," I repeated.
A
glance passed between Miko and his sister. Miko said abruptly, "You seem
to realize it is not my purpose to kill you. And you presume upon it."
"I
shall not again." I eyed Moa. She was gazing at me steadily. She said,
"Leave me with him, Miko. . . ." She smiled.
"Gregg Haljan, we are no more than twenty thousand miles from the asteroid
now. The calculations for retarding are now in operation."
It was what had taken Miko below, that and
trouble with the ventilating system, which was soon rectified. But the retarding
of the ship's velocity when nearing a destination required accurate
manipulation. These brigands were fearful of their own skill. That was obvious.
It gave me confidence. I was really needed. They would not harm me. Except for
Miko's impulsive temper, I was in no danger from them— not now, certainly.
Moa
was saying, "I think I may make you understand, Gregg. We have tremendous
riches within our grasp."
"I know it," I said with sudden
thought. "But there are many with whom to divide this treasure. . .
."
Miko
caught my intended implication. "By the infernal, this fellow may have
thought he could seize this treasure for himself! Because he
is a navigator!"
Moa
said vehemently, "Do not be an idiot, Gregg! You could not do it! There
will be fighting with Grantlinel"
My purpose was accomplished. They seemed to
see me a willing outlaw like themselves. As though it were a
bond between us.
"Leave me with
him," said Moa.
Miko
acquiesced. "For a few minutes only." He
proffered a heat ray cylinder but she refused it.
"I am not afraid of
him.''
Miko swung on me. "Within an hour we
will be nearing the atmosphere. Will you take the controls?"
"Yes."
He
set his heavy jaw. His eyes bored into me. "You're a strange fellow, Hal
Jan. I can't make you out. I am not angry now. Do you think,
when I am deadly serious, that I mean what I say?"
His
calm words set a sudden chill over me. I checked my smile.
"Yes," I said.
"Well
then, I will tell you this: not for all of Prince's well-meaning interference,
or Moa's liking for you, or my own need of your skill, will I tolerate more
trouble from you. The next time, I will kill you. Do you believe me?"
"Yes."
"That
is all I want to say. You kill my men, and my sister says I must not hurt you.
I am not a child to be ruled by a woman!"
He held his huge fist before my face.
"With these fingers I will twist your neck! Do you believe it?"
"Yes." I did indeed.
He
swung on his heel. "Moa wants to try and put sense in your head—I hope she
does it. Bring him to the lounge when you have finished. Come, Prince, Hahn
will need us." He chuckled grimly. "Hahn seems to fear we will plunge
into this asteroid like a wild comet gone suddenly tangent!"
Anita
moved aside to let him through the door. I caught a glimpse of her set white
face as she followed him down the deck. Then Moa's bulk blocked the doorway.
She faced me.
"Sit
where you are, Gregg." She turned and closed the door upon us. "I am
not afraid of you. Should I be?"
"No."
She came and sat down beside me. "If you
should attempt to leave this room, the stern lookout has orders to bore you
through."
"I
have no intention of leaving this room," I retorted. "I do not want
to commit suicide."
"I
thought you did. You seem minded in such a fashion. Gregg, why are you so
heedless?"
I
said carefully, "This treasure—you are many who will divide it. You have
all these men on the Planetara.
And in Ferrok-Shahn,
others—"
I
paused. Would she tell me? Could I make her talk of that other brigand ship
which Miko had said was waiting on Mars? I wondered if he had been able to
signal it. The distance from here to Mars was great; yet upon other voyages
Snap's signals had gotten through. My heart sank at the thought. Our situation
here was desperate enough. The passengers soon would be cast upon the asteroid:
there would be left only Snap, Anita and myself. We might recapture the ship,
but I doubted it now. My thoughts were turning to our arrival on the Moon. We
three might, perhaps, be able to thwart the attack upon Grantline, hold the
brigands off until help from the Earth might come.
But
with another brigand ship, fully manned and armed, coming from Mars, the
condition would be immeasurably worse. Grantline had some twenty men, and his
camp, I
knew, would be reasonably
fortified. I knew too, that Johnny Grantline would fight to his last man.
Moa was saying, "I
would like to tell you our plans, Gregg."
Her
gaze was on my face. Keen eyes, but they were luminous now—an emotion in them
sweeping her. But outwardly she was calm.
"Well, why don't you tell me?" I
said. "If I am to help . . ."
"Gregg,
I want you with us. Don't you understand. And we are
not many, really. My brother and I are guiding this affair. With your help, I
would feel differently."
"The ship at
Ferrok-Shahn-"
My fears were realized. She said, "I
think our signals reached it. Dean tried and Coniston was checking him."
"You think the ship is coming?" "Yes."
"Where will it join
us?"
"At the Moon. We will be there in thirty hours. Your figures gave that, did they
not?"
"Yes," I said.
"And the other ship—how fast is it?"
"Quite fast. In eight days—perhaps nine, it will reach the Moon."
She
seemed willing enough to talk. There was indeed, no reason why she shouldn't: I
could not, she naturally felt, turn the knowledge to account. Certainly my
position seemed desperately helpless.
"Manned—" I
prompted.
"About
forty men."
"And armed? Long range
projectors?"
"You ask very avid questions, Greggl"
"Why
should I not? Don't you suppose I'm interested?" I touched her. "Moa,
did it ever occur to you, if once you and Miko trusted me—which you don't—I
might show more interest in joining you?"
The
look on her face emboldened me. "Did you ever think of that, Moa? And some arrangement for my share of this treasure? I am not
like Johnson, to be hired for a hundred pounds of gold leaf."
"Gregg,
I will see that you get your share. Riches for you and
me."
"I was thinking, Moa—when we land at the
Moon tomorrow—where is our equipment?"
The
Moon, with its lack of atmosphere, needed special equipment. I had never heard
Captain Carter mention what apparatus the Flanetara was carrying.
Moa
laughed. "We have located air suits and helmets— a variety of suitable
apparatus, Gregg. But we were not foolish enough to leave Greater New York on
this voyage without our own apparatus. My brother and Coniston and Prince—an of us shipped crates of freight consigned to
Ferrok-Shahn; and Rankin had special baggage marked 'theatrical
apparatus.'"
I
understood it now. These brigands had boarded the Planetara with their own Moon equipment, disguised as
freight and personal baggage. Shipped in bond, to be inspected
by the tax officials of Mars.
"It
is on board now. We will open it when we leave the asteroid, Gregg. We are well
equipped."
She
bent toward me. And suddenly her long, lean fingers were gripping my shoulders.
"Gregg, look at
mel"
I
gazed into her eyes. There was passion there; and her voice was intense.
"Gregg,
I told you once a Martian girl goes after what she wants. It is you I
want—"
Not
for me to play upon a woman's emotionsl "Moa, you flatter me."
"I
love you." She held me off, gazing at me. "Gregg—" I must have
smiled. Abruptly she released me. "So you think it amusing?"
"No. But on Earth-"
"We
are not on Earth. Nor am I of the Earth!" She was gauging me keenly. No
note of pleading was in her voice: a stern authority,
and the passion was swinging to anger.
"I
am like my brother: I do not understand you, Gregg Haljan. Perhaps you think
you are clever?"
"Perhaps."
There
was a moment of silence. "Gregg, I said I loved you. Have you no
answer?"
"No." In truth, I did not know what
sort of answer it would be best to make. Whatever she must have read in my
eyes, it stirred her to fury. Her fingers with the strength of a man in them,
dug into my shoulders. Heir gaze searched me.
"You tbink you love someone else? Is
that it?"
That
was horribly startling; but she did not mean it just that way. She amended,
with caustic venom: "That little Anita Prince! You thought you loved herl
Was that it?"
"No!"
But I hardly deceived her. "Sacred to her memory!
Her ratlike little face, soft voice like a purring, sniveling catl Is that what
you're remembering, Gregg Haljan?" I tried to laugh. "What
nonsense!"
"Is
it? Then why are you cold under my touch? Am I, a girl descended from the Martian
flame-workers, impotent to awaken a man?"
A
woman scorned! In all the universe there could be no
more dangerous an enemy. An incredible venom shot from
her eyes.
"That miserable mouselike creature! Well for her that my brother killed
her."
It
struck me cold. If Anita were unmasked, beyond all the menace of Miko's wooing,
I knew that the venom of Moa's jealousy was a greater danger.
I
said sharply, "Don't be simple, Moal" I shook off her grip. "You
imagine too much. You forget that I am a man of Earth and you a girl of Mars."
"Is that reason why we
should not love?"
"No.
But our instincts are different. Men of Earth are born to the chase."
I
was smiling. With thought of Anita's danger I could find it readily in my heart
to dupe this Amazon.
"Give me time, Moa.
You attract me."
"You lie!"
"Do
you think so?" I gripped her arm with all the power of my fingers. It must
have hurt her but she gave no sign; her gaze clung to me steadily.
"I don't know what to think, Gregg
Haljan. . . ."
I
held my grip. 'Think what you like. Men of Earth have been known to kill the
thing they love."
"You want me to fear
you?"
"Perhaps."
She smiled scornfully.
"That is absurd."
I
released her. I said eamestiy, "I want you to realize that if you treat me
fairly, I can be of great advantage to this venture. There will be fighting. I, am fearless."
Her
venomous expression was softening. "I think that is true, Gregg!"
"And
you need my navigating skill. Even now I should be in the turret."
I
stood up. I half expected she would stop me, but she did not. I added,
"Shall we go?"
She
stood beside me. Her height brought her face level with mine.
"I
think you will cause no more trouble, Gregg?" "Of
course not. I am not wholly witless." "You have been."
"Well,
that is over." I hesitated. Then I added, "A man of Earth does not
yield to love while there is work to do. This treasure—"
I
think that of everything I said, this last most convinced her.
She
interrupted, "That I understand." Her eyes were smoldering.
"When it is over—when we are rich—then I will claim you, Gregg."
She turned from me.
"Are you ready?"
"Yes. No! I must get
that sheet of Hahn's last figures."
"Are they
checked?"
"Yes."
I picked the sheet up from my desk. "Hahn is fairly accurate, Moa."
"A fool, nevertheless.
An apprehensive fool."
A
comradeship seemed coming between us. It was my
purpose to establish it.
"Are
we going to maroon Dr. Frank with the passengers?" I asked.
"Yes."
"But he may be of use
to us."
Moa shook her head decisively. "My
brother has decided not. We will be well rid of Dr. Frank. Are you ready,
Gregg?" "Yes."
She
opened the door. Her gesture reassured the lookout, who was alertly watching
the stern watchtower.
I stepped out, and followed her forward along
the deck, which now was bright with the radiance of the nearby asteroid.
XVIII
A fair little world. I had thought so before; and I thought so
now as I gazed at the asteroid hanging so close before our bow. A huge, thin crescent, with the Sun off to one side behind it.
A silver crescent, tinged with red. From this near vantage point, all of the little globe's disc was visible. The seas lay in
gray patches. The convexity of the disc was sharply defined. So small a world!
Fair and beautiful, shrouded with clouded areas.
"Where is Miko?"
"In
the lounge, Gregg?"
"Can we stop
there?"
Moa
turned into the lounge archway. Strange, tense scene.
I saw Anita at once. Her robed figure lurked in an inconspicuous comer; her
eyes were upon me as Moa and I entered, but she did not move. The thirty-odd
passengers were huddled in a group. Solemn, white-faced men;
frightened women. Some of them were sobbing. One Earth woman —a young
widow—sat holding her little girl, and wailing with uncontrolled hysteria. The
child knew me. As I appeared now, with my gold laced white coat over my
shoulders, the little girl seemed to see in my uniform a mark of authority. She
left her mother and ran to me.
"You—please, will you
help us? My Moms is crying."
I
sent her gently back. But there came upon me then a compassion
for these innocent passengers, fated to have embarked on this ill-fated
voyage. Herded here in this cabin, with brigands like pirates of old, guarding
them. Waiting now to be marooned on an uninhabited asteroid
roaming in space. A sense of responsibility swept me. I swung upon
Miko. He stood with a nonchalant grace, lounging
against the wall with a cylinder dangling in his hand. He anticipated me, and
was the first to speak.
"So,
Haljan, she put some sense into your head? No more trouble? Then get into the
turret. Moa, stay there with him. Send Hahn here.
Where is that ass, Coniston? We will be in the atmosphere shortly."
I
said, "No more trouble from me, Miko. But these passengers—what
preparation are you making for them on the asteroid?"
He
stared in surprise. Then he laughed. "I am no murderer. The crew is
preparing food, all we can spare. And tools. They can
build themselves shelter—they will be picked up in a few weeks."
Dr.
Frank was here. I caught his gaze but he did not speak. On the lounge couches
there still lay the five bodies. Rankin, who had been killed by Blackstone in
the fight; a man passenger killed; a woman and a man wounded, as well.
Miko
added, "Dr. Frank will take his medical supplies and will care for the
wounded. There are other bodies among the crew." His gesture was
deprecating. "I have not buried them. We will put them ashore; easier that
way."
The passengers were all
eying me. I said:
"You
have nothing to fear. I will guarantee you the best equipment we can
spare." I turned to Miko. "You will give them
apparatus with which to signal?"
"Yes. Get to the
turret."
I
turned away, with Moa after me. Again the little girl ran forward.
"Come . . . speak to
my Moms; she is crying."
It
was across the cabin from Miko. Coniston had appeared from the deck; it created
a slight diversion. He joined Miko.
"Wait,"
I said to Moa. "She is afraid of you. This is humanity."
I
pushed Moa back. I followed the child. I had seen that Venza was sitting with
the child's weeping mother. This was a ruse to get a word
with me.
I
stood before the terrified woman while the child clung to my legs.
I
said gendy, "Don't be so frightened. Dr. Frank will take care of you.
There is no danger; you will be safer on the asteroid than here on the
ship." I leaned down and touched her shoulder. "There is no
danger."
I
was between Venza and the open cabin. Venza whispered swiftly, "When we
are landing, Gregg, I want you to make a commotion—anything—just as the women
go ashore."
"Why? Of course you
will have food, Mrs. Francis."
"Never
mind details! An instant—just confusion. Go, Gregg
—don't speak now!"
I raised the child.
"You take care of Mother." I kissed her.
From
across the cabin, Miko's sardonic voice made me turn. "Touching
sentimentality, Haljanl Get to your post in the turret!"
His
rasping note of annoyance brooked no delay. I set the child down. I said,
"I will land us in an hour. Depend on it."
Hahn
was at the controls when Moa and I reached the turret.
"You
will land us safely, Haljan?" he demanded anxiously. I pushed him away.
"Miko wants you in the lounge." "You take command here?"
"Yes.
I am no more anxious for a crash than you are, Hahn."
He
sighed with relief. "That is true, of course. I am no expert at
atmospheric entry."
"Have no fear. Sit
down, Moa."
I
waved to the lookout in the forward watch tower, and got his routine gesture. I
rang the corridor bells, and the normal signals came
prompdy back.
I
turned to Hahn. "Get along, won't you? Tell Miko that things are all right
here."
Hahn's
small dark figure, lithe as a leopard in his tight fitting trousers and jacket
with his robe now discarded, went swifdy down the spider incline and across the
deck.
"Moa, where is Snap? By the infemal-if
he has been injured—"
Up
on the radio room bridge, the brigand guard still sat. Then I saw that Snap was
out there sitting with him. I waved from the turret window, and Snap's cheery
gesture answered me. His voice carried down through the silver moonlight:
"Land us safely, Gregg. These weird amateur
navigators!"
Within
the hour I had us dropping into the asteroid's atmosphere. The ship heated
steadily. The pressure went up. It kept me busy with the instruments and the
calculations. But my signals were always promptly answered from below. The
brigand crew did its part efficiently.
At a hundred and fifty thousand feet I shifted the gravity plates to the
landing combinations, and started the electronic engines.
"All safe, Gregg?" Moa sat at my elbow; her eyes, with what seem a glow of admiration in them, followed my busy routine
activities.
"Yes. The crew works
well."
The
electronic streams flowed out like a rocket
tail behind us. The Planetara
caught their impetus. In
the rarified air, our bow lifted slightly, like a ship riding a gentle ground
swell. At a hundred thousand feet we sailed gently forward, hull down to the
asteroid's surface, cruising to seek a landing space.
A little sea was now beneath us. A shadowed sea, deep purple in the night down there.
Occasional verdurous islands showed, with the lines of white surf marking them.
Beyond the sea, a curving coastline was visible. Rocky headlines, behind which
mountain foothills rose in serrated, verdurous ranks. The sunlight edged the
distant mountains; and presently this rapidly turning little world brought the
sunlight forward.
It was day beneath us. We slid gently
downward. Thirty thousand feet now, above a sparkling
blue ocean. The coastline was just ahead; green with a
lush, tropical vegetation. Giant trees, huge-leaved.
Long, dangling vines; air plants, with giant pods and vivid orchidlike
blossoms,
I sat at the turret window, staring through
my glasses. A fair, httle world, yet obviously uninhabited.
I could fancy that all this was newly sprung vegetation. This asteroid had
whirled in from the cold of the interplanetary space, far outside our solar
system. A few years ago—as time might be measured
astronomically, it was no more than yesterday—this fair landscape was congealed
white and bleak with a sweep of glacial ice. But the seeds of life
miraculously were here. The miracle of lifel Under the
wanning, germinating sunlight, the verdure had sprung.
"Can
you find landing space, Gregg?" Moa's question brought back my wandering
fancies. I saw an upland glade, a level spread of ferns with the forest banked
around it. A cliff height nearby, frowning down at the sea.
"Yes.
I can land us there." I showed her through the glasses. I rang the sirens,
and we spiraled, descending further. The mountain tops were now close beneath
us. Clouds were overhead, white masses with blue sky behind them. A day of brilliant sunlight. But soon, with our forward
cruising, it was night. The sunlight dropped beneath the sharply convex
horizon; the sea and the land went purple.
A
night of brilliant stars; the Earth was a blazing blue-red point of light. The
heavens visibly were revolving; in an hour or so it would be daylight again.
On
the forward deck now Coniston had appeared, commanding half a dozen of the
crew. They were carrying up caskets of food and the equipment which was to be
given the marooned passengers. And making ready the disembarking
incline, loosening the seals of the side dome windows.
Stemward
on the deck, by the lounge oval, I could see Miko standing. And occasionally
the roar of his voice at the passengers, sounded.
My
vagrant thoughts flung back into Earth's history. Like this, ancient travelers
of the surface of the sea were herded by pirates to walk the plank, or be put
ashore, marooned upon some fair desert island of the tropic Spanish main.
Hahn came mounting our turret incline.
"All is well, Gregg Haljan?"
"Get
to your work," Moa told him sharply. He retreated, joining the bustle and
confusion which now was beginning on the deck. It struck me-could I turn that
confusion to account? Would it be possible, now at the last moment, to attack
these brigands? Snap still sat outside the radio room doorway. But his guard
was alert with upraised projector. And that guard, I saw, in his position,
commanded all the deck.
And
I saw too, as the passengers now were herded in a line from the lounge oval,
that Miko had roped and bound all of the men, a clanking chain connected them.
They came like a line of convicts, marching forward, and stopped on the open
deck near the base of the turret. Dr. Frank's grim face gazed up at me.
Miko
ordered the women and children in a group beside the chained men. His words to
them reached me: You are in no danger. When we land, be careful. You will find
gravity very different—this is a very small world."
I
flung on the landing lights; the deck glowed with the blue radiance; the
searchbeams shot down beside our hull. We hung now a thousand feet above the
forest glade. I cut off the electronic streams. We poised, with the gravity
plates set at normal, and only a gentle night breeze to give us a slight side
drift. This I could control with the lateral propeller rudders.
For all my busy landing routine, my mind was
on other things. Venza's swift words back there in the lounge. I was to create
a commotion while the passengers were landing. Why? Had she and Dr. Frank some
last minute desperate purposes?
I
determined I would do what she said. Shout, or mis-order the lights. That would
be easy.
I
was glad it was night. I had, indeed, calculated our descent so that the
landing would be in darkness. But to what purpose?
These brigands were very alert. There was nothing I could think of to do which
would avail us anything more than a probable swift death under Miko's anger.
"Well done, Greggl" said Moa.
I
cut off the last of the propellers. With scarcely a perceptible jar, the Planetara
grounded, rose like a feather, and settled to rest in the glade. The
deep purple night with stars overhead was around us. I hissed out our interior
air through the dome and hull ports, and admitted the night air of the
asteroid. My calculations—of necessity mere mathematical approximations—proved
fairly accurate. In temperature and pressure there was no radical change as
the dome windows slid back.
We
had landed. Whatever Venza's purpose, her moment was at hand. I was tense. But
I was aware also, that beside me Moa was very alert. I had thought her unarmed.
She was not. She sat back from me; in her hand was a long thin knife blade.
She
murmured tensely, "You have done your part, Gregg. Well and skillfully
done. Now we will sit here quietly and watch them land."
Snap's
guard was standing, keenly watching. The lookouts in the forward and stern
towers were also armed; I could see them both gazing keenly down at the
confusion of the blue lit deck.
The incline went over the hull side and
touched the ground.
"Enough!" Miko roared. "The men first. Hahn, move the women back! Coniston,
pile those caskets to the side. Get out of the way, Prince."
Anita was down there. I saw her at the edge
of the group of women. Venza was near her.
Miko
shoved her. "Get out of the way, Prince. You can help Coniston. Have the things
ready to throw off."
Five
of the steward crew were at the head of the incline.
Miko shouted up at me:
"Haljan, hold our shipboard gravity
normal."
"Yes."
The
line of men were first to descend. Dr. Frank led them. He flashed a look of
farewell up at me and Snap as he went down the incline with the chained men
passengers after him.
Modey
processionl Twenty odd, disheveled, half-clothed men
of these worlds. The changing, lightening gravity on the incline caught them.
Dr. Frank bounded up to the rail under the impetus of his step; caught and held
himself. Drew himself back. The line swayed. In the
dim, blue lit glare it seemed unreal, crazy. A grotesque
dream of men descending a plank.
They
reached the forest glade. Stood swaying, afraid at first to
move. The purple night crowded them; they stood gazing at this strange
world, their new prison.
"Now
the women."
Mike
was shoving the women to the head of the incline. I could feel Moa's gaze upon me. Her knife gleamed in the turret light.
She murmured again, "In a few moments
you can bring us away, Gregg."
I felt like an actor awaiting his cue in the
wings of some turgid drama the plot of which he did not know. Venza was near
the head of the incline. Some of the women and children were on it. A woman
screamed. Her child had slipped from her hand; bounded up over the rail and
fallen. Hardly fallen—floated down to the ground, with
flailing arms and legs, landing in the dark fems unharmed. Its terrified
wail came up.
There
was a confusion on the incline. Venza, still on the
deck, seemed to send a look of appeal to the turret. My cue?
I
slid my hand to the fight switchboard. It was near my knees. I pulled a switch.
The blue lit deck beneath the turret went dark.
I
recall an instant of horrible, tense silence, and in the gloom beside me I was
aware of Moa moving. I felt a thrill of instinctive fear—would she plunge that
knife into me?
The silence of the darkened deck was broken
with a confusion of sounds. A babble of voices; a woman passenger's scream;
shuffling feet; and above it all, Miko's roar:
"Stand quiet! Everyone! No
movement!"
On
the descending incline there was chaos. The disembarking women were clinging
to the gang rail; some of them had evidently surged forward and fallen. Down on
the ground in the purple-shadowed starlight, I could vaguely see the chained
line of men. They too, were in confusion, trying to shove themselves toward the
fallen women.
Miko
roared: "Light those tubes! Gregg Haljan! By the Almighty, Moa, are you up
there? What is wrong? The light tubes—"
Dark
drama of unknown plot! I wondered if I should try and leave the turret. Where
was Anita? She had been down there on the deck when I flung out the lights.
I
think twenty seconds would have covered it all. I had not moved. I thought,
"Is Snap concerned with this?"
Moa's
knife could have stabbed me. I felt her lunge against me. And suddenly I was
gripping her, twisting her wrist. But she flung the knife away. Her strength
was almost the equal of my own. Her hand went for my throat, and with the
other hand she was fumbling.
The
deck abruptly sprang into light again. Moa had found the switch and threw it
back.
She
fought me as I tried to reach the switch. I saw down on the deck. Miko was
gazing up at us. Moa panted, "Gregg—stop! If he
sees you doing this, hell kill you."
The
scene down there was almost unchanged. I had answered my cue. To what purpose? I saw Anita near Miko. The last of the
women were on the plank.
I
had stopped struggling with Moa. She sat back, panting. And then she called:
"Sorry, Miko. It will not happen again."
Miko was in a towering rage. But he was too
busy to bother with me; his anger swung on thdse nearest him. He shoved the
last of the women violently at the incline. She bounded over. Her body, with the gravity pull of only a few
Earth
pounds, sailed in an arc and dropped near the swaying
line of men.
Miko
swung back. "Get out of my wayl" A sweep of his huge arm knocked
Anita sidewise. "Prince, damn you, help me with those boxesl"
The
frightened stewards were lifting the boxes, square metal storage chests each as
long as a man, packed with food, tools, and equipment.
"Here, get out of my
wayl All of you!"
My
breath came again; Anita nimbly retreated before Miko's angry rush. He dashed
at the stewards. Three of them held a box. He took it from them; raised it at
the top of the incline, poised it over his head an instant, with his massive
arms like gray pillars beneath it; and flung it. The box catapulted, dropped;
and then passing the Planetara's gravity
area, it sailed in a long flat arc over the forest glade and crashed into the
purple underbrush.
"Give me
another!"
The
stewards pushed another at him. Like an angry Titan, he flung it. And another. One by one the chests sailed out and crashed.
"There
is your food. Go pick it up! Haljan, make ready to ring us away!"
On the deck lay the dead body of Ranee
Rankin, which the stewards had carried out. Miko seized it: flung it.
