Astounding Stories, August, 1931
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Title: Astounding Stories, August, 1931
Author: Various
Release date: June 28, 2010 [eBook #33016]
Most recently updated: November 5, 2013
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTOUNDING STORIES, AUGUST, 1931 ***
Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
ASTOUNDING
STORIES
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_More than Two Million Copies Required to Supply the Monthly Demand
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* * * * *
VOL. VII, No. 2 CONTENTS AUGUST, 1931
THE DANGER FROM THE DEEP RALPH MILNE FARLEY 149
_Marooned on the Sea-Floor, His Hoisting Cable Cut, Young Abbot Is
Left at the Mercy of the Man-Sharks._
BROOD OF THE DARK MOON CHARLES WILLARD DIFFIN 168
_Once More Chet, Walt and Diane Are United in a Wild Ride to the Dark
Moon. But This Time They Go as Prisoners of Their Deadly Enemy
Schwartzmann._ (Beginning a Four-Part Novel.)
IF THE SUN DIED R. F. STARZL 198
_Tens of Millenniums After the Death of the Sun There Comes a Young
Man Who Dares to Open the Frozen Gate of Subterranea._
THE MIDGET FROM THE ISLAND H. G. WINTER 214
_Garth Howard, Prey to Half the Animals of the Forest, Fights Valiantly
to Regain His Lost Five Feet of Size._ (A Complete Novelette.)
THE MOON WEED HARL VINCENT 236
_Unwittingly the Traitor of the Earth, Van Pits Himself Against the
Inexorably Tightening Web of Plant-Beasts He Has Released from the
Moon._
THE PORT OF MISSING PLANES CAPTAIN S. P. MEEK 255
_In the Underground Caverns of the Selom, Dr. Bird Once Again Locks
Wills with the Subversive Genius, Saranoff._
THE READERS CORNER ALL OF US 273
_A Meeting Place for Readers of Astounding Stories_
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Issued monthly by The Clayton Magazines, 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
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Trade Mark in the U. S. Patent Office. Member Newsstand Group. For
advertising rates address The Newsstand Group, Inc., 80 Lafayette
Street, New York; or The Wrigley Bldg., Chicago.
* * * * *
The Danger from the Deep
_By Ralph Milne Farley_
[Illustration: _He caught a glimpse of the grinning fish-face._]
[Sidenote: Marooned on the sea-floor, his hoisting cable cut, young
Abbot is left at the mercy of the man-sharks.]
Within a thick-walled sphere of steel eight feet in diameter, with
crystal-clear fused-quartz windows, there crouched an alert young
scientist, George Abbot. The sphere rested on the primeval muck and
slime at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, one mile beneath the
surface.
The beam from his 200-watt searchlight, which shot out through one of
his three windows into the dark blue depths beyond, seemed faint
indeed, yet it served to illuminate anything which crossed it, or on
which it fell.
For a considerable length of time since his descent to the ocean
floor, young Abbot had clung to one of the thick windows of his
bathysphere, absorbed by the marine life outside. Slender small fish
with stereoscopic eyes, darted in and out of the beam of light.
Swimming snails floated by, carrying their own phosphorescent
lanterns. Paper-thin transparent crustaceans swam into view, followed
by a few white shrimps, pale as ghosts. Then a mist of tiny fish swept
across his field of vision. Abbot cupped his face in his hands, and
stared out.
The incongruous thought flashed across his mind that thus he had often
sat by the window of his club in New York, and gazed out at the
passing motor traffic.
His searchlight cut a sharp swath through the blue muck. More than
once he thought he saw large moving fish-like forms far away.
"Speed up the generator," he called into his phone.
Immediately the shaft of light brightened. He set about trying to
focus upon one of those dim elusive shapes which had so intrigued him.
* * * * *
But suddenly the searchlight went out! Intent on repairing the
apparatus as rapidly as possible, Abbot snapped the button-switch,
which ought to have illuminated the interior of his diving-sphere; but
the lights did not go on. Then he noticed that the electric fan, on
which he depended to keep his air-supply properly mixed, had stopped.
He spoke into the telephone transmitter, which hung in front of his
mouth: "Hi, there, up on the boat! My electric power is cut off. I'm
down here with my fan stopped and my heat cut off. Hoist me up, and be
quick about it!"
"O.K., sir."
As the young man waited for the winch to get under way on the boat a
mile above him, he pulled out his electric pocket flashlight and sent
its feeble ray out through his quartz-glass window into the dim
royal-purple depths beyond, in one last attempt to get a look at those
mysterious fish-shapes which had so intrigued him.
And then he saw one of them distinctly.
Evidently they had swum closer when the glow of his searchlight had
stopped; and so the sudden flash of his pocket-light had taken them by
surprise.
For, as he snapped it on, he caught an instant's glimpse of a grinning
fish-face pressed close against the outside of his thick window-pane,
as though trying to peer in at him. The fish-face somewhat resembled
the head of a shark, except that the mouth was a bit smaller and not
quite so leeringly brutal, and the forehead was rather high and domed.
But what most attracted Abbot's attention, in the brief instant before
the startled fish whisked away in a swirl of phosphorescent foam, was
the fact that, from beneath each of the two pectoral fins, there
protruded what appeared to be a skinny human arm, terminating in three
fingers and a thumb!
Then the fish was gone. Abbot snapped off his little light.
The diving-sphere quivered, as the hoisting-cable tautened. But
suddenly the sphere settled back to the bottom of the sea with a
jarring thud. "Cable's parted, sir!" spoke a frantic voice in his
ear-phones.
* * * * *
For a moment George Abbot sat stunned with horror. Then his mind began
to race, like a squirrel in a cage, seeking some way of escape.
Perhaps he could manage to unscrew the 400-pound trap door at the top
of the sphere, and shoot to the surface, with the bubbling-out of the
confined air. But his scientifically trained mind made some rapid
calculations which showed him this was absurd.
At the depth of a mile, the pressure is roughly 156 atmospheres, that
is to say, 156 times the air-pressure at the surface of the earth; and
the moment that his sphere was opened to this pressure, he would be
blown back inwardly away from the man-hole, and the air inside his
sphere would suddenly be compressed to only 1/156 of its former
volume.
Not only would this pressure be sufficient to squash him into a
mangled pulp, but also the sudden compression of the air inside the
sphere would generate enough heat to fry that mangled pulp to a crisp
cinder almost instantly.
As George Abbot came to a full realization of the horror of these
facts, he recoiled from the trap-door as though it were charged with
death.
"For Heaven's sakes, do something!" he shrieked in agony into the
transmitter.
"Courage, sir," came back the reply. "We are rigging up a grapple just
as fast as we can. Long before your oxygen gives out, we shall slide
it down to you along the telephone line, which is the only remaining
connection between us. When it settles about your sphere, and you can
see its hooks outside your window by the light of your pocket-flash,
let us know, and we'll trip the grapple and haul you up."
"Thank you," replied the young man.
* * * * *
He was calm now, but it was an enforced and numb kind of calmness.
Mechanically he throttled down his oxygen supply, so as to make it
last longer. Mechanically he took out his notebook and pencil and
started to write down, in the dark, his experiences; for he was
determined to leave a full account for posterity, even though he
himself should perish.
After setting down a categorical description of the successive
partings of the electric light cable and the hoist cable, and his
thoughts and feelings in that connection, he described in detail the
shark with hands, which he had seen through the window of his sphere.
He tried to be very explicit about this, for he realized that his
account would probably be laid, by everyone, to the disordered
imagination of his last dying moments; being a true scientist, George
Abbot wanted the world to believe him, so that another sphere would be
built and sent down to the ocean depths, to find out more about these
peculiar denizens of the deep.
Of course, no one would believe him. This thought kept drumming in his
ears. No one--except Professor Osborne. Old Osborne would believe!
George Abbot's mind flashed back to a conversation he had had with the
old professor, just before the oil interests had sent him on this
exploring trip to discover the source of the large quantities of
petroleum which had begun to bubble up from the bottom of a certain
section of the Pacific very near where Abbot now was.
* * * * *
Osborne had said, "This petroleum suggests a gusher to me. And what
causes gushers? Human beings, boring for oil, to satisfy human needs."
"But, Professor," Abbot had objected, "there can't be any human beings
at the bottom of the sea!"
"Why not?" Professor Osborne had countered. "Life is supposed to have
originated spontaneously in the slime of the ocean depths; therefore
that part of the earth has had a head-start on us in the game of
evolution. May not this head-start have been maintained right down to
date, thus producing at the bottom of the sea a race superior to
anything upon the dry land?"
"But," Abbot had objected further, "if so, why haven't they come up to
visit or conquer us? And why haven't we ever found any trace of them?"
"Quite simple to explain," the old professor had replied. "Any
creature who can live at the frightful pressures of the ocean depths
could never survive a journey even halfway to the surface. It would be
like our trying to live in an almost perfect vacuum. We should
explode, and so would these denizens of the deep, if they tried to
come up here. Even one of their dead bodies could not be brought to
the surface in recognizable form. No contact with them will ever be
possible, nor will they ever constitute a menace to any one--for which
we may thank the Lord!"
George Abbot now reviewed this conversation as he crouched in his
diving-sphere in the purple darkness of the marine depths. Yes, old
Osborne would believe him. The diary must be written for Osborne's
eyes.
* * * * *
Abbot sent another beam from his pocket light suddenly out into the
water; and this time he surprised several of the peculiar fish. These,
like the first, had arms and hands and high intelligent foreheads.
Then suddenly Abbot laughed a harsh laugh. Old Osborne had been wrong
in one thing, namely in saying that the super-race of the deep would
never be a menace to anyone. They were being a menace to George Abbot,
right now, for it was undoubtedly they who had cut his cables.
Probably they were possessed of much the same scientific curiosity
with regard to him as he was with regard to them, and so they had
determined to secure him as a museum specimen.
The idea was a weird one. He laughed again, mirthlessly.
"What is the matter, sir?" came an anxious voice in his ear-phones.
"Hurry that grapple!" was his reply. "I have found out what cut my
cables. There are some very intelligent-looking fish down here, and I
think they want me for--"
An ominous click sounded in his ears. Then silence.
"Hello! Hello there!" he shouted. "Can you hear me up on the boat?"
But no answer came back. The line remained dead. The strange fish had
cut George Abbot's last contact with the upper world. The
grapple-hooks could never find him now, for there was now not even a
telephone cable to guide them down to his sphere.
The realization that he was hopelessly lost, and that he had not much
longer to live, came as a real relief to him, after the last few
moments of frantic uncertainty.
* * * * *
Hoping that his sphere would eventually be found, even though too late
to do him any good, he set assiduously to work jotting down all the
details which he could remember of those strange denizens of the deep,
the man-handed sharks, which he was now firmly convinced were the
cause of his present predicament.
He stared out through one of his windows into the brilliant blue
darkness, but did not turn on his flashlight. How near were these
enemies of his, he wondered?
The presence of those menacing man-sharks, just outside the
four-inch-thick steel shell, which withstood a ton of pressure for
each square inch of its surface, began to obsess young Abbot. What
were they doing out there in the watery-blue midnight? Perhaps, having
secured his sphere as a scientific specimen, they were already
preparing to cut into it so as to see what was inside. That these
fish could cut through four inches of steel was not so improbable as
it sounded, for had they not already succeeded in severing a rubber
cable an inch and a half thick, containing two heavy copper wires, and
also two inches of the finest, non-kinking steel rope!
The young scientist flashed his pocket torch out through the thick
quartz pane, but his enemies were nowhere in sight. Then he fell to
calculating his oxygen supply. His normal consumption was about half a
quart per minute, at which rate his two tanks would be good for
thirty-six hours. His chemical racks contained enough soda-lime to
absorb the excess carbon dioxide, enough calcium chloride to keep down
the humidity and enough charcoal to sweeten the body odors for much
more than that period.
For a moment, the thought of these facts encouraged him. He had been
down less than two hours. Perhaps the boat above him could affect his
rescue in the more than thirty-four hours which remained!
* * * * *
But then he realized that he had failed to take into consideration the
near-freezing temperature of the ocean depths. This temperature he
knew to be in the neighborhood of 39 degrees Fahrenheit--even though
no thermometer hung outside his window, as none could withstand the
frightful pressures at the bottom of the sea. For it is one of the
remarkable facts of inductive science that man has been able to figure
out _a priori_ that the temperature at all deep points of the ocean,
tropic as well as arctic, must always be stable at approximately 39
degrees.
Abbot was clad only in a light cotton sailor suit, and now that his
source of heat had been cut off by the severing of his power lines,
his prison was rapidly becoming unbearably chilly. His thick steel
sphere constituted such a perfect transmitter of heat that he might
almost as well have been actually swimming in water of 39 degrees
temperature, so far as comfort was concerned.
Abbot's emotions ran all the gamut from stupefaction, through dull
calmness, clear-headed thought, intense but aimless mental activity,
nervousness, frenzy, and insane delirium, back to stupefaction again.
During one of his periods of calmness, he figured out what an almost
total impossibility there was of the chance that his ship, one mile
above him on the surface, could ever find his sphere with grappling
hooks. Yet he prayed for that chance. A single chance in a million
sometimes does happen.
* * * * *
Several hours had by now elapsed since the parting of the young
scientist's cables. It was bitterly cold inside the sphere. In order
to keep warm, he had to exercise during his calm moments as
systematically as his cramped quarters would permit. During his
frantic moments he got plenty of exercise automatically. And of course
all this movement used up more than the normal amount of oxygen, so
that he was forced to open the valves on his tanks to two or three
times their normal flow. His span of further life was thereby cut to
ten or twelve hours, if indeed he could keep himself warm for that
long.
Why didn't the people on the boat do something!
He was just about to indulge in one of his frantic fits of despair,
when he heard or felt--the two senses being strangely commingled in
his present situation--a clank or thump upon the top of his
bathysphere. Instantly hope flooded him. Could it be that the one
chance in a million had actually happened, and that a grapple from the
boat above had actually found him?
With feverish expectation, he pressed the button of his little
electric pocket flashlight, and sent its feeble beam out through one
of the quartz-glass windows into the blue-black depths beyond.
No hooks in front of this window. He tried the others. No hooks there,
either. But he did see plenty of the superhuman fish. Eighteen of
them, he counted, in sight at one time. And also two huge snake-like
creatures with crested backs and maned heads, veritable sea-serpents.
As there was nothing the young man could do to assist in the grappling
of his sphere by his friends in the boat above, he devoted his time to
jotting down a detailed description of these two new beasts and of
their behavior.
One of the sharks appeared to be leading or driving them up to the
bathysphere; and when they got close enough, Abbot was surprised to
see that they wore what appeared to be a harness!
* * * * *
The clanking upon the bathysphere continued, and now the young man
learned its cause. It was not the grapple hooks from his ship, but
chains--chains which the man-armed sharks were wrapping around the
bathysphere.
Two more of the harnessed sea-serpents swam into view, and these two
were hitched to a flat cart: an actual cart with wheels. The chains
were attached to the harness of the original two beasts; they swam
upward and disappeared from view; and the sphere slowly rose from the
mucky bottom of the sea, to be lowered again squarely on top of the
cart. The cart jerked forward, and a journey over the ocean floor
began.
Then the little pocket torch dimmed to a dull red glow, and the scene
outside faded gradually from view. Abbot switched off the now useless
light and set to work with scientific precision to record all these
unbelievable events.
In his interest and excitement, he had forgotten the ever-increasing
cold; but gradually, as he wrote, the frigidity of his surroundings
was forced on his consciousness. He turned on more oxygen, and
exercised frantically. Meanwhile the cart, carrying his bathysphere,
bumped along over an uneven road.
From time to time, he tried his almost exhausted little light, but its
dim red beam was completely absorbed by the blue of the ocean depths,
and he could make out nothing except two bulking indistinct shapes,
writhing on ahead of him. Finally even this degree of visibility
failed, and he could see absolutely nothing outside.
He was now so chilled and numb that he could no longer write. With a
last effort, he noted down that fact, and then put the book away in
its rack.
He began to feel drowsy. Rousing himself, he turned on more oxygen.
The effect was exhilaration and a feeling of silly joy. He began to
babble drunkenly to himself. His head swam. His mind was in a daze.
* * * * *
It seemed hours later when he awoke. Ahead of him in the distance
there was a dim pale-blue light, against which there could be seen, in
silhouette, the forms of the two serpentine steeds and their fish-like
drivers. Abbot's hands and feet were completely numb, but his head was
clear.
As they drew nearer to the light, it gradually took form, until it
turned out to be the mouth of a cave. The cart entered it.
Down a long tunnel they progressed, the light getting brighter and
brighter as they advanced. The color of the light became a golden
green. The rough stone walls of the tunnel could now be seen; and
finally there appeared, ahead, two semicircular doors, swung back
against the sides of the passage.
Beyond these doors, the tunnel walls were smooth and exactly
cylindrical, and on the ceiling there were many luminous tubes, which
lit up the place as brightly as daylight. The cart came to a stop.
The young scientist could now see with surprising distinctness his
captors and their serpentine steeds, and even the details of the
chains and the harness. He tried to pick up his diary, so as to jot
down some points which he had theretofore missed; but his hands were
too numb. But at least he could keep on observing; so he glued his
eyes to the thick quartz window-pane once more.
A short distance ahead in the passage there was another pair of doors.
Presently these swung open and the cavalcade moved forward. Five or
six successive pairs of doors were passed in this manner, and then the
sea-serpents began to thrash about and become almost unmanageable. It
was evident that some change not to their liking had taken place in
their surroundings.
* * * * *
At last, as one of the portals swung open, young Abbot saw what
appeared to be four deep-sea diving-suits. Could these suits contain
human beings? And if so, who? It seemed incredible, for no diving-suit
had ever been devised in which a man could descend to the depth of one
mile, and live.
These four figures, whatever they were, came stolidly forward and took
charge of the cart. One of the sharks swam up to them and appeared to
talk to them with its hands. Then the sharks unhitched the two
sea-serpents and led them to the rear, and Abbot saw them no more.
The four divers picked up the chains, and slowly towed the cart
forward, their clumsy, ponderous movements contrasting markedly with
the swift and sure swishings which had characterized the man-sharks
and their snake-like steeds.
Several more pairs of doors were passed, and then there met them four
figures in less cumbersome diving-suits, like those ordinarily used by
men just below the surface of the sea. One of the deep-sea divers then
pressed his face close to the outside of one of the windows of the
bathysphere, as though to take a look inside; but the four newcomers
waved him away, and hurriedly picked up the chains. Nevertheless, in
that brief instant, Abbot had seen within the head-piece of the diver
what appeared to be a bearded human face.
Several more pairs of doors were passed. The four deep-sea divers
floundered along beside the cart, quite evidently having more and more
difficulty of locomotion as each successive doorway was passed, until
finally they lay down and were left behind.
At last the procession entered a section of tunnel which was square,
instead of circular, and in which there was a wide shelf along one
side about three feet above the floor. The four divers then dropped
the chains, and one by one took a look at Abbot through his window.
And he at the same time took a most interested look at them.
They had unmistakable human faces!
* * * * *
He must be dreaming! For even if Osborne was right about his supposed
super-race at the bottom of the sea, this race could not be human, for
the pressures here would be entirely too great. No human being could
possibly stand two thousand pounds per square inch!
Having satisfied their curiosity, the four divers pulled themselves up
onto the shelf, and sat there in a row with their legs hanging over.
