Astounding Stories, May, 1931
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Title: Astounding Stories, May, 1931
Author: Various
Editor: Harry Bates
Release date: November 23, 2009 [eBook #30532]
Most recently updated: September 10, 2015
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTOUNDING STORIES, MAY, 1931 ***
Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
ASTOUNDING
STORIES
20¢
_On Sale the First Thursday of Each Month_
W. M. CLAYTON, Publisher
HARRY BATES, Editor
DOUGLAS M. DOLD, Consulting Editor
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_That_ an intelligent censorship guards their advertising pages.
_The other Clayton magazines are:_
ACE-HIGH MAGAZINE, RANCH ROMANCES, COWBOY STORIES, CLUES, FIVE-NOVELS
MONTHLY, ALL STAR DETECTIVE STORIES, RANGELAND LOVE STORY MAGAZINE,
WESTERN ADVENTURES, and WESTERN LOVE STORIES.
_More than Two Million Copies Required to Supply the Monthly Demand
for Clayton Magazines._
* * * * *
VOL. VI, No. 2 CONTENTS MAY, 1931
COVER DESIGN H. W. WESSO
_Painted in Water-Colors from a Scene in "Dark Moon._"
DARK MOON CHARLES W. DIFFIN 148
_Mysterious, Dark, Out of the Unknown Deep Comes a New Satellite to
Lure Three Courageous Earthlings on to Strange Adventure._
(_A Complete Novelette._)
WHEN CAVERNS YAWNED CAPTAIN S. P. MEEK 198
_Only Dr. Bird's Super-Scientific Sleuthing Stands in the Way of
Ivan Sarnoff's Latest Attempt at Wholesale Destruction._
THE EXILE OF TIME RAY CUMMINGS 216
_Young Lovers of Three Eras Are Swept down the Torrent of the Sinister
Cripple Tugh's Frightful Vengeance._ (Part Two of a Four-Part Novel.)
WHEN THE MOON TURNED GREEN HAL K. WELLS 241
_Outside His Laboratory Bruce Dixon Finds a World of Living Dead
Men--and Above, in the Sky, Shines a Weird Green Moon._
THE DEATH-CLOUD NAT SCHACHNER AND
ARTHUR L. ZAGAT 256
_The Epic Exploit of One Who Worked in the Dark and Alone, Behind
the Enemy Lines, in the Great Last War._
THE READERS' CORNER ALL OF US 276
_A Meeting Place for Readers of Astounding Stories._
Single Copies, 20 Cents (In Canada, 25 Cents) Yearly Subscription,
$2.00
Issued monthly by Readers' Guild, Inc., 80 Lafayette Street, New York,
N. Y. W. M. Clayton, President; Francis P. Pace, Secretary. Entered as
second-class matter December 7, 1929, at the Post Office at New York,
N. Y., under Act of March 3, 1879. Title registered as a Trade Mark in
the U. S. Patent Office. Member Newsstand Group. For advertising rates
address The Newsstand Group, Inc., 80 Lafayette St., New York or The
Wrigley Bldg., Chicago.
* * * * *
Dark Moon
A COMPLETE NOVELETTE
_By Charles W. Diffin_
CHAPTER I
_There Comes a New World_
[Illustration: _Behind them a red ship was falling--falling free!_]
[Sidenote: Mysterious, dark, out of the unknown deep comes a new
satellite to lure three courageous Earthlings on to strange
adventures.]
The one hundred and fifty-ninth floor of the great Transportation
Building allowed one standing at a window to look down upon the roofs
of the countless buildings that were New York.
Flat-decked, all of them; busy places of hangars and machine shops and
strange aircraft, large and small, that rose vertically under the lift
of flashing helicopters.
The air was alive and vibrant with directed streams of stubby-winged
shapes that drove swiftly on their way, with only a wisp of vapor from
their funnel-shaped sterns to mark the continuous explosion that
propelled them. Here and there were those that entered a shaft of
pale-blue light that somehow outshone the sun. It marked an ascending
area, and there ships canted swiftly, swung their blunt noses upward,
and vanished, to the upper levels.
A mile and more away, in a great shaft of green light from which all
other craft kept clear, a tremendous shape was dropping. Her hull of
silver was striped with a broad red band; her multiple helicopters
were dazzling flashes in the sunlight. The countless dots that were
portholes and the larger observation ports must have held numberless
eager faces, for the Oriental Express served a cosmopolitan passenger
list.
But Walter Harkness, standing at the window, stared out from troubled,
frowning eyes that saw nothing of the kaleidoscopic scene. His back
was turned to the group of people in the room, and he had no thought
of wonders that were prosaic, nor of passengers, eager or blase; his
thoughts were only of freight and of the acres of flat roofs far in
the distance where alternate flashes of color marked the descending
area for fast freighters of the air. And in his mind he could see what
his eyes could not discern--the markings on those roofs that were
enormous landing fields: Harkness Terminals, New York.
* * * * *
Only twenty-four, Walt Harkness--owner now of Harkness, Incorporated.
Dark hair that curled slightly as it left his forehead; eyes that were
taking on the intent, straightforward look that had been his father's
and that went straight to the heart of a business proposal with
disconcerting directness. But the lips were not set in the hard lines
that had marked Harkness Senior; they could still curve into boyish
pleasure to mark the enthusiasm that was his.
He was not typically the man of business in his dress. His broad
shoulders seemed slender in the loose blouse of blue silk; a narrow
scarf of brilliant color was loosely tied; the close, full-length
cream-colored trousers were supported by a belt of woven metal, while
his shoes were of the coarse-mesh fabric that the latest mode
demanded.
He turned now at the sound of Warrington's voice. E. B. Warrington,
Counsellor at Law, was the name that glowed softly on the door of
this spacious office, and Warrington's gray head was nodding as he
dated and indexed a document.
"June twentieth, nineteen seventy-three," he repeated; "a lucky day
for you, Walter. Inside of ten years this land will be worth double
the fifty million you are paying--and it is worth more than that to
you."
He turned and handed a document to a heavy-bodied man across from him.
"Here is your copy, Herr Schwartzmann," he said. The man pocketed the
paper with a smile of satisfaction thinly concealed on his dark face.
* * * * *
Harkness did not reply. He found little pleasure in the look on
Schwartzmann's face, and his glance passed on to a fourth man who sat
quietly at one side of the room.
Young, his tanned face made bronze by contrast with his close-curling
blond hair, there was no need of the emblem on his blouse to mark him
as of the flying service. Beside the spread wings was the triple star
of a master pilot of the world; it carried Chet Bullard past all
earth's air patrols and gave him the freedom of every level.
Beside him a girl was seated. She rose quickly now and came toward
Harkness with outstretched hand. And Harkness found time in the
instant of her coming to admire her grace of movement, and the
carriage that was almost stately.
The mannish attire of a woman of business seemed almost a discordant
note; he did not realize that the hard simplicity of her costume had
been saved by the soft warmth of its color, and by an indefinable,
flowing line in the jacket above the rippling folds of an undergarment
that gathered smoothly at her knees. He knew only that she made a
lovely picture, surprisingly appealing, and that her smile was a
compensation for the less pleasing visage of her companion,
Schwartzmann.
"Mademoiselle Vernier," Herr Schwartzmann had introduced her when they
came. And he had used her given name as he added: "Mademoiselle Diane
is somewhat interested in our projects."
She was echoing Warrington's words as she took Harkness' hand in a
friendly grasp. "I hope, indeed, that it is the lucky day for you,
Monsieur. Our modern transportation--it is so marvelous, and I know so
little of it. But I am learning. I shall think of you as developing
your so-splendid properties wonderfully."
* * * * *
Only when she and Schwartzmann were gone did Harkness answer his
counsellor's remark. The steady Harkness eyes were again wrinkled
about with puckering lines; the shoulders seemed not so square as
usual.
"Lucky?" he said. "I hope you're right. You were Father's attorney for
twenty years--your judgment ought to be good; and mine is not entirely
worthless.
"Yes, it is a good deal we have made--of course it is!--it bears every
analysis. We need that land if we are to expand as we must, and the
banks will carry me for the twenty million I can't swing. But,
confound it, Warrington, I've had a hunch--and I've gone against it.
Schwartzmann has tied me up for ready cash, and he represents the
biggest competitors we have. They're planning something--but we need
the land.... Oh, well, I've signed up; the property is mine; but...."
The counsellor laughed. "You need a change," he said; "I never knew
you to worry before. Why don't you jump on the China Mail this
afternoon; it connects with a good line out of Shanghai. You can be
tramping around the Himalayas to-morrow. A day or two there will fix
you up."
"Too busy," said Harkness. "Our experimental ship is about ready, so
I'll go and play with that. We'll be shooting at the moon one of these
days."
"The moon!" the other snorted. "Crazy dreams! McInness tried it, and
you know what happened. He came back out of control--couldn't check
his speed against the repelling area--shot through and stripped his
helicopters off against the heavy air. And that other fellow,
Haldgren--"
"Yes," said Harkness quietly, "Haldgren--he didn't fall back. He went
on into space."
* * * * *
"Impossible!" the counsellor objected. "He must have fallen unobserved.
No, no, Walter; be reasonable. I do not claim to know much about those
things--I leave them to the Stratosphere Control Board--but I do know this
much: that the lifting effect above the repelling area--what used to be
known as the heaviside layer--counteracts gravity's pull. That's why our
ships fly as they please when they have shot themselves through. But they
have to fly close to it; its force is dissipated in another ten thousand
feet, and the old earth's pull is still at work. It can't be done, my boy;
the vast reaches of space--"
"Are the next to be conquered," Harkness broke in. "And Chet and I
intend to be in on it." He glanced toward the young flyer, and they
exchanged a quiet smile.
"Remember how my father was laughed at when he dared to vision the
commerce of to-day? Crazy dreams, Warrington? That's what they said
when Dad built the first unit of our plant, the landing stages for the
big freighters, the docks for ocean ships while they lasted, the
berths for the big submarines that he knew were coming. They jeered at
him then. 'Harkness' Folly,' the first plant was called. And
now--well you know what we are doing."
He laughed softly. "Leave us our crazy dreams, Warrington," he
protested; "sometimes those dreams come true.... And I'll try to
forget my hunch. We've bought the property; now we'll make it earn
money for us. I'll forget it now, and work on my new ship. Chet and I
are about ready for a try-out."
* * * * *
The flyer had risen to join him, and the two turned together to the
door where a private lift gave access to the roof. They were halfway
to it when the first shock came to throw the two men on the floor.
The great framework of the Transportation Building was swaying wildly
as they fell, and the groaning of its wrenched and straining members
sounded through the echoing din as every movable object in the room
came crashing down.
Dazed for the moment, Harkness lay prone, while his eyes saw the
nitron illuminator, like a great chandelier, swing widely from the
ceiling where it was placed. Its crushing weight started toward him,
but a last swing shot it past to the desk of the counsellor.
Harkness got slowly to his feet. The flyer, too, was able to stand,
though he felt tenderly of a bruised shoulder. But where Warrington
had been was only the crumpled wreckage of a steeloid desk, the
shattered bulk of the illuminator upon it, and, beneath, the mangled
remains where flowing blood made a quick pool upon the polished floor.
Warrington was dead--no help could be rendered there--and Harkness was
reaching for the door. The shock had passed, and the building was
quiet, but he shouted to the flyer and sprang into the lift.
"The air is the place for us," he said; "there may be more coming." He
jammed over the control lever, and the little lift moved.
"What was it?" gasped Bullard, "earthquake?--explosion? Lord, what a
smash!"
Harkness made no reply. He was stepping out upon the broad surface of
the Transportation Building. He paid no attention to the hurrying
figures about him, nor did he hear the loud shouting of the
newscasting cone that was already bringing reports of the disaster. He
had thought only for the speedy little ship that he used for his daily
travel.
* * * * *
The golden cylinder was still safe in the grip of its hold-down
clutch, and its stubby wings and gleaming sextuple-bladed helicopter
were intact. Harkness sprang for the control-board.
He, too, wore an emblem: a silver circle that marked him a pilot of
the second class; he could take his ship around the world below the
forty level, though at forty thousand and above he must give over
control to the younger man.
The hiss of the releasing clutch came softly to him as the free-signal
flashed, and he sank back with a great sigh of relief as the motors
hummed and the blades above leaped into action. Then the stern blast
roared, though its sound came faintly through the deadened walls, and
he sent the little speedster for the pale blue light of an ascending
area. Nor did he level off until the gauge before him said twenty
thousand.
His first thought had been for their own safety in the air, but with
it was a frantic desire to reach the great plant of the Harkness
Terminals. What had happened there? Had there been any damage? Had
they felt the shock? A few seconds in level twenty would tell him. He
reached the place of alternate flashes where he could descend, and the
little ship fell smoothly down.
Below him the great expanse of buildings took form, and they seemed
safe and intact. His intention was to land, till the slim hands of
Chet Bullard thrust him roughly aside and reached for the controls.
It was Bullard's right--a master pilot could take control at any
time--but Harkness stared in amazement as the other lifted the ship,
then swung it out over the expanse of ocean beyond--stared until his
own eyes followed those of Chet Bullard to see the wall of water that
was sweeping toward the land.
Chet, he knew, had held them in a free-space level, where they could
maneuver as they pleased, but he knew, too, that the pilot's hands
were touching levers that swung them at a quite unlawful speed past
other ships, and that swept them down in a great curve above the
ocean's broad expanse.
* * * * *
Harkness did not at once grasp the meaning of the thing. There was the
water, sparkling clear, and a monstrous wave that lifted itself up to
mountainous heights. Behind it the ocean's blue became a sea of mud;
and only when he glanced at their ground-speed detector did he sense
that the watery mountain was hurling itself upon the shore with the
swiftness of a great super-liner.
There were the out-thrusting capes that made a safe harbor for the
commerce that came on and beneath the waters to the Harkness
Terminals; the wave built itself up to still greater heights as it
came between them. They were riding above it by a thousand feet, and
Walter Harkness, in sudden knowledge of what this meant, stared with
straining eyes at the wild thing that raced with them underneath.
He must do something--anything!--to check the monster, to flatten out
the onrushing mountain! The red bottom-plates of a submarine freighter
came rolling up behind the surge to show how futile was the might of
man. And the next moment marked the impact of the wall of water upon a
widespread area of landing roofs, where giant letters stared mockingly
at him to spell the words: Harkness Terminals, New York.
He saw the silent crumbling of great buildings; he glimpsed in one
wild second the whirling helicopters on giant freighters that took the
air too late; he saw them vanish as the sea swept in and engulfed
them. And then, after endless minutes, he knew that Chet had swung
again above the site of his plant, and he saw the stumps of steel and
twisted wreckage that remained....
* * * * *
The pilot hung the ship in air--a golden beetle, softly humming as it
hovered above the desolate scene. Chet had switched on the steady buzz
of the stationary-ship signal, and the wireless warning was swinging
passing craft out and around their station. Within the quiet cabin a
man stood to stare and stare, unspeaking, until his pilot laid a
friendly hand upon the broad shoulders.
"You're cleaned," said Chet Bullard. "It's a washout! But you'll build
it up again; they can't stop you--"
But the steady, appraising eyes of Walter Harkness had moved on and on
to a rippling stretch of water where land had been before.
"Cleaned," he responded tonelessly; "and then some! And I could start
again, but--" He paused to point to the stretch of new sea, and his
lips moved that he might laugh long and harshly. "But right there is
all I own--that is, the land I bought this morning. It is gone, and I
owe twenty million to the hardest-hearted bunch of creditors in the
world. That foreign crowd, who've been planning to invade our
territory here. You know what chance I'll have with them...."
The disaster was complete, and Walter Harkness was facing it--facing
it with steady gray eyes and a mind that was casting a true balance of
accounts. He was through, he told himself; his other holdings would be
seized to pay for this waste of water that an hour before had been dry
land; they would strip him of his last dollar. His lips curved into a
sardonic smile.
"June twentieth, nineteen seventy-three," he repeated. "Poor old
Warrington! He called this my lucky day!"
* * * * *
The pilot had respected the other man's need of silence, but his
curiosity could not be longer restrained.
"What's back of it all?" he demanded. "What caused it? The shock was
like no earthquake I've ever known. And this tidal wave--" He was
reaching for a small switch. He turned a dial to the words: "News
Service--General," and the instrument broke into hurried speech.
It told of earth shocks in many places--the whole world had felt
it--some tremendous readjustment among the inner stresses of the
earth--most serious on the Atlantic seaboard--the great Harkness
Terminals destroyed--some older buildings in the business district
shaken down--loss of life not yet computed....
"But what _did_ it?" Chet Bullard was repeating in the cabin of their
floating ship. "A tremendous shake-up like that!" Harkness silenced
him with a quick gesture of his hand. Another voice had broken in to
answer the pilot's question.
"The mystery is solved," said the new voice. "This is the Radio-News
representative speaking from Calcutta. We are in communication with
the Allied Observatories on Mount Everest. At eleven P. M., World
Standard Time, Professor Boyle observed a dark body in transit across
the moon. According to Boyle, a non-luminous and non-reflecting
asteroid has crashed into the earth's gravitational field. A dark moon
has joined this celestial grouping, and is now swinging in an orbit
about the earth. It is this that has disturbed the balance of internal
stresses within the earth--"
* * * * *
"A dark moon!" Chet Bullard broke in, but again a movement from
Harkness silenced his exclamations. Whatever of dull apathy had
gripped young Harkness was gone. No thought now of the devastation
below them that spelled his financial ruin. Some greater, more
gripping idea had now possessed him. The instrument was still
speaking:
"--Without light of its own, nor does it reflect the sun's light as
does our own moon. This phenomenon, as yet, is unexplained. It is
nearer than our own moon and smaller, but of tremendous density."
Harkness nodded his head quickly at that, and his eyes were alive with
an inner enthusiasm not yet expressed in words. "It is believed that
the worst is over. More minor shocks may follow, but the cause is
known; the mystery is solved. Out from the velvet dark of space has
come a small, new world to join us--"
The voice ceased. Walter Harkness had opened the switch.
"The mystery is solved," Chet Bullard repeated.
"Solved?" exclaimed the other from his place at the controls. "Man, it
is only begun!" He depressed a lever, and a muffled roar marked their
passage to a distant shaft of blue, where he turned the ship on end
and shot like a giant shell for the higher air.
There was northbound travel at thirty-five, and northward Harkness
would go, but he shot straight up. At forty thousand he motioned the
master-pilot to take over the helm.
"Clear through," he ordered; "up into the liner lanes; then north for
our own shop." Nor did he satisfy the curiosity in Chet Bullard's eyes
by so much as a word until some hours later when they floated down.
* * * * *
An icy waste was beneath them, where the sub-polar regions were
wrapped in the mantle of their endless winter. Here ships never
passed. Northward, toward the Pole, were liner lanes in the higher
levels, but here was a deserted sector. And here Walter Harkness had
elected to carry on his experiments.
A rise of land showed gaunt and black, and the pilot was guiding the
ship in a long slant upon it. He landed softly beside a building in a
sheltered, snow-filled valley.
Harkness shivered as he stepped from the warmth of their insulated
cabin, and he fumbled with shaking fingers to touch the combination
upon the locked door. It swung open, to close behind the men as they
stood in the warm, brightly-lighted room.
Nitro illuminators were hung from the ceiling, their diffused
brilliance shining down to reflect in sparkling curves and ribbons of
light from a silvery shape. It stood upon the floor, a metal cylinder
a hundred feet in length, whose blunt ends showed dark openings of
gaping ports. There were other open ports above and below and in
regular spacing about the rounded sides. No helicopters swung their
blades above; there were only the bulge of a conning tower and the
heavy inset glasses of the lookouts. Nor were there wings of any kind.
It might have been a projectile for some mammoth gun.
Harkness stood in silence before it, until he turned to smile at the
still-wondering pilot.
"Chet," he said, "it's about finished and ready--just in time. We've
built it, you and I; freighted in the parts ourselves and assembled
every piece. We've even built the shop: lucky the big steeloid plates
are so easily handled. And you and I are the only ones that know.
"Every ship in the airlanes of the world is driven by detonite--and we
have evolved a super-detonite. We have proved that it will work. It
will carry us beyond the pull of gravitation; it will give us the
freedom of outer space. It is ours and ours alone."
"No," the other corrected slowly, "it is yours. You have paid the
bills and you have paid me. Paid me well."
"I'm paying no more," Harkness told him. "I'm broke, right this
minute. I haven't a dollar--and yet I say now that poor Warrington was
right: this is my lucky day."
* * * * *
He laughed aloud at the bewilderment on the pilot's face.