"There! Go to your last resting
place!"
And
the other bodies, Balch, Blackstone, Captain Carter, Johnson—Miko
flung them all. And the course masters and those of our crew
who had been killed.
The
passengers were all on the ground now. It was dim down there. I tried to
distinguish Venza, but could not. I could see Dr. Frank's figure at the end of the chained line of men. The
passengers were gazing in horror at the bodies hurtling over them.
"Ready, Haljan?"
Moa prompted me. "Tell
him yes!"
I called, "Yes!" Had Venza failed in her unknown purpose? It
seemed so. On the radio room bridge Snap and his guard stood like silent
statues in the blue lit gloom.
The disembarkation was
over.
"Close the
portsl" Miko commanded.
The
incline came folding up with a clatter. The port and dome windows slid closed.
Moa hissed against my ear:
"If you
want life, Gregg Haljan, you will start your duties!"
Venza
had failed. Whatever it was, it had come to nothing. Down in the purple forest,
disconnected now from the ship, the last of our friends stood marooned. I could
distinguish them through the blur of the closed dome—only a swaying, huddled
group was visible. But my fancy pictured this last sight of them, Dr. Frank,
Venza, Shac and Dud Ardley.
They
were gone. There were left only Snap, Anita and myself.
I .was mechanically ringing us away. I heard my sirens sounding down below, with
the answering clangs here in the turret. The Planetara's respiratory controls started; the pressure
equalizers began operating; and the gravity plates began shifting into lifting
combinations.
The
ship was hissing and quivering with it, combined with the grating of the last
of the dome ports. And Miko's command:
"Lift, Haljan!"
Hahn had been mingling with the confusion of
the deck though I had hardly noticed him. Coniston had remained below with the
crew answering my signals. Hahn stood now with Miko, gazing down through a deck
window. Anita was alone at another.
"Lift, Haljan!"
I lifted up gently,
bow first, with a repulsion of the bow plates. And started
the central electronic engine. Its thrust from the stern moved us
diagonally over the purple forest trees.
The glade slid downward and
away. I caught a last vague glimpse of the huddled group of marooned
passengers, staring up at us. Left to their fate, alone on this deserted world.
With
the three engines going, we slid smoothly upward. The forest dropped, a purple
spread of treetops edged with starlight and Earthlight. The sharply curving horizon
seemed to follow us upward. I swung on all the power. We mounted at a forty
degree angle, slowly circling, with a bank of clouds over us to the side and
the shining little sea beneath.
"Very good, Gregg." In the turret light Moa's eyes blazed at me.
"I do not know what you meant by darkening the deck lights." Her
fingers dug at my shoulders. "I will tell my brother it was an
error."
I said, "An
error—yes."
"I
didn't know what it was. But you have me to deal with now. You understand? I
will tell my brother so. You said, 'On Earth a man may kill the thing he
loves.' A woman of Mars may do that! Beware of me, Gregg Haljan."
Her
passion-filled eyes bored into me. Love? Hate? The
venom of a woman scorned—a mingling of turgid emotions. . . .
I
twisted back from her grip and ignored her. She sat back, silently watching my
busy activities: the calculations of the shifting conditions of gravity,
pressures, temperatures; a checking of the instruments on the board before me.
Mechanical routine. My mind went to Venza, back there on the asteroid. The wandering little
world was already shrinking to a convex surface beneath us. Venza, with her
last unknown play, gone to failure. Had I missed my cue? Whatever my part, it
seemed now that I must have horribly misacted it.
The
crescent Earth was presently swinging over our bow. We rocketed out of the
asteroid's shadow. The glowing, flaming Sun appeared, making a crescent of the
Earth. With the glass I could see our tiny Moon, visually seeming to hug the
limb of its parent Earth.
We were on our course to the Moon. My mind
flung ahead. Grantline with his
treasure, unsuspecting this brigand ship. And suddenly, beyond all
thought of Grantline, there came to me a fear for Anita. In God's truth I had
been, so far, a very stumbling, inept champion, doomed to failure with
everything I tried. Why had I not contrived to have Anita desert at the
asteroid? Would it not have been far better for her there, taking her chance
for rescue with Dr. Frank, Venza and the others?
But
no I I had, like a fool, never thought of that! Had let her
remain here on board at the mercy of these outlaws.
And
I swore now, that beyond everything, I would protect her.
Futile
oath! If I could have seen ahead a few hours! But I sensed the catastrophe.
There was a shudder within me as I sat in that turret, docilely guiding us out
through the asteroid's atmosphere, heading us upon our course for the Moon.
XIX
"Try
again. By the infernal,
Snap Dean, if you do anything to balk us, you diel"
Miko
scanned the apparatus with keen eyes. How much technical knowledge of signaling
instruments did this brigand leader have? I was tense and cold with
apprehension as I sat in a corner of the radio room, watching Snap. Could Miko
be fooled? Snap, I knew, was trying to fool him.
The
Moon spread close beneath us. My log-chart, computed up to thirty minutes
past, showed us barely some thirty thousand miles over the Moon's surface. A silver quadrant. The sunset caught the Lunar mountains, flung slanting shadows over the Lunar plains. All the disc was plainly visible. The mellow Earthlight
glowed serene and pale to illumine the Lunar night.
The
Planetara was bathed in silver. A brilliant silver
glare swept the forward deck, clean white and splashed with black shadows. We
had partly circled the Moon so as now to approach it from the Earthward side.
Miko
for a time had been at my side in the turret. I had not seen Coniston or Hahn
of recent hours. I had slept, awakened refreshed, and had a meal. Coniston and
Hahn remained below, one or other of them always with the crew to execute my
sirened orders. Then Coniston came to take my place in the turret, and I went
with Miko to the radio room.
"You
are skillful, Haljan." A measure of grim approval was in his voice.
"You evidently have no wish to try and fool me in this navigation."
I
had not, indeed. It is delicate work at best, coping with the intricacies of
celestial mechanics upon a semicircular trajectory with retarding velocity, and
with a makeshift crew we could easily have come upon real difficulty.
We hung at last, hull down, facing the Earthward hemisphere of the Lunar disc. The giant ball of
the Earth lay behind and above us—the Sun over our stern quarter. With forward
velocity almost checked, we poised, and Snap began his signals to the
unsuspecting Grantline.
My
work momentarily was over. I sat watching the radio room. Moa was here, close
beside me. I felt always her watchful gaze, so that even the play of my emotions
needed reining.
Miko worked with Snap. Anita too was here. To
Miko and Moa it was the somber, taciturn George Prince, shrouded always in his
black mourning cloak, disinclined to talk; sitting alone, brooding and sullen.
This is how they thought of Anita.
Miko repeated: "By the infernal, if you
try to fool me, Snap Dean!"
The small metal room, with its grid floor and
low arched ceiling, glared with moonlight through its window. The moving
figures of Snap and Miko were aped by the grotesque, misshapen shadows of them
on the walls. Miko gigantic—a great menacing ogre.
Snap small and alert—a trim, pale figure in his tight-fitting white
trousers, broad-flowing belt, and white shirt open at the throat. His face was
pale and drawn from lack of sleep and the torture to which Miko had subjected
him earlier on the voyage. But he grinned at the brigand's words, and pushed
his straggling hair closer under the red eyeshade.
The
room over long periods was deadly silent, with Miko and Snap
bending watchfully at the crowded banks of instruments. A
silence in which my own pounding heart seemed to echo. I did not dare
look at Anita, nor she at me. Snap was trying to
signal Earth, not the Moonl His main grids were set in the reverse. The
infra-red waves, flung from the bow window, were of a frequency which Snap and
I believed that Grantline could not pick up. And over against the wall, close
beside me and seemingly ignored by Snap, there was a tiny ultra-violet sender.
Its faint hum and the quivering of its mirrors had so far passed unnoticed.
Would
some Earth station pick it up? I prayed so. There was a thumbnail mirror here
which would bring an answer.
Would
some Earth telescope be able to see us? I doubted it. The pinpoint of the Planetara's infinitesimal
bulk would be beyond vision.
Long silences, broken only by the faint hiss and murmur of Snap's
instruments.
"Shall I try the
graphs, Miko?"
"Yes."
I
helped him with the spectro. At every level the plates showed us nothing save
the scarred and pitted Moon surface. We worked for an hour. There was nothing. Bleak cold night on the Moon here beneath us. A touch of fading sunlight upon the Apennines. Up near the
South Pole, Tycho with its radiating open rills stood like a grim dark maw.
Miko bent over a plate. "Something here? Is there?"
An
abnormality upon the frowning ragged cliffs of Tycho? We thought so. But then
it seemed not.
Another hour. No signal came from Earth. If Snap's cans were getting through we had
no evidence of it. Abruptly Miko strode at me from across the room. I went
cold and tense; Moa shifted, alert to my every movement. But Miko was not
interested in me. A sweep of his clenched fist knocked the ultra-violet sender
and its coils and mirrors in a tinkling crash to the grid at my feet.
"We
don't need that, whatever it is!" He rubbed bis knuckles where the violet
waves had tinged them, and turned grimly back to Snap.
"Where
are your ray mirrors? If the treasure lies exposed—"
This
Martian's knowledge was far greater than we believed. He grinned sardonically
at Anita. "If our treasure is ■ here on this hemisphere, Prince, we
should pick up its rays. Don't you think so? Or is Grantline too cautious to
leave it exposed?"
Anita
spoke in a careful, throaty drawl. "The rays came through enough when we
passed here on the way out."
"You
should know," grinned Miko. "An expert eavesdropper,
Prince, I will say that for you. . . . Come, Dean, try something else. By God,
if Grantline does not signal us, I will be likely to blame you—my patience is
shortening. Shall we go closer, Haljan?"
"I don't think it
would help," I said.
He nodded. "Perhaps not. Are we checked?"
"Yes."
We were poised very nearly motionless. "If you wish an advance, I can ring
it. But we need a surface destination now."
"True, Haljan." He stood thinking.
"Would a zed-ray penetrate those crater cliffs? Tycho, for instance, at
this angle?"
"It might," Snap agreed. "You
think he may be on the northern inner Tycho?"
"He may be
anywhere," said Miko shortly.
"If you think that," Snap
persisted, "suppose we swing the Planetara over
the South Pole. Tycho, viewed from there—"
"And take another quarter day of time?" Miko sneered.
"Flash
on your zed-ray; help him hook it up, Haljan."
I
moved to the lens box of the spectroheliograph. It seemed that Snap was very
strangely reluctant. Was it because he knew that the Grantline camp lay
concealed on the north inner wall of Tycho's giant ring? I thought so. But Snap
flashed a queer look at Anita. She did not see it, but I did. And I could not
understand it.
My
accursed, witless incapacity! If only I had taken warning!
"Here,"
commanded Miko. "A score of 'graphs with the zed-ray.
I tell you I will comb this surface if we have to stay here until our ship
comes from Ferrok-Shahn to join us!"
The Martian brigands were coming. Miko's
signals had been answered. In ten days the other brigand ship, adequately
manned and armed, would be here.
Snap
helped me connect the zed-ray. He did not dare even to whisper to me, with Moa
hovering always so close. And for all Miko's sardonic smiling, we knew that he
would tolerate nothing from us now. He was fully armed and so was Moa.
I
recall that several times Snap endeavored to touch me
significantly. Oh, if only I had taken warning!
We
finished our connecting. The dull gray point of zed-ray gleamed through the
prisms to mingle with the moonlight entering the main lens. I stood with the
shutter trip.
"The
same interval, Snap?"
"Yes."
Beside me, I was aware of a faint reflection
of the zed-ray—a gray catherdal shaft crossing the room and falling upon the
opposite wall. An unreality there, as the zed-ray faintly
strove to penetrate the metal room side.
I said, "Shall I make
the exposure?"
Snap nodded. But that
'graph was never made. An exclamation from Moa made us all turn. The
gamma mirrors were quivering! Grantline had picked our signals! With what was
undoubtedly an intensified receiving equipment which
Snap
had not thought Grantline able to use, he had caught our faint zed-rays, which
Snap was sending only to deceive Miko. And Grantline had recognized the Planetara, and had released his occulting screens
surrounding the ore.
And
upon their heels came Grantline's message. Not in the secret system he had
arranged with Snap, but unsuspectingly in open code. I could read the swinging
mirror, and so could Miko.
And Miko decoded it
triumphantly aloud:
"Surprised
but pleased your return. Approch Mid-Northem Hemisphere region of Archimedes,
forty thousand off nearest Apennine range."
The
message broke off. But even its importance was overshadowed. Miko stood in the
center of the radio room, triumphantly reading the little indicator. Its beam
swung on the scale, which chanced to be almost directly over Anita's head. I
saw Miko's expression change. ... A
look of surprise, amazement,- came over him.
"Why-"
He
gasped. He stood staring. Almost stupidly staring, for an
instant. And as I regarded him with fascinated horror, there came upon
his heavy gray face a look of dawning comprehension. And I heard Snap's
startled intake of breath. He moved to the spectro, where the zed-ray connections
were still humming.
But,
with a leap, Miko flung him away. "Off with youl Moa, watch himl Haljan,
don't move!"
Again
Miko stood staring. I saw now that he was staring at Anita!
"Why, George Prince! How strange you
look!"
Anita
did not move. She was stricken with horror; she shrank back against the wall,
huddled in her cloak. Miko's sardonic voice came again:
"How
strange you look, Prince!" He took a step forward. He was grim and calm.
Horribly calm. Deliberate. Gloating like a great gray monster in human form
toying with a fascinated, imprisoned bird.
"Move just a little, Prince. Let the
zed-ray light fall more fully."
Anita's
head was bare. That pale, Hamlet-like face. Dear God,
the zed-ray light lay gray and penetrating upon it!
Miko
took another step. Peering. Grinning.
"How amazing, George Prince! Why, I can hardly believe it!"
Moa
was armed with an electronic cylinder now. For all her amazement—what turgid
emotions sweeping her I can only guess—she never took her eyes from Snap and
me.
Back! Don't move either of
you!" she hissed at us.
Then Miko leaped at Anita like a giant gray
leopard pouncing.
"Away
with that cloak, Prince!"
I
stood cold and numbed. And realization came at last. The faint zed-light had
fallen by chance upon Anita's face. Penetrating the flesh; exposed, faindy
glowing, the bone line of her jaw. Unmasked the art of Glutz.
Miko
seized her wrists, drew her forward, beyond the shaft of zed-light, into the
brilliant light of the Moon. And ripped her cloak from her.
The gentle curves of her woman's figure were so unmistakable!
And as Miko gazed at them, all his calm
triumph swept away.
"Why, Anita!"
I
heard Moa mutter, "So that is it?" A venomous flashing look—a shaft
from me to Anita and back again. "So that is it?"
"Why, Anita!"
Miko's great arms gathered her up as though
she were a child. "So I have you back! From the dead,
delivered back to me!"
"Gregg!"
Snap's warning, and his grip on my shoulders brought
me a measure of sanity. I had tensed to spring. I stood quivering, and Moa
thrust her weapon against my face. The grids were swaying again with a message
from Grantline. But it was ignored.
In the glare of moonlight by the forward
window, Miko held Anita, his great hands pawing her with triumphant possessive
caresses.
"So, little Anita, you are given back to
mel
XX
Moonlight
upon Earth so gently shines
to make romantic a lover's smile I But
the reality of the Lunar night is cold beyond human
belief. Cold and darkly silent. Grim
desolation. Awesome. Majestic.
A frowning majesty that even to the most intrepid human beholder is
inconceivably forbidding.
And
there were humans here now. On this tumbled plain, between Archimedes and the
mountains, one small crater amid the million of its fellows was distinguished
this night by the presence of humans. The Grantline campl It
huddled in the deepest purple shadows on the side of a bowl-like pit, a crudely
circular orifice with a scant two miles across its rippling rim. There was
faint light here to mark the presence of the living intruders. The blue glow
radiance of Morrell tube lights under a spread of glassite.
The
Grantline camp stood midway up one of the inner cliff walls of the little
crater. The broken, rock-strewn floor, two miles wide, lay five hundred feet
below the camp. Behind it, the jagged, precipitous cliff rose another five
hundred to the heights of the upper rim. A broad level shelf hung midway up
the cliff, and upon it Grantline had built his little group of glassite dome
shelters. Viewed from above there was the darkly purple crater floor, the
upflung circular rim where the Earlblight tinged the spires and crags with
yellow sheen; and on the shelf, like a huddled group of birds' nests,
Grantline's domes hung and gazed down upon the inner valley.
The air here on the Moon surface was
negligible— a scant one five-thousandth of the atmospheric pressure at the sea
level on Earth. But within the glassite shelter, a normal
Earth
pressure must be maintained. Rigidly braced double walls to
withstand the explosive tendency, with no external pressure to counteract it.
A tremendous necessity for mechanical equipment had burdened Grantline's small
ship to capacity. The chemistry of manufactured air, the pressure equalizers,
renewers, respirators, the lighting and temperature maintenance of a
space-flyer was here.
There
was this main Grantline building, stretched low and rectangular along the front
edge of the ledge. Within it were living rooms, mess hall and kitchen. Fifty
feet behind it, connected by a narrow passage of glassite, was a similar though
smaller structure. The mechanical control rooms, with their humming, vibrating
mechanisms were here. And an instrument room with signaling apparatus, senders,
receivers, mirror-grids and audiphones of several varieties. And an
electro-telescope, small but modem, with dome overhead like
a little Earth observatory.
From
this instrument building, beside the connecting pedestrian passage, wire
cables for light, and air tubes and strings and bundles of instrument wires ran
to the main structure—gray snakes upon the porous, gray Lunar rock.
The third building seemed a lean-to banked
against the cliff wall, a slanting shed-wall of glassite fifty feet high and
two hundred in length. Under it, for months Grantline's bores had dug into the
cliff. Braced tunnels were here, penetrating back and downward into the vein of
rock.
The
work was over. The borers had been dismanded and packed away. At one end of the
cliff the mining equipment lay piled in a litter. There was a heap of discarded
ore where Grantline had carted and dumped it after his first crude refining
process had yielded it as waste. The ore slag lay like gray powder flakes
strewn down the cliff. Trucks and ore carts along the ledge stood discarded,
mute evidence o£ the weeks and months of work these helmeted miners had
undergone, struggling upon this airless, frowning world.
But
now all that was finished. The catlytic ore was sufficiently concentrated. It
lay—this treasure—in a seventy foot pile behind the glassite lean-to, with a
cage of wires over it and an insulation barrage hiding its presence.
The
ore shelter was dark; the other two buildings were lighted. And there were
small lights mounted at intervals a-bout the camp and along the edge of the
ledge. A spider ladder, with tiny platforms some twenty feet one above the
other, hung precariously to the cliff-face. It descended the five hundred feet
to the crater floor; and, behind the camp, it mounted the jagged cliff-face to
the upper rim height, where a small observatory platform was placed.
Such
was the outer aspect of the Grantline Treasure Camp near the beginning of this Lunar night, when, unknown to Grantline and his men, the Planetara with its brigands was approaching. The night
was perhaps a sixth advanced. Full night. No breath of
cloud to mar the brilliant starry heavens. The quadrant Earth hung poised like
a giant mellow moon over Grantline's crater. A bright Earth, yet no air was here on this Lunar surface to spread its light. Only a glow, mingling with the spots of blue tube light on the
poles along the cliff, and the radiance from the lighted buildings.
No
evidence of movement showed about the silent camp. Then a pressure door in an
end of the main building opened its tiny series of locks. A bent figure came
out. The lock closed. The figure straightened and gazed about the camp.
Grotesque, bloated semblance of a man! Helmeted, with rounded dome hood,
suggestion of an ancient sea diver, yet goggled and trunked like a gas-masked fighter of the twentieth century.
He stopped presently and disconnected metal
weights which were upon his shoes.
Then
he stood erect again, and with giant strides bounded along the cliff. Fantastic
figure in the blue lit glooml A child's dream of crags
and rocks and strange lights with a single monstrous figure in seven league boots.
He
went the length of the ledge with his twenty foot strides, inspected the
lights, and made adjustments. Came back, and climbed with agile, bounding leaps
up the spider ladder to the dome of the crater top. A light flashed on up there. Then it was extinguished.
The
goggled, bloated figure came leaping down after a moment. Grantline's
exterior watchman making his rounds. He came back to the main building. Fastened the weights on his
shoes. Signaled.
The lock opened. The figure
went inside.
It
was early evening. After the dinner hour and before the time of sleep according
to the camp routine Grantline was maintaining. Nine p.m. of Earth Eastern American time, recorded
now upon his Earth chronometer. In the living room of the main building Johnny
Grantline sat with a dozen of his men dispersed about the room, whiling away as best they could the
lonesome hours.
"All as usual. This cursed Moon! When I get home—if I ever do—"
"Say your say, Wilks. But you'll spend your share of the gold leaf and thank your
constellations that you had your chance to make it."
"Let
him alone! Come on, Wilks, take a hand here. This game is not any good with
three."
The man who had been outside flung his hissing helmet recklessly to the
floor and unsealed his suit. "Here, get me out of this. No, I won't play. I can't play your
cursed game with nothing at stakel"
A
laugh went up at the sharp look Johnny Grantline flung from where he sat
reading in a comer of the room.
"Commander's orders. No gambling gold leafers tolerated here."
"Play the game, Wilks," Grantline
said quiedy. "We all know it's infernal—this doing nothing."
"He's
been struck by Earthlight," another man laughed. "Commander, I told
you not to let that guy Wilks out at night."
A rough but good-natured lot of men. Jolly and raucous by
nature in their leisure hours. But there was too much leisure here now.
Their mirth had a hollow sound. In older times, explorers of the frozen Polar
zones had to cope with inactivity, loneliness and despair. But at least they
were on their native world. The grimness of the Moon was eating into the
courage of Grantline's men. An unreality here. A weirdness. These fantastic crags.
The deadly silence. The nights, almost two weeks of
Earth time in length, congealed by the deadly frigidity of space. The days of
black sky, blazing stars and flaming Sun, with no atmosphere to diffuse the
Sun's heat radiating so swiftly from the naked Lunar
surface that the outer temperature still was cold. And day and night, always
the beloved Earth disc hanging poised up near the zenith. From thinnest
crescent to full Earth, then back to crescent.
All
so abnormal, irrational, disturbing to human senses.
With
the mining work over, an irritability grew upon
Grantline's men. And perhaps since the human mind is so wonderful, elusive a
thing, there lay upon these men an indefinable sense of disaster. Johnny
Grantline felt it. He thought about it now as he sat in the room comer watching
Wilks being forced into the plaget game, and he found the premonition strong
within him. Unreasonably, ominous depression! Barring the accident which had
disabled his little space-ship when they reached this small crater hole, his
expedition had gone well. His instruments, and the information he had from the
former explorers, had enabled him to pick up the catalyst vein with only one
month of search.
The
vein had now been exhausted; but the treasure was here—enough to supply every
need on his Earth! Nothing was left but to wait for the Planetora. The men were talking of that now.
"She ought to be well midway from
Ferrok-Shahn by now. When do you figure she'll be back here and signal
us?"
"Twenty
days. Give her another five now to Mars, and five in port. That's ten. Well
pick her signals in three weeks, mark me!"
"Three weeks. Just give me three weeks
of reasonable sunrise and sunset] This cursed Moon]
You mean, Williams, next daylight."
"Hal
He's inventing a Lunar language. You'll be a Moon man
yet."
Olaf
Swenson, the big blond fellow from the Scandia fiords, came and flung himself
down beside Grantline.
"Ay
tank they bane without enough to do, Commander—" "Three weeks isn't
very long, Ole." "No. Maybe
not."
From
across the room somebody was saying, "If the Comet hadn't smashed on us, damn me but I'd ask the
Commander to let some of us take her back."
"Shut up, Billy. She is smashed."
"You
all agreed to things as they are," Johnny said shortly. "We all took
the same chances—voluntarily."
A dynamic little fellow, this Johnny Grantline. Short of temper sometimes,
but always just, and a perfect leader of men. In stature he was almost
as small as Snap. But he was thick-set, with a
smooth-shaven, keen-eyed, square-jawed face; and a shock of brown tousled hair.
A man of thirty-five, though the decision of his manner, the quiet dominance of
his voice made him seem older. He stood up now, surveying the blue lit
glassite room with its low ceiling close overhead. He was bow-legged; in
movement he seemed to roll with a stiff-legged gait like some sea captains of
former days on the deck of his swaying ship. Odd looking figure! Heavy flannel
shirt and trousers, boots heavily weighted, and bulky metal-loaded belt
strapped about his waist.
He
grinned at Swenson. "When the time comes to divide this treasure, everyone
will be happy, Ole."
The
treasure was estimated to be the equivalent of ninety millions in gold leaf. A
hundred and ten millions in the gross as it now stood, with twenty millions to
be deducted by the Federated Refiners for reducing it to the standard purity
for commercial use. Ninety millions, with only a million and a half to come off
for expedition expenses, and the Planetara's share
another million. A nice little stake.
Grantline strode across the
room with his rolling gait.
"Cheer up, boys. Who's
winning there? I say, you fellows—"
An
audiphone buzzer interrupted him, a call from the duty man in the instrument
room of the nearby building.
Grantline
clicked the receiver. The room fell into silence. Any call was unusual—nothing
ever happened here in the camp.
The
duty man's voice sounded over the room. "Signals comingl Not clear. Will you come over, Commander?" Signals!
It
was never Grantline's way to enforce needless discipline. He offered no
objection when every man in the camp rushed through the connecting passages.
They crowded the instrument room where the tense duty man sat bending over his
radio receivers. The mirrors were swaying.
The duty man\looked up and
met Grantline's gaze.
"I
ran it up to the highest intensity, Commander. We ought to get it—"
"Low scale,
Peter?"
"Yes. Weakest
infra-red. I'm bringing it up, even though it uses too much of our
power." "Get it," said Grantline shortly.