Abbot glanced upward at the ceiling lights, but these had become
strangely blurred. There seemed to be an opaque barrier above him, and
this barrier seemed to be slowly descending. The lights blurred out
completely, and were replaced by a diffused illumination over the
entire ripply barrier. And then it dawned on the young man that this
descending sheet of silver was the surface of the water. He was in a
lock, and the water was being pumped out.
The surface settled about the helmets of the divers, and their helmets
disappeared; then their shoulders and the rest of them. At last it
reached the level of Abbot's window. The divers could again be seen,
and among then on the shelf there stood a half dozen naked bearded
men, clad only in loin-cloths. They had evidently entered the lock
while the water was subsiding.
* * * * *
These men unbuckled the helmets of the divers and helped them out, and
then splashed down into the water and peered in through the windows of
the bathysphere. Presently some of them left through a door at the end
of the platform, but soon reappeared with staging, which they set up
around the sphere. Then, climbing on top, they got to work on the
man-hole cover.
As George Abbot realized their purpose, he became frantic. Although
these men appeared to be human, just like himself, yet his
scientifically-trained mind told him that they must be of some very
special anatomical structure, in order to be able to withstand the
immense pressures at the bottom of the Pacific. It was all right for
them to be out there, but it would be fatal to him!
And then the heavy circular door above him began slowly to revolve.
This was terrible! In a moment the crushing pressures of the depths
would come seeping in. Rising unsteadily upon his knees, the young man
tried with his fingers to resist the rotation of the door; but it
continued to turn.
Yet no pressure could be felt. The door became completely unscrewed.
It was pried up, and slid off the top of the bathysphere, to crash
upon the floor outside. Inquisitive bearded faces peered down through
the hole.
Young Abbot slumped to the cold bottom of the sphere and stared back
at them. He was saved; incredibly saved! These were real people, the
air was real air and he must therefore be on the surface of the earth,
instead of at the bottom of the Pacific as he had imagined! With a
sigh of relief, he fainted....
* * * * *
When he came to his senses again, he was lying in a bed in a small
room. Bending over him was the sweetest feminine face that he had ever
seen.
The girl seemed to be about twenty years of age. She was clad in a
clinging robe of some filmy green substance. Her hair was honey-brown,
short and curly, and her forehead high and intelligent. Her eyes, an
indescribable shade of deep violet, were matchlessly set off by her
ivory skin.
The young man smiled up at her, and she smiled back. Thus far it had
not occurred to him to wonder where he was, or why. No recollection of
his recent strange adventures came to him. To him this was an exotic
dream, from which he did not care to awake.
She spoke. Her words were unintelligible, and unlike any language
which George Abbot knew or had even heard; and he was an accomplished
linguist in addition to his other attainments.
And her words were not all that was strange about her speech, for the
very tones of her voice sounded completely unhuman, although not
displeasing. Her talk had a metallic ring to it, like the brassy blare
of temple gongs, and yet was so smooth and subdued as to be sweeter
than any sound that the young scientist had ever heard before.
"Beautiful dream fairy," replied the enraptured young man, "I haven't
the slightest idea what you are saying, but keep right on. I like it."
His own voice sounded crass and crude compared to hers. At his first
words she gave a start of surprise, but thereafter the sound did not
appear to grate on her ears.
* * * * *
Then one of the bearded men in loin-cloths entered, and he and the
girl talked together, quite evidently about their patient. The man's
voice had the same strange metallic quality to it as that of the girl,
but was deeper, so that it boomed with the rich notes of a bell.
At the sight of the man, young Abbot's memory swept back, and he
remembered the adventure of his diving-sphere, and its capture, one
mile down, by the strange shark-fish with human hands and arms. But
how he had reached the surface of the earth again, he couldn't figure
out. Nor did he particularly care.
The strange man withdrew, and the girl sat down beside the bed and
smiled at Abbot. He smiled back at her.
Presently another girl entered and called, "Milli!"
The girl beside the bed started, and looking up asked some question,
to which the other replied.
The newcomer brought in some strange warm food in a covered dish and
then withdrew. The first girl proceeded to feed her patient.
After the meal, which tasted unlike anything which the young man had
ever eaten before, the beautiful nurse again essayed conversation with
him. She seemed perplexed and a bit frightened that he could not
understand her words. Somehow, the young man sensed that this girl had
never heard any other language than her own, and that she did not even
know that other languages existed.
* * * * *
Strengthened by his food, he determined to set about learning her
language as soon as possible. So he pointed at her and asked, "Milli?"
She nodded, and spoke some word which he took for "yes."
Then he pointed to himself and said, "George."
She understood, but the word was a difficult one for her to duplicate
in the metallic tongue of her people. She made several attempts, until
he laughingly spoke her word for "yes."
Then he pointed to other objects about the room. She gave him the
names of these, but he could easily see that she felt that, if he did
not know the names for all these common things, there must be
something the matter with him.
He wondered how he could make her understand that there were other
languages in the world than her own; and then he remembered the sharks
with their hands and what he had taken to be their sign language.
Perhaps Milli at least knew of the existence of the sign language.
This would afford a parallel; for if she realized that there were two
languages in the world, might there not be three?
So Abbot made some meaningless signs with his fingers. Milli quite
evidently was accustomed to this kind of talk, but she was further
perplexed to find that George talked gibberish with his hands as well
as with his mouth.
She made some signs with her hands, and then said something orally.
Young Abbot instantly pointed to her mouth, and held up one finger;
then to her hands, and held up two; then to his own mouth, and held up
three, at the same time speaking a sentence of English. Instantly she
caught on: there were three languages in the world. And thereafter she
no longer regarded him as crazy.
For several hours she taught him. Then another meal was brought, after
which she left him, and the lights went out.
* * * * *
He awakened feeling thoroughly rested and well. The lights were on and
Milli was beside him.
He asked for his clothes. They were brought. Milli withdrew and he put
them on.
After breakfast, which they ate together, one of the bearded men came
and led him out through a number of winding corridors into a larger
room, in which there was a closed spherical glass tank, about ten feet
in diameter, containing one of the human sharks. Around the tank stood
five of the bearded men.
One of them proceeded to address Abbot, but of course the young
American could not make out what he was saying. This apparent lack of
intelligence seemed to exasperate the man; and finally he turned
toward the tank, and engaged in a sign language conference with the
fish; then turned back to Abbot again and spoke to him very sternly.
But Abbot shook his head and replied, "Milli. Bring Milli."
One of the other men flashed a look of triumph at their leader, and
laughed.
"Yes," he added, "bring Milli."
The leader scowled at him, and some words were interchanged, but it
ended in Milli being sent for. She apparently explained the situation
to the satisfaction of the fish, to the intense glee of the man who
had sent for her, and to the rather complete discomfiture of the
leader of the five.
Abbot later learned that the leader's name was Thig, and that the name
of the gleeful man was Dolf.
The reception over, Milli led Abbot back to his room.
* * * * *
There ensued many days--very pleasant days--of language instruction
from Milli. Dolf and Thig and others of the five came frequently, to
note his progress and to talk with him and ask him questions.
A sitting room was provided for him, adjoining his sleeping quarters.
Milli occupied quarters nearby.
Within a week he had mastered enough of the language of these people,
for their strange history began to be intelligible to him.
In spite of the fact that the air here was at merely atmospheric
pressure, nevertheless this place was one mile beneath the surface of
the Pacific. Milli and her people lived in a city hollowed out of a
reef of rocks, reinforced against the terrific weight of the water and
filled with laboratory-made air. They had never been to the surface of
the sea.
The fish with the human arms were their creators and their masters.
Professor Osborne had been right. The fish of the deep, having a head
start on the rest of the world, had evolved to a perfectly
unbelievable degree of intelligence. Centuries ago they had built for
themselves the exact analog of George Abbot's bathysphere, and in it
they had made much the same sort of exploring trips to the surface
that he had made down into the deeps. But their spheres had been
constructed to keep in, rather than to keep out, great pressure.
Their scientists had gathered a wealth of data as to conditions on the
surface, and had even seen and studied human beings. But their
insatiable scientific curiosity had led them to want to know more
about the strange country above them and the strange persons who
inhabited it. And so they set about breeding, in their own
laboratories, creatures which should be as like as possible to those
whom they had observed on the surface.
* * * * *
Of course, this experiment necessitated their first setting up an
air-filled partial vacuum similar to that which surrounds the earth.
But they had persisted. They had brought down samples of air from the
surface of the sea, and had analyzed and duplicated it on a large
scale.
Finally, through long years, they had so directed--and controlled the
course of evolution, in their breederies, as first to be able to
produce creatures which could live in air at low pressures, and then
to evolve the descendants of those creatures into intelligent human
beings.
Some of the lower types of this evolutionary process, both in the
direct line of descent of man, and among the collateral offshoots, had
been retained for food and other purposes. Abbot, with intense
scientific interest, studied these specimens in the zoo of the
underwater city where he was staying.
Plans had been in progress for some time, among the fish-folk and
their human subjects, to send an expedition to the surface. And now
the shark masters had fortunately been able to secure alive an actual
specimen of the surface folk--namely, George Abbot. The expedition was
accordingly postponed until they could pump out of the young scientist
all the information possible.
Abbot was naturally overjoyed at the prospect. This would not only get
him out of here--but think what it would mean to science!
The plans of the sharks were entirely peaceful. Furthermore there were
only about two hundred of their laboratory-bred synthetic human
beings, and so these could constitute no menace to mankind.
Accordingly he enthusiastically assured them that they could depend
upon the hearty cooperation of the scientists of the outer earth.
* * * * *
During all his stay so far in this cave city, Abbot had been permitted
to come in contact only with Milli, the members of the Committee of
Five, and an occasional guard or laboratory assistant. Yet, in spite
of the absence of personal contacts with other members of this strange
race, Abbot was constantly aware of a background of many people and
tense activity, which kept the wheels of industry and domestic economy
turning in this undersea city.
Although the young man readily accustomed himself to the speech and
food and customs of this strange race, his personal modesty and
neatness revolted at the loin-cloths and beards of the men; and so, by
special dispensation, he was permitted to wear his sailor suit and to
shave.
The Committee of Five, who constituted a sort of ruling body for the
city, interviewed him at length, cross-examined him most skilfully and
took copious notes. But there seemed to be a strange lack of common
meeting ground between their minds and his, so that very often they
were forced to call on Milli to act as an intermediary. The beautiful
young girl seemed able to understand both George Abbot and the leaders
of her own people with equal facility.
A number of specially constructed submarines had already been built to
carry the expedition to the surface. Before it came time to use them,
Abbot tried to paint as glowing a picture as possible of life on
earth; but he found it necessary to gloss over a great many things.
How could he explain and justify war, liquor, crime, poverty, graft,
and the other evils to which constant acquaintance has rendered the
human race so calloused?
* * * * *
He was unable to deceive the men of the deep. With their
super-intelligence, they relentlessly unearthed from him all the
salient facts. And, as a result of their discoveries, their initial
friendly feeling for the world of men rapidly developed into supreme
contempt.
But Abbot on the other hand developed a deep respect for them. Their
chemistry and their electrical and mechanical devices amazed and
astounded him. They even were able to keep sun-time and tell the
seasons, by means of gyroscopes!
Age was measured much as it is on the surface. This fact was brought
to Abbot's attention by the approach of Milli's twentieth birthday.
Strange to relate, she seemed to dread the approach of that
anniversary, and finally told Abbot the reason.
"It is the custom," said she, "when a girl or a boy reaches twenty, to
give a very rigorous intelligence test. In fact, such a test is given
on every birthday, but the one on the twentieth is the hardest. So
far, I have just barely passed each test, which fact marks me as of
very low mentality indeed. And, if I fail _this_ time, they will kill
me, so as to make room for others who have a better right to live."
"Impossible!" exclaimed the young man indignantly. "Why, you have a
better mind than those of many of the leading scientists of the outer
world!"
"All the same," she gloomily replied, "it is way below standard for
down here."
* * * * *
On the day of the test, he did his best to cheer her up. Dolf also
came--she seemed to be an especial protege of his--and gave her his
encouragement. He had been coaching her heavily for the examinations
for some time previous.
But later in the day she returned in tears to report to Abbot that she
had failed, and had only twenty-four hours to live. Before he realized
what he was doing, Abbot had seized her in his arms, and was pouring
out to her a love which up to that moment he had not realized
existed.
Finally her sobbing ceased, and she smiled through her tears.
"George, dear," said she, "it is worth dying, to know that you care
for me like this."
"I won't let them kill you!" asserted the young man belligerently.
"They owe me something for the assistance which I am to give them on
their expedition. I shall demand your life as the price of my
cooperation. Besides, you are the only one of all your people who has
brains enough to understand what I tell them about the outer earth. It
is they who are weak-minded; not you!"
But she sadly shook her head.
"It would never do for you to sponsor me," said she, "for it would
alienate my one friend in power, Dolf. He loves me; no, don't scowl,
for I do not love him. But, for the safety of both of us, we must not
let him know of our love--yet."
"'Yet'?" exclaimed Abbot, "when you have less than a day to live?"
"You have given me hope," the girl replied, "and also an idea. Dolf
promised to appeal to the other members of the Five. I have just
thought of a good ground for his appeal; namely, my ability to
translate your clumsy description into a form suited to the high
intelligence of our superiors."
"'Clumsy'?" exclaimed the young man, a bit nettled.
"Oh, pardon me, dear. I'm so sorry," said she contritely. "I didn't
mean to let it slip. And now I must rush to Dolf and tell him my
idea."
"Don't let him make love to you, though!" admonished Abbot gloomily.
She kissed him lightly, and fled.
* * * * *
A half hour later she was back, all smiles. The idea had gone across
big. Dolf, as the leader of the projected expedition, had demanded
that Milli be brought along as liaison officer between them and their
guide; and the other four committeemen had reluctantly acceded. The
execution was accordingly indefinitely postponed.
The young couple spent the evening making happy plans for their life
together on the outer earth, for as soon as they should arrive in
America, Dolf would have no further hold over them.
The next day, the Committee of Five announced that, for a change, they
were going to give George Abbot an intelligence test. He had
represented himself as being one of the scientists of the outer earth;
accordingly, they could gauge the caliber of his fellow countrymen by
determining his I. Q.
Milli was quite agitated when this program was announced, but the
ordeal held no terrors for George Abbot. Had he not taken many such
tests on earth and passed them easily?
So he appeared before the Committee of Five with a rather cocky air.
He had yet to see an intelligence test too tricky for him to eat
alive.
"Start him with something easy," suggested Dolf. "Perhaps they don't
have tests on the outer earth. You know, one gains a certain facility
by practice."
"Milli didn't, in spite of all the practicing which you gave her,"
maliciously remarked Thig.
Dolf glowered at him.
* * * * *
"What is the cube root of 378?" suddenly asked one of the other
members of the committee.
"Oh, a little over seven," hazarded Abbot.
"Come, come," boomed Thig: "give it to us exactly."
"Well, seven-point-two, I guess."
"Don't guess. Give it exact, to four decimal places."
"In my head?" asked Abbot incredulously.
"Certainly!" replied Thig. "Even a child could do that. We're giving
you easy questions to start with."
"Start him on _square_ root," suggested Dolf kindly. "Remember he
isn't used to these tests like our people are."
So they tried him with square root, in which he turned out to be
equally dumb.
Abstract questions of physics and chemistry he did better on; but the
actual quantitative problems, which they expected him to solve in his
head, stumped him completely.
Then they asked him about education on earth, and the qualifications
for becoming a scientist, and who were the leaders in his field, and
what degrees they held, and what one had to do to get those degrees,
etc. Finally they dismissed him. Dolf then sent for Milli.
She was gone about an hour, and returned to Abbot wide-eyed and
incredulous.
"Oh, George," said she, lowering her voice. "Dolf tells me that your
intelligence is below that of a five-year-old child! Perhaps that is
why you and I get along so well together: we are both morons."
* * * * *
He started to protest, but she silenced him with a gesture and hurried
on. "I am not supposed to tell you this, but I want you to know that
your examination to-day has resulted in a complete change in their
plans for the expedition to the surface. They have consulted with the
leaders of our masters, and they agree with them."
She was plainly agitated.
"What is it, dear?" asked Abbot, with ominous foreboding.
Milli continued: "Early during your test, when you demonstrated that
you couldn't do the very simplest mathematical problems in your head,
they began to doubt your boastings that you are a scientist. But you
were so ingenuous in your answers about conditions on the surface,
that finally their faith in your honesty returned. If you are a
scientist among men, as they now believe, then the average run of your
people must be mere animals. This explains what has puzzled them
before; namely, how the people of the earth tolerate poverty and
unemployment and crime, and disease and war."
"Well?"
"And so a mere handful of our people, by purely peaceful means, could
easily make themselves the rulers of the earth. Probably this would be
all for the best; but somehow, my feelings tell me that it is not. I
know only too well what it is to be an inferior among intelligent
beings; so will not your people be happier, left alone to their
stupidity, just as I would be?"
* * * * *
George Abbot was crushed. This frank acceptance by Milli of the
alleged fact that he was a mere moron, was most humiliating. And
swiftly he realized what a real menace to the earth, was this
contemplated invasion from the deeps.
All that was worst in the world above would taint these intellectual
giants of the undersea. They would rise to supremacy, and then would
become rapacious tyrants over those whom they would regard as being no
more than animals.
He had witnessed jealousies among them down below. Might not these
jealousies flame into huge wars when translated to the world above?
Giants striving for mastery, using the human cattle as cannon fodder!
He painted to the girl a word-picture of the horrible vision which he
foresaw.
The invasion must be stopped at all costs! He and Milli must pit their
puny wits against these supermen!
But what could they do? As they were pondering this problem, a girl
entered their sitting room--the same who had brought Abbot's
breakfast on his first day in the caves. Milli introduced George to
the newcomer, whose name was Romehl.
Romehl appeared so woebegone that the young American ventured to
inquire if she too had been having difficulty with one of her tests.
But that was not the trouble; hers was rather of the heart.
About the same age as Milli, Romehl had recently passed her twentieth
birthday test and hence was eligible to marry; so she and a young man
named Hakin had requested the fish-masters to give them the requisite
permission. But their overlords for some reason had peremptorily
denied the request. Romehl and Hakin were desolate.
* * * * *
Young Abbot's sympathies were at once aroused.
"Can't something be done?" he started to ask.
But Milli silenced him with a warning glance. "Of course not!" she
said. "Who are we to question the judgment of our all-knowing
masters?"
Romehl had really come to Milli just to pour her troubles into a
friendly ear, rather than because she hoped to get any helpful ideas.
So she had a good cry, and finally left, somewhat comforted.
George and Milli then took up again the problem of saving the outer
earth from the threatened invasion. Milli suggested that they go
peaceably with the expedition, and then warn the authorities of
America at the first opportunity after their arrival; but Abbot
pointed out that this would merely result in their both being shut up
in some insane asylum, as no one would believe such a crazy story as
theirs.
The time for lights to be put out arrived without their thinking of
any better idea.
Next day Milli spent considerable time with Dolf, and on her return
excitedly informed Abbot that he had evolved a most diabolical plot.
There were sufficient quantities of explosives in storage to blast a
hole through the wall of the caves, letting in the sea and killing
everyone in the city. Dolf planned to set this off with a time fuse,
upon the departure of the expedition. Thus Thig and the people who
were left behind--about two-thirds of the total population of the
city--would be destroyed, and the fish would have no one to send after
Dolf and his followers to dictate to them on the upper earth.