"Chet," he said slowly, and his voice was pitched to a more serious
tone, "out there is a new world, the Dark Moon. 'Tremendous density,'
they said. That means it can hold an atmosphere of its own. It means
new metals, new wealth. It means a new little world to explore, and
it's out there waiting for us. Waiting for us; we will be the first.
For here is the ship that will take us.
"It isn't mine, Chet; it's ours. And the adventure is ours; yours and
mine, both. We only meant to go a few hundred miles at first, but
here's something big. We may never come back--it's a long chance that
we're taking--but you're in on it, if you want to go...."
He paused. The expression in the eyes of Chet Bullard, master-pilot of
the world, was answer enough. But Chet amplified it with explosive
words.
"Am I in on it?" he demanded. "Try to count me out--just try to do it!
I was game for a trial flight out beyond. And now, with a real
objective to shoot at--a new world--"
His words failed him. Walt Harkness knew that the hand the other
extended was thrust forth blindly; he gripped at it hard, while he
turned to look at the shining ship.
But his inner gaze passed far beyond the gleaming thing of metal, off
into a realm of perpetual night. Out there a new world was waiting--a
Dark Moon!--and there they might find.... But his imagination failed
him there; he could only thrill with the adventure that the unknown
held.
CHAPTER II
_Escape_
Two days, while a cold sun peeped above an icy horizon! Two days of
driving, eager work on the installation of massive motors--yet motors
so light that one man could lift them--then Harkness prepared to
leave.
"Wealth brings care when it comes," he told Chet, "but it leaves
plenty of trouble behind it when it goes. I must get back to New York
and throw what is left of my holdings to the wolves; they must be
howling by this time to find out where I am. I'll drop back here in a
week."
There were instruments to be installed, and Chet would look after
that. He would test the motors where the continuous explosion of
super-detonite would furnish the terrific force for their driving
power. Then the exhaust from each port must be measured and thrusts
equalized, where needed, by adjustment of great valves. All this Chet
would finish. And then--a test flight. Harkness hoped to be back for
the first try-out of the new ship.
"I'll be seeing you in a week," he repeated. "You'll be that long
getting her tuned up."
But Chet Bullard grinned derisively. "Two days!" he replied. "You'll
have to step some if you get in on the trial flight. But don't worry;
I won't take off for the Dark Moon. I'll just go up and play around
above the liner lanes and see how the old girl stunts."
Harkness nodded. "Watch for patrol ships," he warned. "There's no
traffic directly over here--that's one reason why I chose this
spot--but don't let anyone get too close. Our patents have not been
applied for."
* * * * *
Harkness spent a day in New York. Then a night trip by Highline
Express took him to London where he busied himself for some hours.
Next, a fast passenger plane for Vienna.
In other days Walter Harkness would have chartered a private ship to
cut off a few precious hours, but he was traveling more economically
now. And the representatives of his foreign competitors were not now
coming to see him; he must go to them.
At the great terminal in Vienna a man approached him. "Herr Harkness?"
he inquired, and saluted stiffly.
He was not in uniform. He was not of the Allied Patrol nor of any
branch of the police force that encircled the world in its operations.
Yet his military bearing was unmistakable. To Harkness it was
reminiscent of old pictures of Prussian days--those curious pictures
revived at times for the amusement of those who turned to their
television sets for entertainment. He had to repress a smile as he
followed where the other led him to a gray speedster in a distant
corner of the open concourse.
He stepped within a luxurious cabin and would have gone on into the
little control room, but his guide checked him. Harkness was mildly
curious as to their course--Schwartzmann was to have seen him in
Vienna--but the way to the instrument board was barred. Another
precise salute, and he was motioned to the cabin at the rear.
"It is orders that I follow," he was told. And Walter Harkness
complied.
"It could happen only here," he told himself. And he found himself
exasperated by a people who were slow to conform to the customs of a
world whose closely-knit commerce had obliterated the narrow
nationalism of the past.
* * * * *
They landed in an open court surrounded by wide lawns. He glimpsed
trees about them in the dusk, and looming before him was an old-time
building of the chateau type set off in this private park. He would
have followed his guide toward the entrance, but a flash of color
checked him.
Like a streak of flame a ship shot in above them; hung poised near the
one that had brought them and settled to rest beside it. A little red
speedster, it made a splash of crimson against the green lawns beyond.
And, "Nice flying," Harkness was telling himself.
The hold-down clamps had hardly gripped it when a figure sprang out
from an opened door. A figure in cool gray that took warmth and color
from the ship behind--a figure of a girl, tall and slender and
graceful as she came impulsively toward him.
"Monsieur Harkness!" she exclaimed. "But this is a surprise. I thought
that Herr Schwartzmann was to see you in Vienna!" For a brief moment
Harkness saw a flicker of puzzled wonderment in her eyes.
"And I am sorry," she went on, "--so very sorry for your misfortune.
But we will be generous."
She withdrew her hand which Harkness was holding. He was still
phrasing a conventional greeting as she flung him a gay laugh and a
look from brown eyes that smiled encouragement. She was gone before
he found words for reply.
Walter Harkness had been brought up in a world of business, and knew
little of the subtle message of a woman's eyes. But he felt within him
a warm response to the friendly companionship that the glance implied.
Within the chateau, in a dark-paneled room, Herr Schwartzmann was
waiting. He motioned Harkness to a chair and resumed his complacent
contemplation of a picture that was flowing across a screen. Color
photography gave every changing shade. It was coming by wireless, as
Harkness knew, and he realized that the sending instrument must be in
a ship that cruised slowly above a scene of wreckage and desolation.
He recognized the ruins of his great plant; he saw the tiny figures of
men, and he knew that the salvage company he had placed in charge was
on the job. Beyond was a stretch of rippling water where the great
wave had boiled over miles of land and had sucked it back to the
ocean's depths. And he realized that the beginning of his conference
was not auspicious.
After the warmth of the girl's greeting, this other was like a plunge
into the Arctic chill of his northern retreat.
* * * * *
"I have listed every dollar's worth of property that I own," he was
saying an hour later, "and I have turned it over to a trustee who will
protect your rights. What more do you want?"
"We have heard of some experimental work," said Herr Schwartzmann
smoothly. "A new ship; some radical changes in design. We would like
that also."
"Try and get it," Harkness invited.
The other passed that challenge by. "There is another alternative,"
he said. "My principals in France are unknown to you; perhaps, also,
it is not known that they intend to extend their lines to New York and
that they will erect great terminals to do the work that you have
done.
"Your father was the pioneer; there is great value in the name of
Harkness--the 'good-will' as you say in America. We would like to
adopt that name, and carry on where you have left off. If you were to
assign to us the worthless remains of your plant, and all right and
title to the name of Harkness Terminals, it might be--" He paused
deliberately while Harkness stiffened in his chair. "It might be that
we would require no further settlement. The balance of your
fortune--and your ship--will be yours."
Harkness' gray eyes, for a moment, betrayed the smouldering rage that
was his.
"Put it in plain words," he demanded. "You would bribe me to sell you
something you cannot create for yourselves. The name of Harkness has
stood for fair-dealing, for honor, for scrupulous observance of our
clients' rights. My father established it on that basis and I have
continued in the same way. And you?--well, it occurs to me that the
Schwartzmann interests have had a different reputation. Now you would
buy my father's name to use it as a cloak for your dirty work!"
He rose abruptly. "It is not for sale. Every dollar that I own will be
used to settle my debt. There will be enough--"
* * * * *
Herr Schwartzmann refused to be insulted. His voice was unruffled as
he interrupted young Harkness' vehement statement.
"Perhaps you are right; perhaps not. Permit me to remind you that the
value of your holdings may depreciate under certain influences that
we are able to exert--also that you are in Austria, and that the laws
of this country permit us to hold you imprisoned until the debt is
paid. In the meantime we will find your ship and seize it, and
whatever it has of value will be protected by patents in our name."
His unctuous voice became harsh. "Honor! Fair dealing!" He spat out
the words in sudden hate. "You Americans who will not realize that
business is business!"
Harkness was standing, drawn unconsciously to his full height. He
looked down upon the other man. All anger had gone from his face; he
seemed only appraising the individual before him.
"The trouble with you people," he said, "is that you are living in the
past--way back about nineteen fourteen, when might made
right--sometimes."
He continued to look squarely into the other's eyes, but his lips set
firmly, and his voice was hard and decisive.
"But," he continued, "I am not here to educate you, nor to deal with
you. Any further negotiations will be through my counsellors. And now
I will trouble you to return me to the city. We are through with
this."
* * * * *
Herr Schwartzmann's heavy face drew into lines of sardonic humor. "Not
quite through," he said; "and you are not returning to the city." He
drew a paper from his desk.
"I anticipated some such _verdammpt_ foolishness from you. You see
this? It is a contract; a release, a transfer of all your interests in
Harkness, Incorporated. It needs only your signature, and that will be
supplied. No one will question it when we are done: the very ink in
the stylus you carry will be duplicated. For the last time, I repeat
my offer; I am patient with you. Sign this, and keep all else that
you have. Refuse, and--"
"Yes?" Harkness inquired.
"And we will sign for you--a forgery that will never be detected. And
as for you, your body will be found--a suicide! You will leave a
letter: we will attend to all that. Herr Harkness will have found this
misfortune unbearable.... We shall be very sad!" His heavy smile grew
into derisive laughter.
"I am still patient, and kind," he added. "I give you twenty-four
hours to think it over."
A touch of a button on his desk summoned the man who had brought
Harkness there. "Herr Harkness is in your charge," were the
instructions to the one who stood stiffly at attention. "He is not to
leave this place. Is it understood?"
As he was ushered from the room, Walter Harkness also understood, and
he knew that this was no idle threat. He had heard ugly rumors of Herr
Schwartzmann and his methods. One man, he knew, had dared to oppose
him--and that man had gone suddenly insane. A touch of a needle, it
was whispered....
There had been other rumors; Schwartzmann got what he wanted; his
financial backing was enormous. And now he would bring his ruthless
methods to America. But there he needed the Harkness standing, the
reputation for probity--and Walter Harkness was grimly resolved that
they should never buy it from him. But the problem must be faced, and
the answer found, if answer there was, in twenty-four hours.
* * * * *
An amazing state of affairs in a modern world! He stood meditating
upon his situation in a great, high-ceilinged room. A bed stood in a
corner, and other furniture marked the room as belonging to an earlier
time. Even mechanical weather-control was wanting; one must open the
windows, Harkness found, to get cooling air.
He stood at the open window and saw storm clouds blowing up swiftly. They
blotted the stars from the night sky; they swept black and ominous
overhead, and seemed to touch the giant trees that whipped their branches
in the wind. But he was thinking not at all of the storm, and only of the
fact that this room where he stood must be directly above the one where
Schwartzmann was seated. Schwartzmann--who would put an end to his life as
casually as he would bring down a squirrel from one of those trees!
And again he thought: "Twenty-four hours!... Why hours? Why not
minutes?... Whatever must be done he must do now. And might made
right: it was the only way to meet this unscrupulous foreign
scoundrel."
A wind-tossed branch lashed at him. On the ground below he saw the man
who had brought him, posting another as a guard. They glanced up at
his window. There would be no escape there.
And yet the branch seemed beckoning. He caught it when again it
whipped toward him, and, without any definite plan, he lashed it fast
with a velvet cord from the window drapes.
But his thoughts came back to the room. He snatched suddenly at the
covers of the bed. What were the sheets?--fabric as old-fashioned as
the room, or were they cellulex? The touch of the soft fabric
reassured him: it was as soft as though woven of spider's web, and
strong as fibres of steel.
It took all of his strength to rip it into strips, but it was a matter
of minutes, only, until he had a rope that would bear his weight. The
storm had broken; the black clouds let loose a deluge of water that
drove in at the window. If only the window below was still open!
He found the middle of his rope, looped it over a post of the bed,
and, with both strands in his grasp, let himself out and over the
dripping sill.
Would the guard see him, or had he taken to shelter? Harkness did not
pause to look. He left the branch tied fast. "A squirrel in a tree,"
he thought: the branch would mislead them. His feet found the
window-sill one story below. He drew himself into the room and let
loose of one strand of his rope as he entered.
Schwartzmann was gone. Harkness, with the bundle of wet fabric in his
hands, glanced quickly about. A door stood open--it was a closet--and
the rain-drenched man was hidden there an instant later. But he
stepped most carefully across the floor and touched his wet shoes only
to the rugs where their print was lost. And he held himself
breathlessly silent as he heard the volley of gutteral curses that
marked the return of Herr Schwartzmann some minutes later.
"Imbecile!" Schwartzmann shouted above the crash of the closing
window. "_Dumkopff!_ You have let him escape.
"Give me your pistol!" Harkness glimpsed the figure of his recent
guard. "Get another for yourself--find him!--shoot him down! A little
lead and detonite will end this foolishness!"
From his hiding place Harkness saw the bulky figure of Schwartzmann,
who made as if to follow where the other man had gone. The pistol was
in his hand. Walt Harkness knew all too well what that meant. The tiny
grain of detonite in the end of each leaden ball was the same terrible
explosive that drove their ships: it would tear him to pieces. And he
had to get this man.
He was tensed for a spring as Schwartzmann paused. From the wall
beyond him a red light was flashing; a crystal flamed forth with the
intense glare of a thousand fires. It checked the curses on the
other's thick lips; it froze Harkness to a rigid statue in the
darkness of his little room.
* * * * *
An emergency flash broadcast over the world! It meant that the News
Service had been commandeered. This flashing signal was calling to the
peoples of the earth!
What catastrophe did this herald? Had it to do with the Dark Moon? Not
since the uprising of the Mole-men, those creatures who had spewed
forth from the inner world, had the fiery crystal called!... It seemed
to Harkness that Schwartzmann was hours in reaching the switch.... A
voice came shouting into the room:
"By order of the Stratosphere Control Board," it commanded, "all
traffic is forbidden above the forty level. Liners take warning.
Descend at once."
Over and over it repeated the command--an order whose authority could
not be disregarded. In his inner vision Harkness saw the tumult in the
skies, the swift dropping of huge liners and great carriers of fast
freight, the scurrying of other craft to give clearance to these
monsters whose terrific speed must be slowly checked. But why? What
had happened? What could warrant such disruption of the traffic of the
world? His tensed muscles were aching unheeded; his sense of feeling
seemed lost, so intently was he waiting for some further word.
"Emergency news report," said another voice, and Harkness strained
every faculty to hear. "Highline ships attacked by unknown foe. Three
passenger carriers of the Northpolar Short Line reported crashed.
Incomplete warnings from their commanders indicate they were attacked.
Patrol ship has spotted one crash. They have landed beside it and are
reporting....
"The report is in; it is almost beyond belief. They say the liner is
empty, that no human body, alive or dead, is in the ship. She was
stripped of crew and passengers in the air.
"We await confirmation. Danger apparently centered over arctic
regions, but traffic has been ordered from all upper levels--"
The voice that had been held rigidly to the usual calm clarity of an
official announcer became suddenly high-pitched and vibrant. "Stand
by!" it shouted. "An S. O. S. is coming in. We will put it through our
amplifiers; give it to you direct!"
* * * * *
The newscaster crackled and hissed: they were waiving all technical
niceties at R. N. Headquarters, Harkness knew. The next voice came
clearly, though a trifle faint.
"Air Patrol! Help! Position eighty-two--fourteen north,
ninety-three--twenty east--Superliner Number 87-G, flying at R. A. plus
seven. We are attacked!--Air Patrol!--Air Patrol!--Eighty-two--fourteen
north, ninety-three--twenty--"
The voice that was repeating the position was lost in a pandemonium of
cries. Then--
"Monsters!" the voice was shouting. "They have seized the ship! They
are tearing at our ports--" A hissing crash ended in silence....
"Tearing at our ports!" Harkness was filled with a blinding nausea as
he sensed what had come with the crash. The opening ports--the
out-rush of air released to the thin atmosphere of those upper levels!
Earth pressure within the cabins of the ship; then in an
instant--none! Every man, every woman and child on the giant craft,
had died instantly!
The announcer had resumed, but above the sound was a guttural voice
that shouted hoarsely in accents of dismay. "Eighty-seven-G!"
Schwartzmann was exclaiming, "--Mein Gott! It iss our own ship, the
Alaskan! Our crack flyer!"
* * * * *
Harkness heard him but an instant, for another thought was hammering
at his brain. The position!--the ship's position!--it was almost above
his experimental plant! And Chet was there, and the ship.... What had
Chet said? He would fly it in two days--and this was the second day!
Chet had no radio-news; no instrument had been installed in the shop;
they had depended upon the one in Harkness' own ship. And now--
Walt Harkness' clear understanding had brought a vision that was
sickening, so plainly had he glimpsed the scene of terror in that
distant cabin. And now he saw with equal clarity another picture.
There was Chet, smiling, unafraid, proud of their joint accomplishment
and of the gleaming metal shape that he was lifting carefully from its
bed. He was floating it out to the open air; he was taking off, and
up--up where some horror awaited.
"Monsters!" that thin voice had cried in a tone that was vibrant with
terror. What could it be?--great ships out of space?--an invasion? Or
beasts?... But Harkness' vision failed him there. He knew only that a
fast ship was moored just outside. He had planned vaguely to seize it;
he had needed it for his own escape; but he needed it a thousand times
more desperately now. Chet might have been delayed, and he must warn
him.... The thoughts were flashing like hot sparks through his brain
as he leaped.
* * * * *
He bore the heavier body of Schwartzmann to the floor. He rained
smashing blows upon him with a furious frenzy that would not be
curbed. The weapon with its deadly detonite bullet came toward him.
In the same burst of fury he tore the weapon from the hand that held
it; then sprang to his feet to stand wild-eyed and panting is he aimed
the pistol at the cursing man and dragged him to his feet.
"The ship!" he said between heavy breaths, "--the ship! Take me to it!
You will tell anyone we meet it is all right. One word of alarm, one
wrong look, and I'll blow you to hell and make a break for it!"
The pistol under Harkness' silken jacket was pressed firmly into
Schwartzmann's side; it brought them safely past excited guards and
out into the storm; it held steady until the men had fought their way
through blasts of rain to the side of the anchored ship. Not till then
did Schwartzmann speak.
"Wait," he said. "Are you crazy, Harkness? You can never take off; the
trees are close; a straight ascent is needed. And the wind--!"
He struggled in the other's grasp as Harkness swung open the cabin
door, his fear of what seemed a certain death overmastering his fear
of the weapon. He was shouting for help as Harkness threw him roughly
aside and leaped into the ship.
Outside Harkness saw running figures as he threw on the motors. A
pistol's flash came sharply through the storm and dark. A window in
the chateau flashed into brilliance to frame the figure of a girl.
Tall and slender, she leaned forward with outstretched arms. She
seemed calling to him.
* * * * *
Harkness seized the controls, and knew as he did so that Schwartzmann
was right: he could never lift the ship in straight ascent. Before her
whirling fans could raise her they would be crashed among the trees.
But there were two helicopters--dual lift, one forward and one aft.
And Walt Harkness, pilot of the second class, earned immediate
disbarment or a much higher rating as he coolly fingered the controls.
He cut the motor on the big fan at the stern, threw the forward one on
full and set the blades for maximum lift, then released the hold-down
grips that moored her.
The grips let go with a crashing of metal arms. The bow shot upward
while a blast of wind tore at the stubby wings. The slim ship tried to
stand erect. Another furious, beating wind lifted her bodily, as
Harkness, clinging desperately within the narrow room, threw his full
weight upon the lever that he held.
The full blast of a detonite motor, on even a small ship, is terrific,
and the speedster of Herr Schwartzmann did not lack for power. Small
wonder that the rules of the Board of Control prohibit the use of the
stern blast under one thousand feet.
The roaring inferno from the stern must have torn the ground as if by
a mammoth plow; the figures of men must have scattered like leaves in
a gusty wind. The ship itself was racked and shuddering with the
impact of the battering thrust, but it rose like a rocket, though
canted on one wing, and the crashing branches of wind-torn trees
marked its passage on a long, curving slant that bent upward into the
dark. Within the control room Walter Harkness grinned happily as he
drew his bruised body from the place where he had been thrown, and
brought the ship to an even keel.
* * * * *
Nice work! But there was other work ahead, and the smile of
satisfaction soon passed. He held the nose up, and the wireless
warning went out before as the wild climb kept on.
Forty thousand was passed; then fifty and more; a hundred thousand;
and at length he was through the repelling area, that zone of
mysterious force, above which was a magnetic repulsion nearly
neutralizing gravity. He could fly level now; every unit of force
could be used for forward flight to hurl him onward faster and faster
into the night.