"I
got one slight television swing a minute ago—then it faded. I think it's the Planetara."
"Planetaral"
The crowding group of men
chorused. How could it be the Planetara?
But
it was. The call came in presently. Unmistakably the Planetara, turned back now from her course to
Ferrok-Shahn.
"How far away,
Peter?"
The
duty man consulted the needles of his dial scale. "Closel
Very weak infra-red. But close. Around thirty thousand
miles, maybe. It's Snap Dean calling."
The
Planetara here within thirty thousand miles! Excitement
and pleasure swept the room. The Planetara had
for so long been awaited eagerly!
The excitement communicated to Grantline. It
was unlike him to be incautious; yet now with no thought save that some
unforeseen and pleasing circumstance had brought the Planetara ahead of time; incautious, Grantline
certainly wasl
"Raise the
barrage."
"Ill go. My suit is here."
A willing volunteer rushed
out to the shed.
"Can
you send, Peter?" Grantline demanded.
"Yes. With more power."
"Use it."
Johnny
dictated the message of his location which we received. In his incautious
excitement he ignored the secret code.
An
interval passed. No message had come from us—just Snap's routine signal in the
weak infra-red, which we hoped Grantline would not get.
The
men crowding Grantline's instrument room waited in tense silence. Then
Grantline tried the television again. Its current weakened the lights with the
drain upon the distributors, and cooled the room with a sudden deadly chill as
the Erentz insulating system slowed down.
The
duty man looked frightened. "You'll bulge out our walls, Commander. The
internal pressure—"
"Well chance it."
They
picked up the image of the Planetara. It
shone clear on the grid—the segment of star-field with a tiny cigar-shaped
blob. Clear enough to be unmistakable. The Planetara! Here now, over the Moon, almost directly
overhead, poised at what the altimeter scale showed to be a fraction under
thirty thousand miles.
The men gazed in awed silence.
The Planetara coming . . .
But
the altimeter needle was motionless. The Planetara was
hanging poised.
A sudden gasp went about the room. The men
stood with whitening faces, gazing at the Planetara's image. And at the altimeter's
needle. It was moving now. The Planetara was
descending. But not with an orderly swoop.
The
grid showed the ship clearly. The bow tilted up, then dipped down. But then in
a moment it swung up again. The ship turned partly over. Righted itself. Then swayed again, drunkenly.
The
watching men were stricken in horrified silence. The Planetara's image momentarily, horribly, grew larger. Swaying. Then turning completely over, rotating slowly end
over end.
The Planetara, out of control, was falling!
XXI
On
the Planetara, in the radio room, Snap and I stood with
Moa's weapon upon us. Miko held Anita. Triumphant,
possessive. Then as she struggled, a gentieness came to this strange
Martian giant. Perhaps he really loved her. Looking back on it, I sometimes
think so.
"Anita,
do not fear me." He held her away from him. "I
would not harm you. I want
your love." Irony came to him. "And I thought I had killed you. But
it was only your brother."
He partly turned. I was aware of how alert was his attention. He
grinned. "Hold them, Moa. Don't let them do anything foolish. . . . So,
little Anita, you were masquerading to spy on me? That was wrong of you."
Anita
had not spoken. She held herself tensely away from Miko. She had flashed me a
look, just one. What horrible mischance to have brought on this catastrophe!
The
completion of Grantline's message had come unnoticed by us all. We remained
tense.
"Look! Grantline again!" Snap said abrupdy.
But
the mirrors were steadying. We had no recording mechanism; the rest of the
message was lost.
No further message came.
There was an interval while
Miko waited. He held Anita in the hollow of
his great arm.
"Quiet, little bird. Do not fear me. I have work to do, Anita, this is our great adventure.
We will be rich, you and I. All the luxuries these worlds can offer—all for us
when this is over. Careful Moal This Haljan has no wit."
Well
could he say it. I, who had been so witless as to let
this come upon us! Moa's weapon prodded me. Her voice
hissed at me with all the venom of a reptile enraged. "So that was your
game, Gregg Haljan! And I was so graceless as to admit love for you!"
Snap
murmured in my ear, "Don't move, Gregg! She's reckless."
She
heard it. She whirled on him. "We have lost George Prince, it seems. Well,
we will survive without his scientific knowledge. And you, Dean—and this
Haljan, mark me—I will kill you both if you cause trouble!"
Miko
was gloating. "Don't kill them yet, Moa. What was it Grantline said? Near the crater of Archimedes. Ring us down, Haljan. Well
land."
He
signaled the turret, gave Coniston the Grantline message, and audiphoned it
below to Hahn. The news spread about the ship. The bandits were jubilant.
"Well
land now, Haljan. Come, Anita and I will go with you to the turret."
I found my voice. "To what destination?"
"Near Archimedes. The Apennine side. Keep well away from the
Grantline camp. We will probably sight it as we descend."
There was no trajectory needed. We were
almost over Archimedes now. I could drop us with a visible, instrumental
course. My mind was whirling with a confusion of thoughts. What could we do? I
met Snap's gaze.
"Ring us down,
Gregg," he said quietly.
I
nodded. I pushed Moa's weapon away. "You don't need that-"
We went to the turret. Moa watched me and
Snap, a grim, cold Amazon. She avoided looking at Anita, whom
Miko helped
down the ladders with a
strange mixture of courtier-like
grace and amused irony. Coniston
stared at Anita.
"I say,
not George
Prince? The girl—"
"No time for
explanations," Miko commanded.
"It's the girl, masquerading as her
brother. Get below,
Coniston. Haljan takes
us down."
The astounded Englishman
continued to gaze at Anita.
But he said, "I mean to
say, where to on the
Moon? Not to encounter Grantline at once, Miko?
Our equipment
is not
ready."
"Of course not. We
will land well away—"
The reluctant Coniston
left us. I took the
controls. Miko, still holding Anita as
though she were a child,
sat beside
me. "We will watch
him, Anita. A
skilled fellow at this sort of
work."
I rang my
signals for the shifting of
the gravity
plates. The answer should have come
from below within a second
or two. But it did not.
Miko regarded me with his
great bushy eyebrows upraised.
"Ring again,
Haljan."
I duplicated.
No answer.
The silence
was ominous.
Miko muttered,
"That accursed Hahn. Ring again!"
I sent
the imperative
emergency demand.
No answer. A second
or two.
Then all of us in
the turret
were startled. Transfixed. From below
came a sudden hiss. It sounded
in the
turret; it came from the
shifting room call grid. The hissing of
the pneumatic
valves of the plate shifters in the lower control
room. The valves were opening;
the plates
automatically shifting into neutral, and
disconnecting!
An instant
of startled
silence. Miko
may have
realized the signficance of what had
happened. Certainly Snap and I did.
The hissing
ceased. I gripped the emergency
plate shifter switch which hung over
my head.
Its disc
was dead! The plates were dead
in neutral:
in the
position they
were placed only in port! And their shifting mechanisms
were
imperative!
I was on my feet.
"We're in neutral!"
The
Moon disc moved visibly as the Planetara lurched.
The vault of the heavens was slowly swinging.
Miko ripped out a heavy
oath. "Haljan! What is this?"
The
heavens turned with a giant swoop. The Moon was over us. It swung in a dizzying
arc. Overhead, then back past our stem; under us, then
appearing over our bow.
The
Planetara had turned over. Upending.
Rotating, end over end.
For
a moment I think all of us in the turret stood and clung. The Moon disc, the
Earth, Sun and all the stars were swinging past our windows. So
horribly dizzying. The Planetara seemed
lurching and tumbling. But it was an optical effect only. I stared with grim
determination at my feet. The turret seemed to steady.
Then I looked again. That horrible swoop of
all the heavens! And the Moon, as it went past seemed expanded. We were
falling! Out of control, with the Moon gravity pulling us down!
"That accursed
Hahn—"
A
moment only had passed. My fancy that the Moon disc was enlarged was merely the
horror of my imagination. We had not fallen far enough for that.
But we were falling. Unless I could do
something, we would crash upon the Lunar surface.
Anita, killed in this turret: the end of
everything—every hope.
Action came to me. I gasped, "Miko, you
stay here! The controls are dead! You stay here and hold Anita—" I ignored
Moa's weapon. Snap thrust her away. "We're falling, you fool—let us
alonel" Miko gasped, "Can you-check us? What happened?" "I
don't know—"
I
stood clinging. This dizzying whirl. From the
audiphone grid Coniston's voice sounded.
"I say, Haljan, something's wrong. Hahn
doesn't signal."
The
lookout in the forward tower was clinging to our ' window. On the deck below
our turret a member of the crew appeared, stood lurching for a moment, then
shouted and ran, swaying, aimless. From the lower hull corridors our grids
sounded with the tramping of running steps. Panic among the crew was spreading
over the ship. A chaos below deck.
I pulled at the emergency
switch again. Dead. . . .
"Snap, we must get
down. The signals."
Conistons voice came like a scream from the
grid. "Hahn is dead. The controls are broken!"
I shouted, "Miko, hold
Anita! Come on, Snap!"
We clung to the ladders. Snap was behind me. "Careful, Gregg! Good God!"
This dizzying whirl. I tried not to look. The deck under me was now a blurred kaleidoscope
of swinging patches of moonlight and shadow.
We reached the deck. It seemed that from the
turret Anita's voice followed us. "Be careful!"
Once
inside the ship, our senses steadied. With the rotating, reeling heavens shut
out, there were only the shouts and tramping steps of the panic-stricken crew
to mark that there was anything amiss. That, and a pseudo sensation of lurching
caused by the pulsing of gravity—a pull when the Moon was beneath our hull to
combine its forces with our magnetizers; a lightening, when it was overhead. A
throbbing, pendulum lurch!
We ran down to the corridor incline. A
white-faced member of the crew came running up.
"What's happened,
Haljan? What's happened?"
"We're
falling!" I gripped him. "Get below. Come with us."
But he jerked away from me.
"Falling?"
A steward came running.
"Falling? My God!"
Snap swung at them.
"Get ahead of usl The manual controls—our only
chance—we need all you men at the compressor pumps!"
But
it was instinct to try and get on deck, as though here below we were rats
caught in a trap. The.men tore away from us and ran. Their shouts of panic
resounded through the dim, blue lit corridors.
Coniston
came lurching from the control room. "I say —falling! Haljan, my God, look!"
Hahn was sprawled at the gravity plate
switchboard. Sprawled, head down. Dead. Killed? Or a suicide?
I
bent over him. His hands gripped the main switch. He had ripped it loose. And
his left hand had reached and broken the fragile line of tubes that intensified
the current of the pneumatic plate-shifters. A suicide?
With his last frenzy, determined to kill us all? Why?
Then
I saw that Hahn had been killed! Not a suicide! In his hand he gripped a small
segment of black fabric, a piece torn from an invisible cloak!
Snap
was rigging the hand compressors. If he could get the
pressure back in the tanks . . .
I swung on Coniston.
"You armed?"
"Yes."
He was white-faced and confused, but not in a panic. He showed me his heat ray
cylinder. "What do you want me to do?"
"Round
up the crew. Get all you can. Bring them here to man the pumps."
He
dashed away. Snap called after him, "Kill them if they arguel"
Miko's
voice sounded from the turret call grid: "Falling! Haljan, you can see it
now! Check us!"
Desperate moments. Or was it an hour? Coniston brought the men. He stood over them with
menacing weapon.
We
had all the pumps going. The pressure Tose a little in
the tanks. Enough to shift a bow plate. I tried
it. The plate slowly clicked into a new combination. A
gravity repulsion just in the bow-tip.
I signaled Miko. "Have we stopped swinging?"
"No. But slower."
I could feel it, that lurch of the gravity.
But not steady now. A limp. The tendency of our bow
was to stay up. "More pressure, Snap."
One
of the crew rebelled, tried to bolt from the room. Coniston shot him down.
I
shifted another bow plate. Then two in the stern. The
stern plates seemed to move more readily than the others.
"Run all the stern plates," Snap
advised.
I
tried it. The lurching stopped. Miko called, "We're bow down. Falling!"
But
not falling free. The Moon gravity pull on us was more than half neutralized.
"I'll
go up, Snap, and try the engines. You don't mind
staying down here? Executing my signals?"
"You idiot!" He gripped my shoulders. His eyes were gleaming, his face haggard, but his
pale hps twitched with a smile.
"Maybe it's good-bye,
Gregg. Well fall-fighting."
"Yes. Fighting. Coniston, you keep the pressure up."
With
the broken tubes it took nearly all the pressure to maintain the few plates I
had shifted. One slipped back to neutral. Then the pumps gained on it, and it
shifted again.
I
dashed up to the deck. Oh, the Moon was so close nowl So
horribly close! The deck shadows were still. Through the forward bow windows
the Moon surface glared up at us.
Those
last horrible minutes were a blur. And there was always Anita's face. She left
Miko. Faced with death, he sat clinging. Moa too, sat apart—staring.
And Anita crept to me. "Gregg,
dear one. The end . .
I tried the electronic engines from the
stern, setting them in reverse. The streams of their light glowed from the
stern, forward along our hull, and flared down from our bow toward the Lunar surface. But no atmosphere was here to give
resistance. Perhaps the electronic streams checked our fall a little. The pumps
gave us pressure just in the last minutes, to slide a few of the hull plates.
But our bow stayed down. We slid, like a spent rocket falling.
I
recall the horror of that expanding Lunar surface. The maw of Archimedes yawning. A blob.
Widening to a great pit. Then I saw it was to one
side, rushing upward.
"Gregg,
dear one—good-bye."
Her gentle arms about me. The end of everything for us. I recall
murmuring, "Not falling free, Anita. Some hull plates are set."
My
dials showed another plate shifting, checking us a little further. Good old
Snap!
I
calculated the next best plate to shift. I tried it. Slid it
over.
Then
everything faded but the feeling of Anita's arms around me.
"Gregg, dear
one—"
The end of everything for
us . . .
There was an up-rush of
gray-black rock.
XXII
I opened
my eyes to a dark blur of
confusion. My shoulder hurt—a pain shooting through it. Something lay like a
weight on me. I could not seem to move my left arm. Then I moved it and it
hurt. I was lying twisted. I sat up. And with a rush, memory came. The crash
was over. I was not dead. Anita-She was lying beside me. There was a little
light here in the silent blur—a soft mellow Earthlight filtering in the window.
The weight on me was Anita. She lay sprawled, her head
and shoulders half way across my lap.
Not
dead! Thank God, not deadl She moved. Her arms went
around me, and I lifted her. The Earthlight glowed on her pale face.
"It's past,
Anita! We've struck, and we're still alive."
I held her as though all of
life's turgid dangers were
powerless to touch us.
But in the silence my
floating senses were brought back
to reality by a faint sound forcing itself upon
me. A litde
hiss. The faintest murmuring
breath like a hiss. Escaping
air!
I cast off Anita's clinging
arms. "Anita, this is madness!"
For
minutes we must have been lying there in the heaven of our embrace. But air was
escaping! The Planetaras
dome was broken and our
precious air was hissing out.
Full
reality came to me. I was not seriously injured. I found I could move freely. I could stand. A
twisted shoulder, a limp left arm, but they were better in a moment.
And
Anita did not seem to be hurt. Blood was upon her. But not
her own.
Beside
Anita, stretched face down on the turret grid, was the giant figure of Miko.
The blood lay in a small pool against his face. A widening
pool.
Moa
was here. I thought her body twitched; then was still. This soundless wreckage!
In the dim glow of the wrecked turret with its two motionless, broken human
figures, it seemed as though Anita and I were ghouls prowling. I saw that the turret had fallen over to the Planetaras deck. It lay dashed against the dome side.
The
deck was aslant. A litter of wreckage! A broken human figure showed—one of the
crew who, at the last, must have come running up. The forward observation tower
was down on the chart room roof: in its metal tangle I thought I could
see the legs of the tower lookout.
So this was the end of the brigands'
adventure. The Planetara's
last voyage! How small and
futile are humans' struggles. Miko's daring enterprise—so villainous—brought
all in a few moments to this silent tragedy. The Planetara had fallen thirty thousand miles. But why? What had happened to Hahn? And where was Conistoh,
down in this broken hull?
And Snap! I thought
suddenly of Snap.
I clutched at my wandering wits. This
inactivity was death. The escaping air hissed in my ears. Our precious air,
escaping away into the vacant desolation of the Lunar
emptiness. Through one of the twisted, slanting dome windows a rocky spire was
visible. The Planetara lay bow
down, wedged in a jagged cradle of Lunar rock. A miracle that the hull and dome had held together.
"Anita, we must get
out of herel"
"Their helmets are in
the forward storage room, Gregg."
She
was staring at the fallen Miko and Moa. She shuddered and turned away and
gripped me. "In the forward storage room, by the port of
the emergency exit."
If
only the exit locks would operate! We must find Snap and get out of here. Good
old Snap! Would we find him lying dead?
We
climbed from the slanting, fallen turret, over the wreckage of the littered
deck. It was not difficult. A lightness was upon us.
The Planetara's gravity-magnitizers were
dead; this was only the light Moon gravity pulling us.
"Careful,
Anita.
Don't jump too freely."
We
leaped along the deck. The hiss of the escaping pressure was like a clanging
gong of warning to tell us to hurry. The hiss of death so close!
"Snap—" I murmured.
"Oh, Gregg, I pray we
may find him alive!"
With
a fifteen foot leap we cleared a pile of broken deck chairs. A man lay groaning
near them. I went back with a rush. Not Snap! A steward.
He had been a brigand, but he was a steward to me now.
"Get up! This is Haljan. Hurry, we must
get out of here. The air is escaping!"
But
he sank back and lay still. No time to find if I could help him: there was
Anita and Snap to save.
We found a broken entrance to one of the
descending passages. I flung the debris aside and cleared it. Like a giant of
strength with only this Moon gravity holding me, I raised a broken
segment of superstructure and heaved it back.
Anita
and I dropped ourselves down the sloping passage. The interior of the wrecked
ship was silent and dim. An occasional passage light was still burning. The
passage and all the rooms lay askew. Wreckage everywhere but the double dome
and hull shell had withstood the shock. Then I realized that the Erentz system
was slowing down. Our heat, like our air, was escaping, radiating away, a
deadly chill settling on everything. The silence and the deadly chill of death
would soon be here in these wrecked corridors. The end of the
Planetara.
We
prowled like ghouls. We did not see Coniston. Snap had been by the shifter
pumps. We found him in the oval doorway. He lay sprawled. Dead?
No, he moved. He sat up before we could get to him. He seemed confused, but his
senses clarified with the movement of our figures over him.
"Gregg! Why,
Anita!"
"Snap! You're all
right? We struck—the air is escaping."
He
pushed me away. He tried to stand. "I'm all right. I was up a minute ago.
Gregg, it's getting cold. Where is she? I had her here—she wasn't- killed. I
spoke to her."
Irrational!
"Snap!"
I held him. Shook him. "Snap, old fellow!"
He said normally, "Easy, Gregg. I'm all right." Anita gripped him.
"Who, Snap?" "She—there she is. ... ."
Another
figure was here! On the grid floor by the door oval. A
figure partly shrouded in a broken invisible cloak and hook. An invisible
cloak! I saw a white face with opened eyes regarding me.
"Venza!" I bent down. "You!"
Venza here? Why . . . how . . . my thoughts swept on. Venza
here—dying? Her eyes closed. But she murmured to Anita, "Where is
he? I want him."
I
murmured impulsively, "Here I am, Venza dear." Gently, as one would
speak with gentle sympathy to humor the dying. "Here 1 am,
Venza."
But it was only the
confusion of the shock upon her. And it was upon us all. She pushed at Anita.
"I want him." She saw me; this whimsical Venus girl! Even here as we
gathered, all of us blurred by shock, confused in the dim, wrecked ship with
the chill of death coming—even here she could jest. Her pale lips smiled.
"You, Gregg. I'm not hurt-I don't think I'm hurt." She managed to get herself
up on one elbow. "Did you think I wanted you with my dying breath? What conceit!
Not you, Handsome Haljan! I was calling Snap."
He was down to her. "We're all right,
Venza. It's over. We must get out of the ship. The air is escaping."
We
gathered in the oval doorway. We fought the confusion of panic.
"The exit port is this
way."
Or was it? I answered Snap,
"Yes, I think so."
The
ship suddenly seemed a stranger to me. So cold. So vibrationless. Broken lights. These slanting wrecked corridors. With the ventilating fans
stilled, the air was turning fetid. Chilling. And thinning, with escaping pressure, rarefying so that I could
feel the grasp of it in my lungs and the pin-pricks in my cheeks.
We
started off. Four of us, still alive in this silent ship of
death. My blurred thoughts tried to cope with it all. Venza
here. I remembered how she had bade me create a
diversion when the women passengers were landing on the asteroid. She had
carried out her purpose! In the confusion she had not gone ashore. A stowaway here. She had secured the cloak. Prowling, to try
and help us, she had come upon Hahn. Had seized his ray cylinder and struck him
down, and been herself knocked unconscious by his dying lunge, which also had
boken the tubes and wrecked the Planetara. And
Venza, unconscious, had been lying here with the mechanism of het cloak still
operating, so that we did not see her when we came and found why Hahn did not
answer my signals.
"It's here, Gregg."
Snap and I lifted the pile of Moon equipment
to which she
referred. We located four
suits and helmets and the mechanisms to operate them.
"More are in the chart
room," Anita said.
But
we needed no others. I robed Anita and showed her the mechanisms. Snap was
helping Venza. We were all stiff from the cold; but within the suits and their
pulsing currents, the blessed warmth came again.
The
helmets had ports through which food and drink could be taken. I stood with my
helmet ready. Anita, Venza and Snap were bloated and grotesque beside me. We
had found food and water here, assembled in portable cases which the brigands
had prepared. Snap lifted them, and signaled to me he was ready.
My
helmet shut out all sounds save my own breathing, my pounding heart, and the
murmur of the mechanism. The warmth and pure air were good.
We
reached the hull port locks. They operated! We went through in the light of the
headlamps over our foreheads.
I
closed the locks after us: an instinct to keep the air in the ship for the
other trapped humans lying in there.
We
slid down the sloping side of the Planetara. We
were unweighted, irrationally agile with this slight gravity. I fell a dozen
feet and landed with barely a jar.
We
were out on the Lunar surface. A great sloping ramp of
crags stretched down before us. Gray-black rock tinged with Earthlight. The
Earth hung amid the stars in the blackness overhead like a huge section of a
glowing yellow ball
This
grim, desolate, silent landscape! Beyond the ramp, fifty feet below us, a
tumbled naked plain stretched away into blurred distance. But I could see
mountains off there. Behind us, the towering, frowning rampart-wall of
Archimedes loomed against the sky.
I
had turned to look back at the Planetara. She
lay broken, wedged between spires of upstanding rock. A few of her lights still
gleamed. The end of the Planetara!
The three grotesque figures of Anita, Venza
and Snap had started off. Hunchback figures with the tanks mounted on their
shoulders. I bounded and caught them. I touched Snap. We made audiphone
contact.
"Which way do you
think?" I demanded.
"I
think this way, down the ramp. Away from Archimedes, toward
the mountains. It shouldn't be too far."
"You run with Venza.
Ill hold Anita."
He nodded. "But we
must keep together, Gregg."
We
could soon run freely. Down the ramp, out over the tumbled
plain. Bounding, grotesque, leaping strides.
The girls were more agile, more skillful. They were soon leading us. The Earth
shadows of their figures leaped beside them. The Planetara faded into the distance behind us. Archimedes
stood back there. Ahead, the mountains came closer.
An hour perhaps. I lost track of time. Occasionally we stopped to rest. Were we going
toward the Grantline camp? Would they see our tiny waving headlights?
Another interval. Then far ahead of us on the ragged plain, lights showed! Moving, tiny
spots of light! Headlights on helmeted figures!
We
ran, monstrously leaping. A group of figures were off there. Grantline's
party? Snap gripped me.
"Grantline! We're safe, Gregg! Safe!"
He
took his bulb light from his helmet; we stood in a group while he waved it. A semaphore signal.
"Grantline?"
And the answer came, "Yes. You, Dean?"
Their personal code. No doubt of this—it was Grantline, who had seen the Planetara fall and had come to help us.
I
stood then with my hand holding Anita. And I whispered, "It's Grantline! We're safe, Anita, my darling]*
Death
had been so close! Those horrible last minutes on the Planetara had shocked us,
marked us. We stood trembling. And Grantline and his men came
bounding up, weird, inflated figures.
A helmeted figure touched me. I saw through
the helmet-
pane the visage of a stem-faced, square-jawed
young man. "Grantline? Johnny Grantline?"
"Yes,"
said his voice at my ear-grid. "I'm Grantline. You're Haljan? Gregg
Haljan?"
They
crowded around us. Gripped us, to hear our explanations.
Brigands!
It was amazing to Johnny Grantline. But the menace was over now, over as soon
as Grantline realized its existence.
We
stood for a brief time discussing it. Then I drew apart, leaving Snap with
Grantline. And Anita joined me. I held her arm so that we had audiphone
contact.
"Anita, mine."
"Gregg—dear onel"
Murmured nothings which
mean so much to lovers!
As
we stood in the fantastic gloom of Lunar desolation,
with the blessed Earthlight on us, I sent up a prayer of thankfulness. Not that
the enormous treasure was saved. Not that the attack upon Grantline had been
averted. But only that Anita was given back to me. In moments of greatest
emotion the human mind individualizes. To me, there was only Anita.
Life is very strange! The gate to the shining
garden of our love seemed swinging wide to let us in. Yet I recall that a vague
fear still lay on me. A premonition?
I
felt a touch on my arm. A bloated helmet visor was thrust near my own. I saw
Snap's face peering at me.
"Grantline
thinks we should return to the Planetara. Might find some of them alive."
Grantline touched me.
"It's only human—"
"Yes," I said.