Relieved of the thraldom of the fish, Dolf could make himself Emperor
of the World, and rule over the human cattle, with Milli at his side
as Empress. An alluring program--from Dolf's point of view.
* * * * *
"I didn't expect such treason even from Dolf!" exclaimed the young
American. "We must tell Thig!"
"What good would that do?" remonstrated the girl. "If you failed to
convince Thig, Dolf would make an end of us both. And if you convinced
Thig, it would mean the end of Dolf, whose influence is all that keeps
me alive. We must think of something else."
"Right, as always," replied Abbot.
A growl came from the doorway. It was Dolf, his bearded face black
with wrath.
"So?" he sputtered. "Treachery, eh?"
He whistled twice and two guards appeared.
"Take them to the prison!" he raged, indicating Abbot and Milli. "Our
expedition will have to do without a guide. I have learned enough of
the American language to make a good start, and I guess I can pick up
another guide when we reach the surface." Then, bending close to the
frightened girl, he whispered, "And another Empress."
The guards hustled them away and locked them up. As an added
precaution, a sentinel was posted in front of each cell door.
Abbot immediately got busy.
"Can you get word for me at once to Thig?" he whispered to the man on
guard.
"Perhaps," replied that individual non-committally.
"Then tell him," said Abbot, "that I have proof that Dolf is planning
to destroy this city behind him, and never return from the surface."
The sentry became immediately agitated.
"So you know this?" he exclaimed. "How did it leak out? But--through
Milli, of course. And the guard on her cell is not a member of the
expedition! Curses! I must get word to Dolf, and have that guard
changed at once."
And he darted swiftly away.
* * * * *
The young prisoner was plunged into gloom. Now he'd gone and done it!
Why hadn't he first made appropriate inquiries of his guard?
A new guard appeared in front of the door.
"Are you going on the expedition?" asked Abbot.
"Yes, worse luck," replied the guard.
The prisoner forgot his own gloom, in his surprise at the gloominess
of the other.
"Don't you want to go?" he exclaimed incredulously.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Do you know Romehl?" asked the guard.
"Yes," Abbot replied.
"Well, that's why."
"Then you must be Hakin!" exclaimed Abbot, with sudden understanding.
"Yes," replied the other dully.
"You are going on the expedition, and Romehl is not?"
"Quite correct."
"Say, look here!" exclaimed Abbot, and then he launched into the
description of a plan, which just that moment had occurred to him, for
him, Milli, Romehl and Hakin to make their getaway ahead of the
expedition--in fact, that very night--and to set off the time-fuse
before leaving.
It turned out that Hakin knew where the explosives were planted, and
where the submarines were kept, and even how to operate them. He
eagerly accepted the plan; and when next relieved as sentinel, he
hurried away to inform Romehl.
Three hours later he was back on post. Quickly he explained to his
prisoner all about the workings of the submarines of the expedition.
The lights-out bell rang, and all the city became dark, except for dim
lights in the passageways. Hakin at once unlocked the door of Abbot's
cell, and together the two young men sneaked down the corridor to the
cell where Milli was confined.
Silently Hakin and Abbot sprang upon the guard and throttled him; then
released Milli. There was no time for more than a few hurried words of
explanation before the three of them left the prison and made for the
locks of the subterranean canal, picking up Romehl at a preappointed
spot on the way.
* * * * *
The canal locks were unguarded, as well as the storerooms of the
submarines. Each of the rooms held two subs, and could open onto the
second lock and be separately flooded.
The submarines were of steel as thick as Abbot's bathysphere. Their
shape was that of an elongated rain drop, with fins. In the pointed
tip of their tails were motors which could operate at any pressure. At
the front end were quartz windows. In the top fin was an expanding
device which could be filled with buoyant gas, produced by chemicals,
when the craft neared the surface. Each submarine also contained a
radio set, so tuned as to be capable of opening and closing the
radio-controlled gates of the locks. Each would carry comfortably two
or three persons.
Having picked out two submarines and found them to be in order, Hakin
sneaked back into the corridor to set off the time-fuse, leaving his
three companions in the dark in the storeroom. Abbot put a protecting
arm around Milli, while Romehl snuggled close to her other side.
Their hearts were all racing madly with excitement, and this was
intensified when they heard Hakin talking with someone just outside
their door.
Then Hakin returned unexpectedly.
"Something terrible has happened!" he breathed. "The explosives have
been discovered and are gone. One of the expedition men has just
informed me. Someone must have gotten word to Thig--"
"Why, _I_ did," interrupted Milli. "I told my guard, just before they
came and changed him."
Abbot groaned.
Hakin continued hurriedly: "So Dolf plans to leave at once. He is
already rounding up his followers. Come on! We must get out ahead of
him!"
An uproar could be heard drawing near in the corridor outside. Abbot
opened the door and peered out; then shut it again and whispered, "The
two factions are fighting already."
"Then come on!" exclaimed Hakin.
* * * * *
As he spoke he turned on the lights, wedged the door tight against its
gaskets and threw the switch which started the water seeping into the
storeroom; then he led Romehl hurriedly to one of the two submarines,
while George and Milli rushed to the other. Heavy blows sounded
against the storeroom door.
The water rapidly rose about them, and the four friends crawled
inside the two machines and clamped the lids tight. Then they waited
for sufficient depth, so that they could get under way.
The water rose above their bow windows, but suddenly and inexplicably
it began to subside again. A man waded by around the bow of Abbot's
machine.
"They've crashed in the door, and are pumping out the water again!"
exclaimed Abbot. "We're trapped!"
"Not yet!" grimly replied the girl at his side. "Can you work the
radio door controls?"
"Yes."
"Then quick! Open the doors into the lock!"
He pressed a button. Ahead of them two gates swung inward, followed by
a deluge of water.
"Come on!" spoke the girl. "Full speed ahead, before the water gets
too low."
Abbot did so. Out into the lock they sped, in the face of the surging
current. Then Abbot pushed another button to close the gates behind
them. But the water continued to fall, and they grounded before they
reached the end of the lock. Quite evidently the rush of the current
had kept the doors from closing behind them. The city was being
flooded through the broken door of the storeroom.
But Abbot opened the next gate, and again they breasted the incoming
torrent. This time, although the level continued to fall, their craft
did not quite ground.
"They must have got the gates shut behind us at last," said he, as he
opened the next set and pressed on.
* * * * *
And then he had an idea. Why not omit to close any further gates
behind him? As a result, the sea pressure would eventually break down
the inmost barriers, and destroy the city as effectively as Dolf's
bomb would have done. But he said nothing to Milli of this plan: she
might wish to save her people.
Gate after gate they passed. This was too simple. A few more locks and
they would be out in open water. The submarine of Hakin and Romehl
swept by--evidently to let George and Milli know their presence--and
then dropped behind again. But was it their two friends after all? It
might have been some enemy! They could not be sure.
This uncertainty cast a chill of apprehension over them, which was
immediately heightened by the sudden extinguishing of the overhead
lights of the tunnel. Abbot pressed the radio button for the next set
of locks, but they did not budge.
"What can be the matter?" he asked frantically.
"My people must have turned off the electric current," Milli replied.
"The gates won't open without electricity to feed the motors. We're
trapped again."
For a moment they lay stunned by a realization that their escape was
blocked.
"Kiss me good-by, dear," breathed Milli. "This is the end."
As the young man reached over to take her in his arms, the submarine
was suddenly lifted up and spun backward, end over end: then tumbled
and bumped along, as though it were a chip on an angry mountain
torrent.
Stunned and bruised and bleeding, the young American finally lost
consciousness....
* * * * *
When he came to his senses again, his first words were, "Milli, where
are you?"
"My darling!" breathed a voice at his side. "Are you all right?"
"Yes," he replied. "Where are we? What has happened?"
"The entire system of locks must have crashed in and flooded the
city," said she.
Instantly Abbott's mind grasped the explanation of this occurrence:
their leaving open so many gates behind them had made it impossible
for the few remaining gates ahead to withstand the terrific pressures
of the ocean depths, and they had crumpled. But he did not tell Milli
his part in this.
She continued, "I was pretty badly shaken up myself, but I've got this
boat going again, and we're on our way out of the tunnel. See--I've
found out how to work our searchlight."
He looked. A broad beam of light from their bow, illuminated the
tunnel ahead of them.
Presently another beam appeared, shooting by them from behind.
"Hakin and Romehl!" exclaimed the girl. "Then they're safe, too!"
The tunnel walls grew rough, then disappeared. They were out in the
open sea at last, although still one mile beneath the surface.
But in front of them was an angry seething school of the man-sharks,
clearly illumined by the two rays of light. Behind the sharks were a
score or more of serpentine steeds.
The sharks saw the two submarines and charged down upon them; but
Milli, with great presence of mind, shut off her searchlight and swung
sharply to the left.
"Up! Up!" urged the young man, so she turned the craft upward.
* * * * *
On and on they went, with no interference. Presently they turned the
light on again, so as to see what progress they were making. But they
were making absolutely none! They were merely standing on their tail.
They had reached a height of such relatively low pressure that it took
all the churning of their propeller just merely to counteract the
great weight of their submarine.
Abbot switched on their chemical gas supply, and as their top fin
expanded into a balloon they again began to rise.
One thing, however, perplexed the young man: the water about him
seemed jet black rather than blue. They must by now be close to the
surface of the sea, where at least a twilight blue should be visible.
Even at the one mile depth in his bathysphere, the water had been
brilliant, yet here, almost at the surface, he could see absolutely
nothing.
He switched on the searchlight again to make sure that their window
wasn't clouded over; but it wasn't.
Then suddenly a rippling veil of pale silver appeared ahead; then a
blue-black sky and twinkling stars. They had reached the surface, and
it was night.
He pointed out the stars to the girl at his side, then swung the nose
of the submarine around and showed her the moon.
Where next? George Abbot picked out his position by the stars and
headed east. East across the Pacific, toward America.
* * * * *
But soon he noticed that their little craft was dropping beneath the
surface. He kept heading up more and more; he threw the lever for more
and more chemical gas; yet still they continued to sink.
"Milli!" he exclaimed, "we've got to get out of here!"
She clutched him in fear, for to her the pressure of the open sea
meant death, certain death. But he pushed her firmly away, and
unclamped the lid of the submarine. In another instant he had hauled
her out and was battling his way to the surface, while their little
boat sunk slowly beneath them.
Milli was an experienced swimmer, for the undersea folk enjoyed the
privilege of a large indoor pool. As soon as she found that the open
sea did not kill her, she became calm.
Side by side they floated in the moonlight. The sky began to pink in
the east. Dawn came, the first dawn that Milli had ever seen.
Suddenly she called George's attention to two bobbing heads some
distance away in the path of light the rising sun made on the ocean.
"Hakin and Romehl!" he exclaimed. Long since they had given them up
for dead; but evidently fate had treated them in much the same way as
themselves.
And a moment later his own salt-stung eyes noticed a long gray shape
to one side.
As the day brightened, Abbot suddenly noticed a large bulking shape
nearby.
It was his own boat!--the one which had lowered him into the depths in
his bathysphere so many weeks and weeks ago! Evidently it was still
sticking around, grappling for his long dead body.
"Come on, dear," said he, and side by side they swam over to it.
He helped her up the ship's ladder. The ship's cook sleepily stuck his
head out of the galley door.
"Hullo, Mike," sang out George Abbot merrily to the astonished man.
"I've brought company for breakfast. And there'll be two more when we
can lower a boat."
[Illustration: Advertisement]
Brood of the Dark Moon
(_A Sequel to "Dark Moon"_)
BEGINNING A FOUR-PART NOVEL
_By Charles Willard Diffin_
[Illustration: _He landed one blow on the nearest face._]
[Sidenote: Once more Chet, Walt and Diane are united in a wild ride to
the Dark Moon--but this time they go as prisoners of their deadly
enemy Schwartzmann.]
CHAPTER I
_The Message_
In a hospital in Vienna, in a room where sunlight flooded through
ultra-violet permeable crystal, the warm rays struck upon smooth walls
the color of which changed from hot reds to cool yellow or gray or to
soothing green, as the Directing Surgeon might order. An elusive
blending of tones, now seemed pulsing with life; surely even a
flickering flame of vitality would be blown into warm livingness in
such a place.
Even the chart case in the wall glittered with the same clean,
brilliant hues from its glass and metal door. The usual revolving
paper disks showed white beyond the glass. They were moving; and the
ink lines grew to tell a story of temperature and respiration and of
every heart-beat.
On the identification-plate a name appeared and a date: "Chet
Bullard--23 years. Admitted: August 10, 1973." And below that the
ever-changing present ticked into the past in silent minutes: "August
15, 1973; World Standard Time: 10:38--10:39--10:40--"
For five days the minutes had trickled into a rivulet of time that
flowed past a bandaged figure in the bed below--a silent figure and
unmoving, as one for whom time has ceased. But the surgeons of the
Allied Hospital at Vienna are clever.
10:41--10:42--The bandaged figure stirred uneasily on a snow-white
bed....
* * * * *
A nurse was beside him in an instant. Was her patient about to recover
consciousness? She examined the bandages that covered a ragged wound
in his side, where all seemed satisfactory. To all appearances the man
who had moved was unconscious still; the nurse could not know of the
thought impressions, blurred at first, then gradually clearing, that
were flashing through his mind.
Flashing; yet, to the man who struggled to comprehend them, they
passed laggingly in review: one picture followed another with
exasperating slowness....
Where was he? What had happened? He was hardly conscious of his own
identity....
There was a ship ... he held the controls ... they were flying low....
One hand reached fumblingly beneath the soft coverlet to search for a
triple star that should be upon his jacket. A triple star: the
insignia of a Master Pilot of the World!--and with the movement there
came clearly a realization of himself.
Chet Bullard, Master Pilot; he was Chet Bullard ... and a wall of
water was sweeping under him from the ocean to wipe out the great
Harkness Terminal buildings.... It was Harkness--Walt Harkness--from
whom he had snatched the controls.... To fly to the Dark Moon, of
course--
What nonsense was that?... No, it was true: the Dark Moon had raised
the devil with things on Earth.... How slowly the thoughts came! Why
couldn't he remember?...
Dark Moon!--and they were flying through space.... They had conquered
space; they were landing on the Dark Moon that was brilliantly alight.
Walt Harkness had set the ship down beautifully--
* * * * *
Then, crowding upon one another in breath-taking haste, came clear
recollection of past adventures:
They were upon the Dark Moon--and there was the girl, Diane. They must
save Diane. Harkness had gone for the ship. A savage, half-human shape
was raising a hairy arm to drive a spear toward Diane, and he, Chet,
was leaping before her. He felt again the lancet-pain of that
blade....
And now he was dying--yes, he remembered it now--dying in the night on
a great, sweeping surface of frozen lava.... It was only a moment
before that he had opened his eyes to see Harkness' strained face and
the agonized look of Diane as the two leaned above him.... But now he
felt stronger. He must see them again....
He opened his eyes for another look at his companions--and, instead of
black, star-pricked night on a distant globe, there was dazzling
sunlight. No desolate lava-flow, this; no thousand fires that flared
and smoked from their fumeroles in the dark. And, instead of Harkness
and the girl, Diane, leaning over him there was a nurse who laid one
cool hand upon his blond head and who spoke soothingly to him of
keeping quiet. He was to take it easy--he would understand later--and
everything was all right.... And with this assurance Chet Bullard
drifted again into sleep....
* * * * *
The blurring memories had lost their distortions a week later, as he
sat before a broad window in his room and looked out over the
housetops of Vienna. Again he was himself, Chet Bullard, with a Master
Pilot's rating: and he let his eyes follow understandingly the moving
picture of the world outside. It was good to be part of a world whose
every movement he understood.
Those cylinders with stubby wings that crossed and recrossed the sky;
their sterns showed a jet of thin vapor where a continuous explosion
of detonite threw them through the air. He knew them all: the pleasure
craft, the big, red-bellied freighters, the sleek liners, whose
multiple helicopters spun dazzlingly above as they sank down through
the shaft of pale-green light that marked a descending area.
That one would be the China Mail. Her under-ports were open before the
hold-down clamps had gripped her; the mail would pour out in an
avalanche of pouches where smaller mailships waited to distribute the
cargo across the land.
And the big fellow taking off, her hull banded with blue, was one of
Schwartzmann's liners. He wondered what had become of Schwartzmann,
the man who had tried to rob Harkness of his ship; who had brought the
patrol ships upon them in an effort to prevent their take-off on that
wild trip.
For that matter, what had become of Harkness? Chet Bullard was
seriously disturbed at the absence of any word beyond the one message
that had been waiting for him when he regained consciousness. He drew
that message from a pocket of his dressing gown and read it again:
"Chet, old fellow, lie low. S has vanished. Means mischief.
Think best not to see you or reveal your whereabouts until
our position firmly established. Have concealed ship.
Remember, S will stop at nothing. Trying to discredit us,
but the gas I brought will fix all that. Get yourself well.
We are planning to go back, of course. Walt."
Chet returned the folded message to his pocket. He arose and walked
about the room to test his returning strength: to remain idle was
becoming increasingly difficult. He wanted to see Walter Harkness,
talk with him, plan for their return to the wonder-world they had
found.
* * * * *
Instead he dropped again into his chair and touched a knob on the
newscaster beside him. A voice, hushed to the requirements of these
hospital precincts spoke softly of market quotations in the far
corners of the earth. He turned the dial irritably and set it on
"World News--General." The name of Harkness came from the instrument
to focus Chet's attention.
"Harkness makes broad claims," the voice was saying. "Vienna
physicists ridicule his pretensions.
"Walter Harkness, formerly of New York, proprietor of Harkness
Terminals, whose great buildings near New York were destroyed in the
Dark Moon wave, claims to have reached and returned from the Dark
Moon.
"Nearly two months have passed since the new satellite crashed into
the gravitational field of Earth, its coming manifested by earth
shocks and a great tidal wave. The globe, as we know, was invisible.
Although still unseen, and only a black circle that blocks out distant
stars, it is visible in the telescopes of the astronomers; its
distance and its orbital motion have been determined.
"And now this New Yorker claims to have penetrated space: to have
landed on the Dark Moon: and to have returned to Earth. Broad claims,
indeed, especially so in view of the fact that Harkness refuses to
submit his ship for examination by the Stratosphere Control Board. He
has filed notice of ownership, thus introducing some novel legal
technicalities, but, since space-travel is still a dream of the
future, there will be none to dispute his claims.
"Of immediate interest is Harkness' claim to have discovered a gas
that is fatal to the serpents of space. The monsters that appeared
when the Dark Moon came and that attacked ships above the Repelling
Area are still there. All flying is confined to the lower levels; fast
world-routes are disorganized.
"Whether or not this gas, of which Harkness has a sample, came from
the Dark Moon or from some laboratory on Earth is of no particular
importance. Will it destroy the space-serpents? If it does this, our
hats are off to Mr. Walter Harkness; almost will we be inclined to
believe the rest of his story--or to laugh with him over one of the
greatest hoaxes ever attempted."
Chet had been too intent upon the newscast to heed an opening door at
his back....
* * * * *
"How about it, Chet?" a voice was asking. "Would you call it a hoax or
the real thing?" And a girl's voice chimed in with exclamations of
delight at sight of the patient, so evidently recovering.