Harkness was flying where his license was void; he was flying, too,
where all aircraft were banned. But the rules of the Board of Control
meant nothing to him this night. Nor did the voluble and sulphurous
orders to halt that a patrol-ship flashed north. The patrol-ship was
on station; she was lost far astern before she could gather speed for
pursuit.
Walter Harkness had caught his position upon a small chart. It was a
sphere, and he led a thin wire from the point that was Vienna to a dot
that he marked on the sub-polar waste. He dropped a slender pointer
upon the wire and engaged its grooved tip, and then the flying was out
of his hands. The instrument before him, with its light bulbs and
swift moving discs, would count their speed of passage; it would hold
the ship steadily upon an unerring course and allow for drift of
winds. The great-circle course was simple; the point he marked was
drawing them as if it had been a magnet--drawing them as it drew the
eyes of Walt Harkness, staring strainingly ahead as if to span the
thousands of miles of dark.
CHAPTER III
_The Space Terror_
The control room was glassed in on all sides. The thick triple lenses
were free from clouding, and the glasses between them kept out the
biting cold of the heights. The glass was strong, to hold the pressure
of one atmosphere that was maintained within the ship. The lookouts
gave free vision in all directions except directly below the hull,
and a series of mirrors corrected this defect.
But Walt Harkness had eyes solely for the black void ahead. Only the
brilliant stars shone now in the mantle of velvety night. No flashing
lights denoted the passing of liners, for they were safe in the harbor
of the lower levels. He moved the controls once to avoid the green
glare of an ascending area, then he knew that there were no ships to
fear, and let the automatic control put him back on his course.
Before him, under a hooded light, was a heavy lens. It showed in
magnification a portion of the globe. There were countries and seas on
a vari-colored map, and one pin-point of brilliance that marked his
ever-changing position.
He watched the slow movement of the glowing point. The Central
Federated States of Europe were behind him; the point was tracing a
course over the vast reaches of the patchwork map that meant the many
democracies of Russia. This cruiser of Schwartzmann's was doing five
hundred miles an hour--and the watching man cursed under his breath at
the slow progress of the tiny light.
But the light moved, and the slow hours passed, while Harkness tried
to find consolation in surmises he told himself must be true.
Chet had been delayed, he insisted to himself; Chet could never have
finished the work in two days; he had been bluffing good-naturedly
when he threatened to fly the ship alone....
* * * * *
The Arctic Ocean was beneath. The tiny light had passed clear of the
land on the moving chart.
He would be there soon.... Of course Chet had been fooling; he was
always ready for a joke.... Great fellow, Chet! They had taken their
training together, and Chet had gone on to win a master-pilot's
rating, the highest to be had....
Another hour, and a rising hum from a buzzer beside him gave warning
of approach to the destination he had fixed. The automatic control was
warning him to decelerate. Harkness well knew what was expected of the
pilot when that humming sounded; yet, with total disregard for the
safety of his helicopters, he dived at full speed for the denser air
beneath.
He felt the weight that came suddenly upon him as he drove through and
beneath the repelling area, and he flattened out and checked his
terrific speed when the gauges quivered at forty thousand.
Then down and still down in a long, slanting dive, till a landmark was
found. He was off his course a bit, but it was a matter of minutes
until he circled, checked his wild flight, and sank slowly beneath the
lift of the dual fans to set the ship down as softly as a snowflake
beside a building that was dark and forbiddingly silent--a lonely
outpost in a lonely waste.
No answer came to his hail. The building was empty; the ship was gone.
And Chet! Chet Bullard!... Harkness' head was heavy on his shoulders;
his feet took him with hopeless, lagging steps to his waiting ship. He
was tired--and the long strain of the flight had been in vain. He was
suddenly certain of disaster. And Chet--Chet was up there at some
hitherto untouched height, battling with--what?
* * * * *
He broke into a stumbling run and drew himself within the little ship.
He was helpless; the ship was unarmed, even if the weapons of his
world were of use against this unknown terror; but he knew that he was
going up. He would find Chet if he could get within reach of his ship;
he would warn him.... He tried to tell himself that he might yet be in
time.
The little cruiser rose slowly under the lift of the fans; then he
opened the throttle and swept out in a parabolic curve that ended in a
vertical line. Straight up, the ship roared. It shot through a stratum
of clouds. The sun that was under the horizon shone redly now; it grew
to a fiery ball; the earth contracted; the markings that were
coastlines and mountains drew in upon themselves.
He passed the repelling area and felt the lift of its mysterious
force--the "R. A. Effect" that permitted the high-level flying of the
world. His speed increased. It would diminish again as the R. A.
Effect grew less. Record flights had been made to another ten
thousand.... He wondered what the ceiling would be for the ship
beneath him. He would soon learn....
He set his broadcast call for the number of Chet's ship. They had been
given an experimental license, and "E--L--29-X" the instrument was
flashing, "E--L--29-X." Above the heaviside layer that had throttled
the radio of earlier years, he knew that his call from so small an
instrument as this would be carried for hundreds of miles.
He reached the limit of his climb and was suddenly weightless,
floating aimlessly within the little room; the ship was falling, and
he was falling with it. His speed of descent built up to appalling
figures until his helicopters found air to take their thrust.
And still no answering word from Chet. The cruiser was climbing again
to the heights. The hands of Harkness, trembling slightly now, held
her to a vertical climb, while his eyes crept back to the unlit plate
where Chet's answering call should flash. But his own call would be a
guide to Chet; the directional finders on the new ship would trace the
position of his own craft if the new ship were afloat--if it were not
lying crushed on the ice below, empty, like the liners, of any sign
of life.
* * * * *
His despairing mind snapped sharply to attention. His startled jerk
threw the ship widely from her course. A voice was speaking--Chet's
voice! It was shouting in the little room!
"Go down, Walt," it told him. "For God's sake, go down! I'm right
above you; I've been fighting them for an hour; but I'll make it!"
He heard the clash of levers thrown sharply over in that distant ship;
his own hands were frozen to the controls. His ship roared on in its
upward course, the futile "E--L--29-X" of his broadcast call still
going out to a man who could not remove his hands to send an answer,
but who had managed to switch on his sending set into which he could
shout.
Harkness was staring into the black void whence the wireless voice had
come--staring into the empty night. And then he saw them.
The thin air was crystal clear; his gaze penetrated for miles. And far
up in the heights, where his own ship could never reach and where no
clouds could be, were diaphanous wraiths. Like streamers of cloud in
long serpentine forms, they writhed and shot through space with
lightning speed. They grew luminous as they moved living streamers of
moonlit clouds.... A whirling cluster was gathered into a falling
mass. Out of it in a sharp right turn shot a projectile, tiny and
glistening against the velvet black. The swarm closed in again....
There were other lashing shapes that came diving down. They were
coming toward him.
And, in his ears, a voice was imploring: "Down! down! The R. A.
tension may stop them!... Go down! I am coming--you can't help--I'll
make it--they'll rip you to pieces--"
The wraith-like coils that had left the mass above had straightened to
sharp spear-heads of speed. They were darting upon him, swelling to
monstrous size in their descent. And Walt Harkness saw in an instant
the folly of delay: he was not helping Chet, but only hindering....
His ship swung end for end under his clutching hands, and the thrust
of his stern exhaust was added to the pull of Earth to throw him into
a downward flight that tore even the thin air into screaming
fragments.
* * * * *
One glance through the lookouts behind him showed lashing serpent
forms, translucent as pale fire; impossible beasts from space. His
reason rejected them while his eyes told him the terrible truth.
Despite the speed of his dive, they were gaining on him, coming up
fast; one snout that ended in a cupped depression was plain. A mouth
gaped beneath it; above was a row of discs that were eyes--eyes that
shone more brightly than the luminous body behind--eyes that froze the
mind and muscles of the watching man in utter terror.
He forced himself to look ahead, away from the spectral shapes that
pursued. They were close, yet he thrilled with the realization that he
had helped Chet in some small degree: he had drawn off this group of
attackers.
He felt the upthrust of the R. A. Effect; he felt, too, the pull of a
body that had coiled about his ship. No intangible, vaporous thing,
this. The glass of his control room was obscured by a clinging,
glowing mass while still the little cruiser tore on.
Before his eyes the glowing windows went dark, and he felt the
clutching thing stripped from the hull as the ship shot through the
invisible area of repulsion. A scant hundred yards away a huge
cylinder drove crashingly past. Its metal shone and glittered in the
sun; he knew it for his own ship--his and Chet's. And what was within
it? What of Chet? The loudspeaker was silent.
He eased the thundering craft that bore him into a slow-forming curve
that did not end for fourscore miles before the wild flight was
checked. He swung it back, to guide the ship with shaking hands where
a range of mountains rose in icy blackness, and where a gleaming
cylinder rested upon a bank of snow whose white expanse showed a
figure that came staggering to meet him.
* * * * *
Some experiences and dangers that come to men must be talked over at
once; thrills and excitement and narrow escapes must be told and
compared. And then, at rare times, there are other happenings that
strike too deeply for speech--terrors that rouse emotions beyond mere
words.
It was so with Harkness and Chet. A gripping of hands; a perfunctory,
"Good work, old man!"--and that was all. They housed the two ships,
closing the great doors to keep out the arctic cold; and then Chet
Bullard threw himself exhausted upon a cot, while he stared, still
wordless, at the high roof overhead. But his hands that gripped and
strained at whatever they touched told of the reaction to his wild
flight.
Harkness was examining their ship, where shreds of filmy, fibrous
material still clung, when Chet spoke.
"You knew they were there?" he asked, "--and you came up to warn me?"
"Sure," Harkness answered simply.
"Thanks," Chet told him with equal brevity.
Another silence. Then: "All right, tell me! What's the story?"
And Walt Harkness told him in brief sentences of the world-wide
warning that had flashed, of the liners crashing to earth and their
cabins empty of human life.
"They could do it," said Chet. "They could open the ports and ram
those snaky heads inside to feed." He seemed to muse for a moment upon
what might have come to him.
"My speed saved me," he told Harkness. "Man, how that ship can travel!
I shook them off a hundred times--outmaneuvered them when I could--but
they came right back for more.
"How do they propel themselves?" he demanded.
"No one knows," Harkness told him. "That luminosity in action means
something--some conversion of energy, electrical, perhaps, to carry
them on lines of force of which we know nothing as yet. That's a
guess--but they do it. You and I can swear to that."
Chet was pondering deeply. "High-level lanes are closed," he said,
"and we are blockaded like the rest of the world. It looks as if our
space flights were off. And the Dark Moon trip! We could have made it,
too."
* * * * *
If there was a questioning note in those last remarks it was answered
promptly.
"No!" said Harkness with explosive emphasis. "They won't stop me." He
struck one clenched fist upon the gleaming hull beside him.
"This is all I've got. And I won't have this if that gang of
Schwartzmann's gets its hands upon it. The best I could expect would
be a long-drawn fight in the courts, and I can't afford it. I am going
up. We've got something good here; we know it's good. And we'll prove
it to the world by reaching the Dark Moon."
Another filmy, fibrous mass that had been torn from one of the
monsters of the heights slid from above to make a splotch of colorless
matter upon the floor.
Harkness stared at it. The firm line of his lips set more firmly
still, but his eyes had another expression as he glanced at Chet. He
would go alone if he must; no barricade of unearthly beasts could hold
him from the great adventure. But Chet?--he must not lead Chet to his
death.
"Of course," he said slowly, "you've had one run-in with the brutes."
Again he paused. "We don't know where they come from, but my guess is
from the Dark Moon. They may be too much for us.... If you don't feel
like tackling them again--"
The figure of Chet Bullard sprang upright from the cot. His harsh
voice told of the strain he had endured and his reaction from it.
"What are you trying to tell me?" he demanded. "Are you trying to
leave me out?" Then at the look in the other's eyes he grinned
sheepishly at his own outburst.
And Walter Harkness threw one arm across Chet's shoulder as he said;
"I hoped you would feel that way about it. Now let's make some plans."
Provisions for one year! Even in concentrated form this made a
prodigious supply. And, arms--pistols and rifles, with cases of
cartridges whose every bullet was tipped with the deadly detonite--all
this was brought from the nearest accessible points. They landed,
though, in various cities, keeping Schwartzmann's ship as
inconspicuous as possible, and made their purchases at different
supply houses to avoid too-pointed questioning. For Harkness found
that he and Bullard were marked men.
The newscaster in the Schwartzmann cabin brought the information. It
brought, too, continued reports of the menace in the upper air. It
told of patrol-ships sent down to destruction with no trace of
commander or crew; and a cruiser of the International Peace
Enforcement Service came back with a story of horror and helplessness.
Their armament was useless. No shells could be timed to match the
swift flight of the incredible monsters, and impact charges failed to
explode on contact; the filmy, fibrous masses offered little
resistance to the shells that pierced them. Yet a wrecked after
compartment and smashed port-lights and doors gave evidence of the
strength of the brutes when their great sinuous bodies, lined with
rows of suction discs, secured a hold.
"Speed!" was Chet Bullard's answer to this, when the newscaster
ceased. "Speed!--until we find something better. I got clear of them
when they caught me unprepared, but we can rip right through them now
that we know what we're up against."
* * * * *
He had turned again to the packing of supplies, but Harkness was held
by the sound of his own name.
Mr. Walter Harkness, late of New York, was very much in the day's
news. When a young millionaire loses all his wealth beneath a tidal
wave; when, further, he flies to Vienna and transfers all rights in
the great firm of Harkness, Incorporated, to the Schwartzmann
interests in part settlement of his obligations; and, still further,
when he is driven to fury by his losses and attacks the great Herr
Schwartzmann in a murderous frenzy, wounds him and escapes in
Schwartzmann's own ship--that is an item that is worth broadcasting
between announcements of greater importance.
It interested Harkness, beyond a doubt. He remembered the shot outside
the cabin as he took off in his wild flight. Schwartzmann had been
wounded, it seemed, and he was to be blamed for the assault. He
smiled grimly as he heard the warrant for his arrest broadcast. Every
patrol-ship would be on the watch. And there would be a dozen
witnesses to swear to the truth of Schwartzmann's lie.
The plan seemed plain to him. He saw himself in custody; taken to
Vienna. And then, at the best, months of waiting in the psychopathic
ward of a great institution where the influence of Herr Schwartzmann
would not be slight. And, meanwhile, Schwartzmann would have his ship.
Clever! But not clever enough. He would fool them, he and Chet.
And then he recalled the girl, Mademoiselle Diane, a slim figure
outlined in a lighted window of the old chateau. Was there hope there?
he wondered. Had her clear, smiling eyes seen what occurred?
"Nonsense," he told himself. "She saw nothing in that storm. And,
besides, she is one of their crowd--tarred with the same stick. Forget
her."
But he knew, as he framed the unspoken words, that the advice was
vain. He would never forget her. There was a picture in his mind that
could not be blotted out--a picture of a tall, slender girl, trim and
straight in her mannish attire, who came toward him from her little
red speedster. She held out her hand impulsively, and her eyes were
smiling as she said; "We will be generous, Monsieur Harkness--"
"Generous!" His smile was bitter as he turned to help Chet in their
final work.
CHAPTER IV
_The Rescue in Space_
How often are the great things of life submerged beneath the trivial.
The vast reaches of space that must be traversed; the unknown world
that awaited them out there; its lands and seas and the life that was
upon it: Walter Harkness was pondering all this deep within his mind.
It must have been the same with Chet, yet few words of speculation
were exchanged. Instead, the storage of supplies, a checking and
rechecking of lists, additional careful testing of generators--such
details absorbed them.
And the heavy, gray powder with its admixture of radium that
transformed it to super-detonite--this must be carefully charged into
the magazines of the generators. A thousand such responsibilities--and
yet the moment finally came when all was done.
The midnight sun shone redly from a distant horizon. It cast strange
lights across the icy waste. And it flashed back in crimson splendor
from the gleaming hull that floated from the hangar and came to rest
upon the snowy world.
The two men closed the great doors, and it was as if they were
shutting themselves off from their last contact with the world. They
stood for long moments, silent, in the utter silence of the frozen
north.
Chet Bullard turned, and Harkness gripped his hand. He was suddenly
aware of his thankfulness for the companionship of this tall, blond
youngster. He tried to speak--but what words could express the tumult
of emotions that arose within him? His throat was tight....
It was Chet who broke the tense silence; his happy grin flashed like
sunshine across his lean face.
"You're right," he answered his companion's unspoken thoughts; "it's a
great little old world we're leaving. I wonder what the new one will
be like."
And Harkness smiled back. "Let's go!" he said, and turned toward the
waiting ship.
* * * * *
The control room was lined with the instruments they had installed. A
nitron illuminator flashed brilliantly upon shining levers--emergency
controls that they hoped they would not have to use. Harkness placed
his hand upon a small metal ball as Chet reported all ports closed.
The ball hung free in space, supported by the magnetic attraction of
the curved bars that made a cage about it. An adaptation of the
electrol device that had appeared on the most modern ships, Harkness
knew how to handle it. Each movement of the ball within its cage,
where magnetic fields crossed and recrossed, would bring instant
response. To lift the ball would be to lift the ship; a forward
pressure would throw their stern exhaust into roaring life that would
hurl them forward; a circular motion would roll them over and over. It
was as if he held the ship itself within his hand.
Chet touched a button, and a white light flashed to confirm his report
that all was clear. Harkness gently raised the metal ball.
Beneath them a soft thunder echoed from the field of snow, and came
back faintly from icy peaks. The snow and ice fell softly away as they
rose.
A forward pressure upon the ball, and a louder roaring answered from
the stern. A needle quivered and swung over on a dial as their speed
increased. Beneath them was a blur of whirling white; ahead was an
upthrust mountain range upon which they were driving. And Harkness
thrilled with the sense of power that his fingers held as he gently
raised the ball and nosed the ship upward in meteor-flight.
The floor beneath them swung with their change of pace. Without it,
they would have been thrown against the wall at their backs. The
clouds that had been above them lay dead ahead; the ship was pointing
straight upward. It flashed silently into the banks of gray, through
them, and out into clear air above. And always the quivering needle
crept up to new marks of speed, while their altimeter marked off the
passing levels.
* * * * *
They were through the repelling area when Harkness relinquished the
controls to Chet. The metal ball hung unmoving; it would hold
automatically to the direction and speed that had been established.
The hand of the master-pilot found it quickly. They were in dangerous
territory now--a vast void under a ceiling of black, star-specked
space. No writhing, darting wraith-forms caught the rays of the
distant sun. Their way seemed clear.
Harkness' eyes were straining ahead, searching for serpent forms, when
the small cone beside him hummed a warning that they were not alone.
Another ship in this zone of danger?--it seemed incredible. But more
incredible was the scream that rang shrilly from the cone. "Help! Oh,
help me!" a feminine voice implored.
Harkness sprang for the instrument where the voice was calling. "We
aren't the only fools up here," he exclaimed; "and that's a woman's
voice, too!" He pressed a button, and a needle swung instantly to
point the direction whence the radio waves were coming.
"Hard a-port!" he ordered. "Ten degrees, and hold her level. No--two
points down."
But Chet's steady hand had anticipated the order. He had seen the
direction-finder, and he swung the metal ball with a single motion
that swept them in a curve that seemed crushing them to the floor.
The ship levelled off; the ball was thrust forward, and the thunder
from the stern was deafening despite their insulated walls. The
shuddering structure beneath them was hurled forward till the needle
of the speed-indicator jammed tightly against its farthest pin. And
ahead of them was no emptiness of space.
* * * * *
The air was alive with darting forms. Harkness saw them plainly
now--great trailing streamers of speed that shot downward from the
heights. The sun caught them in their flight to make iridescent
rainbow hues that would have been beautiful but for the hideous heads,
the sucker-discs that lined the bodies and the one great disc that
cupped on the end of each thrusting snout.
And beneath those that fell from on high was a cluster of the same
sinister, writhing shapes which clung to a speeding ship that rolled
and swung vainly in an effort to shake them off.
The coiling, slashing serpent-forms had fastened to the doomed ship.
Their thrashing bodies streamed out behind it. They made a cluster of
flashing color whose center point was a tiny airship, a speedster, a
gay little craft. And her sides shone red as blood--red as they had
shone on the grassy lawn of an old chateau near far-off Vienna.
"It's Diane!" Harkness was shouting. "Good Lord, Chet, it's Diane!"
This girl he had told himself he would forget. She was there in that
ship, her hands were wrenching at the controls in a fight that was
hopeless. He saw her so plainly--a pitiful, helpless figure, fighting
vainly against this nightmare attack.