We went back. Some ten of us—a line of
grotesque figures bounding with slow, easy strides over the jagged, rock-strewn
plain. Our lights danced before us.
The Planetara came
at last into view. My ship. Again that pang swept me
as I saw her. This, her last resting place. She lay
here, in her open tomb, shattered, broken, unbreathing. The lights on her were
extinguished. The Erentz system had ceased to pulse—the heart of the dying
ship, for a while bearing faintly, but now at rest.
We
left the two girls with some of Grantline's men at the admission port. Snap,
Grantline and I, with three others, went inside. There still seemed to be air,
but not enough so that we dared remove our helmets.
It
was dark inside the wrecked ship. The corridors were black. The hull control
rooms were dimly with Earthlight straggling through the windows.
This littered tomb. Cold and silent with death. We stumbled over a
fallen figure. A member of the crew. Grant-line
straightened from examining it.
"Dead," he said.
Earthlight
fell on the horrible face. Puffed flesh, bloated red from the
blood which had oozed from its pores in the thinning air. I looked away.
We
prowled further. Hahn lay dead in the pump room. The body of Coniston should
have been near here. We did not see it. We climbed up to the slanting, littered
deck. The air up here had all almost hissed away.
Again Grantline touched me.
"That the turret?"
No
wonder he asked mel The wreckage was all so formless.
"Yes."
We
climbed after Snap into the broken turret room. We passed the body of that
steward who just at the end had appealed to me and I had left dying. The legs
of the forward lookout still poked grotesquely up from the wreckage of the
observatory tower where it lay smashed down against the roof of the chart room.
We
shoved ourselves into the turret. What was this? No bodies here! The giant Miko
was gonel The pool of blood lay congealed into a
frozen dark splotch on the metal grid.
And Moa was gonel They
had not been dead. Had dragged themselves out of here,
fighting desperately for life. We would find them somewhere around here.
But
we did not. Nor Coniston. I recalled what Anita had said: other suits and helmets had been here in the
nearby chart room. The brigands had taken them, and food and Water doubtless, and escaped from the ship, following us through the lower
admission ports only a few minutes after we were gone.
We
made careful search of the entire ship. Eight of the bodies which should have
been here were missing: Miko, Moa, Coniston and five of the crew.
We
did not find them outside. They were hiding near here, no doubt, more willing
to take their chances than to yield to us now. But how, in all this Lunar desolation, could we hope to locate them?
"No
use," said Grantline. "Let them go. If they want death, well, they
deserve it."
But
we were saved. Then, as I stood there, realization leaped at me. Saved? Were we
not indeed fatuous fools?
In
all these emotion-swept moments since we had encountered Grantline, memory of
that brigand ship coming from Mars had never once occurred to Snap and met
I told Grantline now. He
stared at me.
"What!"
I
told him again. It would be here in eight days. Fully manned and armed.
"But
Haljan, we have almost no weaponsl All my Cornet's space was taken with equipment and the
mechanisms for my camp. I can't signal Earth! I was depending on the Planet-ara!"
It
surged upon us. The brigand menace past? We were blindly
congratulating ourselves on our safety! But it would be eight days or more
before in distant Ferrok-Shahn the nonarrival of the Planetara would cause any real comment. No one was
searching for us—no one was worried over us.
No
wonder the crafty Miko was willing to take his chances out here in the Lunar wilds! His ship, his reinforcements, his weapons were coming rapidly!
And we were helpless. Almost
unarmed. Marooned here on the Moonl
XXIII
"Trnr rr again," Snap urged. "Good God, Johnny,
we've got to raise some Earth station! Chance it! Use the power—run it up full.
Chance it!"
We
were gathered in Grantline's instrument room. The duty man, with blanched grim
face, sat at his senders. The Grantline crew shoved close around us. There were
very few observers in the high-powered Earth stations who knew that an
exploring party was on the Moon. Perhaps none of them.
The Government officials who had sanctioned the expedition and Halsey and his
confreres in the Detective Bureau were not anticipating trouble at this point.
The Planetara was supposed to be well on her course to Ferrok-Shahn. It was when she
was due to return that Halsey would be alert.
Grantline
used his power far beyond the limits of safety. He cut down the lights; the
telescope intensifiers and television were completely disconnected; the
ventilators were momentarily stilled, so that the air here in the little room
crowded with men rapidly grew fetid. All, to save power pressure, that the
vital Erentz system might survive.
Even
so, it was strained to the danger point. Our heat was radiating away; the
deadly chill of space crept in.
"Again!" ordered
Grantline.
The duty man flung on the power in rhythmic
pulses. In
the silence, the tubes hissed. The light sprang through the banks of rotating
prisms, intensified up the scale until, with a vague, almost invisible beam, it
left the last swaying mirror and leaped through our overhead dome and into
space.
"Enough,"
said Grantline. "Switch it off. Well let it go at that for now."
It
seemed that every man in the room had been holding his breath in the chill
darkness. The lights came on again; the Erentz motors accelerated to normal.
The strain on the walls eased up, and the room began warming.
Had
the Earth caught our signal? We did not want to waste the power to find out.
Our receivers were disconnected. If an answering signal came, we could not know
it. One of the men said:
"Let's assume they read us." He
laughed, but it was a high-pitched,
tense laugh. "We don't dare even use the telescope or television. Or electron radio. Our rescue ship might be right overhead,
visible to the naked eye, before we see it. Three days more—that's what 111
give it."
But
the three days passed and no rescue ship came. The Earth was almost at the full. We tried signaling again. Perhaps it
got through—we did not know. But our power was weaker now. The wall of one of
the rooms sprang a leak,
and the men were hours repairing it. I did not say so, but never once did I
feel that our signals were read on Earth. Those cursed clouds I The Earth
almost everywhere seemed to have poor visibility.
Four of our eight days of grace were all too
soon passed. The brigand ship must be half way here by now.
They
were busy days for us. If we could have captured Miko and his band, our danger
would have been less imminent. With the treasure insulated, and our camp in
darkness, the arriving brigand ship might never find us. But Miko knew our
location; he would signal his oncoming ship when it was close and lead it to
us.
During those three days—and the days which
followed them—Grantline sent out searching parties. But it was unavailing.
Miko, Moa and Coniston, with their five underlings, could not be found.
We
had at first hoped that the brigands might have perished. But that was soon
dispelled! I went—about the third day—with the party that was sent to the Flanetara. We wanted to salvage some of its equipment, its unbroken power units.
And Snap and I had worked out an idea which we thought might be of service. We needed some of the Planet-ara's smaller gravity plate sections. Those in
Grantline's wrecked little Comet had
stood so long that their radiations had gone dead. But the Planetara's were still working.
Our
hope that Miko might have perished was dashed. He too had returned to the Planetara! The evidence was clear before us. The vessel
was stripped of all its power units save those which were dead and useless, The last of the food and water stores were taken. The
weapons in the chart room—the Benson curve lights, projectors and heat rays-had
vanished!
Other
days passed. Earth reached the full and was waning. The fourteen day Lunar night was in its last half. No rescue ship came from
Earth. We had ceased our efforts to signal, for we needed all our power to
maintain ourselves. The camp would be in a state of siege before long. That was
the best we could hope for. We had a few short-range weapons, such as Bensons,
heat-rays and projectors. A few hundred feet of effective range was the most
any of them could obtain. The heat-rays—in giant form one of the most deadly
weapons on Earth—were only slowly efficacious on the airless Moon. Striking an
intensely cold surface, their warming radiations were slow to act. Even in a
blasting heat beam a man in his Erentz helmet-suit could withstand the ray for
several minutes.
We
were, however, well equipped with explosives. Grant-line had brought a large
supply for his mining operations, and much of it was still unused. We had,
also, an ample stock of oxygen fuses, and a variety of oxygen light flares in
small, fragile glass globes.
It was to use these explosives against the
brigands that Snap and I were working out our scheme with the gravity plates.
The brigand ship would come with giant projectors and some thirty men. If we
could hold out against them for a time, the fact that the Planetara was missing would bring us help from Earth.
Another day. A tenseness was
upon all of us, despite the absorption of our feverish activities. To conserve
power, the camp was almost dark, we lived in dim, chill rooms, with just a few
weak spots of light outside to mark the watchmen on their rounds. We did not
use the telescope, but there was scarcely an hour when one or the other of the men
was not sitting on a cross-piece up in the dome of the little instrument room,
casting a tense, searching gaze through his glasses into the black, starry
firmament. A ship might appear at any time now—a rescue ship from Earth, or the
brigands from Mars.
Anita and Venza through these days could aid
us very little save by their cheering words. They moved about the rooms, trying
to inspire us; so that all the men, when they might have been humanly sullen
and cursing their fate, were turned to grim activity, or grim laughter, making
a Joke of the coming siege. The morale of the camp now was perfect. An
improvement indeed over the inactivity of their former peaceful weeks I
Grantline
mentioned it to me. "Well put up a good fight, Haljan. These fellows from
Mars will know they've had a task before they ever sail off with the
treasure."
I
had many moments alone with Anita. I need not mention them. It seemed that our
love was crossed by the stars, with an adverse fate dooming it. And Snap and
Venza must have felt the same. Among the men, we were always quietly, grimly
active. But alone ... I came upon
Snap once with his arms around the little Venus girl. I heard him say:
"Accursed
luckl That you and I should find each other too late,
Venza. We could have a lot of fun in Greater New York together."
"Snap, we willl"
As
1 turned away, 1 murmured, "And pray God, so will
Anita and I."
The
girls slept together in a small room of the main building. Often during the
time of sleep, when the camp was stilled except for the night watch, Snap and I
would sit in the corridor near the girls' door, talking of that time when we
would all be back on our blessed Earth.
Our
eight days of grace were passed. The brigand ship was due—now, tomorrow, or the
next day.
I
recall, that night, my sleep was fitfully uneasy. Snap and I had a cubby together. We talked, and made futile plans. I went to sleep,
but awakened after a few hours. Impending disaster lay heavily upon me. But
there was nothing abnormal nor unusual in that!
Snap was asleep. I was restless, but I did
not have the heart to awaken him. He needed what little repose he could get. I
dressed, left our cubby and wandered out into the corridor of the main
building.
It
was cold in the corridor, and gloomy with the weak blue light. An interior
watchman passed me.
"All
as usual, Haljan."
"Nothing
in sight?"
"No. They're
watching."
I
went through the connecting corridor to the adjacent building. In the
instrument room several of the men were gathered, scanning the vault overhead.
"Nothing,
Haljan."
I
stayed with them awhile, then wandered away. An outside
man met me near the admission lock chambers of the main building. The duty man
here sat at his controls, raising the air pressure in the locks through which
the outside watchman was coming. The relief sat here in his bloated suit, with
his helmet on his knees. It was Wilks.
"Nothing yet, Haljan. I'm going up to the peak of the crater to see if anything is in sight.
I wish that damnable brigand ship would come and get it over with."
Instinctively we all spoke in half whispers,
the tenseness bearing in on us.
The outside man was white and grim, but he
grinned at Wilks. He tried the familiar jest: "Don't let the Earthlight
get youl"
Wilks went out through the
ports—a process of no more than a minute. I wandered away again through the
corridors.
I
suppose it was half an hour later that I chanced to be gazing through a
corridor window. The lights along the rocky cliff were tiny blue spots. The
head of the stairway leading down to the abyss of the crater floor was visible.
The bloated figure of Wilks was just coming up. I watched him for a moment
making his rounds. He did not stop to inspect the fights. That was routine. I
thought it odd that he passed them.
Another
minute passed. The figure of Wilks went with slow bounds over toward the back
of the ledge where the glassite shelter housed the treasure. It was all dark
off there. Wilks went into the gloom, but before I lost sight of him, he came
back. As though he had changed his mind, he headed for the foot of the
staircase which led up the cliff to where, at the peak of the litde crater, five
hundred feet above us, the narrow observatory was perched. He climbed with easy
bounds, the light on his helmet bobbing in the gloom.
I
stood watching. I could not tell why there seemed to be something queer about
Wilks' actions. But I was struck with it, nevertheless. I watched him disappear
over the summit.
Another
minute went by. Wilks did not reappear. I thought I could make out his light on
the platform up there. Then abruptly a tiny white beam was waving from the observatory
platform I It flashed once or twice, then was extinguished.
And now I saw Wilks plainly, standing in the Earthlight, gazing down.
Queer
actions! Had the Earthlight touched him? Or was that a local
signal call which he sent out? Why should Wilks be signaling? What was
he doing with a hand helio? Our watchmen, I knew, had no reason to carry one.
And
to whom could Wilks be signaling? To whom, across this Lunar
desolation? The answer stabbed at me: to Miko's band!
I
waited less than a moment. No further fight. Wilks was still up there!
I went back to the lock entrance. Spare
helmets and suits were here beside the keeper. He gazed at me inquiringly.
"I'm
going out, Franck. Just for a minute." It struck
me that perhaps I was a meddlesome fool. Wilks, of all of Grant-line's men,
was, I knew, most in his commander's trust. The signal could have been some
part of this night's ordinary routine, for all I knew.
I
was hastily donning an Erentz suit. I added, "Let me out. I just got the
idea Wilks is acting strangely." I laughed. "Maybe the Earthlight has
touched him."
With
my helmet on, I went through the locks. Once outside, with the outer panel
closed behind me, I dropped the weights from my belt and shoes and extinguished
my helmet light.
Wilks
was still up there. Apparently he had not moved. I bounded off across the ledge
to the foot of the ascending stairs. Did Wilks see me coming? I could not tell.
As I approached the stairs the platform was cut off from my line of vision.
I
mounted with bounding leaps. In my flexible gloved hand I carried my only
weapon, a,small projector with firing caps for use in
this outside near-vacuum.
I
held the weapon behind me. I would talk to Wilks first. I went slowly up the
last hundred feet. Was Wilks still up there? The summit was bathed in
Earthlight. The little metal observatory platform came into view above my head.
Wilks
was not there. Then I saw him standing on the rocks nearby, motionless. But in
a moment he saw me coming.
I
waved my left hand with a gesture of greeting. It seemed to me that he started,
made as though to leap away, and then changed his mind. I sailed from the head
of the staircase with a twenty foot leap and landed lightly beside him. I
gripped his arm for audiphone contact.
"Wilks!"
Through
my visor his face was visible. I saw him and he saw me. And I heard his voice:
"You, Haljan. How nicel"
It was not Wilks, but the brigand Coniston.
XXIV
The
duty man at
the exit locks stood at his window and watched me curiously. He saw me go up
the spider stairs. He could see the figure he thought was Wilks, standing at
the top. He saw me join Wilks, saw us locked together
in combat.
For
a brief instant the duty man stood amazed. There were two fantastic figures,
fighting at the very brink of the cliff. They were small, dwarfed by distance,
alternately dim and bright as they swayed in and out of the shadows. The duty
man could not tell one from the other. To him it was Haljan and Wilks, fighting
to the death!
The
duty man sprang into action. An interior siren call was on the instrument panel
near him. He rang it frantically.
The men came rushing to him, Grantline among
them. "What's this? Good God, Franck!"
They
had seen the silent, deadly combat up there on the cliff.
Grantline stood stricken with amazement.
"That's Wilks!"
"And
Haljan," the duty man gasped. "He went out—something wrong with
Wilks' actions—"
The
interior of the camp was in a turmoil. The men,
awakened from sleep, ran out into the corridors shouting questions.
"An attack?"
"Is it an attack?"
"The brigands?"
But
it was Wilks and Haljan in a fight up there on the cliff. The men crowded at
the bull's-eye windows.
And
over all the confusion the alarm siren, with no one thinking to shut it off,
was screaming.
Grantline, momentarily stricken, stood
gazing. One of the figures broke away from the other, bounded up to the summit
from the stair platform to which they had both fallen. The other followed. They
locked together, swaying at the brink. For an instant it seemed that they would
go over; then they surged back, momentarily out of sight.
Grantline
found his wits. "Stop them! I'll go out and stop them! What fools!"
He
was hastily donning one of the Erentz suits. "Cut off that siren!"
Within
a minute Grantline was ready. The duty man called from the window, "Still
at it, the fools. By the infernal—they'll kill themselves!"
"Franck, let me
out."
"Ill go with you, Commander." But the volunteer was not equipped.
Grantline would not wait.
The duty man turned to his panel. The
volunteer shoved a weapon at Grantline.
Grantline jammed on his helmet, took the weapon.
He
moved the few steps into the air chamber which was the first of the three
pressure locks. Its interior door panel swung open for him. But the door did
not close after him!
Cursing
the man's slowness, he waited a few seconds. Then he turned to the corridor.
The duty man came running,
Grantline took off his
helmet. "What in hell-"
"Broken! Dead!"
"What!"
"Smashed
from outside," gasped the duty man. "Look there—my tubes—"
The control tubes of the ports had flashed
into a short circuit and burned out. The admission ports would not open!
"And the pressure controls smashed]
Broken from outside!"
There was no way now of getting through the
pressure locks. The doors, the entire pressure lock system, was dead. Had it been tampered with from outside?
As if to answer Grantline's question there came
a chorus of shouts from the men at the corridor windows. "Commander!
By God—look!"
A
figure was outside, close to the building! Clothed in suit and helmet, it
stood, bloated and gigantic. It had evidently been lurking at the port
entrance, had ripped out the wires there.
It
moved past the windows, saw the staring faces of the men, and made off with
giant bounds. Grantline reached the window in time to see it vanish around the
building corner.
It was a giant figure,
larger than an Earth man. A Martian?
Up on the summit of the crater the two small
figures were still fighting. All this turmoil had taken no more than a minute or two.
A lurking Martian outside? The brigand, Miko? More than ever, Grantline
was determined to get out. He shouted to his men to don some of the other
suits, and called for some of the hand projectors.
But he could not get out through these main
admission ports. He could have forced the panels open perhaps; but with the
pressure changing mechanism broken, it would merely let the air out of the
corridor. A rush of air, probably uncontrollable. How
serious the damage was, no one could tell as yet. It would perhaps take hours
to repair it.
Grantline
was shouting, "Get those weapons! That's a Martian outside! The brigand
leader, probably! Get into your suits, anyone who wants to go with mel We'll go by the manual emergency exit."
But
the prowling Martian had found it! Within a minute Grantline was there. It was
a smaller two-lock gateway of manual control, so that the person going out could
operate it himself. It was in a corridor at the other end of the main building.
But Grantline was too late! The lever would not open the panels!
Had someone gone out this way and broken the
medianisms after him? A traitor in the camp? Or had someone come in from outside? Or had the skulking
Martian outside broken this lock as he had broken the other?
The
questions surged on Grantline. His men crowded around him. The news spread. The
camp was a prison! No one could get out!
And
outside, the skulking Martian had disappeared. But Wilks and Haljan were still
fighting. Grantline could see the two figures up on the observatory platform.
They bounded apart, then together again. Crazily swaying, bouncing, striking the rail.
They
went together in a great leap off the platform onto the rocks, and rolled in a
bright patch of Earthlight. First one on top, then the other.
They
rolled unheeding to the brink. Here, beyond the midway
ledge which held the camp, it was a sheer drop of a thousand feet, on down to
the crater floor.
The
figures were rolling; then one shook himself loose; rose up, seized the other
and, with desperate strength, shoved him—
The
victorious figure drew back to safety. The other fell, hurtling down into the
shadows past the camp level—down out of sight in the darkness of the crater
floor.
Snap,
who was in the group near Grantline at the window
gasped, "God! Was that Gregg who fell?"
No
one could say. No one answered. Outside, on the camp ledge, another helmeted
figure now became visible. It was not far from the main building when Grantline
first noticed it. It was running fast, bounding toward the spider staircase. It
began mounting.
And now still another figure became
visible—the giant Martian again. He appeared from around the comer of the main Grantline building. He
evidently saw the winner of the combat on the cliff, who now was standing in
the Earth-light, gazing down. And he saw too, no doubt, the second figure
mounting the stairs. He stood quite near the window through
which Grantline and his men were gazing, with his back to the building, looking
up to the summit. Then he ran with tremendous leaps toward the ascending
staircase.
Was
it Haljan standing up there on the summit? Who was it climbing the stairs? And
was the third figure Miko?
Grantline's
mind framed the questions. But his attention was torn from them, and torn even
from the swift silent drama outside. The corridor was ringing with shouts.
"We're
imprisonedl Can't get outl Was Haljan killed? The
brigands are outsidel"
And
then an interior audiphone blared a calling for Grant-line. Someone in the
instrument room of the adjoining building was talking.
"Commander, I tried the telescope to see
who got killed—"
But
he did not say who got killed, for he had greater news.
"Commander! The brigand ship!"
Miko's reinforcements had come.
XXV
Not
Wilks, but Coniston! His drawling, British voice:
"You, Gregg Haljan! How nice!"
His voice broke off as he jerked his arm from
me. My hand with the projector came up, but with a sweeping blow he struck my
wrist. The weapon dropped to the rocks.
I
fought instinctively, those first moments; my mind was whirling with the shock
of surprise. This was not Wilks, but the brigand Coniston.
It
was an eerie combat. We swayed; shoving, kicking, wrestling.
His hold around my middle shut off the Erentz circulation; the warning buzz
rang in my ears, to mingle with the rasp of his curses. I flung him off, and my
Erentz motors recovered. He staggered away, but in a great leap came at me
again.
I was taller, heavier and far stronger than Coniston. But I found him crafty, and where I was awkward in
handling my lightness, he seemed more skillfully agile.
I
became aware that we were on the twenty foot square grid of the observatory
platform. It had a low metal railing. We surged against it. I caught a dizzying
glimpse of the abyss. Then it receded as we bounced the other way. And then we
fell to the grid. His helmet bashed against mine, striking as though butting
with the side of his head to puncture my visor panel. His gloved fingers were
clutching at my throat.
As
we regained our feet, I flung him off, and bounded like a diver, hend first,
into him. He went backward, but skillfully kept his feet under him, gripped me
again and shoved me.
I
was tottering at the head of the staircase—falling. But I clutched at him. We
fell some twenty or thirty feet to he next lower spider landing. The impact
must have dazed us both. I recall my vague idea that we must have fallen down
the cliff. . . . My air shut off—then it came again. The roaring in my ears was
stilled; my head cleared, and I found that we were on the landing, fighting.
He
presently broke away from me, bounded to the summit with me after him. In the
close confines of the suit I was bathed in sweat and gasping. I had no thought
to increase the oxygen control. I could not find it; or it would not operate.
I
realized that I was fighting sluggishly, almost aimlessly. But so was Coniston!
It seemed dreamlike. A
phantasmagoria of blows and staggering steps. A
nightmare with only the horrible vision of this goggled helmet always before my
eyes.
It
seemed that we were rolling on the ground, back on the summit. The unshadowed
Earthlight was clear and bright. The abyss was beside me. Coniston, rolling,
was now on top, now under me, trying to shove me over the brink. It was all
like a dream—as though I were asleep, dreaming that I did not have enough air.
I
strove to keep my senses. He was struggling to roll me over the brink. God,
that would not dol But I was so tired. One cannot
fight without oxygen!
I
suddenly knew that I had shaken him off and gained my feet. He rose, swaying.
He was as tired, confused, as nearly asphyxiated as I.
The
brink of the abyss was behind us. I lunged, desperately shoving, avoiding his
clutch.
He
went over, and fell soundlessly, his body whirling end over end down into the
shadows, far below.
I
drew back. My senses faded as I sank panting to the rocks. But with inactivity,
my heart quieted. My respiration slowed. The Erentz circulation gained on my
poisoned air. It purified.
That
blessed oxygen! My head cleared. Strength came. I felt better.
Coniston
had fallen to his death. I was victor. I went to the brink cautiously, for I
was still dizzy. I could see, far down there on the crater floor, a little
patch of Earthlight in which a mashed human figure was lying.
I
staggered back again. A moment or two must have passed while I stood there on
the summit, with my senses clearing and my strength renewed as the blood stream
cleared in my veins.
I
was victor. Coniston was dead. I saw now, down on the lower staircase below the
camp ledge, another goggled figure lying huddled. That was Wilks, no doubt.
Coniston had probably caught him there, surprised him, killed him.
My
attention, as I stood gazing, went down to the camp buildings. Another figure
was outside! It bounded along the ledge, reached the foot of the stairs at the
top of which I was standing. With agile leaps, it came
mounting at me!
Another brigand! Miko?
No, it was not large enough to be Miko. I was still confused. 1 thought of Hahn. But that was absurd: Hahn was in the wreck of the Planetara. One of the stewards then. ...
1
The figure came up the staircase recklessly,
to assail me.
I
took a step backward, bracing myself to receive this new antagonist. And then I
looked further down and saw Mikol Unquestionably he,
for there was no mistaking his giant figure. He was down on the camp ledge,
running toward the foot of the stairs.
I
thought of my revolver. I turned to try and find it. I was aware that the first
of my assailants was at the stairhead. I swung back to see what this oncoming
brigand was doing. He was on the summit: with a sailing leap he launched for
me. I could have bounded away, but with a last look to locate the revolver, I
braced myself for the shock.
The
figure hit me. It was small and light in my clutching arms. I recall I saw that
Miko was halfway up the stairs. I gripped my assailant. The audiphone contact
brought a voice.
"Gregg, is it
you?"
It was Anital
XXVI
"Ghegg, you're safe!"
She
had heard the camp corridors resounding with the shouts that Wilks and Haljan
were fighting. She had come upon a suit and helmet by the manual emergency
lock, had run out through the lock, confused, with her only idea to stop Wilks
and me from fighting. Then she had seen one of us killed. Impulsively, barely
knowing what she was doing, she mounted the stairs, frantic to find if I were
alive.
"Anita!"
Miko was coming fast! She had not seen him;
for she had no thought of brigands—only the belief that either Wilks or I had
been killed.
But
now, as we stood together on the rocks near the observatory platform, I could
see the towering figure of Miko nearing the top of the stairs.