"Diane!" Chet exulted, "--and Walt!--you old son-of-a-gun!" He found
himself clinging to a girl's soft hand with one of his, while with the
other he reached for that of her companion. But Walt Harkness' arm
went about his shoulders instead.
"I'd like to hammer you plenty," Harkness was saying, "and I don't
even dare give you a friendly slam on the back. How's the side where
they got you with the spear?--and how are you? How soon will you be
ready to start back? What about--"
Diane Delacouer raised her one free hand to stop the flood of
questions. "My dear," she protested, "give Chet a chance. He must be
dying for information."
"I was dying for another reason the last time I saw you," Chet
reminded her, "--up on the Dark Moon. But it seems that you got me
back here in time for repairs. And now what?" His nurse came into the
room with extra chairs; Chet waited till she was gone before he
repeated: "Now what? When do we go back?"
Harkness did not answer at once. Instead he crossed to the newscaster
in its compact, metal case. The voice was still speaking softly; at a
touch of a switch it ceased, and in the silence came the soft rush of
sound that meant the telautotype had taken up its work. Beneath a
glass a paper moved, and words came upon it from a hurricane of
type-bars underneath. The instrument was printing the news story as
rapidly as any voice could speak it.
Harkness read the words for an instant, then let the paper pass on to
wind itself upon a spool. It had still been telling of the gigantic
hoax that this eccentric American had attempted and Harkness repeated
the words.
"A hoax!" he exclaimed, and his eyes, for a moment, flashed angrily
beneath the dark hair that one hand had disarranged. "I would like to
take that facetious bird out about a thousand miles and let him play
around with the serpents we met. But, why get excited? This is all
Schwartzmann's doing. The tentacles of that man's influence, reach out
like those of an octopus."
* * * * *
Chet ranged himself alongside. Tall and slim and blond, he contrasted
strongly with this other man, particularly in his own quiet
self-control as against Harkness' quick-flaring anger.
"Take it easy, Walt," he advised. "We'll show them. But I judge that
you have been razzed a bit. It's a pretty big story for them to
swallow without proof. Why didn't you show them the ship? Or why
didn't you let Diane and me back up your yarn? And you haven't
answered my other questions: when do we go back?"
Harkness took the queries in turn.
"I didn't show the old boat," he explained, "because I'm not ready
for that yet. I want it kept dark--dark as the Dark Moon. I want to do
my preliminary work there before Schwartzmann and his experts see our
ship. He would duplicate it in a hurry and be on our trail.
"And now for our plans. Well, out there in space the Dark Moon is
waiting. Have you realized, Chet, that we own that world--you and
Diane and I? Small--only half the size of our old moon--but what a
place! And it's ours!
"Back in history--you remember?--an ambitious lad named Alexander
sighed for more worlds to conquer. Well, we're going Alexander one
better--we've found the world. We're the first ever to go out into
space and return again.
"We'll go back there, the three of us. We will take no others
along--not yet. We will explore and make our plans for development;
and we will keep it to ourselves until we are ready to hold it against
any opposition.
"And now, how soon can you go? Your injury--how soon will you be well
enough?"
"Right now," Chet told him laconically; "to-day, if you say the word.
They've got me welded together so I'll hold, I reckon. But where's the
ship? What have you done--" He broke off abruptly to listen--
* * * * *
To all three came a muffled, booming roar. The windows beside them
shivered with the thud of the distant explosion; they had not ceased
their trembling before Harkness had switched on the news broadcast.
And it was a minute only until the news-gathering system was on the
air.
"Explosion at the Institute of Physical Science!" it said. "This is
Vienna broadcasting. An explosion has just occurred. We are giving a
preliminary announcement only. The laboratories of the Scientific
Institute of this city are destroyed. A number of lives have been
lost. The cause has not been determined. It is reported that the
laboratories were beginning analytical work, on the so-called Harkness
Dark Moon gas--
"Confirmation has just been radioed to this station. Dark Moon gas
exploded on contact with air. The American, Harkness, is either a
criminal or a madman; he will be apprehended at once. This
confirmation comes from Herr Schwartzmann of Vienna who left the
Institute only a few minutes before the explosion occurred--"
And, in the quiet of a hospital room, Walter Harkness, drew a long
breath and whispered: "Schwartzmann! His hand is everywhere.... And
that sample was all I had.... I must leave at once--go back to
America."
He was halfway to the door--he was almost carrying Diane Delacouer
with him--when Chet's quiet tones brought him up short.
"I've never seen you afraid," said Chet; and his eyes were regarding
the other man curiously; "but you seem to have the wind up, as the old
flyers used to say, when it comes to Schwartzmann."
* * * * *
Harkness looked at the girl he held so tightly, then grinned boyishly
at Chet. "I've someone else to be afraid for now," he said.
His smile faded and was replaced by a look of deep concern. "I haven't
told you about Schwartzmann," he said; "haven't had time. But he's
poison, Chet. And he's after our ship."
"Where is the ship; where have you hidden it? Tell me--where?"
Harkness looked about him before he whispered sharply: "Our old
shop--up north!"
He seemed to feel that some explanation was due Chet. "In this day it
seems absurd to say such things," he added; "but this Schwartzmann is
a throw-back--a conscienceless scoundrel. He would put all three of us
out of the way in a minute if he could get the ship. _He_ knows we
have been to the Dark Moon--no question about that--and he wants the
wealth he can imagine is there.
"We'll all plan to leave; I'll radio you later. We'll go back to the
Dark Moon--" He broke off abruptly as the door opened to admit the
nurse. "You'll hear from me later," he repeated; and hurried Diane
Delacouer from the room.
But he returned in a moment to stand again at the door--the nurse was
still in the room. "In case you feel like going for a hop," he told
Chet casually, "Diane's leaving her ship here for you. You'll find it
up above--private landing stage on the roof."
Chet answered promptly, "Fine; that will go good one of these days."
All this for the benefit of listening ears. Yet even Chet would have
been astonished to know that he would be using that ship within an
hour....
* * * * *
He was standing at the window, and his mind was filled, not with
thoughts of any complications that had developed for his friend
Harkness, but only of the adventures that lay ahead of them both. The
Dark Moon!--they had reached it indeed; but they had barely scratched
the surface of that world of mystery and adventure. He was wild with
eagerness to return--to see again that new world, blazing brightly
beneath the sun; to see the valley of fires--and he had a score to
settle with the tribe of ape-men, unless Harkness had finished them
off while he, himself, lay unconscious.... Yes, there seemed little
doubt of that; Walt would have paid the score for all of them.... He
seemed actually back in that world to which his thoughts went winging
across the depths of space. The burr of a telephone recalled him.
It was the hospital office, he found, when he answered. There was a
message--would Mr. Bullard kindly receive it on the telautotype--lever
number four, and dial fifteen-point-two--thanks.... And Chet depressed
a key and adjusted the instrument that had been printing the newscast.
The paper moved on beneath the glass, and the type-bars clicked more
slowly now. From some distant station that might be anywhere on or
above the earth, there was coming a message.
The frequency of that sending current was changed at some central
office; it was stepped down to suit the instrument beside him. And the
type was spelling out words that made the watching man breathless and
intent--until he tore off the paper and leaped for the call signal
that would summon the nurse. Through her he would get his own clothes,
his uniform, the triple star that showed his rating and his authority
in every air-level of the world.
That badge would have got him immediate attention on any landing
field. Now, on the flat roof, with steady, gray eyes and a voice whose
very quietness accentuated its imperative commands, Chet had the staff
of the hospital hangars as alert as if their alarm had sounded a
general ambulance call.
* * * * *
Straight into the sky a red beacon made a rigid column of light; a
radio sender was crackling a warning and a demand for "clear air."
From the forty level, a patrol ship that had caught the signal came
corkscrewing down the red shaft to stand by for emergency work....
Chet called her commander from the cabin of Diane's ship. A word of
thanks--Chet's number--and a dismissal of the craft. Then the white
lights signaled "all clear" and the hold-down levers let go with a
soft hiss--
The feel of the controls was good to his hands; the ship roared into
life. A beautiful little cruiser, this ship of Diane's; her twin
helicopters lifted her gracefully into the air. The column of red
light had changed to blue, the mark of an ascending area; Chet touched
a switch. A muffled roar came from the stern and the blast drove him
straight out for a mile; then he swung and returned. He was nosing up
as he touched the blue--straight up--and he held the vertical climb
till the altimeter before him registered sixty thousand.
Traffic is north-bound only on the sixty-level, and Chet set his ship
on a course for the frozen wastes of the Arctic; then he gave her the
gun and nodded in tight-lipped satisfaction at the mounting thunder
that answered from the stern.
Only then did he read again the message on a torn fragment of
telautotype paper. "Harkness," was the signature; and above, a brief
warning and a call--"Danger--must leave at once. You get ship and
stand by. I will meet you there." And, for the first time, Chet found
time to wonder at this danger that had set the hard-headed,
hard-hitting Walt Harkness into a flutter of nerves.
* * * * *
What danger could there be in this well-guarded world? A patrol-ship
passed below him as he asked himself the question. It was symbolic of
a world at peace; a world too busy with its own tremendous development
to find time for wars or makers of war. What trouble could this man
Schwartzmann threaten that a word to the Peace Enforcement Commission
would not quell? Where could he go to elude the inescapable patrols?
And suddenly Chet saw the answer to that question--saw plainly where
Schwartzmann could go. Those vast reaches of black space! If
Schwartzmann had their ship he could go where they had gone--go out to
the Dark Moon.... And Harkness had warned Chet to get their ship and
stand by.
Had Walt learned of some plan of Schwartzmann's? Chet could not answer
the question, but he moved the control rheostat over to the last
notch.
From the body of the craft came an unending roar of a generator where
nothing moved; where only the terrific, explosive impact of bursting
detonite drove out from the stern to throw them forward. "A good
little ship," Chet had said of this cruiser of Diane's; and he nodded
approval now of a ground-speed detector whose quivering needle had
left the 500 mark. It touched 600, crept on, and trembled at 700 miles
an hour with the top speed of the ship.
There was a position-finder in the little control room, and Chet's
gaze returned to it often to see the pinpoint of light that crept
slowly across the surface of a globe. It marked their ever-changing
location, and it moved unerringly toward a predetermined goal.
* * * * *
It was a place of ice and snow and bleak outcropping of half-covered
rocks where he descended. Lost from the world, a place where even the
high levels seldom echoed to the roar of passing ships, it had been a
perfect location for their "shop." Here he and Walt had assembled
their mystery ship.
He had to search intently over the icy waste to find the exact
location; a dim red glow from a hidden sun shone like pale fire
across distant black hills. But the hills gave him a bearing, and he
landed at last beside a vaguely outlined structure, half hidden in
drifting snow.
The dual fans dropped him softly upon the snow ground and Chet, as he
walked toward the great locked doors, was trembling from other causes
than the cold. Would the ship be there? He was suddenly a-quiver with
excitement at the thought of what this ship meant--the adventure, the
exploration that lay ahead.
The doors swung back. In the warm and lighted room was a cylinder of
silvery white. Its bow ended in a gaping port where a mighty exhaust
could roar forth to check the ship's forward speed; there were other
ports ranged about the gleaming body. Above the hull a control-room
projected flatly; its lookouts shone in the brilliance of the nitron
illuminator that flooded the room with light....
Chet Bullard was breathless as he moved on and into the room. His wild
experiences that had seemed but a weird dream were real again. The
Dark Moon was real! And they would be going back to it!
* * * * *
The muffled beating of great helicopters was sounding in his ears;
outside, a ship was landing. This would be Harkness coming to join
him; yet, even as the thought flashed through his mind, it was
countered by a quick denial. To the experienced hearing of the Master
Pilot this sound of many fans meant no little craft. It was a big ship
that was landing, and it was coming down fast. The blue-striped
monster looming large in the glow of the midnight sun was not entirely
a surprise to Chet's staring eyes.
But--blue-striped! The markings of the Schwartzmann line!--He had
hardly sensed the danger when it was upon him.
A man, heavy and broad of frame, was giving orders. Only once had Chet
seen this Herr Schwartzmann, but there was no mistaking him now. And
he was sending a squad of rushing figures toward the man who struggled
to close a great door.
Chet crouched to meet the attack. He was outnumbered; he could never
win out. But the knowledge of his own helplessness was nothing beside
that other conviction that flooded him with sickening certainty--
A hoax!--that was what they had called Walt's story; Schwartzmann had
so named it, and now Schwartzmann had been the one to fool them; the
message was a fake--a bait to draw him out; and he, Chet, had taken
the bait. He had led Schwartzmann here; had delivered their ship into
his hands--
He landed one blow on the nearest face; he had one glimpse of a
clubbed weapon swinging above him--and the world went dark.
CHAPTER II
_Into Space_
A pulsing pain that stabbed through his head was Chet's first
conscious impression. Then, as objects came slowly into focus before
his eyes, he knew that above him a ray of light was striking
slantingly through the thick glass of a control-room lookout.
Other lookouts were black, the dead black of empty space. Through
them, sparkling points of fire showed here and there--suns, sending
their light across millions of years to strike at last on a speeding
ship. But, from the one port that caught the brighter light, came that
straight ray to illumine the room.
"Space," thought Chet vaguely. "That is the sunlight of space!"
He was trying to arrange his thoughts in some sensible sequence. His
head!--what had happened to his head?... And then he remembered. Again
he saw a clubbed weapon descending, while the face of Schwartzmann
stared at him through bulbous eyes....
And this control-room where he lay--he knew in an instant where he
was. It was his own ship that was roaring and trembling beneath
him--his and Walt Harkness'--it was flying through space! And, with
the sudden realization of what this meant, he struggled to arise. Only
then did he see the figure at the controls.
The man was leaning above an instrument board; he straightened to
stare from a rear port while he spoke to someone Chet could not see.
"There's more of 'em coming!" he said in a choked voice. "_Mein Gott!_
Neffer can we get away!"
* * * * *
He fumbled with shaking hands at instruments and controls; and now
Chet saw his chalk-white face and read plainly the terror that was
written there. But the cords that cut into his own wrists and ankles
reminded him that he was bound; he settled back upon the floor. Why
struggle? If this other pilot was having trouble let him get out of it
by himself--let him kill his own snakes!
That the man was having trouble there was no doubt. He looked once
more behind him as if at something that pursued; then swung the
ball-control to throw the ship off her course.
The craft answered sluggishly, and Chet Bullard grinned where he lay
helpless upon the floor; for he knew that his ship should have been
thrown crashingly aside with such a motion as that. The answer was
plain: the flask of super-detonite was exhausted; here was the last
feeble explosion of the final atoms of the terrible explosive that was
being admitted to the generator. And to cut in another flask meant the
opening of a hidden valve.
Chet forgot the pain of his swelling hands to shake with suppressed
mirth. This was going to be good! He forgot it until, through a
lookout, he saw a writhing, circling fire that wrapped itself about
the ship and jarred them to a halt.
The serpents!--those horrors from space that had come with the coming
of the Dark Moon! They had disrupted the high-level traffic of the
world; had seized great liners; torn their way in; stripped these of
every living thing, and let the empty shells crash back to earth. Chet
had forgotten or he had failed to realize the height at which this new
pilot was flying. Only speed could save them; the monsters, with their
snouts that were great suction-cups, could wrench off a metal
door--tear out the glass from a port!
* * * * *
He saw the luminous mass crush itself against a forward lookout and
felt the jar of its body against their ship. Soft and vaporous, these
cloud-like serpents seemed as they drifted through space; yet the
impact, when they struck, proved that this new matter had mass.
Chet saw the figure at the controls stagger back and cower in fear;
the man's bullet-shaped head was covered by his upraised arms: there
was some horror outside those windows that his eyes had no wish to
see. Beside him the towering figure of Schwartzmann appeared; he had
sprung into Chet's view, and he screamed orders at the fear-stricken
pilot.
"Fool! Swine!" Schwartzmann was shouting. "Do something! You said you
could fly this ship!" In desperation he leaped forward and reached for
the controls himself.
Chet's blurred faculties snapped sharply to attention. That yellow
glow against the port--the jarring of their ship--it meant instant
destruction once that searching snout found some place where it could
secure a hold. If the air-pressure within the ship were released; if
even a crack were opened!--
"Here, you!" he shouted to the frantic Schwartzmann who was jerking
frenziedly at the controls that no longer gave response. "Cut these
ropes!--leave those instruments alone, you fool!" He was suddenly
vibrant with hate as he realized what this man had done: he had struck
him, Chet, down as he would have felled an animal for butchery; he had
stolen their ship; and now he was losing it. Chet hardly thought of
his own desperate plight in his rage at this threat to their ship, and
at Schwartzmann's inability to help himself.
"Cut these ropes!" he repeated. "Damn it all, turn me loose; I can fly
us out!" He added his frank opinion of Schwartzmann and all his men.
And Schwartzmann, though his dark face flushed angrily red for one
instant, leaped to Chet's side and slashed at the cords with a knife.
The room swam before Chet's dizzy eyes as he came to his feet. He half
fell, half drew himself full length toward the valve that he alone
knew. Then again he was on his feet and he gripped at the ball-control
with one hand while he opened a master throttle that cut in this new
supply of explosive.
* * * * *
The room had been silent with the silence of empty space, save only
for the scraping of a horrid body across the ship's outer shell. The
silence was shattered now as if by the thunder of many guns. There
was no time for easing themselves into gradual flight. Chet thrust
forward on the ball-control, and the blast from their stern threw the
ship as if it had been fired from a giant cannon.
The self-compensating floor swung back and up; Chet's weight was
almost unbearable as the ship beneath him leaped out and on, and the
terrific blast that screamed and thundered urged this speeding shell
to greater and still greater speed. And then, with the facility that
that speed gave, Chet's careful hands moved a tiny metal ball within
its magnetic cage, and the great ship bellowed from many ports as it
followed the motion of that ball.
Could an eye have seen the wild, twisting flight, it must have seemed
as if pilot and ship had gone suddenly mad. The craft corkscrewed and
whirled; it leaped upward and aside; and, as the glowing mass was
thrown clear of the lookout, Chet's hand moved again to that maximum
forward position, and again the titanic blast from astern drove them
on and out.
There were other shapes ahead, glowing lines of fire, luminous masses
like streamers of cloud that looped themselves into contorted forms
and writhed vividly until they straightened into sharp lines of speed
that bore down upon the fleeing craft and the human food that was
escaping these hungry snouts.
Chet saw them dead ahead; he saw the out-thrust heads, each ending in
a great suction-cup, the row of disks that were eyes blazing above,
and the gaping maw below. He altered their course not a hair's breadth
as he bore down upon them, while the monsters swelled prodigiously
before his eyes. And the thunderous roar from astern came with never a
break, while the ship itself ceased its trembling protest against the
sudden blast and drove smoothly on and into the waiting beasts.
There was a hardly perceptible thudding jar. They were free! And the
forward lookouts showed only the brilliant fires of distant suns and
one more glorious than the rest that meant a planet.
* * * * *
Chet turned at last to face Schwartzmann and his pilot where they had
clung helplessly to a metal stanchion. Four or five others crept in
from the cabin aft; their blanched faces told of the fear that bad
gripped them--fear of the serpents; fear, too, of the terrific plunges
into which the ship had been thrown. Chet Bullard drew the metal
control-ball back into neutral and permitted himself the luxury of a
laugh.