Only an instant of blurred wonderment at her presence up there--then a
frenzy possessed him. He must save her! He leaped to the side of the
crouching pilot, but his outstretched hands that clutched at the
control stopped motionless in air.
* * * * *
Chet Bullard, master-pilot of the first rank, upon whose chest was the
triple star that gave him authority to command all the air-levels of
earth, was tense and crouching. His eyes were sighting along an
instrument of his own devising as if he were aiming some super-gun of
a great air cruiser.
But he was riding the projectile itself and guiding it as he rode. He
threw the ship like a giant shell in a screaming, sweeping arc upon
the red craft that drove across their bow.
They were crashing upon it; the red speedster swelled instantly before
their eyes. Harkness winced involuntarily from the crash that never
came.
Chet must have missed it by inches, Harkness knew; but he knew, too,
that the impact he felt was no shattering of metal upon metal. The
heavy windows of the control room went black with the masses of
fibrous flesh that crashed upon them; then cleared in an instant as
the ship swept through.
Behind them a red ship was falling--falling free! And vaporous masses,
ripped to ribbons, were falling, too, while other wraith-like forms
closed upon them in cannibalistic feasting.
Their terrific speed swept them on into space. When the pilot could
check it, and turn, they found that the red ship was gone.
"After it!" Harkness was shouting. "She went down out of control, but
they didn't get her. They've only sprung the door-ports a crack,
releasing the internal pressure." He told himself this was true; he
would not admit for an instant the possible truth of the vision that
flashed through his mind--a ripping of doors--a thrusting snout that
writhed in where a girl stood fighting.
"Get it!" he ordered; "get it! I'll stand by for rescue."
* * * * *
He sprang for the switch that controlled the great rescue magnets. Not
often were they used, but every ship must have them: it was so
ordered by the Board of Control. And every ship had an inset of iron
in its non-magnetic hull.
His hand was upon the switch in an agony of waiting. Outside were
other beastly shapes, like no horror of earth, that came slantingly
upon them, but even their speed was unequal to the chase of this new
craft that left them far astern. Harkness saw the last ones vanish as
Chet drove down through the repelling area. And he had eyes only for
the first sight of the tiny ship that had fallen so helplessly.
Ahead and below them the sun marked a brilliant red dot. It was
falling with terrific speed, and yet, so swift was their own pace, it
took form too quickly: they would overshoot the mark.... Harkness felt
the ship shudder in slackening speed as the blast from the bow roared
out.
They were turning; aiming down. The red shape passed from view where
Harkness stood. His hand was tight upon the heavy switch.
Chet's voice came sharp and clear: "Rescue switch--ready?" He appeared
as cool and steady as if he were commanding on an experimental test
instead of making his first rescue in the air. And Harkness answered:
"Ready."
A pause. To the waiting man it was an eternity of suspense. Then,
"Contact!" Chet shouted, and Harkness' tense muscles threw the current
into crashing life.
* * * * *
He felt the smash and jar as the two ships came together. He knew that
the great magnets in their lower hull had gripped the plates on the
top of the other ship. He was certain that the light fans of the
smaller craft must have been crushed; but they had the little red
speedster in an unshakable grip; and they would land it gently. And
then--then he would know!
The dreadful visions in his mind would not down.... Chet's voice
broke in upon him.
"I can't maintain altitude," Chet was saying. "Our vertical blasts
strike upon the other ship; they are almost neutralized." He pointed
to a needle that was moving with slow certainty and deadly persistence
across a graduated dial. It was their low-level altimeter, marking
their fall. Harkness stared at it in stunned understanding.
"We can't hold on," the pilot was saying; "We'll crash sure as fate.
But I'm darned if we'll ever let go!"
Harkness made no reply. He had dashed for an after-compartment to
their storage place of tools, and returned with a blow-torch in his
hand. He lit it and checked its blue flame to a needle of fire.
"Listen, Chet," he said, and the note of command in his voice told who
was in charge, at the final analysis, in this emergency. "I will be
down below. You call out when we are down to twenty thousand: I can
stand the thin air there. I will open the emergency slot in the lower
hull."
"You're going down?" Chet asked. He glanced at the torch and nodded
his understanding. "Going to cut your way through and--"
"I'll get her if she's there to get," Harkness told him grimly. "At
five hundred, if I'm not back, pull the switch."
* * * * *
The pilot's reply came with equal emphasis. "Make it snappy," he said:
"this collision instrument has picked up the signals of five
patrol-ships a hundred miles to the south."
They dropped swiftly to the twenty level, and Harkness heard the
deafening roar of their lower exhausts as he opened the slot in their
ship's hull. He dropped to the red surface held close beneath, while
the cold gripped him and the whirling blasts of air tore at him. But
the torch did its work, and he lowered himself into the cabin of the
little craft that had been the plaything of Mademoiselle Diane.
The cabin was a splintered wreck, where a horrible head had smashed in
search of food. One entrance port was torn open, and the head itself
still hung where it had lodged. The mouth gaped flabbily open; above
it was the suction cup that formed a snout; and above that, a row of
staring, sightless eyes. Chet had slammed into the mass of serpents
just in time, Harkness realized. Just in time, or just too late....
The door to the control room was sprung and jammed. He pried it open
to see the unconscious body that lay huddled upon the floor. But he
knew, with a wave of thankfulness that was suffocating, that the brute
had not reached her; only the slow release of the air-pressure had
rendered her unconscious. He was beside her in an instant.
* * * * *
He was dimly aware of the thunder of exhausts and the shrill scream of
helicopters as he reached the upper surface of the red ship and forced
his unconscious burden into the emergency slot above his head.
"They're here!" Chet was shouting excitedly. "We're ordered to halt.
Looks as if our flight was postponed." He tried to smile, but the
experiment was a failure.
"I am dodging around to keep that big one from grabbing us with its
magnet. Schwartzmann is aboard one of the patrols; they think the girl
is in her ship. They won't fire on us as long as we hang on. But we'll
crash if we do that, and they'll nail us if we let go."
Harkness had placed the girl's body upon the floor. His answer was a
quick leap to the pilot's side. "See to her," he ordered; "I'll take
the ship. Stop us now? Like hell they will! What's all our power
for?"
One glance gave him the situation: the big gray fighter above,
slipping down to seize them with her powerful magnets; four other
patrol cruisers that slowly circled, their helicopters holding them
even with the two ships that clung together in swift descent.
Chet was right; no burst of speed could save them from the guns of the
patrols if they dropped the red speedster and made a break for it.
They thought Diane was still in her ship, and a patrol would have the
little craft safe before she had dropped a thousand feet. Their own
stern exhaust would be torn by a detonite shell, and the big cruiser
would seize them in the same way. No--they must hang onto the girl's
ship and outmaneuver the others. He pressed the metal ball forward to
the limit of its space, and the stern exhaust crashed into action with
all the suddenness of his own resolve.
The ship beneath him threw itself straight ahead, flashed under the
patrol-ship that blocked them, and was away. The weight below, and its
resistance to the air, dragged them down, but Harkness brought the
ball up, and the ship answered with a slow lift of the bow that aimed
them straight out into space.
A vertical climb!--and the voice from the instrument beside him was
shouting orders to halt. On each side were patrol-ships that roared
upward with him.
"Cut those motors!" the voice commanded. "Release that ship! Halt, or
we will fire!"
* * * * *
Harkness threw his ship into a wild spiral for reply, and the thin
crack of guns came to him from outside. Down! A headlong dive! Then
out and up again!
He was through the repelling area in a twisting, rocking flight. Not
hit as yet; they had to aim carefully to avoid damaging the red
craft.... He was straining his eyes for a glimpse of serpent-forms,
and he laughed softly under his breath at thought of his strange
allies. Laughed!--until he saw them coming.
He slammed down the switch on his own broadcast sender. "Back!" he
shouted; "back, all of you! Look up! Look above you! The monsters are
coming!--the air-beasts!--they are attacking!"
He threw his own ship into a dive; saw the others do likewise; then
leaped for the switch on the rescue magnets and pulled it open.
He felt the red ship fall clear. He swung his own ship free and aimed
it out and up on a long line of speed. Beside him a voice from a
distant, fleeing patrol was shouting; "Come back, you fool! Down!
Down, through the R. A.!"
One backward glance showed him that his pursuers were safe. The
serpents had turned to pursue him, and other writhing luminosities
were falling from above. He swung head on, his motors wide open, his
speed building up and up, to crash softly through the advance guard of
the giant creatures out of space.
Nothing could stop him! He was trembling with the knowledge, and with
the sheer joy of the adventure. Nothing could check them; neither
cruisers nor monsters; nothing of earth or of space. They were free;
they were on their way out--out where a new world awaited--where the
Dark Moon raced on her unlighted path!
* * * * *
For the moment he had forgotten their passenger. The thrill of combat
and the ecstasy of winning freedom for their great adventure had
filled him to forgetfulness of all else.
"We're off!" he shouted. "Off for the Dark Moon!" Then he remembered,
and turned where Chet was supporting the head of a slim girl whose
eyes opened to look about, to glance from Chet to Harkness and back to
Chet who was holding her.
"You saved me," she breathed, "from them!" She raised one hand weakly
to cover her eyes at memory of those writhing shapes, then let it fall
as other memories crowded in.
"The patrol-ships!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "You must...." Her
voice trailed off into silence.
She was able to stand, and with Chet's help she came slowly to her
feet as Harkness reached her. His voice was harsh and scornful; all
elation had left him. He forced himself to hold his unsmiling gaze
steadily upon the soft brown eyes that turned to his.
"Yes," he said; "we must 'surrender'--that was the word you wanted. We
must surrender!... Well, Mam'selle Diane, we're not in a surrendering
mood to-day. We've got away; made our escape!"
He laughed loudly and contemptuously, though he winced at the look of
hurt that opened the brown eyes wide.
"You brought the patrol," he went on; "you learned where we were--"
"Herr Schwartzmann did," she interrupted in a quiet voice. "He located
you; your signals were picked up.... They left two hours before I
did," she added enigmatically. "I had to fly high, above the R. A. for
greater speed."
Walt Harkness was bewildered. What did this mean? He tried to preserve
the pose of hard indifference that was becoming increasingly
difficult.
"More generosity?" he inquired. "You had to see the end of the
hunt--be in at the death?"
"In at the death!" she echoed, and laughed in a tone that trembled and
broke. "I nearly was, truly. But, no, my dear Monsieur Harkness:
incredible as it seems, in view of your unfriendly reception, I came
to warn you!... But, enough of that. Tell me--you see how interested
I am in your plans?--what did you say of the Dark Moon?"
* * * * *
Walter Harkness tried to rearrange his jumbled thoughts. She had come
to warn them. Was this true? Or was this girl, who laughed so lightly,
playing with him?
"Yes," he said dully, "we were bound for the Dark Moon. The Patrol
couldn't stop us, nor the beasts that have paralyzed the flying
service of the earth; but you have done it. We will turn back at once,
and return you safely--"
He was again at the controls, one hand extended for the metal ball,
when her slim hand closed upon his wrist.
"I know Herr Schwartzmann's plans," she said quietly. "He would ruin
you; seize your ship; steal for himself the glory of your invention.
Would you go back and deliver yourself into his hands--because of me?"
The brown eyes, Harkness found, were upon his with an expression he
could not fathom.
"Yes," he said simply.
And still the eyes looked into his. There was laughter in them, and
something else whose meaning was concealed.
"I ask you not to do this," she was saying. "You will succeed; I read
it in your face. Let me go with you; let me share in the adventure. I
am begging this of you. It is your turn to be generous."
Harkness' hand upon the metal ball held it motionless within its
enclosing cage. From astern there came to him the muffled roar of a
blast that drove them on and out into space--black, velvety space,
thick-studded with sharp points of light.... He stared into that
wondrous night, then back into the eyes that looked steadily,
unfathomably, into his.... And his hand was unresisting as the
strong, slender fingers about his wrist drew it back....
They were off for the Dark Moon: their journey, truly, was begun. And
this girl, whom he had told himself to forget, was going with them.
There was much that he did not understand, but he knew that he was
glad with a gladness that transcended all previous thrills of the
perilous plan.
CHAPTER V
_The "Dark Moon"_
They were seated in the cabin of the man-made meteor that the brain of
Harkness had conceived--two men and a girl. And they stared at one
another unsmilingly, with eyes which reflected their comprehension of
the risks that they ran and the dangers which lay ahead in the dark
void. Yet the brown eyes of Mam'selle Diane, no less than the others,
were afire with the thrill of adventure--the same response to the same
lure that has carried men to each new exploration--or to their death.
Behind them, a rear lookout port framed a picture of awful majesty.
The earth was a great disc, faintly luminous in a curtain of dead
black. From beyond it, a hidden sun made glorious flame of the disc's
entire rim. And, streaming toward it, a straight, blasting line from
their stern exhaust, was an arrow of blue.
It had taken form slowly, that arrow of blue fire, and Harkness
answered an unspoken question from the girl.
"Hydrogen and oxygen," he explained. "It is an explosive mixture at
this height, but too thin to take fire. It will pass. Beyond this is
pure hydrogen. And then, nothing."
He turned to switch on their radio receiver, and he set it for the
newscasting waves that went forth from the most powerful station of
Earth, the Press Tower of New York. A voice came to them faintly. For
a time it vied with the muffled roar of their thundering exhaust; then
it lost volume, faded, and was finally gone.
Their last contact with Earth was severed. There remained only
blackness, and a great abyss through which they were plunging.
* * * * *
Harkness busied himself with calculations. He would have spoken, but
the silence that followed the vanished voice of Earth had robbed his
own voice of control.
A telescope sight was fixed rigid with the axis of their ship. He
looked through it, moved their controls, and brought the cross-hairs
of his instrument to bear upon a star.
"That's about right," he said quietly. "I got all the information that
the observatories had on the orbit of the Dark Moon. It is circling
the Earth from north to south. It coincided for a short time with our
own moon when it first hit; that's what kicked up the big wave and
jarred us up. But it swung off and seems to have settled down in its
own orbit now.
"Two hundred thousand miles away is what they make it, though I think
that is more or less of a guess. I wish we could measure our speed."
He looked at the earth-induction speed-indicator. Useless now, it
registered zero.
"Well," he added, "we are shooting for the North Star. We will pass
close to the Dark Moon's orbit; it should be about over the Pole on
this date. And there is one good safe bet, anyhow; there is nothing
between here and there to stop us."
He was being weakly facetious, but his efforts met with an
enthusiastic response. The tension of the moment, it was plain, had
not affected Harkness alone. But it was many hours before the error of
his statement was made manifest to all.
An island, faintly luminous, lay ahead. It grew to enormous size as
they dashed upon it. Harkness sprang for the controls, but, before he
could reach them, they had struck the vast field of pale green light,
flashed through it, and left it diminishing in size behind them. Then,
other lights, not brilliant, but like phosphorescent bodies, that came
and went and flashed by with blinding speed.
* * * * *
Another luminous area rushed at them from ahead. At first it was a
speck, then an island, and then a continent in size, and through it
moved other brighter lights. This time a slight suggestion of an
impact was felt. Here was matter of a form they could not guess. It
was Chet who pointed to the glass of their control room. The heavy
lights of the lookouts were smeared with sticky fluid that drew
together in trickling streams.
"Nothing between us and the Dark Moon?" he asked of Harkness. "And
space is an empty void? We Earth-creatures are a conceited lot."
"Meaning?" the girl questioned.
"Meaning that because we live on Earth--walk on solid ground, swim in
the water and fly in the air--we deny the existence of life in space.
There's the answer written in the blood of some life that was snuffed
out as we hit it."
Harkness shook his head doubtfully. "Matter of some sort," he
admitted, "and the serpents came from somewhere; but, as for the rest,
the idea that the ocean of space is filled with life as our
Earth-oceans are--creatures living and moving through unknown fields
of force...." He did not finish the denial, but looked with wondering
gaze at the myriad points that flashed softly into glowing masses and
darted aside before their onward rush.
It was hours later that he checked their flight. Slowly at first he
cut off the exhaust from their stern and opened the bow valve.
Slowly, for their wild speed must slacken as it had been built up, by
slow degrees. The self-adjusting floor swung forward and up. Their
deceleration was like the pull of gravity, and now straight ahead
seemed down.
More hours, and they were at rest, floating in an ethereal ocean, an
ocean teeming with strange life. Each face was pressed close to a
lookout port. No one of the three could speak; each was too absorbed
in the story his eyes were reading--this story of a strange, new
existence where no life should have been.
Animalculae. They came in swarms; cloud masses of them floated past;
and swirls of phosphorescent fire marked the presence of larger
creatures that moved among them. Large and small, each living creature
was invisible until it moved; then came the greenish light, like
phosphorescence and yet unlike.
* * * * *
Still Harkness could not force himself to believe the irrefutable
evidence. What of astronomy? he asked himself. Why was this matter not
visible through telescopes? Why did it not make its presence known
through interference? Through refraction of light?... And then he
realized the incredible distance within the scope of his vision; he
knew that this swarming life was actually more widely spaced; and the
light of a brilliant star shone toward him through the center of a
living mass to prove that here was matter that offered no resistance
to the passage of light.
A void of nothingness was before his eyes. He saw its black emptiness
change to pale green fire that swirled and fled before a large shape.
The newcomer swept down like light itself. Softly green like the
others, its rounded body was outlined in a huge circle of orange
light. Like a cyclopean pod, it was open at one end, and that open end
closed and opened and closed again as the creature gulped in uncounted
millions of the tiny, luminous dots--every one, as Harkness now knew,
a living thing.
Strange light whirled into life and vanished, each evidencing a battle
where life took life in this ocean of the invisible living. A gasp
from the girl brought Harkness quickly about.
"Another one!" she said breathlessly, and pointed where the blackness
was looped with writhing fire. It came swiftly near to show the
outline of the dread serpent form; the suction cups showed plainly.
Danger was in this thing, Harkness knew, but it passed them by before
he could move. The further lookout showed two gleaming monsters locked
together in deadly embrace. So swift was their whirling motion that
details of form were lost: only a confusion of lashing tentacles that
whipped and tore, and one glimpse of a savage maw that sheared the
tentacles off. Then the serpent was upon them.
* * * * *
Harkness had seen one time a sight that was indelibly impressed upon
his memory. A steeloid cable had broken under a terrific strain; the
end of it had lashed out with a speed the eye could not follow, to
wind itself around the superstructure of a submarine--and the men who
were gathered there.
He thought of that now, saw again the bleeding mass that had been an
instant before a group of humans, as the serpent seized its prey. The
two combatants were encircled in a living coil of light. Then, as
motion ceased, the ethereal sea went dark except for pulsing suction
cups that drew and strained at the bodies they held.
Harkness was groping for the controls--he saw too plainly their own
helplessness when they were at rest--but the voice of Dianne checked
him.
"That bright star went out," she said; and Harkness let his gaze
follow where she pointed.
The stars that were distant suns shone in brilliant points of light;
no atmosphere here to dim them or cause a flickering. A bright point
vanished as she looked--another!--and he knew abruptly that he was
seeing a circle of blackness that moved slowly between them and the
stars.
"The Moon!" he shouted. "The Dark Moon!" And now his hand found the
controls that threw their ship into thunderous life. It was
approaching! He swung the metal ball to throw them ahead and to one
side, and the roar from the stern told of the fast-growing speed that
was pressing them to the floor....
* * * * *
An hour of wild flight, and the circle was close upon them. Too
faintly lighted to register in the telescopes of Earth, there was
still enough of luminosity to mark it as a round disc of violet that
grew dimly bluish-green around the edge.
It ceased to grow. Their ship, Harkness knew, was speeding beside it
some hundreds of miles away. But they were within its gravitational
pull, and were falling toward it. And he aimed his ship bow-on to make
the forward blast a check upon their falling speed.
The circle broadened; became a sphere; and then they were plunging
through clouds more tenuous than any vapors of Earth--thick layers of
gas that reflected no rays from the distant sun.
Beside them a sinuous form showed where a serpent of space was trying
to match their speed. Harkness saw it twisting convulsively in the
stratum of gas; it was falling, lifeless, beside them as they sped on
and away. Here was something the beasts could not combat. He made a
mental note of the fact, but his thoughts flashed again to what lay
ahead.
Every eye was held close to the lookouts that faced forward. The three
were breathless, wordless; the hand of Harkness that held the tiny
ball was all that moved.
Ahead of them was their goal, the Dark Moon! And they were prepared
for Stygian darkness and a land of perpetual night. The almost
invisible gas-clouds thinned; there was a glow ahead that grew
brilliant as they watched; and then, with a blinding suddenness that
made them shield their eyes, there flashed before them a world of
light.