"Anita, that's Mikol We must runl"
Then
I saw my projector. It lay in a bowl-like depression quite near us. I jumped
for it. And as I tore loose from Anita, she leaped down after me. It was a
broken bowl in the rocks, some six feet deep. It was open on the side facing
the stairs—a narrow, ravinelike gully, full of gray, broken, tumbled rock
masses. The little gully was littered with crags and boulders. But I could see
out through it.
Miko
had come to the head of the stairs. He stopped there, his great figure etched
sharply by the Earthlight. I think he must have known that Coniston was the one
who had fallen over the cliff, as my helmet and Coniston's were different
enough for him to recognize which was which. He did not know who I was, but he
did know me for an enemy.
He
stood now at the summit, peering to see where we had gone. He was no more than
fifty feet from us.
"Anita, lie
down."
I
pulled her down on the rocks. I took aim with my projector. But I had
forgotten our helmet fights. Miko must have seen them just as I pulled the
trigger. He jumped side-wise and dropped, but I could see him moving in the
shadows to where a jutting rock gave him shelter. I fired, missing him again.
I
had stood up to take aim. Anita- pulled me sharply down beside her.
"Gregg, he's
armedl"
It
was his turn to fire. It came—the familiar vague flash of the paralyzing ray.
It spat its tint of color on the rocks near us, but did not reach us.
A moment later, Miko
bounded to another rock.
Time
passed—only a few seconds. I could not see Miko momentarily. Perhaps he was
crouching; perhaps he had moved away again. He was, or had been, on slightly
higher ground than the bottom of our bowl. It was dim down here where we were
lying, but I feared that any moment Miko might appear and strike at us. His ray
at any short range would penetrate our visor panes, even though our suits might
temporarily resist it.
"Anita, it's too
dangerous here!"
Had I been alone, I might perhaps have leapt
up to lure Miko. But with Anita I did not dare chance it. "We've got to
get back to camp," I told her. "Perhaps he has gone—"
But
he had not. We saw him again, out in a distant patch of Earthlight. He was
further from us than before, but on still higher ground. We had extinguished
our small helmet lights. But he knew we were here and possibly he could see us.
His projector flashed again. He was a hundred feet or more away now, and his
weapon was of no longer range than mine. I did not answer his fire, for I could
not hope to hit him at such a distance, and the flash of my weapon would help
him to locate us.
I murmured to Anita,
"We must get away."
Yet
how did I dare take Anita from these concealing shadows? Miko could reach us so easily as we bounded away in plain view in the Earthlight
of the open summitl We were caught, at bay in this little bowl.
The
camp was not visible from here. But out through the broken gully, a white beam
of light suddenly came up from below.
Haljan. It spelled the signal.
It was coming from the Grantline instrument
room, I knew. I could answer it with my helmet light, but I did not dare.
"Try it," urged Anita.
We crouched where we thought we might be safe
from Miko's fire. My little light beam shot up from the bowl. It was
undoubtedly visible to the camp.
Yes,
I am Haljan. Send us help.
I
did not mention Anita. Miko doubtless could read these signals. They answered, Cannot—
I
lost the rest of it. There came a flash from Miko's weapon. It gave us
confidence: he was unable to reach us at this distance.
The Grantline beam
repeated:
Cannot come out. Ports broken. You
cannot get in. Stay where you are for an hour or two. We may be able to repair
ports.
I extinguished my light. What use was it to
tell Grantline anything further? Besides, my light was endangering us. But the
Grantline beam spelled another message: Brigand ship is coming. It will be here before we can get out to you. No lights. We will try and hide our location. And the signal beam brought a last appeal: Miko and his men wiU divulge where we are
unless you can stop them.
The
beam vanished. The lights of the Grantline camp made a faint glow that showed
above the crater edge. The glow died, as the camp now was plunged into darkness.
XXVII
We
crouched in
the shadows, the Earthlight filtering down to us. The skulking figure of Miko
had vanished; but I was sure he was out there somewhere on the crags, lurking,
maneuvering to where he could strike us with his ray. Anita's metal-gloved hand
was on my arm; in my ear-diaphragm her voice sounded eager:
"What was the signal,
Gregg?"
I told her everything.
"Oh GreggI The Martian ship comingl"
Her
mind clung to that as the most important thing. But not so
myself. To me there was only the realization that Anita was caught out
here, almost at the mercy of Miko's ray. Grantline's men could not get out to help us, nor could 1 get Anita into the camp.
She added, "Where do
you suppose the ship is?"
"Twenty or thirty
thousand miles up, probably."
The
stars and the Earth were visible over us. Somewhere up there, disclosed by Grantline's instruments but not yet discernible to
the naked eye, Miko's reinforcements were hovering.
We
lay for a moment in silence. It was horribly nerve straining. Miko could be
creeping up on us. Would he dare chance my sudden fire? Creeping—or would he
make a swift, unexpected rush?
The
feeling that he was upon us abruptly swept me. I jumped to my feet, against
Anita's effort to hold me. Where was he now? Was my imagination playing me
tricks? . . .
I sank back. "That
ship should be here in a few hours."
I
told her what Grantline's signal had suggested; the ship was hovering overhead.
It must be fairly close; for Grant-line's telescope had revealed its identity
as an outlaw flyer, unmarked by any of the standard code identification lights.
It was doubtless too far away as yet to have located the whereabouts of
Grantline's camp. The Martian brigands knew that we were in the vicinity of
Archimedes, but no more than that. Searching this glowing Moon surface, our
tiny local semaphore beams would certainly pass unnoticed.
But
as the brigand ship approached now—dropping close to Archimedes as it probably
would—our danger was that Miko and his men would then signal it, join it, and
reveal the camp's location. And the brigand attack would be upon us!
I told this now to Anita. "The signal
from Grantline said, 'Unless
you can stop them.'"
It
was an appeal to me. But how could I stop them? What could I do, alone out here
with Anita, to cope with this enemy?
Anita made no comment.
I
added, "That ship will land near Archimedes, within an hour or two. If
Grantline can repair the ports, and I can get you inside. . . ."
Again she made no comment. Then suddenly she
gripped me. "Gregg, look there!"
Out
through the gully break in our bowl the figure of Miko showed! He was running. But not at us. Circling the summit, leaping to keep himself behind the upstanding crags. He passed the head of
the staircase; he did not descend it, but headed off along the summit of the
crater rim.
I stood up to watch him.
"Where's he going!"
I
let Anita stand up beside me, cautiously at first, for
it occurred to me it might be a ruse to cover some other of Miko's men who
might be lurking near.
But
the summit seemed clear. The figure of Miko was a thousand feet away now. We
could see the tiny blob of it bobbing over the rocks. Then it plunged down—not
into the crater valley, but out toward the open Moon surface.
Miko had abandoned his attack on us. The
reason seemed plain. He had come here from his encampment with Conisten ahead to lure and kill Wilks. When this was
done, Coniston had flashed his signal to Miko, who was hiding nearby.
It
was not like the brigand leader to remain in the background. Miko was no
coward. But Coniston could impersonate Wilks, whereas Miko's giant stature at
once would reveal his identity. Miko had been engaged in smashing the ports.
He had looked up and seen me kill Coniston. He had come to assail me. And then
he had read Grantline's message to me. It was his first knowledge that his ship
was at hand. With the camp exits inoperative, Grantline and his men were
imprisoned. Miko had made an effort to kill me. He did not know my companion
was Anita. But the effort was taking too long; with his ship at hand, it was
Miko's best move to return to his own camp, rejoin his men, and await their
opportunity to signal the ship.
At
least, so I reasoned it. Anita and I stood alone. What could we do?
We went to the brink of the cliff. The
unlighted Grant-line buildings showed vaguely in the EaitrAight.
I
said, "We'll go down. I'll leave you there. You can wait at the port.
They'll repair it soon."
"And what will you do,
Gregg?"
I did not intend to tell
her. "Hurry, Anita!"
"Gregg, let me go with you."
She jerked away from me and bounded back up
the stairs. I caught her on the summit. "Anita!"
"I'm
going with you." "You're going to stay here." "I'm
not!"
This
exasperating controversy! "Anita, please."
"Ill
be safer with you than waiting here, Gregg." And she added, "Besides,
I won't stay and you can't make me."
We
ran along the crater top. At its distant edge the lower plain spread before us.
Far down, and far away on the distant broken surface, the leaping figure of
Miko showed. He plunged down the broken outer slope, reached the level. Soon,
as we ran, the little Grantline crater faded behind us.
Anita
ran more skillfully than I. Ten minutes or so passed. We had seen Milco and the
direction he was taking, but down here on the plain we could no longer see him.
It struck me that our chase was purposeless and dangerous. Suppose
Miko were to see us following him? Suppose he stopped and lay in ambush
to fire at us as we came leaping heedlessly by?
"Anita, wait!"
I drew her down amid a group of tumbled
boulders. And then abruptly she clung to me.
"Gregg,
I know what we can do! Gregg, don't tell me you won't let me try it!"
I listened to her plan. Incredible! Incredibly dangerous. Yet, as I pondered it, the very daring
of the scheme seemed the measure of its possible success. The brigands would
never imagine we could be so rash!
"But Anita—"
"Gregg,
you're stupid!" It was her turn to be exasperated. But I was in no mood
for daring. My mind was obsessed with Anita's safety. I had been planning that
we might see
the
glow of Miko's encampment and decide on some course of action.
"But,
Gregg, the safety of the treasure—of all the Grant-line men. . . ."
"To
the infernal with that! It's you, your safety—"
"My safety, then! If you put me in the camp and the brigands attack it and I am
killed—what then? But this plan of mine, if we can do it, Gregg, will mean
safety in the end for all of us."
And it seemed possible. We crouched,
discussing it. So daring a thing!
The
brigand ship would come down near Archimedes. That was fifty miles from
Grantline. The brigands from Mars would not have seen the dark Grantline
buildings hidden in the little crater pit. They would wait for Miko and his men
to make their whereabouts known.
Miko's
encampment was ahead of us now, undoubtedly. We had been following him toward
the Mare Imbrium. Or at least, we hoped so. He would signal his ship. But Anita
and I, closer to it, would also signal it; and, posing as brigands, would join
it!
"Remember, Gregg, I remain Anita Prince,
George's sister." Her voice trembled as she mentioned her dead brother.
"They know that George was in Miko's pay, and I as his sister, will help
to convince them."
This
daring scheme! If we could join the ship, we might be able to persuade its
leader that Miko's distant signals were merely a ruse of Grantline to lure the
brigands in that direction. A long range projector from the ship would kill
Miko and his men as they came forward to join it! And then we would falsely
direct the brigands, lead them away from Grantline and the treasure.
"Gregg, we must try
it."
Heaven help me, I yielded
to her persuasion!
We turned at right angles and ran toward
where the distant frowning walls of Archimedes loomed against the starlit
sky.
The bhoken, shaggy ramparts of the giant crater rose
above us. We toiled upward, out of the foothills, clinging now to the crags and
pitted terraces of the main ascent. An hour had passed since we turned from the
borders of Mare Imbrium. Or was it two hours? I could not tell. I only know
that we ran with desperate, frantic haste.
Anita
would not admit that she was tired. She was more skillful than I in this
leaping over the broken rock masses. Yet I felt that her slight strength must
give out. It seemed miles up the undulating slopes of the foothills with the
black and white ramparts of the crater close before us.
And then the main ascent. There were places where, like smooth black frozen ice, the walls rose
sheer. We avoided them, toiling aside, plunging into gullies, crossing pits
where sometimes, perforce, we went downwards, and then up again. Or sometimes
we stood, hot and breathless, upon ledges, recovering our strength, selecting
the best route upward.
In
tumbled mass of rock, honeycombed everywhere with caves and passages leading
into impenetrable darkness, there were pits into which we might so easily have
fallen; ravines to span, sometimes with a leap, sometimes by a long and arduous
detour.
Endless climb. We came to the ledge with the plains of the Mare Imbrium stretching out
beneath us. We might have been upon this main ascent for an hour; the plains
were far down, the broken surface down there smoothed now by the perspective of
height. And yet still above us the brooding circular wall went up into the sky.
Ten thousand feet above us.
"You're tired, Anita. We'd better stay
here." "No. If we could only get to the top—the ship may land on the
other side—they would see us."
There was as yet no sign of the brigand ship.
With every stop for rest we searched the starry vault. The Earth hung over us,
flattened beyond the full. The stars blazed to mingle with the Earthlight and
illumine these massive crags of the Archimedes walls. But no speck appeared to
tell us that the ship was up there.
We
were on the curving side of the Archimedes wall which fronted the Mare Imbrium
to the north. The plains lay like a great frozen sea, congealed ripples shining
in the light of the Earth, with dark patches to mark the hollows. Somewhere down there—six or eight thousand feet below us now—Miko's
encampment lay concealed. We searched for lights of it, but could see none.
Had
Miko rejoined his party, left his camp and come here like ourselves to climb
Archimedes? Or was our assumption wholly wrong: perhaps the brigand ship would not land near
here at alll
Sweeping
around from the Mare Imbrium, the plains were less smooth. The little crater
which concealed the Grantline camp was off in the crater-scarred region beyond
which the distant Apennines raised their terraced walls. There was nothing to
mark it from here.
"Gregg,
do you see anything up there?" She added, "There seems to be a
blur."
Her
sight, sharper than mine, had picked it out. The descending brigand ship! A
faintest, tiny blur against the stars, a few of them occulted as though an
invisible shadow were upon them. A growing shadow, materializing into a blur—a
blob, a shape faindy defined. Then sharper until we were sine of what we saw.
It was the brigand ship. It was dropping slowly, silently down.
We
crouched on the little ledge. A cave mouth was behind us. A gully was beside
us, a break in the ledge; and at our feet the sheer wall dropped.
We
had extinguished our lights. We crouched, silendy gazing up into the stars.
The
ship, when we first distinguished it, was centered over Archimedes. We thought
for a while that it might descend into the crater. But it did not; it came
sailing forward.
I
whispered into the audiphone, "It's coming over the crater."
Her hand pressed my arm in
answer.
I
recalled that when, from the Planetara, Miko
had forced Snap to signal this brigand band on Mars, Miko's only information
as to the whereabouts of the Grantline camp was that it lay between Archimedes
and the Apennines. The brigands now were following that information.
A
tense interval passed. We could see the ship plainly above us now, a gray-black
shape among the stars up beyond the shaggy, towering crater rim. The vessel
came upon a level keel, hull down. Slowly circling, looking for Miko's signal,
no doubt, or for possible lights from Grantline's camp. They might also be
picking a landing place.
We
saw it soon as a cylindrical, cigarlike shape, rather smaller than the Planetara, but similar of design. It bore lights now.
The ports of its hull were tiny rows of illumination, and the glow of light
under its rounding upper dome was faindy visible.
A bandit ship, no doubt of that. Its identification keel plate was empty of
official pass code lights. These brigands had not attempted to secure official
sailing lights when leaving Ferrok-Shahn. It was unmistakably an oudaw ship.
And here upon the deserted Moon there was no need for secrecy. Its lights were
openly displayed, that Miko might see it and join it.
It
went slowly past us, only a few thousand feet higher than our level. We could
see the whole outline of its pointed cylinder hull, with the rounded dome on
top. And under the dome was its open deck with a little cabin superstructure in
the center.
I
thought for a moment that by some unfortunate chance it might land quite near
us. But it went past. And then I saw that it was heading for a level,
plateauhke surface a few miles further on. It dropped, cautiously floating
down.
There was still no sign of Miko. But I
realized that haste was necessary. We must be the first to join the brigand
ship.
I
lifted Anita to her feet. "I don't think we should signal from here."
"No. Miko might see it."
We
could not tell where he was. Down on the plains, perhaps? Or
up here, somewhere in these miles of towering rocks?
"Are you ready, Anita?"
"Yes, Gregg."
I stared through the visors at her white
solemn face. "Yes, I'm ready," she repeated.
Her
hand pressure seemed to me suddenly like a farewell. We were plunging rashly
into what was destined to mean our
death? Was this a farewell?
An
instinct told me not to do this thing. Why, in a few hours I could have Anita
back to the comparative safety of the Grantline camp. The exit ports would
doubtless be repaired by now. I could get her inside.
She
had bounded away from me, leaped down some thirty feet into the broken gulley,
to cross it and then up on the other side. I stood for an instant watching her
fantastic shape, with the great rounded, goggled, trunked helmet and the lump
on her shoulders which held the little Erentz motors. Then I hurried after her.
It
did not take us long—two or three miles of circling along the giant wall. The
ship lay only a few hundred feet above our level.
We stood at last on a buttelike pinnacle. The
lights of the ship were close over us. And there were moving lights up there,
tiny moving spots on the adjacent rocks. The brigands had come out, prowling
about to investigate their location.
No
signal yet from Miko. But it might come at any moment.
"Ill flash now," I whispered.
"Yes."
The brigands had probably not yet seen us. I
took the
lamp from my
helmet. My hand
was trembling. Suppose my
signal were answered by a shot?
A flash from
some giant projector
mounted on the ship?
Anita
crouched behind a rock,
as she had promised. I Stood with my torch and flung its switch. My puny light beam shot up. I waved
it, touched the ship with its faint glowing circle of iUumination.
They
saw me. There was a sudden movement among the lights up there.
I semaphored:
J am from Miko. Do not fire.
I
used open universal code. In Martian first, and then in
English.
There was no answer, but no attack. I tried again.
This
is Haljan, one of the Planetara.
George Prince's sister is
with me. There has been disaster to Miko.
A
small light beam came down from the brink of the overhead cliff beside the
ship.
Continue.
I
went steadily on: Disaster—the
Planetara is wrecked. All killed but me and Prince's
sister. We want to join you. I flashed off my light. The answer came: Where is the Grantline Camp? Near here. The Mare Imbrium.
As
though to answer my he, from down on the Earthlit plains, some ten miles or so
from the crater base, a tiny signal light shot up. Anita saw it and gripped
me.
"There is Miko's
light!"
It spelled in Martian, Come down. Land Mare Imbrium.
Miko
had seen the signaling up here and had joined it! He repeated, Land Mare Imbrium.
I
flashed a protest up to the ship: Beware. That is Grant-line] Trickery.
From the ship the summons came, Come up.
We
had won this first encounter! Miko must have realized his disadvantage. His distant light went out.
"Come, Anita."
There was no retreat now. But again I seemed
to feel in the pressure of her hand that vague farewell. Her voice whispered,
"We must do our best, act our best to be convincing."
In
the white glow of a searchbeam we climbed the crags, reached the broad upper
ledge. Helmeted figures rushed at us, searched us for weapons, seized our helmet lights. The evil face of a giant Martian
peered at me through the visors. Two other monstrous, towering figures seized
Anita.
We
were shoved toward the port locks at the base of the ship's hull. Above the
hull bulge I could see the grids of projectors mounted on the dome side, and
the figures of men standing on the deck, peering down at us.
We
went through the admission locks into a hull corridor, up an incline passage,
and reached the lighted deck. The Martian brigands crowded around us.
XXIX
Anita's
words echoed in my memory:
"We must do our best to be convincing." It was not her ability that I
doubted, as much as my own. She had played the part of George Prince cleverly,
unmasked only by an evil chance.
I
steeled myself to face the searching glances of the brigands as they shoved
around us. This was a desperate game into which we had plunged. For all our
acting, how easy it would be for some small chance thing abruptly to undo us! I
realized it, and now, as I gazed into the peering faces of these men from Mars,
I cursed myself for the witless rashness which had brought Anita into this!
The
brigands—some ten or fifteen of them here on deck —stood in a ring around us.
They were all big men, nearly of a seven-foot average, dressed in leather
jerkins and short leather breeches, with bare knees and flaring leather boots.
Piratical swaggering fellows, knife-blades mingled with small hand projectors
fastened to their belts. Gray, heavy faces, some with scraggly, unshaven
beards. They plucked at us, jabbering in Martian.
One
of them seemed the leader. I said sharply, "Are you the commander here?
You speak the Earth English?"
"Yes,"
he said readily. "I am commander here." He spoke English with the
same freedom and accent as Miko. "Is this George Prince's sister?"
"Yes. Her name is Anita Prince. Tell
your men to take their hands off her."
He waved his men away. They all seemed more
interested in Anita than in me. He added:
"I
am Set Potan." He addressed Anita. "George
Prince's sister? You are called Anita? I have heard of you. I knew your
brother—indeed, you look very much like him."
He
swept his plumed hat
to the grid with a swaggering gesture of homage. A courtierlike fellow this,
debonair as a Venus cavalier!
He
accepted us. I realized that Anita's presence was extremely valuable in making
us convincing. Yet there was about this Potan—as with Miko—a disturbing
suggestion of irony. I could not make him out. I decided that we had fooled
him. Then I remarked the steely glitter of his eyes as he turned to me.
"You were an officer
of the Planetara?"
The
insignia of my rank was visible on my white jacket collar which showed beneath
the Erentz suit now that my helmet was off.
"Yes.
I was supposed to be. But a year ago I embarked upon this adventure with
Miko."
He
was leading us to his cabin. "The Planetara wrecked?
Miko dead?"
"And Hahn and Coniston. George Prince too.
We are the only survivors."
While we divested ourselves of the Erentz
suits, at his command, I told him briefly of the Planetara's fall. All had been killed on board, save Anita and me. We had escaped,
awaited his coming. The treasure was here; we had located the Grantline camp,
and were ready to lead him to it.
Did
he believe me? He listened quietly. He seemed not shocked at the death of his
comrades. Nor yet pleased: merely imperturbable.
I
added with a sly, sidelong glance, "There were too many of us on the Planetara. The purser had joined us and many of the
crew. And there was Miko's sister, the Setta Moa—too
many. The treasure divides better among less."
An
amused smile played on his thin gray lips. But he nodded. The fear
which had leaped at me was allayed by his next words.
"True
enough, Haljan. He was a domineering fellow, Miko. A third of it all was for him alone. But now. . . ."
The
third would go to this sub-leader, Potanl The implication was obvious.
I
said, "Before we go any further, I can trust you for my share?"
"Of
course."
I
figured that my very boldness in bargaining so prematurely would convince him.
I insisted, "Miss Prince will have her brother's share?"
Clever
Anita! She put in swiftly, "Oh, I give no information until you promise!
We know the location of the Grant-line camp, its weapons, its defences, the
amount and location of the treasure. I warn you, if you do not play us fair. .
. ."
He
laughed heartily. He seemed to like us. He spread his huge legs as he lounged
in his settle, and drank of the bowl which one of his men set before him.
"Little
tigress! Fear me not—I play fair!" He pushed two of the bowls across the
table. "Drink, Haljan. All is well with us and I am glad to know it. Miss Prince, drink my health as your leader."
I waved it away from Anita. "We need all
our wits; your Strong
Martian drinks are
dangerous. Look here, 111 tell
you just how the situation stands—"
I
plunged into a glib account of our supposed wanderings to find the Grantline
camp: its location off the Mare Imbrium
—hidden in a cavern there. Potan, with the drink, and under the gaze of Anita's eyes, was in high
good humor. He laughed when I told him that we had dared to invade the
Grantline camp, had smashed its exit ports, had even gotten up to have a look
where the treasure was piled.
"Well
done, Haljan. You're a fellow to my likingl" But his gaze was on Anita.
"You dress like a man or a charming boy."
She
still wore the dark clothes of her brother. She said, "I am used to
action. Man's garb pleases me. You shall treat me like a man and give me my
share of gold leaf."
He
had already demanded the reason for the signal from the Mare Imbrium. Miko's
signal! It had not come again, though any moment I feared it. I told him that
Grantline doubtless had repaired his damaged ports and sallied out to assail me
in reprisal. And, seeing the brigand ship landing on Archimedes, had tried to
lure him into a trap.
I
wondered if my explanation was convincing: it did not sound so. But he was
flushed now with drink, and Anita added:
"Grantline
knows the territory near his camp very well. But he is equipped only for short
range fighting."
I took it up. "It's like this, Potan: if
he could get you to land unsuspectingly near his cavern—"
I pictured how Grantline might have figured
on a sudden surprise attack upon the ship. It was his only chance to catch it
unprepared.
We
were all three in friendly, intimate mood now. Potan said, "We'll land
down there right enough! But I need a few hours for my assembling."
"He will not dare
advance," I said.
Anita
put in, smiling, "He knows by now that we have unmasked his lure. Haljan
and I, joining you—that silenced him. His light went out very promptly, didn't
it?"
She
flashed me a side gaze. Were we acting convincingly? But if Miko started up his
signals again, they might so quickly betray us I Anita's thoughts were upon
that, for she added:
"Grantline
will not dare show his light! If he does, Set Potan, we can blast him from here
with a ray. Can't we?"
"Yes,"
Potan agreed. "If he comes within ten miles, I have one powerful enough.
We are assembling it now."
"And
we have thirty men?" Anita persisted. "When we sail down to attack
him, it should not be difficult to kill all the Grantline party."
"By
heaven, Haljan, this girl of yours is small, but very bloodthirsty!"
"And I'm glad Miko is
dead," Anita added.
I explained, "That
accursed Miko murdered her brother."
Acting!
And never once did we dare relax. If only Miko's signals would hold off and
give us time!
We may have talked for half an hour. We were
in a small steel-lined cubby, located in the forward deck of the ship. The dome
was over it. I could see from where I sat at the table that there was a forward
observatory tower under the dome quite near here. The ship was laid out in
rather similar fashion to the Planetara, though
considerably smaller.
Potan
had dismissed his men from the cubby so as to be alone with us. Out on the deck
I could see them dragging apparatus about, bringing
the mechanisms of giant projectors up from below and beginning to assemble
them. Occasionally some of the men would come to our cubby windows to peer in
curiously.
My
mind was roaming as I talked. For all my manner of casualness, I knew that
haste was necessary. Whatever Anita and I were to do must be quickly done.