"You're a fine bunch of highway-men," he told Schwartzmann; "you'll
steal a ship you can't fly; then come up here above the R. A. level
and get mixed up with those brutes. What's the idea? Did you think you
would just hop over to the Dark Moon? Some little plan like that in
your mind?"
Again the dark, heavy face of Schwartzmann flushed deeply; but it was
his own men upon whom he turned.
"You," he told the pilot--"you were so clever; you would knock this
man senseless! You would insist that you could fly the ship!"
The pilot's eyes still bulged with the fear he had just experienced.
"But, Herr Schwartzmann, it was you who told me--"
A barrage of unintelligible words cut his protest short. Schwartzmann
poured forth imprecations in an unknown tongue, then turned to the
others.
"Back!" he ordered. "Bah!--such men! The danger it iss over--yess!
This pilot, he will take us back safely."
He turned his attention now to the waiting Chet. "Herr Bullard, iss it
not--yess?"
He launched into extended apologies--he had wanted a look at this so
marvelous ship--he had spied upon it; he admitted it. But this
murderous attack was none of his doing; his men had got out of hand;
and then he had thought it best to take Chet, unconscious as he was,
and return with him where he could have care.
* * * * *
And Chet Bullard kept his eyes steadily upon the protesting man and
said nothing, but he was thinking of a number of things. There was
Walt's warning, "this Schwartzmann means mischief," and the faked
message that had brought him from the hospital to get the ship from
its hiding place; no, it was too much to believe. But Chet's eyes were
unchanging, and he nodded shortly in agreement as the other concluded.
"You will take us back?" Schwartzmann was asking. "I will repay you
well for what inconvenience we have caused. The ship, you will return
it safely to the place where it was?"
And Chet, after making and discarding a score of plans, knew there was
nothing else he could do. He swung the little metal ball into a
sharply-banked turn. The straight ray of light from an impossibly
brilliant sun struck now on a forward lookout; it shone across the
shoulder of a great globe to make a white, shining crescent as of a
giant moon. It was Earth; and Chet brought the bow-sights to bear on
that far-off target, while again the thunderous blast was built up to
drive them back along the trackless path on which they had come. But
he wondered, as he pressed forward on the control, what the real plan
of this man, Schwartzmann, might be....
* * * * *
Less than half an hour brought them to the Repelling Area, and Chet
felt the upward surge as he approached it. Here, above this magnetic
field where gravitation's pull was nullified, had been the air-lanes
for fast liners. Empty lanes they were now; for the R. A., as the
flying fraternity knew it--the Heaviside Layer of an earlier
day--marked the danger line above which the mysterious serpents lay in
wait. Only the speed of Chet's ship saved them; more than one of the
luminous monsters was in sight as he plunged through the invisible R.
A. and threw on their bow-blast strongly to check their fall.
Then, as he set a course that would take them to that section of the
Arctic waste where the ship had been, he pondered once more upon the
subject of this Schwartzmann of the shifty eyes and the glib tongue
and of his men who had "got out of hand" and had captured this ship.
"Why in thunder are we back here?" Chet asked himself in perplexity.
"This big boy means to keep the ship; and, whatever his plans may have
been before, he will never stop short of the Dark Moon now that he has
seen the old boat perform. Then why didn't he keep on when he was
started? Had the serpents frightened him back?"
He was still mentally proposing questions to which there seemed no
answer when he felt the pressure of a metal tube against his back. The
voice of Schwartzmann was in his ears.
"This is a detonite pistol"--that voice was no longer unctuous and
self-deprecating--"one move and I'll plant a charge inside you that
will smash you to a jelly!"
* * * * *
There were hands that gripped Chet before he could turn; his arms were
wrenched backward; he was helpless in the grip of Schwartzmann's men.
The former pilot sprang forward.
"Take control, Max!" Schwartzmann snapped; but he followed it with a
question while the pilot was reaching for the ball. "You can fly it
for sure, Max?"
The man called Max answered confidently.
"_Ja wohl!_" he said with eager assurance. "Up top there would have
been no trouble yet for that _verdammt, verloren_ valve. That one
experimental trip is enough--I fly it!"
Those who held Chet were binding his wrists. He was thrown to the
floor while his feet were tied, and, as a last precaution, a gag was
forced into his mouth. Schwartzmann left this work to his men. He paid
no attention to Chet; he was busy at the radio.
He placed the sending-levers in strange positions that would effect a
blending of wave lengths which only one receiving instrument could
pick up. He spoke cryptic words into the microphone, then dropped into
a language that was unfamiliar to Chet. Yet, even then, it was plain
that he was giving instructions, and he repeated familiar words.
"Harkness," Chet heard him say, and, "--Delacouer--_ja!_--Mam'selle
Delacouer!"
Then, leaving the radio, he said, "Put my ship inside the hangar;" and
the pilot, Max, grounded their own ship to allow the men to leap out
and float into the big building the big aircraft in which Schwartzmann
had come.
"Now close the doors!" their leader ordered. "Leave everything as it
was!" And to the pilot he gave added instructions: "There iss no air
traffic here. You will to forty thousand ascend, und you will wait
over this spot." Contemptuously he kicked aside the legs of the bound
man that he might walk back into the cabin.
* * * * *
The take-off was not as smooth as it would have been had Chet's slim
hands been on the controls; this burly one who handled them now was
not accustomed to such sensitivity. But Chet felt the ship lift and
lurch, then settle down to a swift, spiralling ascent. Now he lay
still as he tried to ponder the situation.
"Now what dirty work are they up to?" he asked himself. He had seen a
sullen fury on the dark face of Herr Schwartzmann as he spoke the
names of Walt and Diane into the radio. Chet remembered the look now,
and he struggled vainly with the cords about his wrists. Even a
detonite pistol with its tiny grain of explosive in the end of each
bullet would not check him--not when Walt and Diane were endangered.
And the expression on that heavy, scowling face had told him all too
clearly that some real danger threatened.
But the cords held fast on his swollen wrists. His head was still
throbbing; and even his side, not entirely healed, was adding to the
torment that beat upon him--beat and beat with his pulsing
blood--until the beating faded out into unconsciousness....
Dimly he knew they were soaring still higher as their radio picked up
the warning of an approaching patrol ship; vaguely he realized that
they descended again to a level of observation. Chet knew in some
corner of his brain that Schwartzmann was watching from an under
lookout with a powerful glass, and he heard his excited command:
"Down--go slowly, down!... They are landing.... They have entered the
hangar. Now, down with it, Max! Down! down!"
* * * * *
The plunging fall of the ship roused Chet from his stupor. He felt the
jolt of the clumsy landing despite the snow-cushioned ground; he
heard plainly the exclamations from beyond an open port--the startled
oath in Walter Harkness' voice, and the stinging scorn in the words of
Diane Delacouer.
Herr Schwartzmann had been in the employ of Mademoiselle Delacouer,
but he was taking orders no longer. There was a sound of scuffling
feet, and once the thud of a blow.... Then Chet watched with heavy,
hopeless eyes as the familiar faces of Diane and Walt appeared in the
doorway. Their hands were bound; they, too, were threatened with a
slim-barreled pistol in the hands of the smirking, exultant
Schwartzmann.
A tall, thin-faced man whom Chet had not seen before followed them
into the room. The newcomer was motioned forward now, as Schwartzmann
called an order to the pilot:
"All right; now we go, Max! Herr Doktor Kreiss will give you the
bearings; he knows his way among the stars."
Herr Schwartzmann doubled over in laughing appreciation of his own
success before he straightened up and regarded his captives with cold
eyes.
"Such a pleasure!" he mocked: "such charming passengers to take with
me on my first trip into space; this ship, it iss not so goot. I will
build better ships later on; I will let you see them when I shall come
to visit you."
He laughed again at sight of the wondering looks in the eyes of the
three; stooping, he jerked the gag from Chet's mouth.
"You do not understand," he exclaimed. "I should haff explained. You
see, _meine guten Freunde_, we go--ach!--you have guessed it already!
We go to the Dark Moon. I am pleased to take you with me on the trip
out; but coming back, I will have so much to bring--there will be no
room for passengers.
"I could have killed you here," he said; and his mockery gave place
for a moment to a savage tone, "but the patrol ships, they are
everywhere. But I have influence here und there--I arranged that your
flask of gas should be charged with explosive, I discredited you, and
yet I could not so great a risk take as to kill you all."
"So came inspiration! I called your foolish young friend here from the
hospital. I ordered him to go at once to the ship hidden where I could
not find, and I signed the name of Herr Harkness."
* * * * *
Chet caught the silent glances of his friends who could yet smile
hopefully through the other emotions that possessed them. He ground
his teeth as the smooth voice of Herr Schwartzmann went on:
"He led me here; the young fool! Then I sent for you--and this time I
signed his name--und you came. So simple!"
"Und now we go in my ship to my new world. And," he added savagely,
"if one of you makes the least trouble, he will land on the Dark
Moon-yess!-but he will land hard, from ten thousand feet up!"
The great generator was roaring. To Chet came the familiar lift of the
R. A. effect. They were beyond the R. A.; they were heading out and
away from Earth; and his friends were captives through his own
unconscious treachery, carried out into space in their own ship, with
the hands of an enemy gripping the controls....
Chet's groan, as he turned his face away from the others who had tried
to smile cheerfully, had nothing to do with the pain of his body. It
was his mind that was torturing him.
But he muttered broken words as he lay there, words that had reference
to one Schwartzmann. "I'll get him, damn him! I'll get him!" he was
promising himself.
And Herr Schwartzmann who was clever, would have proved his cleverness
still more by listening. For a Master Pilot of the World does not get
his rating on vain boasts. He must know first his flying, his ships
and his air--but he is apt to make good in other ways as well.
CHAPTER III
_Out of Control_
Walter Harkness had built this ship with Chet's help. They had
designed it for space-travel. It was the first ship to leave the Earth
under its own power, reach another heavenly body, and come back for a
safe landing. But they had not installed any luxuries for the
passengers.
In the room where the three were confined, there were no
self-compensating chairs such as the high-liners used. But the
acceleration of the speeding ship was constant, and the rear wall
became their floor where they sat or paced back and forth. Their bonds
had been removed, and one of Harkness' hands was gripping Diane's
where they sat side by side. Chet was briskly limbering his cramped
muscles.
He glanced at the two who sat silent nearby, and he knew what was in
their minds--knew that each was thinking of the other, forgetting
their own danger: and it was these two who had saved his life on their
first adventure out in space.
Walt--one man who was never spoiled by his millions; and
Diane--straight and true as they make 'em! Some way, somehow, they
must be saved--thus ran his thoughts--but it looked bad for them all.
Schwartzmann?--no use kidding themselves about that lad; he was one
bad hombre. The best they could hope for was to be marooned on the
Dark Moon--left there to live or to die amid those savage
surroundings; and the worst that might happen--! But Chet refused to
think of what alternatives might occur to the ugly, distorted mind of
the man who had them at his mercy.
There was no echo of these thoughts when he spoke; the smile that
flashed across his lean face brought a brief response from the
despondent countenances of his companions.
"Well," Chet observed, and ran his hand through a tangle of blond
hair, "I have heard that the Schwartzmann lines give service, and I
reckon I heard right. Here we were wanting to go back to the Dark
Moon, and,"--he paused to point toward a black portlight where
occasional lights flashed past--"I'll say we're going; going somewhere
at least. All I hope is that that Maxie boy doesn't find the Dark Moon
at about ten thousand per. He may be a great little skipper on a nice,
slow, five-hundred-maximum freighter, but not on this boat. I don't
like his landings."
* * * * *
Diane Delacouer raised her eyes to smile approvingly upon him. "You're
good, Chet," she said; "you are a darn good sport. They knock you down
out of control, and you nose right back up for a forty-thousand foot
zoom. And you try to carry us with you. Well, I guess it's time we got
over our gloom. Now what is going to happen?"
"I'll tell you," said Walter Harkness, looking at his watch: "if that
fool pilot of Schwartzmann's doesn't cut his stern thrust and build up
a bow resistance, we'll overshoot our mark and go tearing on a few
hundred thousand miles in space."
Diane was playing up to Chet's lead.
"_Bien!_" she exclaimed. "A few million, perhaps! Then we may see some
of those Martians we've been speculating about. I hear they are
handsome, my Walter--much better looking than you. Maybe this is all
for the best after all!"
"Say," Harkness protested, "if you two idiots don't know enough to
worry as you ought, I don't see any reason why I should do all the
heavy worrying for the whole crowd. I guess you've got the right idea
at that: take what comes when it gets here--or when we get there."
Small wonder, thought Chet, that Herr Schwartzmann stared at them in
puzzled bewilderment when he flung open the door, and took one long
stride into the room. Stocky, heavy-muscled, he stood regarding them,
a frown of suspicion drawing his face into ugly lines. Plainly he was
disturbed by this laughing good-humor where he had expected misery and
hopelessness and tears. He moved the muzzle of a detonite pistol back
and forth.
* * * * *
"You haff been drinking!" he stated at last. "You are intoxicated--all
of you!" His eyes darted searching glances about the little room that
was too bare to hide any cause for inebriation.
It was Mam'selle Diane who answered him with an emphatic shake of her
dark head; an engaging smile tugged at the corners of her lips. "_Mais
non!_ my dear Herr Schwartzmann," she assured him: "it is joy--just
happiness at again approaching our Moon--and in such good company,
too."
"Fortunes of war, Schwartzmann," declared Harkness; "we know how to
accept them, and we don't hold it against you. We are down now, but
your turn will come."
The man's reply was a sputtering of rage in words that neither Chet
nor Harkness could understand. The latter turned to the girl with a
question.
"Did you get it, Diane? What did he say?"
"I think I would not care to translate it literally," said Diane
Delacouer, twisting her soft mouth into an expression of distaste;
"but, speaking generally, he disagrees with you."
Herr Schwartzmann was facing Harkness belligerently. "You think you
know something! What is it?" he demanded. "You are under my feet: I
kick you as I would _meinen Hund_ and you can do nothing." He aimed a
savage kick into the air to illustrate his meaning, and Harkness' face
flushed suddenly scarlet.
* * * * *
Whatever retort was on Harkness' tongue was left unspoken; a sharp
look from Chet, who brought his fingers swiftly to his lips in a
gesture of silence, checked the reply. The action was almost
unconscious on Chet's part; it was as unpremeditated as the sudden
thought that flashed abruptly into his mind--
They were helpless; they were in this brute's power beyond the
slightest doubt. Schwartzmann's words, "You know something. What is
it?" had fired a swift train of thought.
The idea was nebulous as yet ... but if they could throw a scare into
this man--make him think there was danger ahead.... Yes, that was it:
make Schwartzmann think they knew of dangers that he could not avoid.
They had been there before: make this man afraid to kill them. The
dreadful alternative that Chet had feared to think of might be
averted....
All this came in an instantaneous, flashing correlation of his
conscious thoughts.
"I'll tell you what we mean," he told Schwartzmann. He even leaned
forward to shake an impressive finger before the other's startled
face. "I'll tell you first of all that it doesn't make a damn bit of
difference who is on top--or it won't in a few hours more. We'll all
be washed out together.
"I've landed once on the Dark Moon; I know what will happen. And do
you know how fast we are going? Do you know the Moon's speed as it
approaches? Had you thought what you will look like when that fool
pilot rams into it head on?
"And that isn't all!" He grinned derisively into Schwartzmann's
flushed face, disregarding the half-raised pistol; it was as if some
secret thought had filled him with overpowering amusement. His broad
grin grew into a laugh. "That isn't all, big boy. What will you do if
you do land? What will you do when you open the ports and the--?" He
cut his words short, and the smile, with all other expression, was
carefully erased from his young face.
"No, I reckon I won't spoil the surprise. We got through it all right;
maybe you will, too--maybe!"
* * * * *
And again it was Diane who played up to Chet's lead without a moment's
hesitation.
"Chet," she demanded, "aren't you going to warn him? You would not
allow him and his men to be--"
She stopped in apparent horror of the unsaid words; Chet gave her an
approving glance.
"We'll see about that when we get there, Diane."
He turned abruptly back to Schwartzmann. "I'll forget what a rotten
winner you have been; I'll help you out; I'll take the controls if you
like. Of course, your man, Max, may set us down without damage; then
again--"
"Take them!" Schwartzmann ungraciously made an order of his
acceptance. "Take the controls, Herr Bullard! But if you make a
single false move!" The menacing pistol completed the threat.
But "Herr Bullard" merely turned to his companion with a level,
understanding look. "Come on," he said; "you can both help in working
out our location."
He stepped before the burly man that Diane might precede them through
the door. And he felt the hand of Walt Harkness on his arm in a
pressure that told what could not be said aloud.
* * * * *
There were pallid-faced men in the cabin through which they passed;
men who stared and stared from the window-ports into the black
immensity of space. Chet, too, stopped to look; there had been no
port-holes in that inner room where they had been confined.
He knew what to expect; he knew how awe-inspiring would be the sight
of strange, luminous bodies--great islands of light--masses of
animaculae--that glowed suddenly, then melted again into velvet black.
A whirl of violet grew almost golden in sudden motion; Chet knew it
for an invisible monster of space. Glowingly luminous as it threw
itself upon a subtle mass of shimmering light, it faded like a
flickering flame, and went dark as its motion ceased.
Life!--life everywhere in this ocean of space! And on every hand was
death. "Not surprising," Chet realized, "that these other Earthmen are
awed and trembling!"
The sun was above them; its light struck squarely down through the
upper ports. This was polarized light--there was nothing outside to
reflect or refract it--and, coming as a straight beam from above, it
made a brilliant circle upon the floor from which it was diffused
throughout the room. It was as if the floor itself was the
illuminating agent.
No eye could bear to look into the glare from above; nor was there
need, for the other ports drew the eyes with their black depths of
unplumbed space.
Black!--so velvet as to seem almost tangible! Could one have reached
out a hand, that blackness, it seemed, must be a curtain that the hand
could draw aside, where unflickering points of light pricked through
the dark to give promise of some radiant glory beyond.
* * * * *
They had seen it before, these three, yet Chet caught the eyes of
Harkness and Diane and knew that his own eyes must share something of
the look he saw in theirs--something of reverent wonder and a strange
humility before this evidence of transcendent greatness.
Their own immediate problem seemed gone. The tyranny of this glowering
human and his men--the efforts of the whole world and its struggling
millions--how absurdly unimportant it all was! How it faded to
insignificance! And yet....
Chet came from the reverie that held him. There was one man by whom
this beauty was unseen. Herr Schwartzmann was angrily ordering them
on, and, surprisingly, Chet laughed aloud.
This problem, he realized, was _his_ problem--his to solve with the
help of the other two. And it was _not_ insignificant; he knew with
some sudden wordless knowledge that there was nothing in all the great
scheme but that it had its importance. This vastness that was beyond
the power of human mind to grasp ceased to be formidable--he was part
of it. He felt buoyed up; and he led the way confidently toward the
control-room door where Schwartzmann stood.
The scientist, whom Schwartzmann had called Herr Doktor Kreiss, was
beside the pilot. He was leaning forward to search the stars in the
blackness ahead, but the pilot turned often to stare through the rear
lookouts as if drawn in fearful fascination by what was there. Chet
took the controls at Schwartzmann's order; the pilot saluted with a
trembling hand and vanished into the cabin at the rear.
"Ready for flying orders, Doctor," the new pilot told Herr Kreiss.