Each line of shore was marked distinctly there; the blue and violet of
rippling seas were blended with unreal hues; there were mountains
upthrust and, on the horizon, a range of volcanic peaks that poured
forth flashing eruptions half-blanketed by invisible gas.
"The Dark Moon!" gasped Harkness. He was spellbound with utter awe at
the spectacle he beheld. This brilliant world a-gleam to its farthest
horizon with golden, glorious sunlight, softly spread and diffused!
This, _this!_ was the Dark Moon!
* * * * *
He turned to share with the others the delirium of ecstatic wonder too
overpowering to be borne alone--turned, to find his happiness shot
through with a pang of regret. He saw Chet and Diane. They had been
standing together at a wide forward lookout; and now she was holding
one hand of the pilot to her breast in an embrace of passionate joy.
Unconscious, that gesture of delight at this climax of their perilous
trip?--Harkness told himself that this was so. But he swung back to
the helm of the ship. He glanced at instruments that again were
registering; he saw the air-pressure indicator that told of oxygen
and an atmosphere where men might live. He gauged his distance
carefully, and prepared to land.
The moment of depression could not last, for there was too much here
to fill brain and eyes. What would they find? Was there life? His
question was answered by an awkward body that flapped from beneath
them on clumsy wings. He glimpsed a sinuous neck, a head that was all
mouth and flabby pouch, and the mouth opened ludicrously in what was
doubtless a cry of alarm.
Then land, that took form and detail; a mountain whose curled top was
like a frozen wave of stone. In a valley below it trees were growing.
They swayed in a wind, and their branches reached upward and flowed
and waved like seaweed on the ocean's floor. Green--vivid, glowing
green!--and reds and purples that might be flowers and fruit.
* * * * *
An open space in a little valley spread invitingly before him, and he
laid the ship down there in a jungle of lush grasses--set it down as
gently as if he were landing from a jaunt of a thousand miles instead
of two hundred times that distance straight away from Earth.
The others were looking at him with glowing, excited eyes. In the
cabin was silence. Harkness felt that he must speak, must say
something worthy of the moment--something to express in slight degree
the upwelling emotion that filled them all, three adventurers about to
set foot upon a virgin world....
The pause was long-drawn, until he ended it in a voice that had all
the solemn importance of a head-steward's announcement on a liner of
the high-level service. But the corners of his lips were twitching to
a little smile.
"This," he announced, "is as far as we go. This is the end of our
run."
The tension that had held them emotionally taut was ended. With
outstretched hands Diane ran toward him, and her broken laugh betrayed
the hysteria she was holding back.
"Congratulations!" she cried, and clung tightly to his hands.
"Congratulations, M'sieu Walter--"
Her voice choked and she could not go on; but the eyes that were
raised to his were luminous through the tears that filled them.
From the cabin beyond came a clash of levers, where Chet was preparing
to open a port. And Harkness followed with unseeing eyes where the
pilot waited that their commander might be the first to step forth
upon an unknown globe--upon the surface of what men had called "The
Dark Moon."
CHAPTER VI
_Trapped_
Walter Harkness, piloting his ship to a slow, safe landing on a new
world, had watched his instruments with care. He had seen the outer
pressure build up to that of the air of Earth; the spectro-analyzer
had shown nitrogen preponderating, with sufficient oxygen to support
life. And, below him, a monstrous thing that flopped hurriedly away on
leather wings had told him that life was there.
But what would that life be? This was the question uppermost in the
minds of all three as they stepped forth--the first of Earth's people
to ask the question and to find the answer.
Chet had gone to their stores. He strapped a belt about his waist, a
belt banded with a row of detonite cartridges, and a pistol hung at
his hip. He handed another to Harkness. But the pistol he offered
Diane was refused.
"My many accomplishments," she laughed, "do not include that. I never
could shoot--and besides I will not need to with both of you here."
Her hand was resting confidently upon Chet's arm as they followed
where Harkness led.
The heavy grass, standing waist-high in the little valley where their
ship was at rest, stirred to ripples of vivid green as a light breeze
touched it. Above, the sun shone warm upon this world of tropical
growth. Harkness, listening in the utter silence for sounds that might
mean danger, let his eyes follow up the rugged wall of rock that
hemmed them in on two sides. It gleamed with metallic hues in the
midday glare. He looked on to the sun above.
"A dark moon!" he said wonderingly. "Dark!--and yet it is blazing
bright. Why can't we see it from Earth? Why is it dark?... I've an
idea that the gas we came through is the answer. There is metal, we
know, that conducts an electric current in only one direction: why not
a gas that will do the same with light?"
* * * * *
The pilot was listening, but Diane seemed uninterested in scientific
speculations. "The trees!" she breathed in rapture; "the marvelous,
beautiful trees!"
She was gazing toward distant towering growths where the valley
widened. Like no trees of Earth, these monsters towered high in air,
their black trunks branching to end in tendrils that raised high above
them. And the tendrils were a waving, ever-moving sea of color, where
rainbow iridescence was stabbed through with the flash of crimson
buds. A down-draft of air brought a heady, intoxicating odor.
And still there was silence. To Walter Harkness, standing motionless
and alert amidst the waving grass, it seemed a hush of waiting. A
prickle of apprehension passed over his skin. He glanced about, his
pistol ready in his hand, looked back for a moment at the ship, then
smiled inwardly in self-derision of his fear as he strode forward.
"Let's have a look at things," he said with a heartiness not entirely
sincere. "We'll discover nothing standing here."
But the silence weighed upon them all as they pressed on. No
exclamations of amazement from them now, no speculations of what might
lie ahead. Only wide-eyed alertness and a constant listening,
listening--until the silence was broken by a scream.
A man it seemed at first, when Harkness saw the figure leap outward
from the cliff. A second one followed. They landed on all fours upon a
rock that jutted outward toward the trees.
The impact would have killed a human, but these creatures stood
upright to face the concealment from which they had sprung. One was
covered with matted, brown hair. Its arms were long, and its fists
pounded upon a barrel-like chest, while it growled hoarsely. The other
ape-thing, naked and hairless, did the same. They were both uttering
those sounds, that at times seemed almost like grunted words, when the
end came.
A swishing of leather wings!--a swooping, darting rush of a huge
body!--and one of the ape-men, as Harkness had mentally termed them,
was struggling in the clutch of talons that gripped him fast.
The giant bat-shape that had seized him reached for the other, too. A
talon ripped at the naked face, but the ape-man dodged and vanished
among the rocks.
* * * * *
With pounding wings, the bat swept off in lumbering flight, but with
its burden it seemed heavy, and failed to rise. The trees were close,
and their waving tentacles drew back, then shot out to splash about
the intruder. The talons released their hold, and the huge leather
wings flapped frantically; but too late. Both captor and captive were
wrapped in an embrace of iridescent arms and held struggling in
mid-air, while the unmoving watchers below stood in horror before this
drama of life and death.
Then a red bud opened. It was enormous, and its flowery beauty made
more revolting the spectacle of the living food that was thrust within
its maw.
The bud closed. Its petals were like lips.... And Diane, in
white-faced horror, was clinging to the protecting arm of Chet Bullard
beside her. Chet, too, had paled beneath his tan. But Walter Harkness,
though white of face, was staring not at the crimson bud, shut tightly
about its living food, but upward toward the broken, rocky face of the
cliff.
The flying thing, the unnamed horror of the air, had come silently
from on high. None of them had seen it until it struck, and he was
sure that the ape-men had been taken unaware. Then what had frightened
them? What other horror had driven them in screaming terror to that
fearful spring out into the open where they must have known danger
awaited?
Did a rock move? he wondered. Was the splotch of color--that mottling
of crimson and copper and gray--a part of the metallic mass? He rubbed
his smarting eyes--and when he looked again the color was gone. But he
had a conviction that eyes, sinister and deadly, had been staring into
his, that a living mass had withdrawn softly into a shadowed cave, and
that the menace that had threatened the ape-men was directed now
toward them.
Was this the reason for the silence? Was this valley, so peaceful in
its sunlit stillness, a place of death, from which all living things
kept clear? Had the ape-men been drawn there through curiosity at
seeing their ship float down?
And the quiet beauty of the valley--it might be as horrible a mockery
as the blazing splendor of those things ahead--those beautiful and
horrible eaters of flesh! His voice was unsteady as he turned toward
the others.
"Let's call this off," he said: "there is something up there. We'll go
back to the ship and get up in the air again. We'll find a healthier
place to land."
* * * * *
Like Harkness, Chet Bullard held his pistol ready in his hand.
"Something else?" he inquired. "You saw something?" And Harkness
nodded grimly.
They retraced their steps. A half-mile, perhaps. It had seemed long as
they ventured forth, and was no shorter now. And the gleaming, silvery
shape of the ship was entirely lovely to their eyes as they
approached.
Harkness circled the blunt bow with its open exhaust high above his
head. On the far side was the port where they had emerged; its open
door would be welcome in its promise of safe seclusion. His sigh of
relief was echoed by the two who followed, for the horror and
apprehension had been felt by all. But the breath choked abruptly in
his throat.
Before them was the door, its thick metal wide-swung as they had left
it. But the doorway itself, where warm darkness should have invited,
was entirely sealed by a web of translucent stuff.
Harkness approached to look more closely. The substance was glistening
and smooth--yellowish--almost transparent. It was made up of a tangle
of woven cords which clung tightly to the metal sides. Harkness
reached out in sudden fury to grip it and tear it loose. He grasped
the slippery stuff, stumbled--and hung suspended by a tenacious hold
that gripped his hand where it had touched, and would not let go.
His arm swung against it, and his shoulder. They were instantly
immovable. And he knew in a single terrifying instant his utter
helplessness. He saw Chet Bullard's hands come up, and he found his
voice in time to scream a harsh warning to him.
"Tear me loose!" he commanded, "but don't touch the damned stuff!" It
took the combined strength of the pilot and the girl to free him, and
Harkness had to set his teeth to restrain an exclamation of pain as
his hand came slowly from the web that clung and clung and would not
let go.
* * * * *
From his place upon the ground he saw Chet raise a broken piece of
rock. It was like metal, and heavy, as the pilot's efforts proved,
though it was surprisingly small in size. He saw Chet raise it above
his head and crash it upon the thick web that filled the door. And, as
his own aching arm had been held, the rock was seized in the tough
strands, which gave back only slightly under the blow.
Harkness scrambled to his feet. The fury that had possessed him made
the hurt of his arm unfelt. What devil's work was this that barred
them from the safety of the ship? The memory of that other menace,
half-seen among the rocks, was strong upon him.
"Stand back!" he shouted to Chet and the girl, and he raised his
pistol to send a charge of detonite into the unyielding mass. Here was
power to tear the clinging-stuff to atoms.
He felt Chet's body plunge upon him an instant before he fired, and
his pistol was knocked up and flew outward from his hand. He heard
the pilot's voice.
"Walt!" Chet was saying. "For God's sake come out of it! Are you
crazy? You might have wrecked that door-port so we never could have
fixed it; or the bullet could have gone on through to explode inside
the ship. Either way we would never get back: no leaky hull would ever
let us make the trip home!"
Chet was right: Harkness knew it in a moment. He knew the folly of
what he would have done, yet knew, too, that desperate measures were
needed and needed quickly. The eyes of a devil had held his own from
the darkness of the rocks, and the same rock wall came close to where
they stood. He was in command; it was up to him--
* * * * *
The moment of indecision ended as a mass of viscous fluid splashed
heavily against the ship. Harkness whirled about to face the rocks. He
was calm now and controlled, but under his quiet courage was a fear
that gripped him. A fear of what he should find! But the reality was
so far beyond any imagined terror as to leave him cold.
Above them and thirty feet away on a rocky ledge was a thing of
horror. Basilisk eyes in a hairy head; gray, stringy hairs; and the
fearful head ended in narrow, outthrust jaws, where more of the gray
hairs hung like moss from lips that writhed and curled and sucked at
the air with a whistling shrillness. Those jaws could crush a man to
pulp. And the head seemed huge until the body behind it came into
view.
The suddenness with which the great body rose showed the strength of
the beast. A prodigious sack, like black leather, with markings of
crimson and copper!--and the straggling, ropy hairs on it were
greenish-gray like the lustre of the rocks at its back.
It stood upright on great hairy legs. The eyes shot forward on
protruding antennae. The sack-like body flexed to bring the rear part
under and forward. It was aiming at them.
Harkness seized the slim figure of the girl who stood, mute with
horror, beside him. He threw her roughly to the ground, for the
meaning of the viscous splash was plain.
"Down!" he shouted to Chet. "Down on the ground!" And he felt the
swish of another liquid mass above his head as he obeyed his own
command.
He felt for his pistol, then remembered it was gone--lost when Chet
sprang upon him. But Chet had his.
"Shoot!" he ordered. "Shoot the damned thing, Chet! Kill the spider!"
Spider! He had named it unconsciously. But the name was inadequate,
for here was a thing of horror beyond even a spider of prodigious
size. This peaceful valley!--and here was its ruler, frightful,
incredibly loathsome!
* * * * *
He waited for the sound of a shot. A cursing, instead, was the only
reply: Chet was not firing! Harkness whirled to see the pilot pinned
by one arm to the web.
The fluid had caught him; he had not dropped quickly enough. And his
right hand that had been raised, and the pistol it held, were clamped
fast to the awful stuff.
There was no word of appeal, no call for help, yet Chet Bullard must
have known what this meant. But neither did Harkness wait for that
word. One spring, and he had the pilot by the waist, and he felt the
weight of the girl's slim body added to his as her arms went about him
to help. Chet's face went chalk-white as the hand tore loose. The
pistol remained buried in the clinging stuff.
From the corner of his eye, Harkness saw the monster crouched to
spring. He was half dragging the other two as he stooped and ran for
the bow of the ship. The monstrous body thudded against the metal hull
behind them.
The leap was prodigious. He saw the sack-like body fall inert, the
great, hairy legs shaking. For the moment, the attacker was helpless:
but the respite was brief, as the glaring eyes plainly told.
Below the ledge where the beast had been was an opening in the
rocks--a bit of black shadow that was darker than the lustrous metal
of the cliff. There was a chance--
"I can make it," Chet was saying, as Harkness dragged him on; "help
Diane!" But the girl had sprung before them to gain a foothold and
extend a helping hand. And they were back in the darkness of a rocky
cave before the sunlit entrance was blocked by a hairy head and a
horrible, slavering mouth on a body too huge to enter.
CHAPTER VII
_In the Labyrinth_
Spent and shaken, the three passed onward into the cave. Harkness
searched his pockets for his neolite flash; found it--a tiny pencil
with a tip of glass--and the darkness of the inner cave was flooded
with light.
A box of food tablets was in a pocket of Chet's jacket, and there was
water that trickled in a tiny stream out of the rocks. It could have
been worse, Diane pointed out with forced gaiety. But Harkness, who
had gone back for a final look at the entrance to the cave, found it
difficult to smile.
He had found the entrance an opening no longer: it was sealed with a
giant web of ropy strands--a network, welded together to a glutinous
mesh. They were sealed in as effectively as if the opening were
closed by a thick door of steel.
They gathered fungus that grew in thready clumps on the walls, and
this served as a mattress to soften the rocky floor that must be their
bed. And Harkness sat silent in the darkness long after the others
were asleep--sat alone on guard, to think and to reach, at last, a
conclusion.
A cleavage in the rocks made a narrow crack to the outside world, and
through it the starlight filtered dimly. The thread of light grew
brilliantly golden--moonlight, a hundredfold more bright than
moonlight on Earth. And he realized that the source of light was their
own globe, Earth, shining far through space!
It lighted the cave with a mellow glow. It shone upon the closed eyes
of the sleeping girl, and touched lightly upon the rounded softness of
a lovely face beneath a tangle of brown curls. Harkness stared long
and soberly at the picture she made, and he thought of many things.
No parasite upon society was this girl. He had known such; but her
ready wit, her keen grasp of affairs, had been evident in their talks
on the journey they had made. They had stamped her as one who was able
to share in the work and responsibilities of a world where men and
women worked together. Yet there was nothing of the hardness that so
many women showed. And now she was altogether feminine, and entirely
lovely.
* * * * *
Not far away, Chet Bullard was sleeping heavily. His hand, injured
painfully when they tore it from the clinging mass, had been bandaged
by Diane. It troubled him now, and he flung one arm outward. His hand
touched that of the girl, and Harkness saw the instant quiet that came
upon him at the touch. And Diane--her lips were smiling in her sleep.
They had been much together, those two; theirs had been a ready,
laughing comradeship. It had troubled Harkness, but now he put all
thought of self aside.
"This trip," he thought, "can end only in disaster--if it has not
already done so. What a fool I was to bring these two!" And: "If I
want to risk my own life," he told himself bitterly, "that's my own
affair. But for Chet, and Diane, with their lives ahead of them--" His
determination was quickly reached.
He would go back. Somehow, some way, he would get them to the ship.
They would return to Earth. And then.... His plans were vague. But he
knew he could interest capital; he knew that this new world, that was
one great mine of raw metals, would not go long unworked. The metallic
colorations in rock walls and mountains had fairly shouted of rich
ores and untold wealth.
Yes, they would go back, but he would return. He would put from his
mind all thought of this girl; he would forget forever those nebulous
plans that had filled him with hope for a happiness beyond all hoping.
And he would come back here prepared for conquest.
He put aside all speculation as to what other horrible forms of life
the little world might hold: he would be prepared to deal with them.
But he still wondered if there were people. He had hoped to find some
human life.
And this hope, too, left him; his sense of this globe as an
undeveloped world was strong upon him. The monsters; the tropical,
terrible vegetation; the very air itself--all breathed of a world that
was young. There had not been time for the long periods of evolution
through which humanity came.
He tried to tell himself of the wealth that would be his; tried to
feel the excitement that should follow upon such plans. But he could
only feel a sense of loss, of something precious that was gone.
Diane--named for the moon: she seemed more precious now to the lonely
man than all else on moon or Earth. She could never be his; she never
had been. It was Chet upon whom the gods and Diane had smiled. And
Chet deserved it.
Only in this last conviction did he find some measure of consolation
during the long night.
* * * * *
"We will rip the big web out with detonite," Harkness told the others
when morning came. "But I want to get the spider, too."
A touch upon the web with a stick brought an instant response. Again
they saw in all its repulsiveness the thing that seemed a creature of
some horrible dream. The eyes glared, while hairy feelers seized the
web and shook it in furious rage. Harkness, fearing another discharge
of the nauseating, viscous liquid, withdrew with the others far back
in the cave.
"Wait," he told them. "I have a plan."
The creature vanished, and Harkness went cautiously forward to the
web. He took a detonite cartridge from his belt and placed it on the
floor close to the ropy strands. Another, and another, until he had a
close-packed circle of the deadly things. Then he placed a heavy,
metallic piece of rock beside them and proceeded, with infinite care,
to build a tower.
One irregular block upon another: it was like a child at play with his
toys. Only now the play was filled with deadly menace. The stones
swayed, then held in precarious, leaning uncertainty; the topmost was
directly above the cartridges on the floor.
"Back!" he ordered the others, "and lie flat on the floor. I must
guess at the amount of explosive for the job."
Chet and Diane were safe as Harkness weighed a fragment of metal in
his hand. One throw--and he must not hit the tower he had built....
The rock struck into the network of cords; he saw it clinging where it
struck, and saw the web shaking with the blow.
Over his shoulder, as he ran, he glimpsed the onrush of the beast.
Again the eyes were glaring, again the feelers were shaking furiously
at the web. They touched the leaning stones!
He had reached the place where Chet and Diane lay and saw the
beginning of the tower's fall; and in the split second of its falling
he threw himself across the body of the prostrate girl to shield her
from flying fragments of stone. A blast of air tore at him; his ears
were numbed with the thunder of the blast--a thunder that ended with a
crashing of stone on stone....
* * * * *
Slowly he recovered his breath; then raised himself to his feet to
look toward the entrance. It would be open now, the way cleared. But,
instead of sunlight, he saw utter dark. Where the mouth of the cave
had been was blackness--and nothing else!
He fumbled for his flash, and stood in despairing silence before what
the light disclosed.
The rock was black and shining about the mouth of the cavern. It had
split like glass. In shattered fragments it filled the forward part of
the cave. The whole roof must have fallen, and a crashing slide above
had covered all.
Chet was beside him; Harkness dared not look toward the girl coming
expectantly forward.
"We'll use more of the same," Chet suggested: "we will blast our way
out."
"And bring down more rock with each charge," Harkness told him
tonelessly. "This means we are--"
Diane had overheard. Harkness' pause had come too late.