But
to win this fellow's utter confidence first was necessary, so that we might
have the freedom of the ship, might move about unnoticed, unwatched.
I
was horribly tense inside. Through the dome windows across the deck from the
cubby, the rocks of the Lunar landscape were visible.
I could see the brink of this ledge upon which the ship lay,
the descending crags down the precipitous wall of Archimedes to the Earthlit
plains far below. Miko, Moa, and a few of the Planetara's crew were down there somewhere.
Anita
and I had a fairly definite plan. We were now in Potan's confidence; this
interview at an end, I felt that our status among the brigands would be
established. We would be free to move about the ship, join in its activities.
It ought to be possible to locate the signal room, get friendly with the
operator there.
Perhaps
we could find a secret opportunity to flash a signal to Earth. This ship, I was
confident, would have the power for a long range signal, if not of too
sustained a length. It would be a desperate thing to attempt, but our whole
procedure was desperate! Anita could lure the duty man from the signal room, I
might send a single flash or two that would reach the Earth. Just
a distress signal, signed "Grantline." If I could do that and
not get caught!
Anita
was engaging Potan in talking of his plans. The brigand leader was boasting of
them: of his well equipped ship, the daring of his men. And
questioning her about the size of the treasure. My thoughts were free to
roam.
While
we were making friends with this brigand, the longest range electronic
projector was being assembled. Miko then could flash his signal and be damned
to him! I would be on the deck with that projector. Its operator and I would
turn it upon Miko—one flash of it and he and his little band would be wiped
out.
But
there was our escape to be thought of. We could not remain very long with these
brigands. We could tell them that the Grantline camp was on the Mare Imbrium.
It would delay them for a time, but our lie would soon be discovered. We must
escape from them, get away and back to Grantline. With Miko dead, a distress
signal to Earth, and Potan in ignorance of Grantline's location, the treasure
would be safe until help arrived from Earth.
"By the infernal, little Anita, you look
like a dove, but you're a tigress! A comrade after my own heart—bloodthirsty as
a fire-worshipperl"
Her
laugh rang out to mingle with his. "Oh no, Set Potan! I am treasure-thirsty."
"Well get the treasure. Never fear,
little Anita."
"With you to lead us, I'm sure we
will."
A
man entered the cubby. Potan looked frowningly around. "What is it,
Argle?"
The
fellow answered in Martian, leered at Anita and withdrew.
Potan
stood up. I noticed that he was unsteady with the drink.
"They want me with the work at the
projectors." "Go ahead," I said.
He
nodded. We were comrades now. "Amuse yourself, Haljan. Or come out on
deck if you wish. I will tell my men you are one of us."
"And tell them to keep their hands off
Miss Prince."
He
stared at me. "I had not thought of that: a woman among so many men!"
His
own gaze at Anita was as offensive as any of his men could have given. He said,
"Have no fear, little tigress."
Anita laughed. "I'm afraid of
nothing."
But
when he had lurched from the cabin, she touched me. Smiled with her mannish
swagger, for fear we were still observed, and murmured:
"Oh Gregg, I am afraid!"
We
stayed in the cubby a few moments, whispering and planning.
"You think the signal room is in the
tower, Gregg? This tower outside our window here?"
"Yes, I think so." "Shall we go out and see?" "Yes.
Keep near me always." "Oh Gregg, I will!"
We deposited our Erentz suits carefully in a
corner of the cubby. We might need them so suddenly! Then we swaggered out to
join the brigands working on the deck.
XXX
The
deck glowed lurid in the
queer blue-greenish glare of Martian electro-fuse lights. It was in a bustle of
ordered activity. Some twenty of the crew were scattered about, working in
little groups. Apparatus was being brought up from below to be assembled. There
was a pile of Erentz suits and helmets, of Martian pattern, but still very
similar to those with which Grantline's expedition was equipped. There were
giant projectors of several kinds, some familiar to me, others of a fashion I
had never seen before. It seemed there were six or eight of them, still
dismanded, with a litter of their attendant batteries and coils and tube
amplifiers.
They
were to be mounted here on the deck, I surmised; I saw in the dome side one or two
of them already rolled into position.
Anita
and I stood outside Potan's cubby, gazing around us curiously. The men looked
at us but none of them spoke.
"Let's
watch from here a moment," I whispered. She nodded, standing with her hand
on my arm. I felt that we were very small, here in the midst of these seven
foot Martian men. I was all in white, the costume used in the warm interior of
Grantline's camp. Bareheaded, white silk Planetara uniform
jacket, broad belt and tight-laced trousers. Anita was a slim black
figure beside me, somber as Hamlet, with her pale boyish face and wavy black
hair.
The
gravity being maintained here on the ship we had found to be stronger than that
of the Moon and rather more like Mars.
"There are the heat rays, Gregg."
A
pile of them was visible down the deck length. And I saw caskets of fragile
glass globes, bombs of different styles, hand projectors of the paralyzing ray;
search beams of several varieties; the Benson curve light, and a few side arms
of ancient Earth design—swords and dirks, and small bullet projectors.
There
seemed to be some mining equipment also. Far along the deck, beyond the central
cabin in the open space of the stern, steel rails were stacked; half a dozen
tiny-wheeled ore carts; a tiny motor engine for hauling them and what looked as
though it might be the dismembered sections of an ore chute.
The
whole deck was presently strewn with this mass of equipment.
Potan
moved about, directing the different groups of workers. The news had spread
that we knew the location of the treasure. The brigands were jubilant. In a few
hours the ship's armament would be ready, and it would advance.
I
saw many glances cast out the dome side windows toward the distant plains of
the Mare Imbrium. The brigands believed that the Grantline camp lay in that
direction.
Anita
whispered, "Which is their giant electronic projector, Gregg?"
I could see it amidships of the deck. It was
already in place. Potan was there now, superintending the men who were
connecting it. The most powerful weapon on the ship.
It had, Potan said, an effective range of some ten miles. I wondered what it
would do to a Grantline buildingl The Erentz double walls would withstand it
for a time, I was sure. But it would blast an Erentz fabric suit, no doubt of
that. Like a lightning bolt, it would kill—its
flashing free stream of electrons shocking the heart, bringing instant death.
I whispered, "We must smash that before
we leavel But first turn it on Miko, if he signals now."
I was tensely watchful for that signal. The
electronic projector obviously was not ready. But when it was connected, I
must be near it, to persuade its duty man to fire it on Miko. With this done we
would have more time to plan our other tasks. I did not think Potan would be
ready for his attack before another time of sleep here in the ship's routine.
Things would be quieter then; I would watch my chance to send a signal to
Earth, and then we would escape.
With
my thoughts roving, we had been standing quietly at the cubby door for about
fifteen minutes. My hand in my side pouch clutched the little bullet projector.
The brigands had taken it from me and given it to Potan. He had placed it on
the settle with my Erentz suit; and when we gained his confidence he had
forgotten it and left it there. I had it now, and the feel of its cool sleek
handle gave me a measure of comfort. Things could go wrong so
easily. But if they did, I was determined to sell my life as dearly as
possible. And a vague thought was in my mind: I must not use the last bullet.
That would be for Anita.
"That
electronic projector is remote controlled. Look, Anita, that's the signal room
over us. The giant projector will be aimed and fired from up there."
A
thirty foot skeleton tower stood on the deck near us, with a spiral ladder
leading up to a small, square, steel cubby at the top. Through the cubby window
I could see instrument panels. A single Martian was up there; he had called
down to Potan concerning the electronic projector.
The
roof of this little tower room was close under the dome—a space of no more than
four feet. A pressure lock exit in the dome was up there, with a few steps
leading up to it from the roof of the tower signal room.
We
could escape that way, perhaps. In the event of dire necessity it might be
possible. But only as a desperate resort, for it would put us on the top of the
glassite dome, with a sheer
hundred feet or more down its sleek bulging exterior side, and down the outside
bulge of the ship's hull, to the rocks below. There might be a spider ladder
outside leading downward, but I saw no evidence of it. If Anita and I were
forced to escape that way, I wondered how we could manage a hundred foot jump to the rocks, and land safely. Even with the slight
gravity of the Moon, it would be a dangerous
fall.
"You are Gregg
Haljan?"
I stared as one of the brigands, coming up
behind, addressed me. "Yes."
"Commander Potan tells me you were chief
navigator of the Planetara?"
"Yes."
"You
shall pilot us when we advance upon the Grantline camp. I am control-commander
here—Brotow, my name."
He
smiled. A giant fellow, but spindly. He spoke good
English. He seemed anxious to be friendly.
"We
are glad to have you and George Prince's sister with us." He shot Anita an
admiring glance. "I will show you our controls, Haljan."
"All right," I
said. 'Whatever I can do to help . . ."
"But not now. It will be some hours before we are
ready."
I
nodded, and he wandered away. Anita whispered: "Did he mean that signal
room up in the tower? Oh Gregg, maybe it's only the control room."
"Suppose
we go up and see? Miko's signals might start any minute."
And
the electronic projector seemed about ready. It was time for me to act. But a
reluctant instinct was upon me. Our Erentz suits were close behind us in
Potan's cubby. I hated to leave them. If anything happened, and we had to make
a sudden dash, there would be no time to garb ourselves in the suits. To
adjust the helmets would be bad enough.
I whispered swifdy, "We must get into
our suits—find some pretext." I drew her back through the cubby doorway
where we would be more secluded.
"Anita,
listen. I've been a fool not to plan our escape more carefully. We're in too
great a danger here]"
Suddenly
it seemed to me that we were in desperate plight! Was it premonition?
"Anita, listen: if anything happens and
we have to make a dash—"
"Up
through that dome lock, Gregg? It's a manual control; you can see the
levers."
"Yes.
It's a manual. But once up there how would we get down?"
She
was far calmer than I. "There may be an outside ladder, Gregg."
"I don't think so. I
haven't seen it."
"Then
we can get out the way they brought us in. The hull port—it's a manual,
too."
"Yes,
I think I can find our way down through the hull corridors."
"There are guards
outside on the rocks."
We
had seen them through the dome windows. But there were not many, only two or
three. I was armed and a surprise rush would do the trick.
We donned our Erentz suits.
"What
will we do with the helmets?" demanded Anita. "Leave them here?"
"No,
take them with us. I'm not going to get separated from them I"
"We'll
look strange going up to that signal room equipped like
this."
"I can't help it,
Anita. We'll explain it, somehow."
She
stood before me, a queer-looking little figure in the now deflated, bagging
suit with her slim neck and head protruding above it.
"Carry your helmet, Anita. I'll take
mine."
We
could adjust the helmets and start the motors all within a few seconds.
"I'm ready,
Gregg."
"Come on, then. Let me go first."
I had the bullet projector in an outer pouch
of the suit where I could instantly reach it. This was more rational; we had a
fighting chance now. The fear which had swept me began to recede.
"Well climb the tower to the signal
room," I whispered. "Do it boldly."
We
stepped from the cubby. Potan was not in sight; perhaps he was on the further deck beyond the central cabin structure.
On
the deck, we were immediately accosted. This was different—our appearance in
the Erentz suits!
"Where
are you going?" This fellow spoke in Martian. I answered in English,
"Up there."
He stood before us, towering over me. I saw a
group of nearby workers stop to regard us. In a moment we would be causing a
commotion, and it was the last thing I desired.
I
said in Martian, "Commander Potan told me, what I wish I can do. From the
dome we look around to see where is the Grantline
camp from here. I am pilot of this ship to go there."
The
man who had called himself Brotow passed near us. I appealed to him.
"We
put on our suits. After our experience, we feel safer that way. If I'm to pilot
the ship . . ."
He
hesitated, his glance sweeping the deck as though to ask Potan. Someone said in
Martian:
"The Commander is down
in the stem storeroom."
It
decided Brotow. He waved away the Martian who had stopped me.
"Let them pass."
Anita
and I gave him our most friendly smiles. "Thanks."
He
bowed to Anita with a sweeping gesture. "I will show you over the control
room presently.
His gaze went to the peak
of the bow.
The little hooded cubby there was the control
room, then. Satisfaction swept me. Then above us in the tower, must surely be
the signal room. Would Brotow follow us up? I hoped not. I wanted to be alone
with the duty man up there, giving me a chance to get at the projector controls
if Miko's signal should come.
I drew Anita past Brotow, who had stood
aside. "Thanks," I repeated. "We won't be long." We mounted
the little ladder.
XXXI
"Hubby,
Anita!"
I
feared that Potan might come up from the hull at any moment and stop us. The duty man over us gazed down, his huge head and shoulders
blocking the small signal room window. Brotow called up in Martian,
telling him to let us come. He scowled, but when we reached the trap in the
room floor grid, we found him standing aside to admit us.
I
flung a swift glance around. It was a metallic cubby, not much over fifteen
feet square, with an eight foot arched ceiling. There were instrument panels.
The range finder for the giant projector was here; its telescope with the trajectory
apparatus and the firing switch were unmistakable. And the signaling apparatus
was here! Not a Martian set, but a fully powerful Botz ultra-violet sender with
its attendant receiving mirrors. The Planetara had
used the Botz system, so I was thoroughly familiar with it.
I
saw too, what seemed to be weapons: a row of small fragile glass globes,
hanging on clips along the wall—bombs, each the size of a man's fist. And a
broad belt with bombs in its padded compartments.
My
heart was pounding as my first quick glance took in these details. I saw also
that the room had four small oval window openings. They were breast high above
the floor; from the deck below I knew that the angle of vision was such that
the men down there could not see into this room except to glimpse its upper
portion near the ceiling. And the helio set was banked on a low table near the
floor.
In a corner of the room a small ladder led through a ceiling
trap to the cubby roof. This upper trap was open. Four feet above the room's
roof was the arch of the dome, with the entrance to the exit-lock directly
above us. The weapons and the belt of bombs were near the ascending ladder, evidently
placed here as equipment for use from the top of the dome.
I
turned to the solitary duty man. I must gain his confidence at once. Anita had
laid her helmet aside. She spoke first.
"We
were with Set Miko," she said smilingly, "in the wreck of the Planetara. You heard of it? We know where the treasure
is."
This
duty man was a full seven feet tall, and the most heavy-set Martian I had ever
seen. A tremendous, beetie-browed, scowling fellow. He
stood with hands on his hips, his leather-garbed legs spread wide; and as I
confronted him, I felt like a child.
He
was silent, glaring down at me as I drew his attention from Anita.
"You
speak English?" I asked. "We are not skilled with Martian."
I
wondered if at the next time of sleep this fellow would be on duty here. I
hoped not: it would not be easy to trick him and find an opportunity to flash a
signal. But that task was some hours away as yet; I would worry about it when
the time came. Just now I was concerned with Miko and his little band, who at any moment might arrive in sight. If we could
persuade this duty man to turn the projector on theml
He answered me in ready
English:
"You
are the man Gregg Haljan? And this is the sister of George Prince—what do you
want up here?"
"I
am a navigator. Brotow wants me to pilot the ship when we advance to attack
Grantline."
"This is not the
control room."
"No, I know it
isn't."
I
put my helmet carefully on the floor beside Anita's. I straightened to find the
brigand gazing at her. He did not speak: he was still scowling. But in the dim
blue glow of the cubby, I caught the look in his eyes.
I
said hastily, "Grantline knows your ship has landed here on Archimedes.
His camp is off there on the Mare Imbrium. He sent up a signal—you saw it,
didn't you? —just before Miss Prince and I came aboard. He was trying to
pretend he was your Earth party, Miko and Coniston."
"Why?"
The fellow turned his scowl on me, but Anita
brought his gaze back to her. She put in quickly:
"Grantline,
as brother always said, has no great cunning. I believe now he plans to creep
up on us unawares, by pretending that he is Miko."
"If
he does that," I said, "we will turn this electronic projector on
him and his party and annihilate them. You have its firing mechanism
here."
"Who told you so?" he shot at me.
I
gestured. "I see it here. It's obvious: I'm skilled at trajectory firing.
If Grantline appears down there now, I'll help you."
"Is it connected?" Anita demanded
boldly.
"Yes,"
he said. "You have on your Erentz suits: are you going to the dome roof?
Then go."
But
that was what we did not want to do. Anita's glance seemed to tell me to let
her handle this. I turned toward one of the cubby windows.
She
said sweetly, "Are you in charge of this room? Show me how the projector
is operated. I know it will be invincible against the Grantline camp."
I
had my back to them for a moment. Through the breast-high oval I could see down
across the deck-space and out through the side dome windows. And my heart
suddenly leaped into my throat. It seemed that down there in the Earthlit
shadows, where the spreading base of the giant crater joined the plains, a
fight was bobbing. I gazed, stricken. Miko's lights?
Was he advancing, preparing to signal? I tried to gauge the distance; it was
not over two miles from here.
Or
was it not a light at all? With the naked eye, I could not be sure. Perhaps
there was a telescope finder here in the cubby. . . .
I
was subconsciously aware of the voices of Anita and the duty man behind me.
Then abruptly I heard Anita's low cry. I whirled around.
The
giant Martian had gathered her into his huge arms, his heavy jowled gray face,
with a leering grin, close to hersl
He saw me coming. He held her with one arm! his other flung at me, caught me, knocked me backward. He
rasped:
"Get out of here! Go
up to the dome—"
Anita
was silently struggling with her litde hands at his thick throat. His blow
flung me against a settle. But I held my feet. I was partly behind him. I
leaped again, and as he tried to disengage himself from Anita to front me, her
clutching fingers impeded him.
My
projector was in my hand. But in that second as I leaped, I had the sense to
realize I should not fire it because its noise would alarm the ship. I grasped
its barrel, reached upward and struck with its heavy metal butt. The blow
caught the Martian on the skull, and simultaneously my body struck him.
We
went down together, falling partly upon Anita. But the giant had not cried out,
and as I gripped him now, I felt his body go limp. I lay panting. Anita
squirmed silently from under us. Blood from the giant's head was welling out,
hot and sticky against my face as I lay sprawled on him.
I
cast him off. He was dead, his fragile Martian skull split open by my blow.
There
had been no alarm. The slight noise we made had not been heard down on the busy
deck. Anita and I crouched by the floor. From the deck all this part of the
room could not be seen.
"Dead."
"Oh Gregg-"
It
forced our hand. I could not wait now for Miko to come. But i could flash the Earth signal now, and then we
would have to make our run to escape.
Then
I remembered that light down by the base! I kept Anita out of sight down on the
floor and went cautiously to a window. The deck was in turmoil with brigands
moving a-bout excitedly. Not because of what had happened in our tower signal
room: they were unaware of that.
Miko's
signals were showing! I could see them now plainly, down at the crater base. A
group of hand lights and small waving helio beam.
And
they were being answered from the ship! Potan was on the deck—a babble of
voices, above which his rose with roars of command. At one of the dome windows
a brigand with a hand searchbeam was sending
its answering light. And I saw that Potan was working over a deck telescope
finder.
It had all come so suddenly that I was
stunned. But I did not wait to read the signals. I swung back at Anita, who
stared helplessly at me.
"It's
Miko! And they are answering him! Get your helmet: 111 try firing the
projector."
Or
would I instead try and send a brief flash signal to Earth? There would be no
time to do both: we must escape out of here. The route up through the dome was
the only feasible one now.
This
range mechanism of the projector was reasonably familiar, and I felt that I
could operate it. The range-finder and the switch were on a ledge at one of the
windows. I rushed to it. As I swung the telescope, training it down on Miko's
lights, I could see the huge projector on the deck swinging similarly. Its
movement surprised the men who were attending it. One of them called up to me,
but I ignored him.
Then Potan looked up and saw me. He shouted
in Martian at the duty man, whom he doubtless thought was behind me: "Be
ready! We may fire on them. Ill give you the
word."
The
signals were proceeding. It had only been a moment. I caught something like, "Haljan is imposter."
I
was aiming the projector. I was aware of Anita at my elbow. I pushed her back.
"Put on your
helmet!"
I had the range. I flung
the firing switch.
At
the deck window the giant projector spat its deadly electronic stream. The men
down there leaped away from it in surprise. I heard Potan's voice, his shout of
protest and anger.
But
down in the Earth glow at the crater base, Miko's lights had not vanished! I had
missed! An error in the range? Abruptly I knew it was
not that. Miko's lights were still there. His signals still
coining. And I noticed now a faint distortion about them, the glow of
his little group of hand lights faintly distorted and vaguely shot with a greenish
cast. Benson curve lights!
My
thoughts whirled in the few seconds while I stood there at the tower window.
Miko had feared he might be summarily fired on. He had gone back to his camp,
equipped all his lights with the Benson curve. He was somewhere at the crater
base now. But not where I thought I saw him! The Benson curve light changed the
path of the light rays traveling from him to me,
I could not even approximate his true position!
Anita was plucking at me.
"Gregg, come."
"I can't hit him,"
I gasped.
Should
I try the flash signal to Earth? Did we dare linger here? I stood another few
seconds at the window. I saw Potan down in the confusion of the deck, training
a telescope. He had shouted up violently at his duty man here not to fire again.
And
now he let out a roar. "I can see them! It's Miko! By the Almighty—his
giant stature—Brotow, look! That's not an Earth man!"
He flung aside his telescope finder.
"Disconnect that projector! Its Miko down there!
This Haljan is a trickster!
Where
is he? Braile—Braile, you accursed fool! Are Haljan and the girl up there with
you?"
But the duty man lay in his
blood at our feet.
I
had dropped back from the window. Anita and I crouched for an instant in
confusion, fumbling with our helmets.
The
ship rang with the alarm. And amid the turmoil we could hear the shouts of the
infuriated brigands swarming up the tower ladder after us!
XXXII
I was
only inactive a
moment. I had thought Anita would have on her helmet. But she was reluctant, or
confused.
"Anita,
we've got to get out of here! Up through the overhead locks
to the dome."
"Yes."
She fumbled with her helmet. The climbing men on the ladder were audible. They
were already nearing the top. The trap door was closed; Anita and I were
crouching on it. There was a thick metal bar set in a depressed groove for the
grid. I slid it in place; it would seal the trap for a short time.
A degree of confidence came to me. We had a
few moments before there could be any hand-to-hand conflict. The giant
electronic projector would eventually be used against Grantline; it was the
brigands' most powerful weapon. Its controls were here, by Heaven, I would
smash them? That at least I could do!
I
jumped for the window. Miko's signals had stopped, but I caught a glimpse of
his distant moving curve lights.
A
flash came up at me, as in the window I became visible to the brigands on the
ship's deck. It was a small hand projector, hastily fired, for it went wide of
the window. It was followed by a rain of small beams, but I was warned and
dropped my head beneath the sill. The rays flashed dangerously upward through
the oval opening, hissed against our vaulted roof. The air snapped and tingled
with a shower of blue-red sparks, and the acrid odor of the released gases
settled down upon us.
The
trajectory controls of the projector were beside me. I seized them, ripped and
tore at them. There was a roar down on the deck. The projector had exploded. A
man's agonizing scream split the confusion of sounds.
It
silenced the brigands on the deck. Under our floor grid, those on the ladder
had been pounding at the trap door. They stopped, evidently to see what had
happened. The bombardment of our windows stopped momentarily.
I
cautiously peered out the window again. In the wreck of the projector, three
men were lying. One of them was screaming horribly. The dome side was damaged.
Potan and other men were frantically investigating to see if the ship's air was
hissing out.
A
triumph swept over me. They had not found me so meek and inoffensive as they
might have thought!
Anita clutched me. She
still had not donned her helmet.
"Put on your
helmet!"
"But Gregg-"
"Put it on!"
"I ... I don't want to put it on until you put
yours on."
"I've
smashed the projector! We've stopped them coming up for a while."
But
they were still on the ladder under our floor. They heard our voices: they
began thumping again. Then pounding. They seemed now
to have heavy implements. They rammed against the trap.
The floor seemed holding. The square of metal
grid trembled, yielded a little. But it was good for a few minutes longer.
I
called down, "The first one who comes through will be shot!" My words
mingled with their oaths. There was a moment's pause, then
the ramming went on. The dying man on the deck was still screaming.
I whispered, "I'll try
an Earth signal."
She nodded. Pale, tense, but calm. "Yes,
Gregg. And I was thinking—"
"It won't take a
minute. Have your helmet ready."
"I was thinking—"
She hurried across the room.
I
swung on the Botz signaling apparatus. It was connected. Within a moment I had
it humming. The fluorescent tubes lighted with their lurid glare; they painted
purple the body of the giant duty man who lay sprawled at my feet. I drew on
all the ship's power. The tube lights in the room quivered and went dim.
I
would have to hurry. Potan could shut this off from the main hull control room.
I could see, through the room's upper trap, the primary sending mirror mounted
in the peak of the dome. It was quivering, radiant with its light energy. I sent the flash.
The
flattened past full Earth was up there. I knew that the Western Hemisphere
faced the Moon at this hour. I flashed in English, with the open Universal
Earth code:
Help. Grantline.
And
again: Help. Archimedes region near Apennines. Attacked
by brigands.
Send help at once. Grantline.
If
only it would be receivedl I flung off the current. Anita stood watching me
intently. "Gregg, look!"
I
saw that she had taken some of the glass globe-bombs which lay by the foot of
the ascending ladder. "Gregg, I threw some of them."
At the window we gazed down. The globes she
flung had shattered on the deck. They were darkness bombs.
Through
the blackness of the deck, the shouts of the brigands came up. They were
stumbling about. But the ramming of our trap went on, and I saw that it was
beginning to yield.
"We've got to go, Anita!"
From
out of the darkness which hung like a shroud over the deck an occasional flash
came up, unaimed, wide of our windows. But the darkness was dissipating. I
could see now the dim glow of the deck lights, blurred as through a heavy fog.
I dropped another of the bombs.
"Put on your helmet."
"Yes—yes, I will. You put yours
on."
We
had them adjusted in a moment. Our Erentz motors were pumping.
I gripped her. "Put out your helmet
light."