"I'll put her where you say--within reason."
Behind him he heard the choked voice of Mademoiselle Diane:
"_Regardez! Ah, mon Dieu_, the beauty of it! This loveliness--it
hurts!"
* * * * *
One hand was pressed to her throat; her face was turned as the pilot's
had been that she might stare and stare at a quite impossible moon--a
great half-disk of light in the velvet dark.
"This loveliness--it hurts!" Chet looked, too, and knew what Diane was
feeling. There was a catch of emotion in his own throat--a feeling
that was almost fear.
A giant half-moon!--and he knew it was the Earth. Golden Earth-light
came to them in a flooding glory; the blazing sun struck on it from
above to bring out half the globe in brilliant gold that melted to
softest, iridescent, rainbow tints about its edge. Below, hung
motionless in the night, was another sphere. Like a reflection of
Earth in the depths of some Stygian lake, the old moon shone, too, in
a half-circle of light.
Small wonder that these celestial glories brought a gasp of delight
from Diane, or drew into lines of fear the face of that other pilot
who saw only his own world slipping away. But Chet Bullard, Master
Pilot of the World, swung back to scan a star-chart that the scientist
was holding, then to search out a similar grouping in the black depths
into which they were plunging, and to bring the cross-hairs of a
rigidly mounted telescope upon that distant target.
"How far?" he asked himself in a half-spoken thought, "--how far have
we come?"
* * * * *
There was an instrument that ticked off the seconds in this seemingly
timeless void. He pressed a small lever beside it, and, beneath a
glass that magnified the readings, there passed the time-tape. Each
hour and minute was there; each movement of the controls was
indicated; each trifling variation in the power of the generator's
blast. Chet made some careful computations and passed the paper to
Harkness, who tilted the time-tape recorder that he might see the
record.
"Check this, will you, Walt?" Chet was asking. "It is based on the
time of our other trip, acceleration assumed as one thousand miles per
hour per hour out of air--"
The scientist interrupted; he spoke in English that was carefully
precise.
"It should lie directly ahead--the Dark Moon. I have calculated with
exactness."
Walter Harkness had snatched up a pair of binoculars. He swung sharply
from lookout to lookout while he searched the heavens.
"It's damned lucky for us that you made a slight error," Chet was
telling the other.
"Error?" Kreiss challenged. "Impossible!"
"Then you and I are dead right this minute," Chet told him. "We are
crossing the orbit of the Dark Moon--crossing at twenty thousand miles
per hour relative to Earth, slightly in excess of that figure relative
to the Dark Moon. If it had been here--!" He had been watching
Harkness anxiously; he bit off his words as the binoculars were thrust
into his hand.
"There she comes," Harkness told him quietly; "it's up to you!"
But Chet did not need the glasses. With his unaided eyes he could see
a faint circle of violet light. It lay ahead and slightly above, and
it grew visibly larger as he watched. A ring of nothingness, whose
outline was the faintest shimmering halo; more of the distant stars
winked out swiftly behind that ghostly circle; it was the Dark
Moon!--and it was rushing upon them!
* * * * *
Chet swung an instrument upon it. He picked out a jet of violet light
that could be distinguished, and he followed it with the cross-hairs
while he twirled a micrometer screw; then he swiftly copied the
reading that the instrument had inscribed. The invisible disk with its
ghostly edge of violet was perceptibly larger as he slammed over the
control-ball to up-end them in air.
Under the control-room's nitron illuminator the cheeks of Herr Doktor
Kreiss were pale and bloodless as if his heart had ceased to function.
Harkness had moved quietly back to the side of Diane Delacouer and was
holding her two hands firmly in his.
The very air seemed charged with the quick tenseness of emotions.
Schwartzmann must have sensed it even before he saw the onrushing
death. Then he leaped to a lookout, and, an instant later, sprang at
Chet calmly fingering the control.
"Fool!" he screamed, "you would kill us all? Turn away from it! Away
from it!"
He threw himself in a frenzy upon the pilot. The detonite pistol was
still in his hand. "Quick!" he shouted. "Turn us!"
Harkness moved swiftly, but the scientist, Kreiss, was nearer; it was
he who smashed the gun-hand down with a quick blow and snatched at the
weapon.
Schwartzmann was beside himself with rage. "You, too?" he demanded.
"Giff it me--traitor!"
* * * * *
But the tall man stood uncompromisingly erect. "Never," he said, "have
I seen a ship large enough to hold two commanding pilots. I take your
orders in all things, Herr Schwartzmann--all but this. If we die--we
die."
Schwartzmann sputtered: "We should haff turned away. Even yet we
might. It will--it will--"
"Perhaps," agreed Kreiss, still in that precise, class-room voice,
"perhaps it will. But this I know: with an acceleration of one
thousand m.p.h. as this young man with the badge of a Master Pilot
says, we cannot hope, in the time remaining, to overcome our present
velocity; we can never check our speed and build up a relatively
opposite motion before that globe would overwhelm us. If he has
figured correctly, this young man--if he has found the true resultant
of our two motions of approach--and if he has swung us that we may
drive out on a line perpendicular to the resultant--"
"I think I have," said Chet quietly. "If I haven't, in just a few
minutes it won't matter to any of us; it won't matter at all." He met
the gaze of Herr Doktor Kreiss who regarded him curiously.
"If we escape," the scientist told him, "you will understand that I am
under Herr Schwartzmann's command; I will be compelled to shoot you if
he so orders. But, Herr Bullard, at this moment I would be very proud
to shake your hand."
And Chet, as he extended his hand, managed a grin that was meant also
for the tense, white-faced Harkness and Diane. "I like to see 'em
dealt that way," he said, "--right off the top of the deck."
But the smile was erased as he turned back to the lookout. He had to
lean close to see all of the disk, so swiftly was the approaching
globe bearing down.
* * * * *
It came now from the side; it swelled larger and larger before his
eyes. Their own ship seemed unmoving; only the unending thunder of the
generator told of the frantic efforts to escape. They seemed hung in
space; their own terrific speed seemed gone--added to and fused with
the orbital motion of the Dark Moon to bring swiftly closer that
messenger of death. The circle expanded silently; became menacingly
huge.
Chet was whispering softly to himself: "If I'd got hold of her an hour
sooner--thirty minutes--or even ten.... We're doing over twenty
thousand an hour combined speed, and we'll never really hit it....
We'll never reach the ground."
He turned this over in his mind, and he nodded gravely in confirmation
of his own conclusions. It seemed somehow of tremendous importance
that he get this clearly thought out--this experience that was close
ahead.
"Skin friction!" he added. "It will burn us up!"
He had a sudden vision of a flaming star blazing a hot trail through
the atmosphere of this globe; there would be only savage eyes to
follow it--to see the line of fire curving swiftly across the
heavens.... He, himself, was seeing that blazing meteor so plainly....
His eyes found the lookout: the globe was gone. They were
close--close! Only for the enveloping gas that made of this a dark
moon, they would be seeing the surface, the outlines of continents.
Chet strained his eyes--to see nothing! It was horrible. It had been
fearful enough to watch that expanding globe.... He was abruptly aware
that the outer rim of the lookout was red!
For Chet Bullard, time ceased to have meaning; what were seconds--or
centuries--as he stared at that glowing rim? He could not have told.
The outer shell of their ship--it was radiant--shining red-hot in the
night. And above the roar of the generator came a nerve-ripping
shriek. A wind like a blast from hell was battering and tearing at
their ship.
"Good-by!" He had tried to call; the demoniac shrieking from without
smothered his voice. One arm was across his eyes in an unconscious
motion. The air of the little room was stifling. He forced his arm
down: he would meet death face to face.
* * * * *
The lookout was ringed with fire; it was white with the terrible white
of burning steel!--it was golden!--then cherry red! It was dying, as
the fire dies from glowing metal plunged in its tempering bath--or
thrown into the cold reaches of space!
In Chet's ears was the roar of a detonite motor. He tried to realize
that the lookouts were rimmed with black--cold, fireless black! An
incredible black! There were stars there like pinpoints of flame! But
conviction came only when he saw from a lookout in another wall a
circle of violet that shrank and dwindled as he watched....
A hand was gripping his shoulder; he heard the voice of Walter
Harkness speaking, while Walt's hand crept over to raise the triple
star that was pinned to his blouse.
"Master Pilot of the World!" Harkness was saying. "That doesn't cover
enough territory, old man. It's another rating that you're entitled
to, but I'm damned if I know what it is."
And, for once, Chet's ready smile refused to form. He stared dumbly at
his friend; his eyes passed to the white face of Mademoiselle Diane;
then back to the controls, where his hand, without conscious volition,
was reaching to move a metal ball.
"Missed it!" he assured himself. "Hit the fringe of the air--just the
very outside. If we'd been twenty thousand feet nearer!..." He was
moving the ball; their bow was swinging. He steadied it and set the
ship on an approximate course.
"A stern chase!" he said aloud. "All our momentum to be overcome--but
it's easy sailing now!"
He pushed the ball forward to the limit, and the explosion-motor gave
thunderous response.
CHAPTER IV
_The Return to the Dark Moon_
No man faces death in so shocking a form without feeling the effects.
Death had flicked them with a finger of flame and had passed them by.
Chet Bullard found his hands trembling uncontrollably as he fumbled
for a book and opened it. The tables of figures printed there were
blurred at first to his eyes, but he forced himself to forget the
threat that was past, for there was another menace to consider now.
And uppermost in his mind, when his thoughts came back into some
approximate order, was condemnation of himself for an opportunity that
was gone.
"I could have jumped him," he told himself with bitter self-reproach;
"I could have grabbed the pistol from Kreiss--the man was petrified."
And then Chet had to admit a fact there was no use of denying: "I was
as paralyzed as he was," he said, and only knew he had spoken aloud
when he saw the puzzled look that crossed Harkness' face.
Harkness and Diane had drawn near. In a far corner of the little room
Schwartzmann had motioned to Kreiss to join him; they were as far away
from the others as could be managed. Schwartzmann, Chet judged, needed
some scientific explanation of these disturbing events; also he
needed to take the detonite pistol from Kreiss' hand and jam it into
his own hand. His eyes, at Chet's unconscious exclamation, had come
with instant suspicion toward the two men.
"Forty-seven hours, Walt," the pilot said, and repeated it loudly for
Schwartzmann's benefit; "--forty-seven hours before we return to this
spot. We are driving out into space; we've crossed the orbit of the
Dark Moon, and we're doing twenty thousand miles an hour.
"Now we must decelerate. It will take twenty hours to check us to zero
speed; then twenty-seven more to shoot us back to this same point
in space, allowing, of course, for a second deceleration. The same
figuring with only slight variation will cover a return to the Dark
Moon. As we sweep out I can allow for the moon-motion, and we'll hit
it at a safe landing speed on the return trip this time."
* * * * *
Chet was paying little attention to his companion as he spoke. His
eyes, instead, were covertly watching the bulky figure of
Schwartzmann. As he finished, their captor shot a volley of questions
at the scientist beside him; he was checking up on the pilot's
remarks.
Chet was leaning forward to stare intently from a lookout, his head
was close to that of Harkness.
"Listen, Walt," he whispered; "the Moon's out of sight; it's easy to
lose. Maybe I can't find it again, anyway--it's going to take some
nice navigating--but I'll miss it by ten thousand miles if you say so,
and even the Herr Doktor can't check me on it."
Chet saw the eyes of Schwartzmann grow intent. He reached
ostentatiously for another book of tables, and he seated himself that
he might figure in comfort.
"Just check me on this," he told Harkness.
He put down meaningless figures, while the man beside him remained
silent. Over and over he wrote them--would Harkness never reach a
decision?--over and over, until--
"I don't agree with that," Harkness told him and reached for the
stylus in Chet's hand. And, while he appeared to make his own swift
computations, there were words instead of figures that flowed from his
pen.
"Only alternative: return to Earth," he wrote. "Then S will hold off;
wait in upper levels. Kreiss will give him new bearings. We'll shoot
out again and do it better next time. Kreiss is nobody's fool. S means
to maroon us on Moon--kill us perhaps. He'll get us there, sure. We
might as well go now."
* * * * *
Chet had seen a movement across the room. "Let's start all over
again," he broke in abruptly. He covered the writing with a clean
sheet of paper where he set down more figures. He was well under way
when Schwartzmann's quick strides brought him towering above them.
Again the detonite pistol was in evidence; its small black muzzle
moved steadily from Harkness to Chet.
"For your life--such as is left of it--you may thank Herr Doktor
Kreiss," he told Chet. "I thought at first you would have attempted to
kill us." His smile, as he regarded them, seemed to Chet to be
entirely evil. "You were near death twice, my dear Herr Bullard; and
the danger is not entirely removed.
"'Forty-seven hours' you have said; in forty-seven hours you will land
us on the Dark Moon. If you do not,"--he raised the pistol
suggestively--"remember that the pilot, Max, can always take us back
to Earth. You are not indispensable."
Chet looked at the dark face and its determined and ominous scowl.
"You're a cheerful sort of soul, aren't you?" he demanded. "Do you
have any faint idea of what a job this is? Do you know we will shoot
another two hundred thousand miles straight out before I can check
this ship? Then we come back; and meanwhile the Dark Moon has gone on
its way. Had you thought that there's a lot of room to get lost in out
here?"
"Forty-seven hours!" said Schwartzmann. "I would advise that you do
not lose your way."
Chet shot one quizzical glance at Harkness.
"That," he said, "makes it practically unanimous."
Schwartzmann, with an elaborate show of courtesy, escorted Diane
Delacouer to a cabin where she might rest. At a questioning look
between Diane and Harkness, their captor reassured them.
"Mam'selle shall be entirely safe," he said. "She may join you here
whenever she wishes. As for you,"--he was speaking to Harkness--"I
will permit you to stay here. I could tie you up but this iss not
necessary."
And Harkness must have agreed that it was indeed unnecessary, for
either Kreiss or Max, or some other of Schwartzmann's men, was at his
side continuously from that moment on.
* * * * *
Chet would have liked a chance for a quiet talk and an exchange of
ideas. It seemed that somewhere, somehow, he should be able to find an
answer to their problem. He stared moodily out into the blackness
ahead, where a distant star was seemingly their goal. Harkness stood
at his side or paced back and forth in the little room, until he threw
himself, at last, upon a cot.
And always the great stern-blast roared; muffled by the insulated
walls, its unceasing thunder came at last to be unheard. To the pilot
there was neither sound nor motion. His directional sights were
unswervingly upon that distant star ahead. Seemingly they were
suspended, helpless and inert, in a black void. But for the occasional
glowing masses of strange living substance that flashed past in this
ocean of space, he must almost have believed they were motionless--a
dead ship in a dead, black night.
But the luminous things flashed and were gone--and their coming,
strangely, was from astern; they flicked past and vanished up ahead.
And, by this, Chet knew that their tremendous momentum was unchecked.
Though he was using the great stern blast to slow the ship, it was
driving stern-first into outer space. Nor, for twenty hours, was there
a change, more than a slackening of the breathless speed with which
the lights went past.
Twenty hours--and then Chet knew that they were in all truth hung
motionless, and he prayed that his figures that told him this were
correct.... More timeless minutes, an agony of waiting--and a
dimly-glowing mass that was ahead approached their bow, swung off and
vanished far astern. And, with its going, Chet knew that the return
trip was begun.
He gave Harkness the celestial bearing marks and relinquished the
helm. "Full speed ahead as you are," he ordered: "then at
nineteen-forty on W.S. time, we'll cut it and ease on bow repulsion to
the limit."
And, despite the strangeness of their surroundings, the ceaseless,
murmuring roar of the exhaust, the weird world outside, where endless
space was waiting for man's exploration--despite the deadly menace
that threatened, Chet dropped his head upon his outflung arms and
slept.
* * * * *
To his sleep-drugged brain it was scarcely a moment until a hand was
dragging at his shoulder.
"Forty-seven hours!" the voice of Schwartzmann was saying.
And: "Some navigating!" Harkness was exclaiming in flattering
amazement. "Wake up, Chet! Wake up! The Dark Moon's in sight. You've
hit it on the nose, old man: she isn't three points off the sights!"
The bow-blast was roaring full on. Ahead of them Chet's sleepy eyes
found a circle of violet; and he rubbed his eyes savagely that he
might take his bearings on Sun and Earth.
As it had been before, the Earth was a giant half-moon; like a
mirror-sphere it shot to them across the vast distance the reflected
glory of the sun. But the globe ahead was a ghostly world. Its black
disk was lost in the utter blackness of space. It was a circle, marked
only by the absence of star-points and by the halo of violet glow that
edged it about.
Chet cut down the repelling blast. He let the circle enlarge, then
swung the ship end for end in mid-space that the more powerful stern
exhaust might be ready to counteract the gravitational pull of the new
world.
Again those impalpable clouds surrounded them. Here was the enveloping
gas that made this a dark moon--the gas, if Harkness' theory was
correct, that let the sun's rays pass unaltered; that took the light
through freely to illumine this globe, but that barred its return
passage as reflected light.
Black--dead black was the void into which they were plunging, until
the darkness gave way before a gentle glow that enfolded their ship.
The golden light enveloped them in growing splendor. Through every
lookout it was flooding the cabin with brilliant rays, until, from
below them, directly astern of the ship, where the thundering blast
checked their speed of descent, emerged a world.
* * * * *
And, to Chet Bullard, softly fingering the controls of the first ship
of space--to Chet Bullard, whose uncanny skill had brought the tiny
speck that was their ship safely back from the dark recesses of the
unknown--there came a thrill that transcended any joy of the first
exploration.
Here was water in great seas of unreal hue--and those seas were his!
Vast continents, ripe for adventure and heavy with treasure--and they,
too, were his! His own world--his and Diane's and Walt's! Who was this
man, Schwartzmann, that dared dream of violating their possessions?
A slender tube pressed firmly, uncompromisingly, into his back to give
the answer to his question. "Almost I wish you had missed it!" Herr
Schwartzmann was saying. "But now you will land; you will set us down
in some place that you know. No tricks, Herr Bullard! You are clever,
but not clever enough for that. We will land, yess, where you know it
is safe."
From the lookout, the man stared for a moment with greedy eyes; then
brought his gaze back to the three. His men, beside Harkness and
Diane, were alert; the scientist, Kreiss, stood close to Chet.
"A nice little world," Schwartzmann told them. "Herr Harkness, you
have filed claims on it; who am I to dispute with the great Herr
Harkness? Without question it iss yours!"
He laughed loudly, while his eyes narrowed between creasing wrinkles
of flesh. "You shall enjoy it," he told them; "--all your life."
And Chet, as he caught the gaze of Harkness and Diane, wondered how
long this enjoyment would last. "All your life!" But this was rather
indefinite as a measure of time.
CHAPTER V
_A Desperate Act_
The ship that Chet Bullard and Harkness had designed had none of the
instruments for space navigation that the ensuing years were to bring.
Chet's accuracy was more the result of that flyer's sixth sense--that
same uncanny power that had served aviators so well in an earlier day.
But Chet was glad to see his instruments registering once more as he
approached a new world.
Even the sonoflector was recording; its invisible rays were darting
downward to be reflected back again from the surface below. That
absolute altitude recording was a joy to read; it meant a definite
relationship with the world.
"I'll hold her at fifty thousand," he told Harkness. "Watch for some
outline that you can remember from last time."