"Yes?" she encouraged. "This means we are entombed?--buried here? Is
that it?"
Her voice was quiet; her eyes, in the light of the little flash, were
steady in their look upon the man who was leader of the expedition.
Diane Vernier might shudder with horror before some obscene beast--she
would tremble with delight, too, at sight of some sudden beauty--but
she was not one to give way to hysteria when a situation must be
faced. No despair could be long-lived under the spell of those eyes,
brave and encouraging.
"No," said Walter Harkness: "we will find some way to escape. This is
blocked. We will follow the cave back and see where it leads. There
must be other outlets. We're not quitting now." He smiled with a
cheerful confidence that gave no hint of being assumed, and he led the
way with a firm step.
* * * * *
Diane followed as usual, close to Chet. But her eyes were upon their
leader; they would have repaid him for a backward look.
To a mineralogist this tunnel that nature had pierced through the rock
would have been an endless delight, but to a man seeking escape from
his living tomb it brought no such ecstasy. The steady, appraising
glance of Harkness was everywhere--darting ahead, examining the walls,
seeking some indication, some familiar geological structure, that
might be of help.
He stopped once to kick contemptuously at a vein of quartz. Three feet
in thickness--and it crumbled to fragments under his foot to release a
network of gold.
"Rotten with it," he said.
And the only comment came from Chet: "A fat lot of good it does us!"
he replied.
The cavern branched and branched again; it opened to a great room
higher than their light could reach; it narrowed to leave apertures
through which they crawled like moles; it became a labyrinth of
passages from which there seemed no escape. Each turn, each new
opening, large or small--it was always the same: Harkness praying
inaudibly for a glimpse of light that would mean day; and,
instead--darkness!--and their own pencil of light so feeble against
the gloom ahead....
CHAPTER VIII
_The Half-Men_
"The Valley of the Fires," Harkness was to call it later, and shorten
it again to "Fire Valley." The misty smokes of a thousand fires rose
skyward from the lava beds of its upper end.
Where the lava flow had stopped and the lower valley began, came
vegetation. Sparse at first, then springing to luxuriant growth, it
contrasted strongly with the barren wall beside it and the equally
barren waste of high ground where the fires were.
Mountains hemmed it in; their distant peaks showed black, with red and
green striations of mineralized deposits. The valleys about them were
dense with foliage, a green so startling and vivid as almost to offend
the eye.
Trees were in the lower end of the valley. They were of tremendous
growth, and the dew of early morning dripped from them like rain.
Trunks smooth and ghostly white, except where the bark had split into
countless fractures and the scarlet color of the sap-wood showed
through. Outflung branches forked to drop down dangling stalks that
rooted again in the ground; these made a forest of slender white
supports for the leafy roof--a forest of spectral shapes in a
shadow-world. Only here and there were arrows of sunlight that
pierced the dense foliage above to strike through and down to the
black earth floor and the carpet of rainbow hues.
And that carpet of radiant colors was trampled into paths that wound
on to lose themselves in the half-light of that ghostly world.
* * * * *
From one of the paths came sounds of tramping feet. Cries and snarling
grunts resounded through the silence to send lizards scurrying to the
safety of the trees. Animal cries or hoarse voices of men--it would
have been difficult to tell which. And a sight of the creatures
themselves would have left an observer still in doubt.
A score of them, and they walked upright. Some bodies were naked, a
coppery-black in color; on others the skin was covered by a sparse
growth of hair. Noses that were mere nostril-slits; low foreheads,
retreating flatly to a tangle of matted hair; protruding jaws which
showed the white flash of canine teeth as the ape-like faces twisted
and the creatures tugged at ropes of vines thrown over their
shoulders.
The Neanderthal Man had not learned to use the wheel; and these
man-animals, too, used only the sheer strength of their corded muscles
as they hauled at the body of a beast.
It dragged along the path behind them, rolling at times to show the
white of its belly instead of the flexible armor-plating that
protected its back. Fresh blood flowed from a wound in the white
under-skin; this, and the dripping flints that tipped their spears,
told how death had come. One curving horn that projected from a
wrinkled snout caught at times in the undergrowth, and then the ones
who dragged it would throw themselves upon the head with snarls of
fury and twist the big horn free.
The rocky cliff was honeycombed with caves. A cry, half-human in its
tone, brought an avalanche of figures scurrying forth. Children, whose
distended abdomens told of the alternate feasting and hunger that was
theirs, were cuffed aside by women who shouted shrilly at sight of the
prize. Older men came, too, and in a screaming mob they threw
themselves upon the carcass of the beast that had been dragged into
the open.
* * * * *
Flint knives came into play, then sharpened stakes that were thrust
through the bleeding meat. Young and old seized what they could,
leaped across the little stream that trickled downward through the
valley, and raced for the nearest fires.
The fumaroles made places for roasting, and these half-men had learned
the taste of cooked meats. Their jaws were slavering as they waited.
The scents were tantalizing.
A hunter was reaching to snatch a shred of half-cooked meat when a
woman of the tribe gave a scream that was shrill with fear. She
pointed her gnarled hand upward on the face of the cliff.
An opening was there, a black cave-mouth in the black cliff. Above
their own caves, was this higher opening, yet they must have explored
it often--must have followed it as far as they dared, where it led to
the mountain's innermost depths. Yet from this familiar place there
stepped forth an apparition. Another followed, and another--three
strange creatures like none the savage eyes of this world had ever
seen.
Clothing torn to rags--faces black and smeared with blood--hands that
reached groping and trembling toward the light, until the half-blinded
eyes of one saw the trickling brook.
Then, "Water!" he croaked in a voice hardly more human than the
grunts of horror from below, and he took the hand of another to help
in the steep descent--while the tribe beneath them forgot their
anticipated feast, forgot all but their primordial fear of the
unknown, and, with startled cries, broke and ran for the safety of the
forest....
CHAPTER IX
_The Throwers of Thunder_
It is doubtful if Walter Harkness heard or consciously saw that
fleeing tribe. He saw only the glorious sunlight and its sparkling
reflection upon the stream; and in his nostrils was the scent of
roasting meat to rouse him to a frenzy.
For seven Earth days he and Chet had kept account of the hours. How
long after that they had followed their stumbling course he could not
have told. Time ceased to be measured in hours and days; rather was it
reckoned in painful progress a foot at a time up rocky burrows,
helping, both of them, to ease the path for the girl who struggled so
bravely with them, until aching muscles refused to bear them further.
Then periods of drugged sleep with utter fatigue for an opiate--and on
again in hopeless, aimless wandering.
And now, the sun! And he was plunging his head into icy water to drink
until he strangled for breath! He knew that Chet and Diane were beside
him. A weak laugh came to his lips as he sat erect: the girl had drunk
as deeply as the rest--and now she was washing her hands and face.
The idea seemed tremendously amusing--or was it that the simple rite
indicated more than he could bear to know? It meant that they were
safe; they had escaped; and again a trifle like cleanliness was
important in a woman's eyes. He rocked with meaningless
laughter--until again a puff of wind brought distinctly the odor of
cooking food.
A hundred feet away, up higher in the valley, were the first of the
fires. Harkness came to his feet and ran--ran staggeringly, it is
true, but he ran--and he tore at some hanging shreds of smoking meat
regardless of the burn. But the fierce gnawing at his stomach did not
force him to wolf the food. He carried it back, a double handful of
half-cooked meat, to the others. And he doled it out sparingly to them
and to himself.
The cold water had restored his sanity. "Easy," he advised them; "too
much at first and we're done for."
* * * * *
He was chewing on the last shred when a thought struck him; he had
been too stunned before to reason. For the first time he jerked up his
head in startled alarm. He looked carefully about--at the meat on its
pointed stakes, at the distant fires, at the open glade below them and
the dense jungle beyond where nothing stirred.
"Cooked meat!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "Who did it? This means
people!"
The memory that had registered only in some corner of a mind deeper
than the conscious, came to the surface. "I remember," he said. "There
were things that ran--men--apes--what were they?"
"Oh, Lord!" Chet groaned. "And all I ask is to be left alone!" But he
wearily raised himself upright and verified the other's words.
"They ran toward that opening among those trees. And I'll bet they
live in these caves up here behind us. I got a whiff of them as we
came past: they smelled like a zoo."
They had come out on top of the lava-flow, close to its end. The
molten rock had hardened to leave a drop of some forty feet to the
open glade below. Beyond that the jungle began, but behind them was
the lava bed, frozen in countless corrugations. Harkness rose and
helped Diane to her feet: they must force their aching muscles to take
up their task again.
He peered up the valley where a thousand fires smoked. "That stream,"
he said, "comes in from a little valley that branches off up there. We
had better follow it--and we had better get going before that gang
recovers from its surprise."
They were passing the first of the fires where the meat was smoking
when Chet called a halt. "Wait a bit," he begged: "let's take a
sirloin steak along--" He was haggling at a chunk of meat with a
broken flint when a spear whistled in and crashed upon the rocks.
* * * * *
Harkness saw the thrower. Beyond the lava's edge the jungle could be
seen, and from among the spectral trees had darted a wild figure whose
hairy arm had snapped the spear into the air.
There were more who followed. They were sliding down the slender
trunks that supported the branches and leafy roof high above the
ground. To Harkness the open doorway to the jungle seemed swarming
with monkey-men. The movement of the three fugitives had been taken as
a retreat, and the courage of the cave-dwellers had returned.
Harkness glanced quickly about to size up their situation. To go on
was certain death; if these creatures came up to meet them on the
lava-beds, the end was sure. The escarpment gave the three some slight
advantage of a higher position.
One vain wish for the pistol now resting in the deep grass beside a
vanished ship; then he sprang for the weapon that had been thrown--it
was better than nothing--and advanced cautiously to the lava's edge.
No concealment there; no broken rocks, other than pieces of flint; a
poor fortress, this, that they must defend! And the weapons of their
civilization were denied them.
Another spear hummed its shrill song, coming dangerously close. He saw
women-figures that came from the jungle with supplies of weapons.
Short spears, about six feet long, like the one he held. But they had
others, too--long lances of slender wood with tips of flint. Thrusting
spears! He had a sickening vision of those jagged stone heads ripping
into their bodies while these beasts stood off in safety. It was thus
that they killed their prey. And Diane--he could not even spare
her--could not give her the kind oblivion of a mercy-shot!
The other two were lying beside him now at the edge of the sloping
cliff. The bank of shining gray was not steep; the enemy would climb
it with ease. Hopeless! They had won through for this!... Harkness
groaned silently in an agony of spirit at thought of the girl.
"Oh, for one detonite shell to land among them!" he said between
clenched teeth--then was breathless with a thought that exploded
within his mind.
* * * * *
His fingers were clumsy with haste as he fumbled at the head of the
spear. The sharp-edged stone was bound to its shaft with sinew, wound
round and round. The enemy were out in the open; he spared an
instant's look to see them advancing. A clattering of falling spears
sounded beyond, but the weapons were overcast, thanks to the
protection of the rocky edge.
"A shell!" Harkness spoke with sharp intensity. "Give me a cartridge
from your belt, quick!"
Chet handed him one. Harkness took one look, then pulled a cartridge
from his own belt.
"That explains it," he was muttering as he worked, "--the big
explosion when I smashed the rocks. You've got ammunition for your
pistol, but you put rifle cartridges in my belt--and service
ammunition at that. No wonder they raised the devil with those rocks!"
His fingers were working swiftly now to bind the slender cartridge to
the spear. A chipped out hollow in the flint made a seat. He gave
silent thanks for Chet Bullard's mistake. Chet had slipped; he had
filled Harkness' belt with ammunition that would have been useless for
the pistol--but it was just what he needed here.
So intent was he on his task that he hardly heard the yelling chorus
from below. It swelled to a din; but his work was finished, and he
looked up.
One figure in advance of the rest had been urging them on, and they
came in a wild rush now. Walt Harkness scrambled to his feet. Tall and
sinewy, his broad shoulders, scantily covered by the rags of blouse
that remained, were turned sideways as he raised the spear. The
yelling from below swelled louder and more shrill.
This strange one from another tribe--he was unarmed except for one of
their own spears. The curious covering on his body was flapping in the
breeze. Nothing here, surely, to hold a hunting-tribe in check.
The spear rose slowly in the air. What child of the tribe could not
have thrown it better! They came on faster now; the leader had almost
reached the place where the spear was dropping down. He must have
laughed, if laughter had yet been born in such a breast, at the futile
weapon dropping point first among the rocks.
One little shell, a scant three inches long, no thicker than the
stylus on milady's desk! But here was service ammunition, as Harkness
had said; and in the end of the lead a fulminate cap was buried--and a
grain of dense, gray dust!
* * * * *
There was no flame--only a concussion that cracked upon one's ears,
and flying rock fragments that filled the air with demoniac shrieks.
And then that sound was lost in the shriller cries of terror and pain
as the ape-men broke for the trees.
Harkness saw some of them who rose and fell again to rise no more, and
one who dragged himself slowly from the blast that had struck him
down. But his eyes came back to another spear in his hands, and his
fingers were tearing at the sinew wrapping.
The spear bent in his hands; the wood was flexible and springy. It was
Diane who offered the next suggestion. She, too, was working at
another spear--what wonder if her breath came fast!--but her eyes were
alight, and her mind was at work.
"Make a bow!" she exclaimed. "A bow and arrow, Walter! We are fighting
primitive men, so we can't scorn primitive weapons." She stopped with
a little exclamation of pain; the sharp tip of the flint had cut her
hand.
Chet's spearhead was unloosed. He tried the spring of the shaft.
"Bully girl, Diane!" he said, and fell to gouging out a notch with the
sharp flint near the end of the shaft.
The sinew made a string. Three slender sticks lying about whose ends
had been sharpened for use on the meat: they would do for arrows. Each
arrow must be notched and headed with an explosive shell, and there
were many of them.
Chet sprang to his feet at last. Forgotten was the fatigue that had
numbed him. A wild figure, his clothes in rags, his short, curling
hair no longer blond, his face a mottling of brown and black, where
only here and there the white skin dared show through--he executed an
intricate dance-step with a bed of lava for a floor, while he
shouted:
"Bring on your fighters! Bring 'em on! Who's going to stop us now?"
* * * * *
They were free to go, but Harkness paused at a renewed screaming from
the jungle. Again the hairy ones poured forth into the open glade. He
had half raised his bow, with arrow ready, before he saw that this was
no attack.
The screams merged discordantly with other sounds--a crashing of
uprooted trees--a chorus of harsh coughing--snorting--unrecognizable
noises. And the people were cowering in terror.
They half-ran toward the safety of their caves, but the throwers of
thunder, the demons on the lava bed, were between them and their
homes. They turned to face the jungle, and the wild sounds and crash
of splintered wood that drew near.
Harkness saw the first head that appeared. He stared in open-mouthed
amazement at the armored monster. Thick plates of shell covered its
mammoth body and lapped part way over the head to end at beady,
wicked, red eyes on either side of a single curved horn.
An instant the animal waited, to glare at the cowering human forms it
had tracked to their lair; others crashed through beside it; and in
that instant Harkness recognized the huddled group below as brothers.
Far down they were, in the long, weary path that was evolution, and
hardly come as yet to a consciousness of self--but there were those
who leaped before the others, their long spears couched and ready;
they were defending the weaker ones at their backs; they were men!
And Harkness was shouting as he raised his crude bow. "Shoot!" he
ordered. "Kill the brutes!" His own arrow was speeding true.
The rush of mammoth beasts was on as he fired, but it was checked as
quickly as it began. An inferno of explosions rose about the rushing
bodies; crashing detonations struck two of them down, their heads torn
and crushed. Between the helpless, primordial men and the charging
beasts was a geyser of spouting earth and rocks, through which showed
ugly heads and tremendous bodies that wheeled and crashed madly back
into the jungle growth.
Harkness suddenly realized that only he and Chet had fired. Diane's
bow was on the ground. He saw the girl beside it, sitting upright; but
her body was trembling and weaving, and she was plainly maintaining
her upright posture only by the greatest effort.
* * * * *
He was beside her in an instant. "What is it?" he demanded. "Are you
hurt? What is it?"
She raised her hand that he might see; her lips, seemed almost too
numb for speech.
"Only a scratch," she whispered, but Harkness saw her eyes glazing. He
dropped to his knees and caught her swaying body in his arms.
"A scratch," she repeated in a fading voice, "from the spear....
Poison ... I think."
A head appeared over the lava crest. Harkness saw it vaguely. He knew
that Chet had the newcomer covered; his bow was drawn. It meant
nothing to him, for Diane was wounded--dying! Dying, now, in his
arms....
The ape-man came on; he was grovelling upon the ground. He was
hairless, like the one they had seen escape the attack of the giant
bat, and his cheek was slashed with a healing cut that might have been
made by a ripping talon. He abased himself before the awful might of
these creatures who had saved them. And he made motions with his arms
to picture how they had sailed down from the skies; had landed; and he
had seen them. He was plainly petitioning for pardon and the favor of
these gods--when he dropped his animal head to stare at the girl and
the cut hand that Harkness held in his.
The blue discoloration of the wound must have been plain in its
significance. The hairless one sprang abruptly to his feet and darted
toward a cave. He was back in a moment; and, though be approached with
wriggling humility, he reached the girl and he ventured to touch the
discolored hand with a sticky paste. He had a gourd that he held to
the girl's lips.
Harkness would have struck it away; he was beside himself with grief.
But Chet interposed.
"Give it to her," he said in a sharp, strained voice that told of his
own dismay. "I think the beggar knows what he's about. He is trying to
help."
The lips were lax; only a little of the liquid found its way down her
throat. But Harkness, after minutes of agony, saw the first flutter of
lids that betokened returning life....
CHAPTER X
"_But Awfully Dumb...._"
Harkness would never forget the helpless body in his arms, nor the
tender look that came slowly to the opened eyes that gazed so steadily
into his. And yet it was Chet that she seemed to want for the thousand
little services during the week that followed. And Harkness tried to
still the hurt in his heart, and he told himself that it was her
happiness be wanted more than his; that if she found greater pleasure
in having Chet near, then his love was unworthy if it placed itself as
a bar to that other happiness.
He talked by signs with the hairless one whom he called Towahg. It was
the sound the other made as he struck upon his chest. And he learned
that Towahg could guide him to the ship.
The tribe had left them alone. Only Towahg seemed inclined to
friendliness; and Harkness frequently saw the one who was their leader
in ugly, silent contemplation of them when Towahg brought food and
water to their cave.
Diane was recovering, but her progress was slow. She was able at once
to walk and go slowly about, but the least exertion tired her. It had
been a close call, Harkness knew, and he realized that some time must
pass before she could take up the hardships of the trail. And in the
meantime much might happen.
He felt that he must reach the ship at the first possible moment and
return for the others; Towahg would show him the way. He explained the
plan to Chet and Diane only to meet with emphatic dissent.
"You would go alone?" the girl exclaimed. "To meet heaven knows what
dangers? No, no, Walter; you must not! Wait; I am stronger; I can go
soon, I know."
Chet, too, was for delay--Diane was better, and she would improve
steadily. They could carry her, at first. But Harkness looked at the
jungle he must penetrate and knew that he was right.
* * * * *
He gave Towahg a bow and arrows like his own and those that Chet kept
for defense, but the arrows were of sharpened wood without detonite
tips. He grinned toward Chet as he showed the savage how to handle the
marvellous thing.
"We've advanced these people a thousand years in the science of arms,"
he said. "They should make Diane their first Minister of Munitions, or
worship her as their own lovely goddess of the chase."
A weapon that would throw farther than the strongest man could cast a
spear--here was magic indeed! And Towahg knelt and grovelled on the
ground at his benefactor's feet.
Harkness made light of the dangers he must face, but he knew in his
own mind he might fail. And the time of leaving found him curiously
depressed. He had gripped Chet's hand, then turned to Diane for what
might be a last good-by. The quick enfoldment of her soft body in his
arms was as unpremeditated as the kiss he placed upon her lips.... He
swung away abruptly, and fell in behind his guide without a word. The
way led first across the place of smoke and fire.
Danger ahead on this strange trail; he knew it well. But he took it as
it came; and his guide, and his crude weapon, and his steady eye and
sureness of foot on rocky crags all saw him through. And he mentally
mapped the hills and valleys and the outcrops of metals that he would
explore some later time. Only seven of the short six-hour days of this
little earth had passed when he drew near the ship.
He was ready for an attack. There was the broken rubble that marked
the entrance of the cave. Beneath it, he knew, were mangled, horrible
remains. This one beast alone, it seemed, had been the ruler of the
valley, for no other appeared.