She extinguished it. I handed her my
projector.
"Hold it a moment. I'm going to take
that belt of bombs."
The
trap door was all but broken under the ramming blows of the men. I leaped over
the body of the dead duty man, seized the belt of bombs and strapped it around
my waist.
"Give me the projector."
She
handed itto me. The trap door burst upwardl A man's
head and shoulders appeared. I fired a bullet into him— the leaden pellet
singing down through the yellow powder flash that spat from the projector's
muzzle.
The
brigand screamed, and dropped back out of sight. There was confusion at the
ladder top. I flung a bomb at the broken trap. A tiny heat ray came wavering up
through the opening, but went wide of us.
The instrument room was in darkness. I clung
to Anita.
"Hold on to my hand. You go first—here
is the ladder!"
We
found it in the blackness, mounted it and went through the cubby's roof-trap.
I
took another look and dropped another bomb beside ys. The four foot space up
here between the cubby roof and the overhead dome,
went black. We were momentarily concealed.
Anita located the manual levers of the
lock-entrance. "Here, Gregg."
I shoved at them. Fear leaped in me that they
would not operate. But they swung. The tiny port opened wide to receive us. We
clambered into the small air-chamber; the door slid closed, just as a flash
from below struck at it. The brigands had seen our cloud of darkness and were
firing up through it.
In a moment we were out on the dome top. A sleek, rounded spread of glassite, with broad aluminite girders.
There were cross ribs which gave us a footing, and occasionally
projections—streamline fin-tips, the casings of the upper rudder shafts, and
the upstanding stubby funnels into which helicopters were folded.
We
moved along the central footpath and crouched by a six-foot casing. The stars
and the glowing Earth were over us. The curving dome top—a hundred feet or so
in length, and bulging thirty feet wide beneath us—glistened in the Earthlight.
It was a sheer drop and down these curving sides past the ship's hull, a
hundred feet to the rocks on which the vessel rested. The towering wall of
Archimedes was beside us; and beyond the brink of the ledge the thousands of
feet down to the plains.
I
saw the lights of Miko's band down there. He had stopped signaling. His little
lights were spread out, bobbing as he and his men advanced up the crater's
foothills, coming to join the ship.
I
had an instant's glimpse. Anita and I could not stay here. The brigands would
follow us up in a moment. I saw no exterior ladder. We would have to take our
chances and jump.
There
were brigands down there on the rocks. I saw three or four helmeted figures,
and they saw us! A bullet whizzed by us, and then came the flash of a hand ray.
I touched Anita. "Can you make the leap?
Anita dear . . ."
Again it seemed that this must be farewell.
"Gregg, dear one,
we've got to do itl"
Those waiting figures would pounce on us.
"Anita,
lie here a moment."
I jumped up and ran twenty feet toward the
bow; then back toward the stern, flinging down the last of my bombs. The
darkness was like a cloud down there, enveloping the outer brigands. But up
there we were above it, etched by the starlight and Earthglow.
I came back to Anita. "We'll have to
chance it now."
"Gregg . . ."
"Good-bye, dear. I'll jump first, down this side, you follow."
To
leap into that black patch, with the rocks under it . . . "Gregg-"
She
was trying to tell me to look overhead. She gestured, "Gregg, seel"
I saw it, out over the plains, a litde speck
amid the stars. A moving speck, coming toward usl "Gregg, what is
it?"
I
gazed, held my breath. A moving speck out there. A blob now. And then I realized it was not a large object,
far away, but small, and already very close—only a few hundred feet off,
dropping toward the top of our dome. A narrow, flat, ten foot
object, like a wingless volplane. There were no lights on it, but in the Earthlight I could
see two crouching, helmeted figures riding it.
"Anital Don't you rememberl"
I
was swept with dawning comprehension. Back in the Grantline camp Snap and I had
discussed how to use the Planetara's gravity plates. We had gone to the wreck and
secured them, had rigged this little volplane flyer. . . .
The
brigands on the rocks saw it now. A flash went up at it. One of the figures
crouching on it opened a flexible fabric like a wing over its side. I saw another
flash from below, harmlessly striking the insulated shield.
I
gasped to Anita, "Light your helmetl It's from
Grantline! Let them see us!"
I
stood erect. The little flying platform went over us, fifty feet up, circling,
dropping to the dome top.
I waved
my helmet light. The exit lock from below—up which we had come—was near us. The
advancing brigands were already in it! I had forgotten to demolish the manuals.
And I saw that the darkness down on the
rocks was almost gone now, dissipating in the airless night. The brigands down
there began firing up at us.
It was a confusion of
flashing lights. I clutched at Anita.
"Come this
way—runl"
The
platform barely missed our heads. It sailed lengthwise of the dome top, and crashed silently on the central runway near the
stem tip. Anita and I ran to it.
The
two helmeted figures seized us, shoved us prone on the metal platform. It was
barely four feet wide; a low railing, handles with which to cling, and a tiny
hooded cubby in front.
IGregg!" "You, Snap I"
It was Snap and Venza. She seized Anita, held
her crouching in place. Snap flung himself face down at the
controls.
The
brigands were out on the dome now. I took a last shot as we lifted. My bullet
punctured one of them: he slid, fell scrambling off the rounded dome and
dropped out of Sight.
Light
rays and silent flashes seemed to envelope us. Venza held the side shields
higher.
We tilted, swayed crazily,
and then steadied.
The
ship's dome dropped away beneath us. The rocks of the open ledge were beneath
us. Then the abyss, with the moving, climbing specks of
Miko's lights far down.
I
saw, over the side shield, the already distant brigand ship resting on the
ledge with the massive Archimedes' wall behind it. A
confusion back there of futile flashing rays.
It
all faded into a remote glow as we sailed smoothly up into the starlight and
away, heading for the Grantline camp.
XXXIII
"Wake
up. Gregg! They're
comingl"
I forced myself to consciousness.
"Coming—"
I leaped from my bunk, followed Snap with a
rush into the corridor.
We
had returned safely to the Grantline camp. Anita and I found ourselves
exhausted from lack of sleep, our arduous climb of Archimedes and that tense
time on the brigand ship. On the flight back, Snap had explained how the
landing of the ship on Archimedes was observed through the Grant-line
telescope. They had read with amazement my signals to the brigands. Snap had rushed
to completion the first of our flying platforms. Then he had seen Miko's
signals from the crater base, seen the lights and the fight to capture Anita
and me, and had come to rescue us.
Back
at the camp we were given food, and Grantline forced me to try to sleep.
"They'll
be on us in a few hours, Gregg. Miko will have joined them by now. Hell lead them to us. You must rest, for we need everyone at
his best."
And
surprisingly, in the midst of the camp's turmoil of last minute activities, I
slept soundly until Snap called me, telling me the ship was coming.
The
corridor echoed with the tramp of Grantline's busy crew. But there was no
confusion; a grim calmness had setded on everyone.
Anita and Venza rushed up
to join us. 'It's in sight!"
There
was no need of going to the instrument room. From the windows fronting the
brink of the cliff the brigand ship was plainly visible. It came
sailing from Archimedes, a dark shape blurring the stars. All its lights were
extinguished save a single white search beam in the bow peak, slanting diagonally
down.
The beam presently caught our group of
buildings; its glare shone in the windows as it clung for a moment. I could envisage
the triumphant curiosity of Potan and his men up there, gazing along the beam.
We
had dimmed the lights to conserve our power, and to enable the Erentz motors to
run at full capacity. Our buildings would have1 to withstand the
brigands' rays which soon would be upon us.
Outside
on our dim, Earthlit cliff, the tiny lights showed where our few guards were
lurking. As I stood at the window watching the incoming ship, Grantline's voice
sounded:
"Call in those men!
Ring the call-lights, Franck!"
The
siren buzzed over the camp's interior; the warning call-lights on the roof
brought in the outer guards. They came running to the admission ports, which
had been repaired after Miko disabled them.
The guards came in. We dimmed our lights
further. The treasure sheds were black against the cliff behind us. No need for
guards there—we reasoned the brigands would not attempt to move it until our
buildings were captured. But, if they should try it, we were prepared to defend it.
In
the dim light we crouched. A silence was upon us save for the clanging in the
workshop down the corridor. Most of us wore our Erentz suits, with helmets ready, though I am sure there was not a man of us but who
prayed he might not have to go out. At many of the windows—our weakest points
to withstand the rays—insulated fabric sheets were hung like curtains.
The
brigand ship slowly advanced. It was soon over the opposite rim of our little
crater. Its searchbeam swung about the rim and down the valley.
My thoughts ran like a turgid stream as I
stood tensely watching.
Four hours ago I had sent that flash signal
to Earth. If it was received, a patrol ship could come to our rescue and arrive
here in another eight hours—or perhaps even less.
Ah,
that "if!" If the signal was received! If the patrol ship were immediately available. If it started at once. . . .
Eight
hours at the very least. I tried to assure myself that we could hold out that
long.
The
brigand ship crossed the opposite crater rim. It dropped lower. It seemed
poised over the crater valley, almost at our own level and less than two miles
from us. Its searchbeam vanished. For a moment it hung, a sleek, cylindrical
silver shape, gleaming in the Earthlight.
Snap looked at me and
murmured, "It's descending."
It
slowly settled, cautiously picked its landing place amid the crags and pits of
the tumbled, scarred valley floor. It came to rest, a vague, menacing silver
shape lurking in the lower shadows, close at the foot of the inner opposite
crater wall.
A
few moments of tense waiting passed. Soon tiny lights were moving down there,
some out on the rocks near the ship, others up under its deck dome.
A
stab of searchlight shot across the valley, swung along our ledge and clung
with its glaring ten foot circle to the front of our main building. Then a ray
flashed.
The assault had begun!
XXXIV
It
seemed, with that first
shot from the enemy, that a great relief came to us—an apprehension fallen
away. We had anticipated this moment for so long, dreaded it. I think all our
men felt it. A shout went up: "Harmless!"
It
was not that. But our building withstood it better than I had feared. It was a
flash from a large electronic projector mounted on the deck of the brigand
ship. It stabbed up from the shadows across the valley at the foot of the
opposite crater wall, a beam .of vaguely fluorescent fight. Simultaneously the
searchlight vanished.
The
stream of electrons caught the front face of our main building in a six foot
circle. It held a few seconds, vanished, then stabbed again, and still again.
Three bolts. A total, I suppose, of nine or ten seconds.
I
was standing with Grantline at a front window. We had rigged an oblong of
insulated fabric like a curtain; we stood peering, holding the curtain
cautiously aside. The ray struck some twenty feet away from us.
"Harmless!" The
men shouted it with derision.
But Grantline swung on
them: "Don't get that ideal"
An
interior signal panel was beside Grantline. He called the duty men in the
instrument room.
"It's over. What are
your readings?"
The
bombarding electrons had passed through the outer shell of the building's
double wall, and been absorbed in the rarefied, magnetized aircurrent of the
Erentz circulation. Like poison in a man's veins, reaching his heart, the free
alien electrons had disturbed the motors. They accelerated, then retarded.
Puked unevenly, and drew added power from the reserve tanks. But they had
normalized at once when the shot was past.
The duty man's voice sounded from the grid in answer to Grantline's question:
"Five
degrees colder in your building. Can't you feel it?"
The
disturbed, weakened Erentz system had allowed the outer cold to radiate through
a trifle. The walls had had a trifle extra explosive pressure from the air. A
strain—but that was all.
"It's
probably their most powerful single weapon, Gregg," said Grantline.
I nodded, "Yes, I
think so."
I
had smashed the real giant, with its ten mile range. The ship was only two
miles from us, but it seemed as though this projector were exerted to its
distance limit. I had noticed on the deck only one of this
type. The others, paralyzing rays and heat rays, were less deadly.
Grantline
commented: "We can withstand a lot of that bombardment. If we stay
inside—"
That ray, striking a man outside, would
penetrate his Erentz suit within a few seconds, we could not doubt. We had,
however, no intention of going out unless for dire necessity.
"Even so," said Grantline, "a
hand shield would hold it off for a certain length of time."
We had an opportunity a
moment later to test our insulated shields. The bolt came again. It darted along
the front face of the building, caught our window, and clung. The double window
shelves were our weakest points. The sheet of flashing Erentz current was
transparent; we could see through it as though it were glass. It moved faster,
but was thinner at the windows than the walls. We feared the bombarding
electrons might cross it, penetrate the inner shell and, like a hghtning bolt, enter the room.
We
dropped the curtain comer. The radiance of the bolt was dimly visible. A few
seconds, then it vanished again, and behind the shield we had not felt a
tingle.
"Harmless!"
But
our power had been drained nearly an aeron, to neutralize the shock to the
Erentz current. Grantline said:
"If
they kept that up, it would be a question of whose power supply would last
longer. And it would not be ours. . . . You saw our lights fade when the bolt
was striking?"
But the brigands did not know we were short
of power. And to fire the projector with a continuous bolt would, in thirty
minutes, perhaps, have exhausted their own power reserve.
"I won't answer them," Grantline
declared. "Our game is to sit defensive. Conserve everything. Let them
make the leading moves."
We
waited half an hour; but no other shot came. The valley floor was patched with
Earthlight and shadow. We could see the vague outline of the brigand ship
backed up at the foot of the opposite crater wall. The form of its dome over
the illuminated deck was visible, and the line of its tiny hull ovals.
On
the rocks near the ship, helmet fights of prowling brigands occasionally
showed.
Whatever
activity was going on down there we could not see with the naked eye. Grantline
did not use our telescope at first. To connect it, even for local range, drew
on our precious ammunition of power. Some of the men urged that we search the
sky with the telescope. Was our rescue ship from Earth coming? But Grantline
refused. We were in no trouble yet. And every delay was to our advantage.
"Commander, where
shall I put these helmets?"
A man came wheeling a pile
of helmets on a small truck.
"At
the manual port—in the other building."
Our
weapons and outside equipment were massed at the main exit locks of the large
building. But we might want to go out through smaller locks too. Grantline sent
helmets there; suits were not needed, as most of us were garbed in them now.
Snap was still in the workshop. I went there
during this first half-hour of the attack. Ten of our men were busy there with
the little flying platforms and the fabric shields.
"How goes it,
Snap?"
"Almost
all ready."
He
had six of the platforms, including the one we had already used, and more than
a dozen hand shields. At a squeeze, all of us could ride on these six little
vehicles. We might have
to ride them! We planned
that, in event of disaster to the buildings, we could at least escape in this
fashion. Food supplies and water were now being placed at the ports.
Depressing
preparations! Our buildings uninhabitable, a rush out and
away, abandoning the treasure. . . . Grantline had never mentioned such a contingency, but I noticed,
nevertheless, that preparations were being made.
Snap's voice was raised over the clang of the
workmen bolting the gravity plates of the last platform:
"Only
that one projector, Gregg?"
"They
gave us four blasts; but just the one projector. Then-strongest."
He
grinned. He wore no Erentz suit as yet. He stood in torn grimy work trousers
and a bedraggled shirt, with the inevitable red eyeshade holding back his
unruly hair. Around his waist was the weighted belt, and there were weights on
his shoes for gravity stability.
"Didn't hurt us much." "No."
"When
I get the tube panels in this thing 111 be finished.
It'll take another half-hour. Then I'll join you. Where are you
stationed?"
I
shrugged. "I was at a front window with Johnny. Nothing
to do as yet."
Snap
went back to his work. "Well, the longer they delay,
the better for us. If only your signal got through, Gregg, well have a rescue
ship here in a few hours morel"
Ah,
that ifl
I
turned away. "Can't help you, Snap?" "No. . . . Take those
shields," he added to one of the men.
"Take
them where?"
"To Grantline. He'll tell you where to put them." The shields were wheeled away
on a little cart. I followed it. Grantline sent it to the back exit. "No
other move from them yet, Johnny?" "No. All quiet." "Snap's
almost finished."
The
brigands presently made another play. A giant heat-ray beam came across the
valley. It clung to our front wall for nearly a minute.
Grantline
got the report from the instrument room. He laughed.
"That
helped rather than hurt us. Heated the outer wall.
Franck took advantage of it and eased up the motors."
We
wondered if Miko knew that. Doubtless he did, for the heat-ray was not used
again.
Then
came a zed-ray. I stood at the window, watching it,
faint sheen of beam in the dimness; it crept with sinister deliberation along
our front wall, clung momentarily to our shielded windows, and pried with its
revealing glow into Snap's workshop.
"Looking
us over," Grantline commented. "I hope they like what they see."
I knew that he did not feel the bravado that
was in his tone. We had nothing but small hand weapons: heat-rays, electronic
projectors, and bullet projectors. All for very short range fighting. If Miko
had not known that before, he could at least make a good guess at it after the
careful zed-ray inspection. With his ship down there two miles away, we were
powerless to reach him. It seemed that Miko was now testing all his mechanisms.
A light flare went up from the dome peak of the ship. It rose in a slow arc
over the valley, and burst. For a few seconds the two mile circle of crags was
brilliantly illumined. I stared, but I had to shield my eyes against the
dazzling actinic glare, and I could see nothing. Was Miko making a zed-ray
photograph of our interiors? We had no way of knowing.
He
was testing his short range projectors now. With my eyes again accustomed to
the normal Earthlight in the valley, I could see the stabs of electronic beams,
the Martian paralyzing rays and heat beams. They darted out like flashing
swords from the rocks near the ship.
Then the whole ship and the crater wall
behind it seemed to shift sidewise as a Benson curve light spread its glow
about the ship, with a projector curve beam coming up and touching the window
through which I was peering.
"Haljan,
come look at these damn girls! Commander—shall I stop them? They'll kill
themselves, or kill us— or smash something!"
We
followed the man into the building's broad central corridor. Anita and Venza
were riding a midget platform! Anita, in her boyish black garb; Venza, with a
flowing white Venus-robe. They lay on the tiny six foot long oblong of metal,
one manipulating its side shields, the other at the controls. As we arrived,
the platform came sliding down the narrow confines of the corridor, lurching,
barely missing a door projection. Up to the low vaulted ceiling, then down to
the floor.
It
sailed over our heads, rising over us as we ducked. Anita waved her hand.
Grantline
gasped, "By the infernall" I shouted, "Anita, stop I"
But
they only waved at us, skimming down the length of the corridor, seeming to
avoid a smash a dozen times by the smallest margin of chance, stopping
miraculously at the further end, hanging poised in mid-air, wheeling, coming
back, undulating up and down.
Grantline
clung to me. "By the gods of the airways!"
In
spite of my astonished horror, I could not but share Grantline's admiration.
Three or four other men were watching. The girls were amazingly skillful, no
doubt of that. There was not a man among us who could have handled that gravity
platform indoors, not one who would have had the brash temerity to try it.
The
platform landed with the grace of a humming bird at our feet, the girls
dexterously balancing so that it came to rest* swiftly, without the least bump.
I
confronted them. "Anita, what are you doing?"
She
stood up, flushed and smiling. "Practicing."
"What for?"
Venza's roguish eyes twinkled at me. Her
hands went to her slim hips with a gesture of defiance.
She
asked, "Are you speaking for yourself or the Commander?"
I
ignored her. "What for?"
"Because we're good at it," Anita
retorted. "Better than any of you men. If you
should need us, we're ready. .
. ." "We
won't!" I said shortiy. "But if you should . . ."
Venza
put in, "If Snap and I hadn't come for you, you wouldn't be here, Gregg
Haljan. I didn't notice you were so horrified to see me holding that shield up
over youl"
It
silenced me.
She
added, "Commander, let us alone. We won't smash anything."
Grantline
laughed. "I hope you won't!"
A
warning call took us back to the front window. The
brigands'
searchlight was again being used. It swept slowly along the length of the
cliff. Its circle went down the cliff steps to the valley floor, and came
sweeping up again. Then it went up to the observatory platform at the summit
above us, then over to the ore sheds.
We
had no men outside, if that was what the brigands wanted to determine. The
searchbeam presently vanished. It was replaced immediately by a zed-ray, which
darted at once to our treasure sheds and clung.
That
stung Grantline into his first action. We flung our own zed-ray down across the
valley. It reached the brigand ship and the blurred interior of the cabins.
"Try the searchbeam,
Franck."
The
zed-ray went off. We gazed down our searchlight which clung to the dome of the
distant enemy vessel. We could see movement there.
"The
telescope," Grantline ordered. +
The
dynamos hummed. The telescope finder glowed and clarified. On the deck of the
ship we saw the brigands working with the assembling of tiny ore carts. A deck
landing port was open. The ore carts were being carried out through a port lock
and down a landing incline. And on the rock outside, we saw several of the
carts, tiny rail sections and the section of an ore chute.
Miko
was unloading his mining apparatus 1 He
was making ready to come up for the treasurel
The
discovery, startling as it was, nevertheless, was far overshadowed by an
imperative danger alarm from our main building. Brigands were outside on our
ledgel Miko's search-beam, sweeping the ledge a moment before, had carefully
avoided revealing them. It had been done just for that purpose, no doubt—to
make us feel sure the ledge was unoccupied and thus to guard against our own
light making the search.
But
there was a brigand group close outside our walls! By the merest chance the
radiating glow from our searchray had shown the hehneted figures scurrying for
shelter.
Grantline leaped to his feet.
We
rushed from the rear port exit which was nearest us. The giant bloated figures
had been seen running along the outside of the connecting corridor, in this
direction. But before we ever got there, a new alarm came. A brigand was
crouching at a front corner of the main building!
His
hydrogen heat torch had already opened a rift in the wall!
XXXV
"In
with you!"
ordered Grantline. "Get your helmets on! How many? Six.
Enough—get back there, Williams—you were last. The lock won't hold any
more."
I
was one of the six who jammed into the manual exit lock. We went through it; in
a moment we were outside. It was less than three minutes since the prowling
brigand had been seen.
Grantline touched me just as we emerged.
"Don't wait for orders? Get him."
"That fellow with the torch—" "Yes. I'm with you."
We
went out with a rush. We had already discarded our shoe and belt weights. I
leaped, regardless of my companions.
The scurrying Martians had disappeared.
Through my visor bull's-eye I could see only the Earthlit rocky surface of the
ledge. Beside me streched the dark wall of our building.
I
bounded toward the front. The brigand with the torch had been at the front
corner. I could not see him from here; he had been crouching just around the
angle.
I
had a tiny bullet projector, the best weapon for short range outdoors. I was
aware of Grantline close behind me.
It
took only a few of my giant leaps. I handed at the corner, recovered my balance
and whirled around to the front.
The
Martian was here, a giant misshapen lump as he crouched. His torch was a little
stab of blue in the deep shadow enveloping him. Intent upon his work, he did
not see me. Perhaps he thought his fellow men had broken our exits by now.
I
landed like a leopard upon his back and fired, my weapon muzzle ramming him.
His torch fell hissing with a silent rain of blue fire upon the rocks.
As
my grip upon him made audiphone contact, his agonized scream rattled the
diaphragms of my ear grids with horrible, deafening intensity.
He lay writhing under me; then was still. His
scream choked into silence. His suit deflated within my encircling grip. He was
dead: my leaden, steel-tipped pellet had punctured the double surface of his
Erentz fabric; penetrated his chest.
Grantline had leaped,
landing beside me. "Dead?"
"Yes."
I
climbed from the inert body. The torch had hissed itself out. Grantline swung
to our building corner, and I leaned down with him to
examine it. The torch had fused and scarred the wall, burned almost through. A
pressure rift had opened. We could see it, a curving gash in the metal wall-plate
like a crack in a glass window pane.
I went cold. This was serious damage. The
rarefied Erentz air would seep out. It was leaking now: we could see the
magnetic radiance of it all up the length of the ten foot crack. The leak would
change the pressure of the Erentz system, constantly
lower it, demanding steady renewal. The Erentz motors would overheat; some
might go bad from the strain.
Grantline
stood gripping me. "Damn bad." "Yes. Can't we repair it,
Johnny?"
"No.
Would have to take that whole plaster section out, shut off the Erentz plant
and exhaust the interior air of all this bulkhead. Day's job—maybe more."
And the crack would get worse, I knew. It would gradually spread and widen. The Erentz circulation would
fail. All our power would be drained struggling to maintain it. This brigand
who had unwittingly committed suicide by his daring act had accomplished more
than he had perhaps realized. I could envisage our weapons, useless from the
lack of power. The air in our buildings turned fetid and frigid; ourselves forced to the helmets. A rush out to abandon the
camp and escape. The building exploding, scattering into a litter on the ledge
like a child's broken toy. The treasure abandoned, with the brigands coming up
and loading it on their ship.
Our defeat. In a few hours now—or minutes. This crack
could slowly widen, or it could break suddenly at any time. Disaster, come now
so abruptly upon us at the very start of the brigand attack. . . .
Grantline's
voice in my audiphone broke my despairing thoughts.
"Bad. Come on, Gregg. Nothing to do here."
We
were aware that our other four men had run along the building's other side.
They emerged now—with the running brigands in front of them, rushing out
toward the stairs on the ledge. Three giant Martian figures
in flight, with our four men chasing.
A
brigand fell to the rocks by the brink of the ledge. The others reached the
descending staircase, tumbled down it with reckless leaps.
Our
men turned back. Before we could join them, the enemy ship down in the valley
sent up a cautious search-beam which located its returning men. Then the beam
swung up to the ledge, landing upon us.
We
stood confused, blinded by the brilliant glare. Grant-line stumbled against me.
"Run, GreggI They'll be firing at us."
We
dashed away. Our companions joined us, rushing back for the port. I saw it open, reinforcements coming out to help us—half a dozen figures
carrying a ten foot insulated shield. They could barely get it through the
port.
The Martian searchray vanished. Then almost
instantly the electronic ray came with its deadly stab. Missed
us at first, as we ran for the shield, carrying it back to the port, hiding
behind it.
The ray stabbed once or
twice more.
Whether
Miko's instruments showed him how badly damaged our front wall was, we never
knew. But I think that he realized. His searchbeam clung to it, and his zed-ray
pried into our interiors.