There was an irregular area of continental size; only when they had
crossed it did Harkness point toward an outflung projection of land.
"That peninsula," he exclaimed; "we saw that before! Swing south and
inland.... Now down forty, and east of south.... This ought to be the
spot."
Perhaps Harkness, too, had the flyer's indefinable power of
orientation. He guided Chet in the downward flight, and his pointing
finger aimed at last at a cluster of shadows where a setting sun
brought mountain ranges into strong relief. Chet held the ship steady,
hung high in the air, while the quick-spreading mantle of night swept
across the world below. And, at last, when the little world was
deep-buried in shadow, they saw the red glow of fires from a hidden
valley in the south.
"Fire Valley!" said Chet. "Don't say anything about me being a
navigator. Wait, you've brought us home, sure enough."
"Home!" He could not overcome this strange excitement of a home-coming
to their own world. Even the man who stood, pistol in hand, behind him
was, for the moment, forgotten.
Valley of a thousand fires!--scene of his former adventures! Each
fumerole was adding its smoky red to the fiery glow that illumined the
place. There were ragged mountains hemming it in; Chet's gaze passed
on to the valley's end.
Down there, where the fires ceased, there would be water; he would
land there! And the ship from Earth slipped down in a long slanting
line to cushion against its under exhausts, whose soft thunder echoed
back from a bare expanse of frozen lava. Then its roaring faded. The
silvery shape sank softly to its rocky bed, as Chet cut the motor that
had sung its song of power since the moment when Schwartzmann had
carried him off--taken him from that frozen, forgotten corner of an
incredibly distant Earth.
* * * * *
"Iss there air?" Schwartzmann demanded. Chet came to himself again
with a start: he saw the man peering from the lookout to right and to
left as if he would see all that there was in the last light of day.
"Strange!" he was grumbling to himself. "A strange place! But those
hills--I saw their markings--there will be metals there. I will
explore; later I return: I will mine them. Many ships I must build to
establish a line. The first transportation line of space. Me, Jacob
Schwartzmann--I will do it. I will haff more than anyone else on
Earth; I will make them all come to me crawling on their bellies!"
Chet saw the hard shine of the narrowed eyes. For an instant only, he
dared to consider the chance of leaping upon the big, gloating figure.
One blow and a quick snatch for the pistol!... Then he knew the folly
of such a plan: Schwartzmann's men were armed; he would be downed in
another second, his body a shattered, jellied mass.
Schwartzmann's thoughts had come back to the matter of air; he
motioned Chet and Harkness toward the port.
Diane Delacouer had joined them and she thrust herself quickly between
the two men. And, though Schwartzmann made a movement as if he would
snatch her back, he thought better of it and motioned for the portal
to be swung. Chet felt him close behind as he followed the others out
into the gathering dark.
* * * * *
The air was heavy with the fragrance of night-blooming trees. They
were close to the edge of the lava flow. The rock was black in the
light of a starry sky; it dropped away abruptly to a lower glade. A
stream made silvery sparklings in the night, while beyond it were
waving shadows of strange trees whose trunks were ghostly white.
It was all so familiar.... Chet smiled understandingly as he saw Walt
Harkness' arm go about the trim figure of Diane Delacouer. No mannish
attire could disguise Diane's charms; nor could nerve and cold courage
that any man might envy detract from her femininity. Her dark, curling
hair was blowing back from her upraised face as the scented breezes
played about her; and the soft beauty of that face was enhanced by the
very starlight that revealed it.
It was here that Walt and Diane had learned to love; what wonder that
the fragrant night brought only remembrance, and forgetfulness of
their present plight. But Chet Bullard, while he saw them and smiled
in sympathy, knew suddenly that other eyes were watching, too; he felt
the bulky figure of Herr Schwartzmann beside him grow tense and rigid.
But Schwartzmann's voice, when he spoke, was controlled. "All right,"
he called toward the ship; "all iss safe."
Yet Chet wondered at that sudden tensing, and an uneasy presentiment
found entrance to his thoughts. He must keep an eye on Schwartzmann,
even more than he had supposed.
Their captor had threatened to maroon them on the Dark Moon. Chet did
not question his intent. Schwartzmann would have nothing to gain by
killing them now. It would be better to leave them here, for he might
find them useful later on. But did he plan to leave them all or only
two? Behind the steady, expressionless eyes of the Master Pilot,
strange thoughts were passing....
* * * * *
There were orders, at length, to return to the ship. "It is dark
already," Schwartzmann concluded: "nothing can be accomplished at
night."
"How long are the days and nights?" he asked Harkness.
"Six hours," Harkness told him; "our little world spins fast."
"Then for six hours we sleep," was the order. And again Herr
Schwartzmann conducted Mademoiselle Delacouer to her cabin, while Chet
Bullard watched until he saw the man depart and heard the click of the
lock on the door of Diane's room.
Then for six hours he listened to the sounds of sleeping men who were
sprawled about him on the floor; for six hours he saw the one man who
sat on guard beside a light that made any thought of attack absurd.
And he cursed himself for a fool, as he lay wakeful and vainly
planning--a poor, futile fool who was unable to cope with this man who
had bested him.
Nineteen seventy-three!--and here were Harkness and Diane and himself,
captured by a man who was mentally and morally a misfit in a modern
world. A throw-back--that was Schwartzmann: Harkness had said it. He
belonged back in nineteen fourteen.
Harkness was beyond the watching guard; from where he lay came sounds
of restless movement. Chet knew that he was not alone in this mood of
hopeless dejection. There was no opportunity for talk; only with the
coming of day did the two find a chance to exchange a few quick words.
The guard roused the others at the first light of sunlight beyond the
ports. Harkness sauntered slowly to where Chet was staring from a
lookout. He, too, leaned to see the world outside, and he spoke
cautiously in a half-whisper:
"Not a chance, Chet. No use trying to bluff this big crook any more.
He's here, and he's safe; and he knows it as well as we do. We'll let
him ditch us--you and Diane and me. Then, when we're on our own, we'll
watch our chance. He will go crazy with what he finds--may get
careless--then we'll seize the ship--" His words ended abruptly. As
Schwartzmann came behind them, he was casually calling Chet's
attention to a fumerole from which a jet of vapor had appeared.
Yellowish, it was; and the wind was blowing it.
Chet turned away; he hardly saw Schwartzmann or heard Harkness' words.
He was thinking of what Walt had said. Yes, it was all they could do;
there was no chance of a fight with them now. But later!
Diane Delacouer came into the control-room at the instant; her dark
eyes were still lovely with sleep, but they brightened to flash an
encouraging smile toward the two men. There were five of
Schwartzmann's men in the ship besides the pilot and the scientist,
Kreiss. They all crowded in after Diane.
They must have had their orders in advance; Schwartzmann merely
nodded, and they sprang upon Harkness and Chet. The two were caught
off their guard; their arms were twisted behind them before resistance
could be thought of. Diane gave a cry, started forward, and was
brushed back by a sweep of Schwartzmann's arm. The man himself stood
staring at them, unmoving, wordless. Only the flesh about his eyes
gathered into creases to squeeze the eyes to malignant slits. There
was no mistaking the menace in that look.
* * * * *
"I think we do not need you any more," he said at last. "I think, Herr
Harkness, this is the end of our little argument--and, Herr Harkness,
you lose. Now, I will tell you how it iss that you pay.
"You haff thought, perhaps, I would kill you. But you were wrong, as
you many times have been. You haff not appreciated my kindness; you
haff not understood that mine iss a heart of gold.
"Even I was not sure before we came what it iss best to do. But now I
know. I saw oceans and many lands on this world. I saw islands in
those oceans.
"You so clever are--such a great thinker iss Herr Harkness--and on one
of those islands you will haff plenty of time to think--yess! You can
think of your goot friend, Schwartzmann and of his kindness to you."
"You are going to maroon us on an island?" asked Walt Harkness
hoarsely. Plainly his plans for seizing the ship were going awry. "You
are going to put the three of us off in some lost corner of this
world?"
Chet Bullard was silent until he saw the figure of Harkness struggling
to throw off his two guards. "Walt," he called loudly, "take it easy!
For God's sake, Walt, keep your head!"
This, Chet sensed, was no time for resistance. Let Schwartzmann go
ahead with his plans; let him think them complacent and unresisting;
let Max pilot the ship; then watch for an opening when they could land
a blow that would count! He heard Schwartzmann laughing now, laughing
as if he were enjoying something more pleasing than the struggles of
Walt.
* * * * *
Chet was standing by the controls. The metal instrument-table was
beside him; above it was the control itself, a metal ball that hung
suspended in air within a cage of curved bars.
It was pure magic, this ball-control, where magnetic fields crossed
and recrossed; it was as if the one who held it were a genie who could
throw the ship itself where he willed. Glass almost enclosed the cage
of bars, and the whole instrument swung with the self-compensating
platform that adjusted itself to the "gravitation" of accelerated
speed. The pilot, Max, had moved across to the instrument-table, ready
for the take-off.
Schwartzmann's laughter died to a gurgling chuckle. He wiped his eyes
before he replied to Harkness' question.
"Leave you," he said, "in one place? _Nein!_ One here, the other
there. A thousand miles apart, it might be. And not all three of you.
That would be so unkind--"
He interrupted himself to call to Kreiss who was opening the port.
"No," he ordered; "keep it closed. We are not going outside; we are
going up."
But Kreiss had the port open. "I want a man to get some fresh water,"
he said; "he will only be a minute."
He shoved at a waiting man to hurry him through the doorway. It was
only a gentle push; Chet wondered as he saw the man stagger and grasp
at his throat. He was coughing--choking horribly for an instant
outside the open port--then fell to the ground, while his legs jerked
awkwardly, spasmodically.
Chet saw Kreiss follow. The scientist would have leaped to the side of
the stricken man, whose body was so still now on the sunlit rock; but
he, too, crumpled, then staggered back into the room. He pushed feebly
at the port and swung it shut. His face, as he turned, was drawn into
fearful lines.
"Acid!" He choked out the words between strangled breaths.
"Acid--sulfuric--fumes!"
* * * * *
Chet turned quickly to the spectro-analyzer; the lines of oxygen and
nitrogen were merged with others, and that meant an atmosphere unfit
for human lungs! There had been a fumerole where yellowish vapor was
spouting; he remembered it now.
"So!" boomed Schwartzmann, and now his squinting eyes were full on
Chet. "You--you _schwein!_ You said when we opened the ports there
would be a surprise! Und this iss it! You thought to see us kill
ourselves!"
"Open the port!" he shouted. The men who held Chet released him and
sprang forward to obey. The pilot, Max, took their place. He put one
hand on Chet's shoulder, while his other hand brought up a
threatening, metal bar.
Schwartzmann's heavy face had lost its stolid look; it was alive with
rage. He thrust his head forward to glare at the men, while he stood
firmly, his feet far apart, two heavy fists on his hips. He whirled
abruptly and caught Diane by one arm. He pulled her roughly to him and
encircled the girl's trim figure with one huge arm.
"Put you _all_ on one island?" he shouted. "Did you think I would put
you _all_ out of the ship? You"--he pointed at Harkness--"and
you"--this time it was Chet--"go out now. You can die in your damned
gas that you expected would kill me! But, you fools, you
imbeciles--Mam'selle, she stays with me!" The struggling girl was
helpless in the great arm that drew her close.
Harkness' mad rage gave place to a dead stillness. From bloodless lips
in a chalk-white face he spat out one sentence:
"Take your filthy hands off her--now--or I'll--"
Schwartzmann's one free hand still held the pistol. He raised it with
deadly deliberation; it came level with Harkness' unflinching eyes.
"Yes?" said Schwartzmann. "You will do--what?"
* * * * *
Chet saw the deadly tableau. He knew with a conviction that gripped
his heart that here was the end. Walt would die and he would be next.
Diane would be left defenseless.... The flashing thought that followed
came to him as sharply as the crack of any pistol. It seemed to burst
inside his brain, to lift him with some dynamic power of its own and
project him into action.
He threw himself sideways from under the pilot's hand, out from
beneath the heavy metal bar--and he whirled, as he leaped, to face the
man. One lean, brown hand clenched to a fist that started a long
swing from somewhere near his knees; it shot upward to crash beneath
the pilot's out-thrust jaw and lift him from the floor. Max had aimed
the bar in a downward sweep where Chet's head had been the moment
before; and now man and bar went down together. In the same instant
Chet threw himself upon the weapon and leaped backward to his feet.
One frozen second, while, to Chet, the figures seemed as motionless as
if carved from stone--two men beside the half-opened port--Harkness in
convulsive writhing between two others--the figure of Diane, strained,
tense and helpless in Schwartzmann's grasp--and Schwartzmann, whose
aim had been disturbed, steadying the pistol deliberately upon
Harkness--
"Wait!" Chet's voice tore through the confusion. He knew he must grip
Schwartzmann's attention--hold that trigger finger that was tensed to
send a detonite bullet on its way. "Wait, damn you! I'll answer your
question. I'll tell you what we'll do!"
In that second he had swung the metal bar high; now he brought it
crashing down in front of him. Schwartzmann flinched, half turned as
if to fire at Chet, and saw the blow was not for him.
With a splintering crash, the bar went through an obstruction. There
was sound of glass that slivered to a million mangled bits--the sharp
tang of metal broken off--a crash and clatter--then silence, save for
one bit of glass that fell belatedly to the floor, its tiny jingling
crash ringing loud in the deathly stillness of the room....
It had been the control-room, this place of metal walls and of
shining, polished instruments, and it could be called that no longer.
For, battered to useless wreckage, there lay on a metal table a cage
that had once been formed of curving bars. Among the fragments a metal
ball that had guided the great ship still rocked idly from its fall,
until it, too, was still.
It was a room where nothing moved--where no person so much as
breathed....
Then came the Master Pilot's voice, and it was speaking with quiet
finality.
"And that," he said, "is your answer. Our ship has made its last
flight."
His eyes held steadily upon the blanched face of Herr Schwartzmann,
whose limp arms released the body of Diane; the pistol hung weakly at
the man's side. And the pilot's voice went on, so quiet, so hushed--so
curiously toneless in that silent room.
"What was it that you said?--that Harkness and I would be staying
here? Well, you were right when you said that, Schwartzmann; but it's
a hard sentence, that--imprisonment for life."
Chet paused now, to smile deliberately, grimly at the dark face so
bleached and bloodless, before he repeated:
"Imprisonment for life!--and you didn't know that you were sentencing
yourself. For you're staying too, Schwartzmann, you contemptible,
thieving dog! You're staying with us--here--on the Dark Moon!"
(_To be continued._)
If The Sun Died
_By R. F. Starzl_
[Illustration: Crack! Again Mich'l's fist caught him.]
[Sidenote: Tens of millenniums after the Death of the Sun there comes
a young man who dares to open the Frozen Gate of Subterranea.]
By our system of time we would have called it around 65,000 A. D., but
in this cavern world, miles below the long-forgotten surface of the
earth, it was 49,889. Since the Death of the Sun. That legendary sun
was but a dim racial memory, but the 24-hour day, based on its
illusory travel across the sky, was still maintained by uranium
clocks, by which the myriads who dwelt in the galleries and maze of
the under-world warrens regulated their lives.
In the office of the nation's central electro-plant sat a young man.
He was unoccupied at the moment. He was an example of the marvelously
slow process of evolution, for, to all outward appearances he differed
little from a Twentieth Century man. Keen intelligence sat on his
fine-cut, kindly young face. In general build he was lighter, more
refined than a man of the past. Yet even the long, delicately colored
robe of mineral silk which he wore could not detract from his obvious
virility and strength.
His face flashed in a smile when a girl suddenly appeared in the
middle of the room, materializing, so it seemed, out of nowhere. She
resembled him to some extent, except that she was exquisitely
feminine, dark-haired, with a skin of warm ivory, while he was blond
and ruddy. Her tinkling, silvery voice was troubled as she asked:
"Have I your leave to stay, Mich'l Ares?"
The look of adoration he gave her was answer enough, but he answered
with the conventional formula, "It is given." He rose to his feet,
walked right through the seemingly solid vision and made an adjustment
on a bank of dials. Then he walked through the apparition again and,
standing beside his chair, looked at her inquiringly.
"You haven't forgotten, Mich'l, this is the day of the Referendum?"
Mich'l smiled slightly. It would be a day of confusion in Subterranea
if he should forget. As chief of the technies he was in direct charge
of the tabulating machines that would, a few seconds after the vote,
give the result in the matter of the opening of the Frozen Gate. But
the girl's concern sobered him instantly. On the decision of the
people at noon depended the life work of her father, Senator Mane. And
it was now nine o'clock.
"I am sure they will order the Gate opened," he said instantly. "All
the technies are agreed that your father is right, that the Great
Cold was only another, more severe ice age--not the death of the Sun.
The technies--"
* * * * *
Just as the girl had seemingly materialized, a young man now stood
beside her. In appearance he was a picture of pride, power, arrogance,
and definite danger. His hawk-like, patrician features were smiling.
This olive-skinned, dark young rival of Mich'l was Lane Mollon, son of
Senator Mollon, ruthless administration leader and bitter opponent of
Senator Mane's Exodus faction.
Lane looked at Mich'l insolently.
"Have I your leave to stay, Mich'l Ares?" he asked.
"It is given," said Mich'l without enthusiasm.
"I'm not calling on you of my own will, Mich'l," the apparition of
young Mollon said contemptuously, "but Nida had the telucid turned on
as I stepped into the room."
"It's as well for you that you're not here personally," Mich'l replied
promptly. "The last time we met I believe I was obliged to knock you
down."
Lane Mollon flushed, with a sidelong glance at Nida. The girl gave
Mich'l a frightened look.
Lane interpreted her concern rightly.
"Ordinarily it's not safe to try anything like that with me. I could
have you executed in half an hour. But I don't have to call on the
State to punish you. Nida, you'll admit I'm taking no unfair advantage
of him?"
"Oh, I do, Lane, but--"
Lane reached out his hand to the dial, invisible to Mich'l, which
operated the telucid apparatus, and immediately the apparitions
vanished. Mich'l looked at his own telucid, its great unwinking eye
set in the wall. But he did not project his own illusory body to the
girl's home. He was a technie--one of the pitifully few trained men
and women who kept the intricate automatic machinery working. On them
rested the immense, stupid civilization of the caverns, and there was
work to do. Mich'l felt that on this morning of her father's greatest
trial Nida would pay scant attention to Lane.
* * * * *
Mich'l was testing some of the controls when Gobet Hanlon came in.
Gobet was also a technie, and Mich'l's special friend. Like Mich'l, he
wore the light robe that was universal among the civilians in the
equable climate of the caverns. He walked with the light, springy step
that was somehow characteristic of the specialized class to which he
belonged, as distinguished from the languid gait of the pampered, lazy
populace. Attached to his girdle of flat chain links was a tiny
computing machine about as large as the palm of a man's hand. For
Gobet did most of the mathematical work.
"You'll want me at the tabulating section?" Gobet stated inquiringly.
"It may be well," Mich'l smiled. "For the first time in centuries, I
believe, the general public is going to vote."
"Flos Entine wants to come along."
Mich'l's smile changed to a grin. He knew the pretty, willful little
sweetheart of Gobet's. If she wanted to be at the tabulating plant she
would be there.
"In fact," Gobet confessed somewhat sheepishly, "she is in the car."