The mass that had blocked the doorway was crystalline now, and broke
to brittle fragments at a blow. He entered the familiar cabin of the
ship. There was nothing disturbed; the sealed inner door had barred
entrance to any inquiring beasts.
Far down the valley he saw a naked, running figure. Towahg had
escorted this sky-god to the great bird that had brought him, but the
courage of even so advanced a tribesman as he must have limits. He was
still running along the path they had come when Harkness closed and
sealed the door.
* * * * *
There was an instrument among their stores for taking samples of gas.
Harkness attached it to the ship before he left, and he took a few
precious minutes for a flight into the heights. That gas up there was
fatal to the monsters of space: he must secure a sample and learn its
composition.
A closing of the switch on wires that led to the instrument outside,
and he knew that the container had emptied its contents of water,
drawn in the gas and sealed itself.
Then the swift descent.
He flew low as he circled back. They had traveled far on their journey
below ground; it was even a longer route where he and Towahg had
circled about. But it was the only route he knew; he could take no
chances on a short-cut and a possible long-drawn search for the little
valley.
He followed the trail. The quick dusk was near; but in an hour's slow
flying, while his eyes searched the hills and hollows, the valley was
in sight.
He came down slowly in a black sky, with only the soft, muffled roar
of the lower exhausts. It was growing dark, and he leaned from an open
door to see more clearly his position. All was different from the air,
and he needed time and careful scrutiny to get the bearings of the
place.
The soft thunder from below was in his ears when a sound pierced
through. His own name! And it was Diane's voice calling him in a
terrified tone.
"Walter!" she cried. "Help! Help! Oh, Walter, come quickly!"
* * * * *
The scene below was lighted by fitful fires. He was above the upper
valley, a hundred yards from their cave: his mind was oriented in an
instant, and he knew each foot of ground.
And here, where neither Diane nor Chet should be, was Diane. He saw
her running in the bright glare of his landing light that he now
switched on; saw a black shape hurl itself upon her; she was
struggling. He threw himself back at the controls to send the ship
like a thunderbolt upon the earth.
A pistol was in his hand as he leaped from the still-rocking ship and
threw himself upon the thing that ran and tried to carry a struggling
burden in its arms.
He could not fire; but he brought the pistol down upon a heavy skull.
The hairy figure seemed never to feel the blow. It dropped the body of
Diane and turned, and its slavering, shining fangs were set in a
horrible face that Harkness recognized.
It was the leader of the tribe, and he had dared to attack. But where
was Chet? What of his arrows and their detonite tips? These thoughts
were crowding through his mind in the instant that ape-like fingers
gripped at his throat--the instant while he was bringing the pistol
forward and up.
A light charge of detonite in pistol ammunition--but no living body
could withstand the shock. Harkness leaped over the fallen foe to
reach the girl. She was half risen to a sitting posture as he came.
"_Dieu!_" she was whispering; "_Ah, le bon Dieu!_" Then she cried out:
"Walter! Oh, Walter, they have killed Chet! Down there!" Her hand was
pointing. She grasped at Harkness' hand to draw herself to her feet
and race with him toward the cave.
* * * * *
"Just at dark," she explained gaspingly as they ran. "It was their
chief, and there were others with him. They leaped upon Chet--before
he could reach for his bow. They had seemed so friendly after you
left--but they were short of food--"
Her voice was sobbing now, but she kept on, and she set a pace that
Harkness could not outdistance.
"One aimed a spear at me, and Chet threw himself between. I saw the
spear strike--then I ran. I thought I heard your motors--I screamed
for you--"
They were nearing the caves. A fire was burning in the open glade
where grotesque figures leaped and danced in cannibal glee about a
figure that lay motionless upon the ground.
The tattered, wind-blown clothing--the curling hair, blond in the
fire's light--it was Chet.... And now Harkness could fire.
His pistol held twenty rounds. He emptied it into the shrieking group,
then jammed in more of the shells and fired again. He fired until no
target remained, and every savage figure was either vanished among the
trees or inert and lifeless upon the ground, their only motion the
stirring of their hairy coverings in the breeze.
* * * * *
Harkness was beside the prostrate figure. He raised Chet's head within
his arms; Diane's brown head leaned close, her gasping breath broken
by dry sobs. The firelight flickered upon the closed lids to give them
semblance of life.
"Chet," said Walter Harkness softly. "Chet, old man--can't you speak?
We'll save you, Chet; you're not done for yet." But he felt as he
spoke that the words were a horrible lie; the blood that ran slowly
now from a wound in Chet's side seemed to speak more truly than did
he.
Yet Chet Bullard opened his eyes. His breath was the merest flutter;
the listeners bent their heads close to hear.
"Made it, did you?" asked Chet in a ghastly whisper. "And you've saved
Diane?... Good!... Well, it's been a great trip.... It's been worth
the price...."
Harkness seized at the girl's name. Here was something that might
strike home to the sinking man; might rouse him.
"Yes, Diane is saved," he told Chet: "saved for you, old fellow. You
must live--for Diane's sake. You love her, and she needs you."
Again the tired eyes opened. Once more the fluttering breath formed
words; lips moved to bring a pale ghost of Chet's ready smile like a
passing light across his face.
"Needs me? Diane?" It was a question and a denial. He was looking
straight at Harkness as he added: "It's you she needs.... You're one
square old sport, Walt, but dumb--awfully dumb...."
* * * * *
Glorious adventure!--and the price is so often death. "A great trip,"
Chet Bullard had said; "it's been worth the price." Chet was prepared
to pay in full.
But--there was the ship! Walt Harkness, as she finished bandaging the
body of the unconscious man, stared first at the metal cylinder,
gleaming, brilliant in the Earthlight; then his gaze went to the Earth
that had risen over distant peaks with the glory of a thousand moons.
And he dared to hope.
He brought the ship softly to rest close to where Chet lay, then
placed the limp form on the self-adjusting floor of the control room.
There must be no shifting of the body as the pull of gravitation
ceased. Soft blankets made a resting place for him.
The entrance port was closed and sealed; and the ship rose gently
under his touch. And, below them, the mirrors showed a world that sank
away. Diane's head was pressed near to his to watch that vanishing
world.
Each rugged mountain was softened in the Earthlight's mellow glow;
they melted together, and lost all sharpness of form. And the light
faded and vanished as they rose into the blanket of gas that blocked
off the return rays and made of this world a dark moon.
No regret now for the territory that was unexplored. Harkness told
himself he would return. And, with the vanishing of that world his
thoughts were only of the little flame of life that still flickered in
Chet's body, and of the Earth, and of the metal ball that was swinging
them out and away.... The sound of the stern exhaust built up and up
to the roaring thunder that meant the blast was opened full....
CHAPTER XI
"_Nothing to Be Done_"
Unmoving, their ship seemed, through the long hours. Yet there were
lights that passed swiftly and unnoticed, and the unending thunder
from the stern gave assurance that they were not floating idly in the
vast sea of space.
The sun was behind them, and ahead was Earth in midday glory; Harkness
could not tear his eyes away from that goal. He stood always at the
controls, not because there was work to be done, but for the feeling
it gave him of urging the ship onward.
Diane ministered to Chet and dressed the wound. There were few words
exchanged between them.
The menace that had emptied Earth's higher levels of all aircraft was
still there. No ships were in sight, as Harkness guided his ship
toward the great sphere. His speed had been cut down, yet still he
outraced the occasional, luminous, writhing forms that threw
themselves upon them. Then the repelling area--and he crashed silently
through and down, with their forward exhaust roaring madly to hold
them in check.
A sea and a shoreline, where a peninsula projected like a giant
boot--and he knew it for Italy and the waters of the Mediterranean.
"Vienna," Diane was telling him; "go to Vienna! It is nearby. And I
know of a surgeon--one of the greatest!"
And an hour later, a quiet, confident man was telling them: "But
yes!--of a certainty he will live. It is fortunate that you were not
very far away when the accident occurred." And only then did Harkness
catch Diana's eyes in an exchange of glances where unbearable relief
was tempered with amusement.
* * * * *
The great hospital had its own landing stages on its broad roof. Their
ship was anchored there, an object to excite the curiosity of a
gathering throng.
"Not a healthy place for me, here in Vienna," Harkness remarked. He
was lifting the ship from its anchorage, its errand of mercy done.
"Now where?" he pondered aloud. The strain of the flight was telling
on him.
The girl recognized the strained look in his eyes, the deep lines that
their experiences had etched upon his face. Gently she drew his hand
from the controls.
"I will take it," she said. "Trust me. Lie down and rest."
Harkness had witnessed an example of her flying skill; she could
handle the ship, he knew. And he threw himself upon a cot in the cabin
to sink under the weight of overpowering fatigue.
He felt the soft shock of their landing. Diane was calling him, her
hand extended to lead him from the open port. But he was wrenched
sharply from the lethargy that held him at sight of his surroundings,
and the memories they recalled.
They were in a park, and their ship rested upon a spacious lawn.
Beyond were trees where a ship had shot crashingly through
storm-tossed limbs. And, before him, a chateau, where a window had
framed the picture of a girl with outstretched arms.
"Trust me," Diane had said. And he did trust her. But did she not know
what this meant? She was delivering him into the enemy's hands. He
should have kept himself from sight until he had rallied his
forces.... He was stammering words of protest as she led him toward
the door. Armed guards were already between him and the ship.
* * * * *
In a dark-panelled room Herr Schwartzmann was waiting. His gasp of
amazement as he sprang to his feet reflected the utter astonishment
written upon his face, until that look gave place to one of
satisfaction.
"Mademoiselle," he exclaimed, "--my dear Mademoiselle Diane! We had
given you up for lost. I thought--I thought--"
"Yes," said Diane quietly, "I believe that I can well imagine what you
thought."
"Ah!" said Herr Schwartzmann, and the look of satisfaction deepened.
"I see that you understand now; you will be with us in this matter. We
have plans for this young man's disposal."
The puzzled wonder that had clouded the steady eyes of Walter Harkness
was replaced by cold anger and more than a trace of contempt.
"You can forget those plans," he told Schwartzmann. "I have plans of
my own."
"Poof!" exclaimed the heavy, bearded man. "We will crush you like
that!" He struck one heavy fist upon the desk. "And what will you do?"
"Several things," said Harkness evenly. "I shall rid the upper levels
of the monsters: I have a gas that will accomplish that. I shall
restore the world's flying to normal. And, with that attended to, I
will give you my undivided attention--raise forty kinds of hell with
Herr Schwartzmann and the interests he represents.
"Forgery! Theft! The seizing of my properties by virtue of a lying
document! You shall see what this leads to. Your companies will be
wrecked; not a decent man or woman engaged in the business of a decent
world will deal with you: that is a small part of what I plan."
The dark face of Herr Schwartzmann was flushed with anger. "You will
never leave this place--" he began. But Harkness would not let him go
on: his voice was as hard as the metal of his ship.
"You and your assassins!" he said contemptuously. "You don't dare
touch me. There is another man who knows--and Diane, too." He paused
to look into the eyes of the girl, which were regarding him with an
inscrutable expression. "I do not know why she brought me here, but
Diane also knows. You can't throttle us all."
"Diane!" The exclamation was wrung involuntarily from Schwartzmann's
lips. "You speak of Mademoiselle Vernier so familiarly?"
* * * * *
The girl's cool voice broke in. She had watched the meeting of the men
in silence; she spoke now as one taking matters into her own quite
capable hands.
"You may omit the incognito, Herr Schwartzmann," she said; "it is no
longer required. I have enjoyed a birthday since last we met: it was
passed in a place of darkness and anguish, where strong men and brave
forgot their own suffering to try by every means to bring comfort to a
girl who was facing death. For that reason I say that I enjoyed it.... And
that birthday was my twenty-first. You know what that means."
"But Mademoiselle Vernier--pardon!--Mam'selle Delacoeur, surely you
will support me. My trustee-ship during all these successful years--"
"Is at an end," said the cool voice.
"I learned more than you were aware of in this last year while I
familiarized myself with the interests that would soon be mine. No,
Herr Schwartzmann, your methods do not appeal to me; they are an
anachronism in the world of to-day."
Harkness was standing in stunned silence. "Delacoeur!" Diane was
Mademoiselle Delacoeur! But that name had been borne by the wealthiest
house of France! Old Delacoeur had died, possessed of millions beyond
counting--and he had left a daughter--Diane!
His mind could not grasp the full significance of this. But one thing
was clear: he could not aspire to the love of one of the queens of
Earth. Whatever faint hope that remained in his heart was lost.... The
cool voice was still speaking.
"You may leave now," she was saying--this girl who had been his
comrade, so unfailingly tender, so true and steady in the face of
incredible dangers. And Herr Schwartzmann took his dismissal as one
who cannot dispute his superior.
* * * * *
The room was silent. Harkness stood with downcast eyes that followed
with meticulous precision the intricacies of design in the rug on
which he stood. A voice was speaking. Not the cool, imperative voice
of Mademoiselle Delacoeur, mistress of vast estates, but the voice of
Diane--the Diane he had learned to love--and it tore at his emotions
until his mind was a whirl of conflicting thoughts.
A tender voice: and there was laughter in it and in the eyes that his
own came despondently to meet.
"Such a man, this Walter Harkness!" she was saying. "So hard, so
vindictive! Ah, the trouble he will make for me because of my
conscienceless agents!"
Harkness threw out his hands in a helpless gesture. "Don't taunt me,"
he said. "You know you have me tied. You've drawn the charges from all
my guns. There is nothing to be done."
Diane Delacoeur drew near. The raillery was gone from her voice, and
the hand that she placed on his arm was trembling.
"Nothing?" she inquired. "Then, if friendly rivalry is impossible,
would you consider, could there not be arranged--a merger of our
interests? I am not thinking now of wealth, of which you will have far
more than I: there are so much greater things in life--"
The eyes that clung to his were pleading now. And within them was the
light that Walter Harkness at last could understand and define. He
took the trembling hand in one of his that was suddenly strong, and
with the other he raised a lovely face that no longer dared to meet
his look.
"You mean--" he began, and fumbled for words to express an emotion
that was beyond words. "Chet said--why, he said--that you needed me--"
Her reply came mingled with a tremulous laugh.
"I have the greatest regard," she whispered, "for Chet's judgement.
But--do you--need me?"
Walt Harkness held the soft body close; bent nearer to catch the
words. And he answered them with his own lips in an ecstasy of emotion
that made nothing of the thrills to be found in that other
conquest--of a Dark Moon.
A SCIENTIFIC HELL
Science playing the rôle of an up-to-date Persephone, visiting the
underworld realm of Pluto to wrest from it hidden cosmic secrets, was
described recently at a meeting of the American Geographical Society
at the Engineering Building by Prof. Harlow Shapley, Harvard
astronomical wizard, who told of the ultra-modern scientific version
of Ulysses's descent into Hades or Dante's visit to hell.
Prof. Shapley, to whom 10,000,000 light-years are like a day to any
ordinary mortal, and whose astronomical investigations have led him to
the center of the cosmos, told the scientists present to descend to
the bowels of the earth and construct therein "Plutonic Laboratories,"
where a man could learn many things unknown about beginnings and
endings, and where, incidentally he may find a way of utilising the
tremendous heat energy stored up in the "scientific hell."
Under the general theme of the "Third Dimension in Geography," Prof.
Shapley talked about the past, present and future of the earth-moon
system; how in 50,000,000 years our days and months will be
forty-seven times as long as they are now; how after that the moon
will again approach the earth until it is broken up by tidal
disruption into ring fragments circulating around the earth like the
ring around Saturn; and of shooting stars coming from far-away solar
systems.
"The temperature under the surface of the earth," said Prof. Shapley,
"increases one degree Fahrenheit at every seventy-six feet, about
seventy degrees per mile. In some places in California we get the
temperature of boiling water at a depth of less than a mile. The
center of the earth is roughly 4,000 miles below the surface.
"Because of this intense internal heat of the earth it would probably
be impossible to maintain permanent laboratories at greater depths
than two miles," said the lecturer, "and, in addition, the
installation and maintenance of Plutonic laboratories will be a
scientific adventure of great difficulty and expense. Yet, if carried
on in connection with the work of existing mines and borings it may
mark the coming decade as one of the important epochs in man's attempt
to understand the earth.
"These Plutonic laboratories, placed at various depths under the
surface, fully equipped with modern scientific apparatus, and
maintained indefinitely, will contribute to our knowledge in a dozen
important fields of geophysic and astronomy."
What Prof. Shapley pointed to as merely a possible by-product of the
proposed scientific "descent into Hades" is the commercial possibility
of tapping the earth's internal source of heat. There is 31,000,000
times as much natural heat in the earth than in all the coal resources
of the world. He stated that Sir Charles Parsons and John L. Hodgson,
both noted British engineers, are already engaged in work on this
problem.
When Caverns Yawned
_By Captain S. P. Meek_
[Illustration: From the bump on the side of the submarine came a flash
of red light.]
[Sidenote: Only Dr. Bird's super-scientific sleuthing stands in the
way of Ivan Saranoff's latest attempt at wholesale destruction.]
Bells jangled discordantly. A whistle split the air with a piercing
note. A band blared away on the platform. With a growing rumble of
sound, the Presidential special slowly gathered headway. The President
waved a final farewell to the crowds at the platform and sat down. He
chatted cheerily with his companions until the train was clear of
Charleston, then rose, and with a word to the others stepped into the
car. Operative Carnes of the United States Service slumped back in
his chair with a sigh of relief.
"Thank Goodness, that's over," he said. "I was never so glad to get
him safely away from a place in my life."
Haggerty of the secret service nodded in agreement. Colonel Holmes,
the military aide, looked up inquiringly.
"Why so? Do you think Charleston an especially dangerous place for him
to be?"
"Not ordinarily. Charleston is a very patriotic and loyal city, but I
have been worried. There have been vague rumors going around. Nothing
definite that we could pin down, but enough to make me pretty uneasy."
"I think you've worried needlessly. I have been in constant touch with
the Military Intelligence Division and they have reported nothing
alarming."
Haggerty chuckled at the look of disgust that spread over Carnes'
face. Colonel Holmes bridled visibly.
"Now look here, Carnes," he began.
"Oh, horse-feathers!" interrupted Carnes. "The M.I.D. is all right in
its place--Good Lord! What's that?"
* * * * *
The train gave a sudden sickening lurch. Colonel Holmes sprawled in an
undignified heap in one corner of the observation platform. Carnes and
Haggerty kept their feet by hanging on to the rails. From the interior
of the car came cries of alarm. The train righted itself for a moment
and then lurched worse than before. There was a scream of brakes as
the engineer strove to halt the forward progress. The train swayed and
lurched like a ship in a storm. Carnes sprang for the telephone
connected with the engine cab and rang excitedly.
"Hello, Bemis," he cried when an answer came: "take off the brakes!
Keep moving at full speed, no matter what happens. What? Use your gun
on him, man! Keep moving even if the train tips over!"
The train swayed and rocked worse than ever as it began to gather
momentum. Carnes looked back along the track and gasped. For three
hundred yards behind them, the track was sinking out of sight. The
train forged ahead, but it was evident that it also was sinking into
the ground. The track behind them suddenly gave. With a roar like a
hundred buildings collapsing, it sank out of sight in a cloud of dust.
The rear car of the train hung partially over the yawning cavern in
the earth for an instant before the laboring engine dragged it to
solid ground. The swaying and lurching grew less. For a mile it
persisted to a slight degree. With a face the color of a sheet, Carnes
made his way into the train. The President met him at the door.
"What's the trouble, Carnes?" he demanded.
"I am not sure, Mr. President. It felt like an earthquake. A great
cavern opened in the earth behind us. Our train was almost trapped in
it."
"An earthquake! We must stop the train at once and take charge of the
situation. An emergency of that sort demands immediate attention."
"I beg you to do nothing of the sort, sir. Your presence would add
little to the rescue work and your life is too precious to risk."
"But my duty to the people--"
"Is to keep yourself alive, sir! Mr. President, this may well be an
attempt on your life. There are persons who would give anything to do
away with you, especially at present. You have not endeared yourself
to a certain class in calling for a conference of the powers to curb
Russia's anti-religious tactics."
* * * * *
The President hesitated. He knew Carnes well enough to know that he
usually spoke from accurate knowledge and with good judgment.
"Mr. President," went on the operative earnestly, "I am responsible to
the American people for your safety. I beg you to follow my advice."
"Very well, Carnes," replied the President, "I'll put myself in your
hands for the present. What is your program?"
"Your route is well known. Other attempts may be planned since this
one failed. Let me have you transferred incognito to another train and
hurried through to Washington secretly. I am going to drop off and go
back. That earthquake needs to be looked into."
Again the President hesitated.