The
brigand ship was active now. We were desperate; we used our telescope freely
for observation. Miko's ore carts and mining apparatus were unloaded on the
rocks. The rail sections were being carried a mile out, nearly to the center of
the valley. A subsidiary camp was being established there, only a mile from the
base of our cliff, but still far beyond reach of our weapons. We could see the
brigand lights down there.
Then
the ore chute sections were brought over. We could see Miko's men carrying some
of the giant projectors, mounting them in the new position. Power
tanks and cables. Light flare catapults—small mechanical cannons for
throwing illuminating bombs.
The
enemy searchlight constantly raked our vicinity. Occasionally the giant electronic
projector flung out its bolt as though warning us not to dare leave our
buildings.
Half
an hour went by. Our situation was even worse than Miko could know. The Erentz
motors were running hot—our power draining, the crack widening. When it would
break, we could not tell; but the danger was like a sword over us.
An anxious thirty minutes for us, this second
interlude.
Grantline called a meeting of all our little force, with every man having his
say. Inactivity was no longer a feasible policy. We recklessly used our power
to search the sky. Our rescue ship might be up there; but we could not see it
with our now disabled instruments. No signals came. xWe
could not—or, at least, did not—receive them.
"They wouldn't signal," Grantline protested. "They'd know the Martians would be more
likely to get the signal than us. Of what use to warn MikoP"
But
he did not dare wait for a rescue ship that might or might not be coming! Miko
was playing the waiting game now—making ready for a quick loading of the ore
when we were forced to abandon our buildings.
The
brigand ship suddenly moved its position! It rose up in a low flat arc, came
forward and settled in the center of the valley where the carts and rail
sections were piled, and the outside projectors newly mounted on the rocks.
The
brigands now began laying the rails from the ship toward the base of our cliff.
The chute would bring the ore down from the ledge, and the carts would take it
to the ship. The laying of the rails was done under cover of occasional stabs from the electronic projector.
And
then we discovered that Miko had made still another move. The brigand rays,
fired from the depth of the valley, could strike our front building, but could
not reach all our ledge.
And from the ship's newer and nearer position this
disadvantage to us was intensified. Then abruptly we realized that under cover
of darkness bombs, an electronic projector and search-ray had been carried to
the top of the crater rim, diagonally across and only half a mile from us.
Their beams shot down, raking all our vicinity from this new angle.
I was on the little flying platform which
sallied out as a test to attack these isolated
projectors. Snap and I, and one other volunteer, went. He and I held the
shield; Snap handled the controls.
Our
exit port was on the lee side of the building from the hostile searchbeam. We
got out unobserved and sailed upward; but soon a light from the ship caught
us. And the projector bolts came up. . . .
Our
sortie only lasted a few minutes. To me, it was a confusion of crossing beams,
with the stars overhead, the swaying little platform under me, and the shield
tingling in my hands when the blasts struck us. Moments of blurred
terror. . . .
The
voice of the man beside me sounded in my ears: "Now, Haljan, give them
onel"
We
were up over the peak of the rim with the hostile projectors under us. I
gauged our movement, and dropped an explosive powder bomb.
It missed. It flared with a puff on the
rocks, twenty feet from where the two projectors were mounted. I saw that two
helmeted figures were down there. They tried to swing their grids upward, but
could not get them vertical to reach us. The ship was firing at us, but it was
far away. And Grant-line's searchbeam was going full power, clinging to the
ship to dazzle them.
Snap
circled them. As we came back I dropped another bomb. Its silent puff seemed
littered with flying fragments of the two projectors and the bodies of the men.
We swiftly flew back to our
base.
It
decided Grantline. For an hour past Snap and I had been urging our plan to use
the gravity platforms. To remain inactive was sure defeat now. Even if our
buildings did not explode—if we thought to huddle in them, helmeted in the
failing air—then Miko could readily ignore us and proceed with his loading of
the treasure under our helpless gaze. He could do that now with safety—if we
refused to accept the challenge—for we could not fire through the windows and
must go out to meet this threat.
To
remain defensive would end inevitably in our defeat. We all knew it now. The
waiting game was Miko's—not ours.
The
success of our attack upon the distant isolated projectors,
heartened us. Yet it was a desperate offensive upon which we decidedl
We
prepared our little expedition at the larger of the exit ports. Miko's zed-ray
was watching all our interior movements. We made a brave show of activity in
our workshop with abandoned ore carts which were stored there. We got them out,
started to recondition them.
It
seemed to fool Miko. His zed-ray clung to the workshop, watching us. And at
the distant port we gathered the platforms, shields, helmets, bombs, and a few
hand projectors.
There
were six platforms—three of us upon each. It left four people to remain
indoors.
I
need not describe the emotion with which Snap and I listened to Venza and Anita pleading to be
allowed to accompany us. They urged it upon Grantline, and we took no part. It
was too important a decision. The treasure—the life or death of all these men—hung
now upon the fate of our venture. Snap and I could not intrude our pensonal
feelings.
And
the girls won. Both were undeniably more skillful at handling the midget platforms than any of us men. Two of the six
platforms could be guided by them. That was a third or our little force! And of
what use to go out and be defeated, leaving the girls here to meet death almost
immediately afterward?
We
gathered at the port. A last minute change made Grantline order six of his men
to remain to guard the buildings. The instruments, the Erentz system, all the
appliances had to be attended.
It left four platforms, each with three
men—Grantline at the controls of one of them. And upon two of
the others, Venza rode with Snap and I with Anita.
We
crouched in the shadows outside the port. So small an army, sallying out to
bomb this enemy vessel or be killed in the attempt! Only
sixteen of us. And thirty or so brigands well armed.
I envisioned then this tiny Moon crater, the
scene of this battle we were waging. Struggling humans, desperately trying to
kill!
Anita
drew me down on the platform. "Ready, Gregg." The others were rising.
We lifted, moved slowly out and away from
the protective shadows of the building.
Grantline
led us. We held about
level. Five hundred feet beneath us the brigand ship lay,
cradled on the rocks. When it was still a mile away from us I could see all its outline fairly clearly in the dimness. Its tiny hull
windows were dark; but the blurred shape of the hull was visible, and above it
the rounded cap of dome, with a dim radiance beneath it.
We followed Grantline's platform. It was
rising, drawing the others after it like a tail. I touched Anita where she lay
beside me with her head half in the small hooded control bank.
"Going too high."
She
nodded, but followed the line nevertheless. It was Grantline's command.
I
lay crouched, holding the inner tips of the flexible side shields. The bottom
of the platform was covered with the insulated fabric. There were two side
shields. They extended upward some two feet, flexible so that I could hold them
out to see over them, or draw them up and in to cover us.
They afforded a measure of protection against
the hostile rays, though just how much we were not sure. With the platform
level, a bolt from beneath could not harm us unless it continued for a
considerable time. But the platform, except upon direct flight, was seldom
level, for it was a frail, unstable little vehiclel To
handle it was more than a question of the controls. We balanced, and helped to
guide it with the movement of our bodies—shifting our weight sidewise, or back,
or forward to make it dip as the controls altered the gravity pull in its tiny
plate sections.
Like
a bird, wheeling, soaring, swooping. To me, it was a
precarious business.
But
now we were in straight flight diagonally upward. The outline of the brigand
ship came directly under us. I crouched tense, breathless; every moment it
seemed that the brigands must discover us and loose their bolts.
They
may have seen us for some moments before they fired. I peered over the side
shield down at our mark, then up ahead to get Grantline's firing signal. It
seemed long delayed. An added glow down there must have warned Grant-line that
a shot was coming from there. The tiny red light flared bright on his platform.
I
turned on our Benson curve light radiance. We had been dark, but a soft glow
now enveloped us. Its sheen went down to the ship to reveal us. But its curving
path showed us falsely placed. I saw the little line of platforms ahead of us.
They seemed to move suddenly sidewise.
It was everyone for himself
now; none of us could tell where the other platforms actually were placed or
headed. Anita swooped us sharply down to avoid a
possible collision.
"Greggr
"Yes. I'm
aiming."
I was making ready to drop the small
explosive globe bomb. Our search fight ray at the camp, answering Grant-line's
signal, shot down and bathed the enemy ship in a white glare, revealing it for
our aim. Simultaneously the brigand bolts came up at us.
I
held my bomb out over the shield, calculating the angle to throw it down. The
brigand rays flashed around me. They were horribly close; Miko had understood
our sudden visible shift and aimed, not where we appeared to be, but approximately
where we had been before.
I dropped my bomb hastily at the glowing
white ship. The touch of a hostile ray would have exploded it in my hand. I saw
others dropping also from our nearby platforms. The explosions from them merged
in a confusion of the white glare—and a cloud of black mist as the brigands out
on the rocks used their darkness bombs.
We
swept past in a blur of leaping hostile beams. Silent battle of lightsl
Darkness bombs down at the ship struggling to bar our camp searchray. The
Benson radiance rays from our passing platforms, curving down to mingle with
the confusion. The electronic rays sending up their bolts. . . .
Our
platforms dropped some ten dynamitrine bombs in that first passage over the
ship. As we sped by, I dimmed the Benson radiance. I peered. We had not hit the
ship. Or if we had, the damage was inconclusive. But on the rocks I could see a
pile of ore carts scattered—broken wreckage, in which the litter of two or
three projectors seemed strewn. And the gruesome deflated forms of several
helmeted figures. Others seemed to be running, scattering—hiding in the rocks
and pit-holes. Twenty brigands at least were outside the ship. Some were
running over toward the base of our camp ledge. The darkness bombs were
spreading like a curtain over the valley floor; but it seemed that some of the
figures were dragging their projectors away.
We
sailed off toward the opposite crater rim. I remember passing over the broken
wreckage of Grantline's little spaceship, the Comet. Miko's bolts momentarilly had vanished. We had hit some of his outside
projectors; the others were abandoned, or being dragged to safer positions.
After
a mile we wheeled and went back. I suddenly realized that only four platforms
were in the re-formed line ahead of us. One was missingl I saw it now, wavering
down, close over the ship. A bolt leaped up diagonally from a distant angle on
the rocks and caught the disabled platform. It fell, whirling, glowing
red—disappeared into the blur of darkness like a bit of heated metal plunged
into water.
One
out of six of our platforms already lostl Three men of our small force gonel
But
Grantline led us desperately back. Anita caught his signal to break our line.
The five platforms scattered, dipping and wheeling like frightened
birds—blurring shapes, shifting unnaturally in flight as the Benson curve
lights were altered.
Anita now took our platform in a long swoop
downward. Her tense, murmured voice sounded in my ears: "Hold off; 111
take us low."
A
melee.
Passing platform shapes. The darting bolts, crossing like ancient rapiers. Falling blue points of fuse lights as we threw our bombs.
Down in a swoop. Then rising. Away, and then
back. This silent warfare of lights! It seemed that around me must be
bursting a pandemonium of sound. Yet there was none. Silent,
blurred melee, infinitely frightening. A bolt struck us, clung for an
instant; but we weathered it. The fight was blinding. Through my gloves I could
feel the tingle of the over charged shield as it caught and absorbed the
hostile bombardment. Under me the platform seemed heated. My little Erentz
motors ran with ragged pulse. I got too much oxygen. I was dully smothering. .
. .
Then
the bolt was gone. I found us soaring upward, horribly tilted. I shifted over.
"Anita! Anita, dear, are
you all right?"
"Yes, Gregg. All
right."
The melee went on. The brigand ship and all
its vicinity were enveloped in dark mist now—a turgid sable curtain, made more dense by the dissipating heavy fumes of our exploding
bombs which settled low over the ship and the rocks nearby. The searchlight
from our camp strove futilely to penetrate the cloud.
Our
platforms were separated. One went by, high over us. I saw another dart close
beneath my shield.
"God, Anita!"
"Too close! I didn't see it." Almost a collision.
"Gregg, haven't we broken the ship's
dome yet?"
It
seemed not. I had dropped nearly all my bombs. This could not go on much
longer. Had it been only about five minutes? Only that?
Reason told me so, yet it seemed an eternity of horror.
Another swoop. My last bomb. Anita
had brought us into position to fling it. But I could not. A bolt stabbed up
from the gloom and caught us. We huddled, pulling the shields up and over us.
Blurred darkness again. Too much to the side now.
I had to wait while Anita swung us back. Then we seemed too high.
I
waited with my last bomb. The other platforms were occasionally dropping them:
I had been too hasty, too prodigal.
Had we broken the ship's dome with a direct
hit? It seemed not.
The
brigands were sending up catapulted light flares. They came from positions on
the rocks outside the ship. They mounted in lazy curves and burst over us. The
concealing darkness, broken only by the flares of explosions, enveloped the
enemy. Our camp searchlight was still struggling with it. But overhead, where
the few little platforms were circling and swooping, the flares gave an almost
continuous glare. It was dazzling, blinding. Even through the smoked pane which
I adjusted to my visor I could not stand it.
But
these were thoughts of comparative dimness. In a patch where the Earthlight
struck through the darkness of the rocks, I saw another of our fallen
platforms! Snap and Venza?
It
was not they, but three figures of our men. One was dead. Two had survived the
fall. They stood up, staggering. And in that instant, before the turgid black
curtain closed over them, I saw two brigands come rushing. Their hand
projectors stabbed at close range. Our men crumpled and fell. . . .
We
were in position again. I flung my last missile, watched its light as it
dropped. On the dome roof two of Miko's men were crouching. My bomb was truly
aimed—perhaps one of the few" in all our bombardment which landed directly
on the dome roof. But the waiting marksmen fired at it with short range heat
projectors and exploded it harmlessly while it was still above them.
We
swung up and away. I saw, high above us, Grantline's platform, recognizing its
red signal light. There seemed a lull. The enemy fire had died down to only a
very occasional bolt. In the confusion of my whirling impressions, I wondered
if Miko were in distress. Not that! We had not hit his ship; perhaps we had
done litde damage indeed! It was we who were in distress. Two of our platforms
had fallen—two out of six. Or more, of which I did not know.
I
saw one rising off to the side of us. Grantline was over us. Well, we were at
least three. And then I saw the fourth.
"Grantline is calling
us up, Gregg."
Grantline's
signal light was summoning us from the attack. He was a thousand feet or more
above us.
I
was suddenly shocked with horror. The searchray from our camp suddenly
vanished! Anita wheeled us to face the distant ledge. The camp lights showed,
and over one of the buildings was a distress light!
Had the crack in our front wall broken,
threatening explosion of all the buildings? The wild thought swept me. But it
was not that. I could see light stabs from the cliff outside the main building.
Miko had dared to send some men to attack our almost deserted camp!
Grantline
realized it. His red helmet light semaphored the command to follow him. His
platform soared away, heading for the camp, with the other two behind him.
Anita lifted us to follow.
But I checked her.
"No! Off to the right,
across the valley."
"But
Gregg!"
"Do as I say,
Anita."
She
swung us diagonally away from both the camp and the brigand ship. I prayed that
we might not be noticed by the brigands.
"Anita, listen: I've got an idea!"
The
attack on the brigand ship was over. It lay enveloped in the darkness of the
powder gas cloud and its own darkness bombs. But it was uninjured.
Miko had answered us with our own tactics. He
had practically unmanned the ship, no doubt, and had sent his men to our
buildings. The fight had shifted. But I was now without ammunition, save for
two or three bullet projectors.
Of what use for our
platform to rush back? Miko expected that. His attack on the camp was
undoubtedly made just for that purpose: to lure us back there.
"Anita,
if we can get down on the rocks somewhere near the ship, and creep up
unobserved in that blackness. . . ."
I
might be able to reach the manual hull lock, rip it open and let the air out.
If I could get into its pressure chamber and unseal the inner slide . . .
"It
would wreck the ship, Anita: exhaust all its air. Shall we try it?"
"Whatever you say,
Gregg."
We
seemed to be unobserved. We skimmed close to the valley floor, a mile from the
ship. We headed slowly toward it, sailing low over the rocks.
Then we landed, left the
platform. "Let me go first, Anita."
I
held a bullet projector. With slow, cautious leaps, we advanced. Anita was
behind me. I had wanted to leave her with the platform, but she would not stay.
And to be with me seemed at least equally safe.
The
rocks were deserted. I thought that there was very little chance that any of
the enemy would lurk here. We clambered over the pitted, scarred surface; the
higher crags, etched with Earthlight, stood like sentinels in the gloom.
The
brigand ship with its surrounding darkness was not far from us. No one was out
here. We passed the wreckage of broken projectors, and gruesome, shattered
human forms.
We
prowled closer. The hull of the ship loomed ahead of us. All
dark.
We came at last close against the sleek metal
hull side, slid along it to where I was sure the manual lock would be
located.
Abruptly
I realized that Anita was not behind mel Then I saw
her at a little distance, struggling in the grip of a giant helmeted figurel
The brigand lifted her—turned, and ran.
I
did not dare fire. I bounded after them along the hull-side, around under the
curve of the pointed bow, down along the other side.
I had mistaken the hull port location. It was
here. The running, bounding figure reached it, slid the panel. I was only
fifty feet away—not much more than a single leap. I saw Anita being shoved into
the pressure lock. The Martian flung himself after her.
I
fired at him in desperation, but missed. I came with a rush. And as I reached
the port, it slid closed in my face, barring mel"
XXXVII
With
puny fists I
pounded the panel. A small pane in it was transparent. Within the lock I could
see the blurred figures of Anita and her captor—and it seemed,
another figure there. The lock was some ten feet square, with a low ceiling. It
glowed with a dim tube-light.
I
strained at it with futile, silent effort. The mechanism was here to open this
manual; but it was now clasped from within so would not operate.
A
few seconds, while I stood there in a panic of confusion, raging to get in.
This disaster had come so suddenly. I did not plan: I had no thought save to
batter my way in and rescue Anita. I recall that I finally beat on the glassite
pane with my bullet projector until the weapon was bent and useless. And I
flung it with a wild despairing rage at my feet.
They
were letting the ship's air-pressure into this lock. Soon they would open the
inner panel, step into the secondary chamber—and in a
moment more would be within the ship's hull corridor. Anita,
lost to me!
The
outer panel suddenly opened! I had lunged against it with my shoulder; the
giant figure inside slid it. It was taken by surprise! I half fell forward.
Huge
arms went around me. The goggled face of the helmet peered into mine.
"So it is you, Haljan!
I thought I recognized that little device over your helmet bracket. And here is
my little Anita, come back to me againl" Miko!
This
was he. His great bloated arms encircling me, bending me
backward, holding me helpless. I saw over his shoulder that Anita was
clutched in the grip of another helmeted figure. No giant, but tall for an
Earth man—almost as tall as myself. Then the tube light in the room illumined
the visor. I saw the face, recognized it. Moal
I gasped, "So—I've got you— Miko—"
"Got
mel You're a fool to the last, Haljanl A fool to the
lastl But you were always a fool."
I
could scarcely move in his grip. My arms were pinned. As he slowly bent me
backward, I wound my legs around one of his: it was as unyielding as a steel
pillar. He had closed the outer panel; the air pressure in the lock was rising.
I could feel it against my suit.
My
helmeted head was being forced backward; Miko's left arm held me. In his gloved
right hand as it came slowly up over my throat I saw a knife blade, its naked,
sharpened metal glistening blue-white in the light from overhead.
I
seized his wrist. But my puny strength could not hold him. The knife, against
all of my efforts, came slowly down.
A moment of this slow, deadly combat—the end of everything for me.
I was aware of the helmeted figure of Moa
casting off Anita—and then the two girls leaping upon Miko. It threw him off
his balance, and my hanging weight made him topple forward. He took a step to
recover himself; his hand with the knife was flung up with an instinctive,
involuntary balancing gesture. And as it came down again, I forced the
knife-blade to graze his throat. Its point caught in the fabric of his suit.
His
startled oath jangled in my ears. The girls were clawing at him; we were all
four scrambling, swaying. With despairing strength I twisted at his wrist. The
knife went into his throat. I plunged it deeper.
His suit went flabby. He crumpled over me and
fell, knocking me to the floor. His voice, with the horrible gurgling rasp of
death in it, rattled my ear-grids.
"Not such a fool—are
you, Halj'an—"
Moa's
helmeted head was close over us. I saw that she had seized the knife, jerked it
from her brother's throat. She leaped backward, waving it.
I
twisted from beneath Miko's lifeless, inert body. As I got to my feet, Anita
flung herself to shield me. Moa was across the lock, back up against the wall.
The knife in her hand went up. She stood for the briefest instant regarding
Anita and me, holding each other. I thought that she was about to leap upon us.
But before I could move, the knife came down and plunged into her breast. She
fell forward, her grotesque helmet striking the grid-floor almost at my feet.
"Gregg!"
"She's dead."
"No!
She moved! Get her helmet off! There's enough air here."
My
helmet pressure indicator was faintly buzzing to show that a safe pressure was
in the room. I shut off Moa's Erentz motors, unfastened her helmet and raised
it off. We gently turned her body. She lay with closed eyes, her pallid face
blue. With our own helmets off, we knelt over her.
"Oh, Gregg—is she
dead?"
"No. Not quite—but dying."
"Gregg,
I don't want her to die! She was trying to help you there at the last."
She
opened her eyes. The film of death was glazing them. But she saw me, recognized
me.
"Gregg-"
"Yes,
Moa.
I'm here."
Her vivid lips were faintly drawn in a smile.
"I'm—so glad—you took the helmets off, Gregg. I'm—going—you know."
"No!"
"Going—back to Mars—to
rest with the fire-makers—where
I
came from. I was thinking—maybe you would kiss me, Gregg?"
Anita
gently pushed me down. I pressed the white, faintly smiling hps with mine. She
sighed, and it ended with a rattle in her throat.
"Thank
you—Gregg—closer—I can't talk so loudly—"
One
of her gloved hands struggled to touch me, but she had no strength and it fell
back. Her words were the faintest of whispers:
"There
was no use living—without your love. But I want
you to see—now—that a Martian girl can die with a smile—"
Her
eyelids fluttered down; it seemed that she sighed and then was not breathing.
But on her livid face the faint smile still lingered, to show me how a Martian
girl could die.
We
had forgotten for the moment where we were. As I glanced up I saw through the inner panel,
past the secondary lock, that the hull's
corridor was visible. And along its length a group of Martians was advancing I They saw us, and came running.
"Anital Lookl We've got to get out of here!"
The
secondary lock was open to the corridor. We jammed on our helmets. The
unhelmeted brigands by then were fumbling at the inner panel. I pulled at the
lever of the outer panel. The brigands were hurrying, thinking that they could
be in time to stop me. One of the more cautious fumbled with a helmet.
"Anita, run! Try and
keep your feet."
I
slid the outeT
panel and pushed at Anita.
Simultaneously the brigands opened the inner port.
The air came with a tempestuous rush. A blast through the inner port—through the small pressure lock—a
wild rush, out to the airless Moon. All the air in the ship madly rushing to
escape. . . .
Like feathers, we were blown with it. I recall an impression of the hurtling brigand figures and swift flying
rocks under me. A silent crash as I struck.
Then
soundless, empty blackness.
xxxvm
"Is
he conscious? We'd better take him back: get his helmet off."
"It's over. We can get back to the camp
now. Venza dear, we've won—it's over." "He hears ust"
"Gregg!"
"He hears us. Hell be all right!"
I
opened my eyes, I lay on the rocks. Over my helmet, other helmets were peering,
and faint, familiar voices mingled with the roaring in my ears.
"—back to the camp and
get his helmet off."
"Are
his motors smooth? Keep them right, Snap—he must
have good air."
I seemed unhurt. But Anita. . . .
She was here. "Gregg, dear one!"
Anita safel All four of us here on the
Earthlit rocks, close outside the brigand ship. "Anital"
She
held me, lifted me. I was uninjured. I could stand: I staggered up and stood
swaying. The brigand ship, a hundred feet away, loomed dark and silent, a
lifeless hulk, already empty of air, drained in the mad blast outward. Like
the wreck of the Planetara—a
dead, useless, pulseless
hulk already.
We
four stood together, triumphant. The battle was over. The brigands were
worsted, almost the last man of them dead or dying. No more than ten or fifteen
had been available for that final assault upon the camp buildings. Miko's last strategy. I think perhaps he had intended, with
his few remaining men, to take the ship and make away, deserting his fellows.
All
on the ship, caught unhelmeted by the explosion, were dead long since.
224 BRIGANDS OF THE MOON
I stood listening to Snap's triumphant
account. It had not been difficult for the flying platforms to hunt down the attacking
brigands on the open rocks. We had only lost one more platform.
Human
hearts beat sometimes with very selfish emotions. It was a triumphant ending
for us, and we hardly gave a thought that half of Grantline's men had
perished.
We
huddled on Snap's platform. It rose, lurching drunken-ly barely carrying us.
As
we headed for the Grantline buildings, where still the rift in the wall had not
quite broken, there came the final triumph. Miko had been aware of it, and knew
he had lost. Grantline's searchlight leaped upward, swept the sky, caught its
sought-for object—a huge silver cylinder, bathed brighdy in the white searchbeam
glare.
The police ship from Earth.
BUCCANEERS OF OUTER
SPACE
A pioneer of imaginative writing, Ray Cummings is one of the founding fathers of modern American science-fiction. For in his novels and short stories, this talented writer—once an associate of Thomas Edison himself — first originated many of the soaring conceptions which became part and parcel of all science-fiction since then.
Cummings spanned the gap between the early gropings of H. G. Wells and the full vision of our atomic future. His vivid tales were the first to fully explore the cosmos from the interiors of atoms to the farthest bounds of the galactic universe.
BRIGANDS OF THE MOON is one of Cummings' classic novels—a thrilling novel of the clash of two planets in the fight for super-power ore, an adventure in interplanetary piracy, and a prediction of the mining and colonization of the moon that is still as timely as the day it was written.
AN ACE BOOK