"My desertion of the stricken area will not be favorably regarded. If
I sneak away secretly as though in fear, it will be bad for the public
morale."
"We'll let the special go through. No one need know that you have left
it."
"Well--I guess you're right. What are you going to do about it?"
"My first move will be to summon Dr. Bird from Washington."
"That's a good move. You'd better have him bring Dr. Lassen with him.
Lassen is a great volcano and earthquake specialist, you know."
"I will, sir. If you will get ready to drop off at the next connecting
point, I'll send Haggerty and Bemis with you. The rest of the party
can remain on the special."
"All right, Carnes, if you insist."
* * * * *
Carnes went forward to the operator of the train's radio set. In half
an hour the special came to a stop at a junction point and four men
got off. Ten minutes later three of them climbed aboard another train
which stopped for them. Carnes, the fourth man, hurried to a
telephone. Fifteen minutes later he was talking to Dr. Bird at the
latter's private laboratory in the Bureau of Standards.
"An earthquake, Carnes?" exclaimed the doctor as the operative
described the happenings. "Wait a few minutes, will you?"
In five minutes he was back on the telephone.
"It was no earthquake, old dear, whatever it may have been. I have
examined the records of all three of the Bureau's seismographs. None
of them record even a tremor. What are you going to do?"
"Whatever you say, Doctor. I'm out of my depth already."
"Let me think a moment. All right, listen. Go back to Charleston as
quickly as you can and get in touch with the commanding officer at
Fort Moultrie. I'll have the Secretary of War telephone him and give
him orders. Get troops and go to the scene of the catastrophe. Allow
no one near it. Proclaim martial law if necessary. Stop all road and
rail traffic within a radius of two miles. Arrest anyone trying to
pass your guard lines. I'll get a plane from Langley Field and come
down on the run. Is that all clear?"
"Perfectly, Doctor. By the way, the President suggested that you bring
Dr. Lassen with you."
"Since it wasn't an earthquake, he wouldn't be of much value. However,
I'll bring him if I can get hold of him. Now start things moving down
there. I'll get some apparatus together and join you in five hours;
six at the outside. Have a car waiting for me at the Charleston
airport."
* * * * *
Carnes commandeered a passing car and drove back to Charleston. He
made a wide sweep to avoid the disturbed area and went direct to Fort
Moultrie. Dr. Bird had been good at his word. The troops were
assembled in heavy marching order when the detective arrived. A few
words to the commanding officer was sufficient to set the trucks
loaded with soldiers in motion. Carnes, accompanied by the colonel and
his staff, went direct to the scene of the catastrophe.
He found a hole in the ground, a hundred feet wide and a quarter of a
mile long, sunk to a depth of fifty feet. He shuddered as he thought
of what would have happened had the Presidential train been in the
center of the devastated area instead of at the edge. The edges of the
hole were ragged and sloping as though the earth had caved in to fill
a huge cavern underground.
State and local authorities were already on the ground, striving to
hold back sightseers. They were very glad to deliver their
responsibility to the representative of the federal government. Carnes
added their force to that of the military. In an hour a cordon of
guards were stationed about the cavern while every road was picketed
two miles away. Fortunately there had been no loss of life and no
rescue work was needed. The earth-shaking had been purely a local
matter, centered along the line of the railroad track.
There was nothing to do but wait, Carnes thought furiously. He had
worked with Dr. Bird long enough to have a fair idea of the
scientist's usual lines of investigation.
"The first thing he'll want to do is to explore that hole," he mused.
"Probably, that'll mean some excavating. I'd better get a wrecking
train with a crane on it and a steam shovel here. A gang of men with
picks and shovels might be useful, too."
He hurried to the railroad officials. The sight of his gold badge had
the desired result. Telegraph keys began to click and telephones to
ring. Carnes was sorely tempted to explore the hole himself, but he
resisted the temptation. Dr. Bird was not always pleasant when his
colleagues departed from the orders he had given.
* * * * *
The morning passed, and the first part of the afternoon. Two wrecking
trains stood with steam up at the edge of the hole. Grouped by the
trains were a hundred negroes with shovels and picks. Carnes sat at
the edge of the hole and stared down into it. He was roused from his
reverie by the sound of a motor.
From the north came an airplane. High over the hole it passed, and
then swerved and descended. On the under side of the wings could be
seen the insignia of the Air Corps. Carnes jumped to his feet and
waved his hat. Lower came the plane until it roared across the cavern
less than a hundred feet above the ground. Two figures leaned out and
examined the terrain carefully. Carnes waved again. One of the figures
waved a hand in reply. The plane rose in the air and straightened out
toward Charleston.
"We'll have the doctor here in a few minutes now," said Carnes to the
Colonel. "It might be a good plan to send a motorcycle out along the
Charleston road to bring him in. We don't want the guards to delay
him."
The colonel gave an order and a motorcycle shot off down the road. In
half an hour it came sputtering back with a huge Cadillac roaring in
its wake. The car drew up and stopped. From it descended two men. The
first was a small, wizened figure with heavy glasses. What hair age
had left to him was as white as snow. The second figure, which towered
over the first, was one to merit attention anywhere.
* * * * *
Dr. Bird was as light on his feet and as quick and graceful as a cat,
but there was nothing feline about his appearance. He stood well over
six feet in his stockings and tipped the beam close to the two
hundred mark. Not one ounce of fat was on his huge frame. So fine was
he drawn that unless one looked closely he would never suspect the
weight of bone and muscle that his unobtrusive tweed suit covered.
Piercing black eyes looked out from under shaggy brows. His face was
lean and browned, and it took a second glance to realize the
tremendous height and breadth of his forehead. A craggy jutting chin
spoke of stubbornness and the relentless following up of a line of
action determined on. His head was topped with an unruly shock of
black hair which he tossed back with a hand that commanded instant
attention.
His hands were the most noteworthy thing about the famous Bureau
scientist. Long slender hands, they were, with slim tapering
fingers--the hands of an artist and a dreamer. The acid stains that
marred them could not hide their slim beauty, yet Carnes knew that
those hands had muscles like steel wire and that the doctor boasted a
grip that could crush the hand of a professional wrestler. He had seen
him tear a deck of playing cards in half and, after doubling, again in
half, with as little effort as the ordinary man would use in tearing a
bare dozen of the cards. As he climbed out of the car his keen black
eyes swept around in a comprehensive glance. Carnes, trained observer
that he was, knew that in that one glance every essential detail which
it had taken him an hour to place had been accurately noted and stored
away in the doctor's mind. He came forward to the detective.
"Has anything happened since you telephoned me?" was his first
question.
"Nothing, Doctor. I followed your instructions and also assembled a
crew of men with excavating tools."
"You're improving, Carnes. This is Dr. Lassen. This is a little out
of your line. Doctor, but you may see something familiar. What does
it look like to you?"
"Not like an earthquake, Bird, at all events. Offhand I would say that
a huge cavern had been washed in the earth and the ground had caved
in."
"It looks that way. If you are right, we should find running water if
we dig deep enough. Have you been down in the hole, Carnes?"
"No, Doctor."
"Then that's the first thing to do. You have ropes, of course?"
* * * * *
Carnes called to the waiting gang of negroes and a dozen of these
hurried up with ropes. Dr. Bird slung a rope around his body under his
arms and was lowered into the hole. The rope slackened as he reached
bottom. Carnes lay on his stomach and looked over the edge. Dr. Bird
was gingerly picking his way across the ground. He turned and called
up.
"Carnes, you and Lassen can come down if you care to."
In a few minutes the detective and the volcanologist joined him in the
cavern. The top surface of the ground was rolled up into waves like
the sea. The sides of the hole were almost sheer. The naked rock was
exposed for thirty feet. Above the rock could be seen the subsoil, and
then the layer of top soil and vegetation. Dr. Bird was carefully
examining the rock wall.
"What do you make of these, Lassen?" he asked, pointing to a row of
horizontal striations in the rock. The volcanologist studied them.
"They might be water marks but if so they are different from any that
I have seen before," he said doubtfully. "It looks as though some
force had cut the rock away in one sharp stroke."
"Exactly. Notice this yellow powder on the ridges. Water would have
washed it away."
Dr. Bird stepped forward to the wall and idly attempted to pick up a
pinch of the yellow powder he had referred to in his fingers. He gave
an exclamation of surprise as he did so. The powder was evidently fast
to the wall. He drew his knife from his pocket and pried at the stuff.
It fell readily. He scraped again and caught a speck of the falling
powder in his hand. He gave a cry of surprise, for his hand sank as
though borne down by a heavy weight. With an effort he lifted his hand
and examined the substance.
"Come here, Carnes," he said. "Hold your hand up to catch some of this
powder as I scrape it off."
* * * * *
The detective held up his hand. Dr. Bird pried with his knife and a
shower of dull yellow particles fell. Carnes' hand sank as though the
bits of dust had been a lead bar. He placed his other hand under it
and with an effort lifted both hands up a few inches.
"What on earth is this stuff, Doctor?" he cried. "It's as heavy as
lead."
"It's a great deal heavier than lead, Carnesy, old dear. I don't know
what it is. I am inclined to think you did a wise thing when you sent
for me. Lassen, take a look at this stuff. Did you ever run into
anything like it?"
The aged volcanologist shook his head. The yellow powder was something
beyond his ken.
"I have been poking around volcanos all my life," he said, "and I have
seen some queer things come out of the ground--but nothing like that."
Dr. Bird poked tentatively at the substance for a moment, his brow
furrowed in lines of thought. He suddenly threw back his shoulders in
a gesture of decision.
"Send a gang of excavators down here," he cried. "Never mind the power
shovel at present."
* * * * *
Down the ropes swarmed the gang of negroes. Dr. Bird indicated an area
at one end of the cavern and directed them to dig. The blacks flew to
work with a will. The top soil and subsoil were rapidly tossed into
buckets and hauled to the surface. When bare rock lay before them, the
negroes ceased their efforts.
"What next, Doctuh, suh?" asked the foreman.
"Get dynamite!" cried the doctor. "If I'm right, this underground
cavern is entered by a tunnel. We'll blast away this caved-in rock
until we locate it."
Then occurred a strange thing.
"There is no need to go to that trouble, Dr. Bird," spoke a metallic
voice, from nowhere, it seemed. The negroes looked at one another.
Picks and shovels fell from nerveless hands.
"Your guess about a tunnel is correct, Doctor," went on the Voice.
"There is a tunnel leading away from the spot where you are, but to
find the end would be useless to you. I have prepared for that."
From the blacks came a low moan of fear.
"Ha'nts!" cried one of them. The cry was taken up and spread into a
rolling chorus of fear. With one accord they dropped their tools and
stampeded in a mad rush toward the dangling ropes. Carnes sprang
forward to stop them.
"Let them go, Carnes!" cried the doctor. "Their work is done for the
present. Let's locate that radio receiver."
"That also will be a useless search. Doctor," spoke up the Voice
again. "I have perfected a transmitter which will send my voice
through space and make it audible without the aid of the clumsy
apparatus you depend on. I am also able to see you through the miles
of intervening rock without the aid of any instruments at your end."
* * * * *
"I presume that you can hear me as well?"
"Certainly, Doctor. To save you trouble--and I dislike to see you
waste the efforts of your really good brain on minor problems--I will
tell you that your surmise is correct. A tunnel does lead both to and
from the place where you stand. It twists and turns so that even you
would be puzzled to plot a general direction. You would have to follow
it inch by inch. If you tried that, naturally I would cause it to
collapse before you, or on top of you, if you got too close. Be
content with what you have seen and seek a better way to trace me."
"Who are you, anyway?" blurted out Carnes.
"Is it possible that you do not know? Such is fame. I thought that at
least my friend Mr. Carnes would suspect that Ivan Saranoff had done
this."
"But you're dead!" protested the detective. "We killed you when we
destroyed your helicopter."
"You killed merely an assistant who had disobeyed my orders. Had I not
decreed his death, he would be alive to-day. I could kill you as you
stand there; resolve you into nothingness; but I do not choose to do so--yet.
Other attempts I have made you have frustrated, but this time I shall
succeed. I will institute a reign of terror which will bring your
rich, foolish country to its knees. Listen, while I give you a taste
of my power. The city of Charleston is about to be destroyed."
A thunderous roaring filled the air. Crash followed crash in rapid
succession. It sounded as though all the noise of the universe had
been concentrated in the cavern. The earth shook and rocked like a
restless sea. From above came cries of terror.
The three men in the cavern were thrown to the ground. Shaken by the
fall and deafened by the tumult, they hung onto irregularities of the
rock on which they lay. Gradually the tumult and the shaking subsided.
The cries from above became more apparent. Silence finally reigned in
the cavern and the metallic Voice spoke again.
"Go back now and look at Charleston and you will see what to expect.
The rest of your cities will soon share the same fate. Beware of
trying to trace my movements, for your lives are in the hollow of my
hand."
* * * * *
The voice died away in silence. From the edge of the hole came a cry.
A Fort Moultrie officer was peering down at them.
"Are you all right down there?" he hailed.
"Right as hops," called Dr. Bird cheerfully. "What happened up above?"
"I don't know, Doctor. There seems to be a lot of smoke and fire over
in the direction of the city. I expect the quake shook them up a
little this time. What shall we do now?"
"We're ready to come up. First I'm going to send up a wheelbarrow full
of yellow powder. Rig a crane to lift it, for it's too heavy to try to
hoist with ropes."
With the aid of Carnes and Dr. Lassen, Dr. Bird collected a few cubic
inches of the yellow powder from the ridges in the rock. He made the
wheelbarrow containing it fast to the wire cables of the crane and
gave the signal. Slowly it was raised to the surface. When it had
safely reached there he turned to his companions.
"Grab a rope and let's go," he said.
In a few moments they were on the upper level. With the efforts of
half a dozen men, the body of the wheelbarrow was lifted into the car.
With a few final words of instruction to the colonel, Dr. Bird and his
companions entered the car and were whisked away to the city.
A spectacle of destruction and ruin awaited them. Fully one-fourth of
the city had sunk thirty feet into the ground. The sinking was not
even nor uniform. The sunken ground was rolled into huge waves while
buildings which had collapsed lay in confused heaps on all sides. From
a dozen places in the area, columns of fire rose in the air.
* * * * *
Dr. Bird wasted little time on the scene before him. His car skirted
the edge of the huge hole and took the road toward the Charleston
airport, which was in a section which had suffered little. In half an
hour the army transport roared into the air carrying Dr. Bird's
precious load of yellow powder. Four hours later they dropped to a
landing at Langley Field.
"Now, Carnes," said the doctor as they debarked from the plane, "there
is work ahead. It may be too late to do much to-night, but we have no
time to waste. Get Bolton on the wire and tell him that we have
positive evidence that Saranoff is still alive and still up to his
devil's tricks. Start every man of the secret service and every
Department of Justice agent that can be spared on the trail. He can't
live underground all the time, and you ought to get on his tracks
somehow. I'm going up to the laboratory and see what I can do with
this stuff. Report to me there to-morrow morning."
Carnes hurried away. Bolton, the chief of the United States Secret
Service, had long ago recovered from any professional jealousy he had
ever felt of Dr. Bird. The doctor's message that Ivan Saranoff, the
arch-enemy of society, the head of the Young Labor party, the
unofficial chief of the secret Soviet forces in the United States, was
alive and again in the field against law and order was enough to set
in motion every force that he controlled. Waving aside precedent and
crashing his way past secretaries, he set in motion not only the
agents of the Department of Justice but also the post-office forces
and the specialized but highly efficient Military and Naval
Intelligence Divisions. The telephone and telegraph wires from
Washington were kept busy all night carrying orders and bringing in
reports. But despite all this activity, it was with a disappointed
face that Operative Carnes sought the doctor in the morning.
* * * * *
Dr. Bird was in his private laboratory on the third floor of the
Bureau of Standards. When Carnes entered he was seated in a chair at
his desk. His black eyes shone out from a chalky face like two burned
holes in a blanket. Carnes started at the appearance of utter
weariness presented by the famous scientist. Dr. Bird straightened up
and squared his shoulders as the detective entered.
"Any luck, Carnes?" he asked eagerly.
"None at all, Doctor. We haven't been able to get a single trace of
his corporeal existence since that submarine was destroyed off the
Massachusetts coast. All we have is Karuska's word that he is still
alive."
"We heard his voice yesterday."
"His or another's."
"True. Have you set in motion every agency that the government has?"
"Every one. Either Bolton or I have talked to the Chief of Police in
every large city in the United States and Canada. Every known member
of the Young Labor party who is above the mere rank and file is under
close surveillance."
"Good enough. Keep at it and you'll trace him eventually. As soon as I
get a few quarts of black coffee into my system, I'll start another
line of search going."
"What did you find out last night?"
"I found that our seismograph recorded the Charleston disaster. It was
merely a faint jog, about what should be caused by a severe landslide.
The disaster did not affect the earth's crust, but was purely local.
That gives me a clue to his method."
"I described the affair to Bolton and he suggested that it might be
caused by a disintegrating ray."
* * * * *
Dr. Bird snorted. "When will people learn that there is not, and in
the nature of things never can be, a disintegrating ray?" he
exclaimed. "Of course a ray can be made which will tear things down to
their constituent elements, but matter is indestructible, and the idea
of wiping matter out of existence is absurd."
"But I have heard you say that matter and energy were
interchangeable."
"That is a different proposition. I believe they are. In fact, if you
remember, Carmichael proved it, although the proof was lost at his
death. Nothing of the sort was done at Charleston, however. Do you
know how much energy is contained in matter? Well, a cubic inch of
copper would drive the largest ship afloat around the world twice, and
across the Atlantic to boot. The energy contained in the cubic yards
of rock that were removed under Charleston would have blown the world
to fragments."
"Then what did happen?"
"Matter, as you know, is composed of atoms. These atoms are as far
from one another, compared to their size, as the stars and planets of
the universe. Each atom in turn is composed of electrons, negative
particles of electrical energy, held in position about a fixed central
nucleus of positive electricity known as a proton. I speak now of the
simplest element. Most of them have many protons and electrons in
their make-up. The space between these particles compared with their
size is such that the universe would be crowded in comparison."
"What does that lead to?"
"I have described the composition of lead, the densest known element,
over thirteen times as heavy as water, bulk for bulk. Conceive what it
would mean if some force could compress together these widely
separated particles until they touched. The resulting substance would
be an element of almost inconceivable density. Such a condition is
approached in the stars, some of which are as high as four thousand
times as dense as the earth. What Saranoff has done is to find some
way of compressing together the atoms into that yellow powder which we
found in the cavern. He has not gone to the limit, for the stuff is
only a little over four thousand times as dense as water. A cubic inch
of it weighs one hundred and thirty-two pounds. With its density
increased to that extent, the volume is reduced accordingly. That was
what accounted for those caverns into which the earth tumbled."
"I'll believe you, Doctor," replied the detective; "but I'd believe
you just as quickly if you swore that the moon was made of cream
cheese made from the milk taken from the milky way. One would be just
as understandable to me as the other."
* * * * *
They were interrupted by the entrance of a waiter who bore a huge pot
of steaming coffee. Dr. Bird's eyes lighted up as a cup was poured.
Carnes knew enough not to interrupt while the doctor poured and drank
eight cups of the strong black fluid. As he drank, the lines of
fatigue disappeared from the scientist's face. He sat up as fresh as
though he had not been working at high pressure the entire night.
"Dr. Fisher tells me that the amount of caffeine I drink would kill a
horse," he said with a chuckle; "but sometimes it is needed. I feel
better now. Let's get to work."
"What shall we do?"
"Despite Saranoff's words, it must be possible to trace him. He is
undoubtedly releasing his energy from some form of subterranean borer,
and such a thing can be located. The energy he uses must set up
electrical disturbances which instruments will detect. I have had work
started on a number of ultra-sensitive wave detectors which will
record any wave-length from zero to five millimeters. We'll send them
to various points along the seacoast. They ought to pick up the stray
waves from the energy he is using to blast a path through the earth.
I'm not going to bother with the waves from his motor; they may be of
any wave-length, and there would be constant false alarms. I have
another idea."
"What is it?"
"I am judging Saranoff from his previous actions. You remember that he
used a submarine in that alien-smuggling scheme the Coast Guard broke
up, and also when he loosed that sea monster on the Atlantic shipping?
He seems to be rather fond of submarines."
"Well?"
* * * * *
"The amount of energy he uses must be almost inconceivable," Dr. Bird
went on. "He can hardly carry an amount of fuel which will enable him
to bore underground for very many miles, Charleston is on the coast. I
have an idea that he uses a submarine to transport his borer from
point to point. After using the borer he must return to the submarine
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