The car was waiting in the gallery. It had no visible support, but
hovered a few inches above the floor above one of two parallel
aluminum alloy strips that stretched, like the trolley tracks of the
ancients, throughout all the galleries. The ancients well knew that
aluminum is repelled by magnetism, but the race had lived in the
caverns for centuries before evolving an alloy that possessed this
repulsive power to a degree strong enough to support a considerable
weight.
Under Mich'l's guidance the car moved forward silently, through
interminable busy streets with arched roofs, lined on either side with
doors that led to homes, theaters and food distributing automats.
Occasionally they passed public gardens, purely ornamental, in which a
few specimens of vegetation were preserved. They passed multitudes of
people, most of them handsome with a pampered, hot-house prettiness,
but betraying the peculiar lassitude which had been sapping the
energies of this once dynamic race for millennia. Yet to-day they
showed almost eagerness. The name of Leo Mane, prophet of deliverance,
was on every tongue. And what was the Sun like? Like the great
vita-lights that were prescribed by law and evaded by everyone, except
possibly the technies? Those technies--they seemed to delight in work!
Curious glances fell on the gliding car. Some work in connection with
the Referendum? What must one do to vote? Oh, the telucid!
* * * * *
Arriving at Administration Circle, the car entered a vast excavation
half a mile in diameter, possibly a thousand feet high at the dome.
Here were the entrances to some of the principal Government warrens.
Here also centered the streets, like radiating spokes of a wheel, on
which many of the officials lived. Here the emanation bulbs were more
frequent than in the galleries, so that the light was almost glaring.
Guards of soldier-police, the stolid, well-fed, specialized class
produced by centuries of a static civilization, were everywhere. Not
in the memory of their grandparents had they done any fighting, but in
their short, brightly colored tunics, flaring trousers and little
kepis they looked very smart. Their only weapon was a small tube
capable of projecting a lethal light-ray.
Mich'l led his party to the audience hall. It was only a few hundred
feet in diameter. At one end was the speaker's rostrum. Senator Mane
was already there. He was tall, purposeful, but withal tired and
wistful looking. His graying hair was cut at the nape of his neck,
sweeping back from his swelling temples in a manner really suggestive
of a mane. His large, luminous eyes lit up.
"Is it nearly time?"
"Yes, Senator," Mich'l said. "The nation will soon assemble."
"You have met Senator Mollon?"
"I have had the pleasure," Mich'l acknowledged with polite irony,
"since Senator Mollon gives me practically all my orders."
Mollon acknowledged the tribute with a quick smile, without rising
from his chair. He, too, was different from the average Subterranean
in that he was forceful and aggressive, like Senator Mane. He was
still youngish looking, of powerful, blocky build. His dark hair was
carefully parted in the middle and brushed down sleekly. The Twentieth
Century had known his prototype, the successful, powerful, utterly
unscrupulous politician; and in a different sphere, that type of
extra-Governmental ruler which the ancients called "gangster." It was
casually discussed in Subterranea that certain of the state
soldier-police were responsible for the mysterious assassinations that
had so conveniently removed most of the effective resistance to
Mollon's progress in the Senate. The once potent body had not held a
session in ten years: didn't dare to, a cynical and indifferent public
said. And a strange reluctance on the part of qualified men to accept
the Presidential nomination had left that office unfilled for the past
three years. Mollon, as party dictator, performed the duties of
President provisionally.
* * * * *
Flos, mischievous as usual, rounded her great blue eyes and gazed at
Mollon with an expression of rapt admiration.
"Oh, Senator," she thrilled, "I think it's wonderful of you to give
Senator Mane an opportunity to debate with you. You are so kind!"
Mollon failed to detect any mockery, luckily for Flos. He looked at
her with half-closed eyes.
"The public must be satisfied," he rumbled. "Senator Mane has aroused
in them great hopes. A small matter might be adjusted, but only a
Referendum will satisfy them in this."
"But Senator, the race is going to ruin. If we could get into the Sun
again--wouldn't you want that?"
"I don't believe there is a 'Sun'," Mollon replied; then, with the
candor of one who is perfectly sure of himself, added:
"If Mane were right, I still couldn't permit the Frozen Gate to be
opened. I can control the people for their own good, here; it might
not be possible Outside."
A deep musical note sounded. Suddenly the myriad inhabitants of
Subterranea seemed to be milling around in the room. Actually their
bodies were in their dwelling cells, but their telucid images filled
the hall. By a simple adjustment of the power circuit, their images,
instead of being life size, were made only about an inch high,
permitting the accommodation of the entire nation in the hall. Their
millions of tiny voices, mingling, made a sighing sound.
* * * * *
Mane rose and stepped forward, raising his hand.
"Citizens of Subterranea," he began in powerful, resonant tones, and
then went on to put into his address all the fervor of a lifetime of
endeavor. He told them of those times in the dim past when the human
race still dwelt on the surface of the earth. Of the Sun that poured
out inexhaustible floods of life and light; of the green things that
were grown, not only to look at, but for food for all living things
before food was made synthetically out of mined chemicals. Of the
world overrun by a teeming, happy, dynamic civilization.
"Then something happened. The Sun seemed to give less light, less
heat. Perhaps we ran into a cloud of cosmic dust that intercepted the
Sun's rays. Perhaps the cause was to be found in some change in the
Sun's internal structure. But the effects could not be doubted. Ice
began to come down from the poles. Ice barriers higher than the
highest towers covered the world, wiping out all life but the most
energetic.
"Our ancestors, and many other advanced nations, began to burrow
toward the hot interior of the earth. We to-day have no idea of the
labor that went into the digging of our underground home. We are
becoming degenerate. More and more of us, even those who still use the
vita-lights, are becoming pale and flabby. There are hardly enough
technies to keep the automatic machinery in order. What will happen
when those technies also deteriorate, and lose the will to work? For
deteriorate they must, just as Senator Mollon and his still active
allies will. Just as I will, if I live long enough. There is a great
force that we never know here. It is called the cosmic ray. It never
penetrates to our depth. And our vita-lights do not produce it."
He then spoke of the proposed Exodus, argued, pleaded, painted a rosy
picture of the outer world, of a Sun come back, a world of brightness
and life. At the conclusion of his speech a sigh arose from the
assembled millions--a sigh of hope, of half belief. Had the vote been
taken then the Frozen Gate would have been opened.
* * * * *
But Senator Mollon was on the rostrum, holding up a square, well
manicured hand for attention. In his deep rumbling bass he tore the
arguments for the Exodus to shreds. With the whip of fear he drove
away hope.
"If our savage ancestors lived on the inhospitable outer shell of the
earth," he shouted, "is that a reason for our taking that retrograde
step? Read your histories. What happened to our neighboring nation of
Atlantica only a short 15,000 years ago? They did just as this man is
urging--opened their outer gate. It promptly froze open, and liquid
air, the remnant of what in primordial days was an outer atmosphere,
poured down the tunnels. The whole nation died, and we saved ourselves
only by blasting the connecting passages between them and us with
fulminite."
A wave of fear passed over the tiny massed figures. For centuries the
race had been rapidly losing all initiative, except for those few
leaders who, through superior stamina and religious devotion to the
artificial sun-rays, had maintained something of their pristine
energy.
Now they were hysterical with fear of the unknown. Even as Mich'l Ares
adjusted the parabolic antenna of the thought-receptor vote-counting
machine, he knew what the verdict would be. In a moment the vote was
flashed on a screen on the ceiling: 421 in favor of the Exodus and
2,733,485 against it. There was an eery cheer from the people, and
they began to dissolve like smoke. Mollon rose, bowed politely and
smilingly, and walked out to where his magnetic car awaited him.
* * * * *
It was with a feeling of deep depression that Mich'l Ares went to work
the next morning. His despair was shared by the technies under him
with whom he talked. At the telestereo station he found a bitter young
man broadcasting a prepared commentary on the election ordered by
Senator Mollon. It was congratulatory in nature, designed to confirm
popular opinion that the nation had been saved from a great
catastrophe and to glorify the principles of Mollon's party.
"... And so once more this great nation has demonstrated its ability
to govern itself, to protect itself against dangerous and unsocial
experiments. The voice of the people is the voice of God. The
Government claims for itself no credit for this momentous decision.
Each citizen has done his share toward the continuation of our safety,
our prosperity...."
The young man finished the document, smiled a charming smile, and
turned off the switch. Then he grimaced his disgust and lapsed into a
glum meditation.
"What say, Kratz?" Mich'l asked.
"Trouble again on the west sector. Had trouble getting power enough.
Generators ought to be overhauled." He made a helpless gesture.
"How about conscripting a little labor?"
"Tried it this morning. Most of the people are still in a daze from
chewing too much merclite. Those that're sober are too busy preening
themselves for voting on the winning side."
Kratz informed Mich'l that Mollon had that morning given up all
pretense of constitutional government, had preempted the treasury, and
was consolidating his position as avowed dictator.
"He probably wanted to do that a long time," Mich'l commented. "He
didn't quite dare till that Referendum yesterday gave him the real
measure of the public. Well, I've got to be going."
* * * * *
Mich'l took one of the small mechanical service tunnels back to his
office. This latest news had hardly affected him, so keen was his
disappointment over the defeat of the Exodus. But he wanted to be
alone. He walked through vast halls full of machinery, abandoned and
rusting, through dark corridors that had once roared with industrial
life. What would happen when the present overloaded machinery should
break down; wear out? The remnants of the great technical army could
hardly serve what was left. Each passing year these silent, useless
hulks became more numerous. The specter of famine was stalking amid
the dusty pipes and empty vats of the chemical plants; the horrors of
darkness lurked amid the tarnished compression spheres and the long,
hooded monstrosities of the power plants, inadequately served by
harassed and overworked technies.
In the middle of his office Mich'l found the telucid counterpart of
Mila, sister of Nida Mane. She was younger than Nida, hardly more than
sixteen. Her eyes were wide with terror as she sought Mich'l. Her
cheeks were wet with tears, and her silken brown hair fell in careless
disarray.
"Mich'l!" she cried, as soon as she saw him. "Lane Mollon has taken
Nida!"
"Taken her!"
"And Father is under arrest. Lane came this morning, crazy with
merclite gum. He had four or five soldiers with him. When Nida refused
to see him they broke down the door and went to her room. They dragged
her out to Lane's car, and he took her to his warren near the
Presidential quarters."
"She there now?"
"Yes. Father followed Lane's car. Guards kept him out of Lane's
warren, so he went to see Mollon. That devil only laughed at him,
offered to call another Referendum. Father had a small pocket
needle-ray and--"
"Good! He killed Mollon?"
"No. But he managed to burn a hole through his arm. He was rushed off
to one of the cells. And Mollon says he will call a Referendum to
decide Father's fate."
"It would be just like that devil's sense of humor to let the people
decree their only friend's death."
* * * * *
"They'll do it, too!" Mila exclaimed tragically. "Oh, how I wish
Mother were alive!"
"And each one will feel deep within him that he has done a great,
commendable and original thing!" Mich'l added, with keen insight.
Mila sank to the floor.
"Go to your room," Mich'l said, gently stern. "Mollon and his gang
have reckoned without the technies." A woman's image appeared,
stooping commiseratingly over Mila--a friend of the family. Mich'l
ordered her to care for Mila. Then, he took a deep breath. Gone was
his feeling of helpless sorrow, leaving only an overwhelming,
steadying, satisfying anger. He flung the telucid switch, barked
cracking orders.
In half an hour every technical man of Subterranea was in a large
storeroom near Mich'l's office. They were mostly young, keen and
alert, their skins red or brown from the actinic lights, their hair
showing more or less bleaching from the same cause. As Mich'l talked
they became intent: they listened with a cold, deadly silence that
would perhaps have made the smug millions of Subterranea quake with
fear.
This affront put upon the only man in the Government who could speak
their language, who could comprehend their ideals: the peril of the
girl they all knew and loved: these things set their long-repressed
resentment flaring to white heat. They were ready for desperate
things. A turn of a valve and water would thunder through the maze of
galleries; a mishap far, far down toward the earth's hot core, and
steam would rush up--
* * * * *
But Mich'l steadied them. After all, Subterranea was their country.
Anarchy was far from the technie ideals. He had a plan.
"Nothing is to be done until we have Senator Mane and Nida," Mich'l
instructed them. "Remember that! Do nothing until you hear from me.
Each of you go to your station. Set all adjustments so that they will
not need attention for some weeks, at least. Those of you who have
families, tell them to be ready to move to another residence. Say
nothing about any trouble--understand?"
There were nods of assent.
"You will proceed to your posts and keep busy. When I come it'll be by
telucid. I will say nothing. I will simply wave my hand. That means
you are to take your wives, your families, your sweethearts, to
Substation No. 37X."
There were audible gasps.
"Not 37X!" exclaimed one of the older men. "Why, that's twenty miles
up, near the Frozen Gate!"
"Yes!" Mich'l smiled with tight lips. "You men willing?"
There was an instantaneous shout of approval. Curiously enough,
seizure of the Gate by force had not occurred to any of this
law-abiding, well-disciplined group. But Mollon's lawless seizure of
the Government had removed all inhibitions of that sort. Seizure of
the Gate would bring at one stroke the realization of the dream that
the technies had tried for generations to win by political means.
Surely, when the Gate was open, and they could see the glorious,
half-mythical Sun for themselves, the people would consent to the
Exodus!
For the technies, even in the bitterness of defeat, were not
anti-social. They hoped and worked for the devitalized races of
Subterranea, for the betterment of their condition, more than for
their own. The technies were the fittest; they had demonstrated their
ability to survive unchanged under adverse condition. They would be
least helped by the Exodus. Yet they had worked for it all their
lives, as had their fathers before them, out of unselfish love for
humanity. There have always been such men. Through the murk of history
we see their lives as small, steady lights, infrequent and lonely.
With the opening of the Frozen Gate suddenly a possibility, the
technies forgot their exasperation with the stupid mob.
* * * * *
"The Gate is guarded," said an elderly man dubiously.
"A small guard," Gobet Hanlon remarked quickly, "and probably dazed
with merclite. Nothing to fear."
"Stay away from the Gate," Mich'l instructed. "Give no cause for
alarm. If an emergency arises while I'm gone, see Gobet."
"Don't go alone, Mich'l," Gobet begged. "A few of us with ray-needles
can storm the detention cells. We can clean out Lane's warren."
"We might, but the Senator and Nida would be gone. The alarm would be
given. In a few minutes there'd be a mob."
The technies were already dispersing eagerly. Mich'l pressed his
friend's hand, saying:
"I'll take my needle-ray, and I know every way to get around there is.
Alone, I'll attract no attention. Till later, Gobet!" And he was gone.
Mich'l's way was through the smaller, less frequented communication
passages used principally by the technies. Occasionally he did meet
citizens, still light-headed after their election victory celebration,
and lost, but he paid them no heed. He came to the ventilation center
of that level.
For ages no air had entered Subterranea from the outside. All of the
air had to be regularly reconditioned, and so was returned, through a
systematic network of air ducts, to a vast, central chemical plant. It
was a latter-day Cave of the Winds, where the north, south, east and
west winds of that buried empire regularly returned for a brief few
minutes of play amid chemical sprays, condensers, humidifiers,
oxydisers, to be again dispatched to their drudgery. This hall was
truly colossal, filled to the shadowy ceilings, a thousand feet high,
with gigantic pipes, tanks, wind-turbines.
* * * * *
The technie in charge had not yet returned, but Mich'l consulted the
distribution plan, and soon located the duct that led to Lane Mollon's
warren. In a few minutes he was running, helped along by a strong
current of fresh air. The map had shown the warren to be about a mile
away. For the benefit of the technies who had to work there, the duct
was plainly marked; and the lighting, by infrequent emanation bulbs,
was adequate, though dim.
Mich'l had made no plans for a course of action after arriving at his
destination. He felt reasonably sure that if he could get into the
warren he would have a good chance to escape with Nida. In the
confusion he could hide her nearby, and perhaps effect the release of
the senator also. He had no doubt about his fate if he were caught.
Lane's pose of good sportsmanship having failed to impress Nida, he
had adopted simple, brutal coercion. Mich'l's fate, if caught
interfering, would be summary execution.
Mich'l found the grating which he sought. It bore the key number of
Lane's establishment. The key which would unlock it was of course in
the hands of the police; but the bars were badly corroded, and Mich'l
managed to bend them enough to permit the passage of his body.
He found himself in a small chamber, from which ducts led to all parts
of the warren. These ducts were too small to permit passage of his
body, however; it would be necessary to come into the open. A small
metal door promised egress. Mich'l climbed out, and faced a surprised
cook in the kitchen, engaged in flavoring synthetic food drinks.
Mich'l said explanatorily:
"Inspection, air service."
The cook did not know the regulations about keeping the air tunnels
locked. Moreover, he, like all other servants of the mighty, worked
unwillingly, being conscripted. He only grunted.
* * * * *
Mich'l made a pretense of testing the air currents. Presently he
stepped into one of the communicating corridors. The warren was
planned something like a house of the Surface Age, with luxuriously
furnished rooms, baths, dining halls, and all the appurtenances of
wealth. Arriving at a rotunda, in the center of which was a glowing
fountain, Mich'l encountered a guard. Boldly he asked him:
"Where is Mr. Mollon? I wish to see him."
The guard looked surprised.
"About Nida Mane, sir? I would hardly dare."
Mich'l looked at the man sharply, but there was no hint of recognition
in the stupid, phlegmatic face.
"What about Nida Mane? It is about her I wish to speak."
There was a slight stirring of interest in the soldier's face.
"He will be glad to see you, sir, if you bring news of her."
"Eh, yes? Perhaps what I have to tell will be of no interest to him."
"If you can tell him where she is he will ask no more of you."
"She made good her escape then?"
Slow suspicion was dawning at last.
"For one who brings news you ask a lot of questions," the guard
remarked heavily, as his hand slipped to the needle-ray weapon at his
side. "Show your pass!"
Like a flash Mich'l was upon him, his hand at the thick throat, the
other grasping the wrist. Although the soldier, like the majority of
the populace, lacked the intense vitality of the technies, he had
stubborn strength, and he fought effectively in the drilled, automatic
way of his kind. Mich'l was further handicapped by the necessity of
maintaining silence. One shout, and a dozen needle-rays would no doubt
perforate his body with holes and slash his flesh with smoldering
cuts.
* * * * *
Grunting and sweating, they fought all around the rose-colored curb of
the fountain. At last Mich'l succeeded in forcing his adversary over
the low stone, and they went over together with a resounding splash.
The straining body of the guard suddenly relaxed, and a spreading red
cloud in the water disclosed that he had struck his head against the
first of the terraces that rose in the fountain's mist-shrouded
center.
Up one of the corridors a door opened, and an angry voice shouted:
"Gurka! Gurka! I'll have you in bracelets! Captain of the guard!"
"Sir!" From another of the corridors came a sound of running feet. A
command rang out:
"On the double!"
An officer, followed by four soldiers, dashed around the corner and
flashed by the fountain. Peering over the curb, Mich'l saw them, some
hundred yards away, come to a halt before an opened door. With a
thrill of exultation Mich'l recognized the tall figure of Lane Mollon,
looking like a slightly damaged satyr of the better class, for his
head was bandaged, and he was in bad humor.
"Captain!" he stormed. "I want you to put that damned louse in
solitary confinement for a year. Hear?"
"Yes, sir." Like a megaphone the long corridor carried the low,
respectful words to Mich'l's ears.
Lane continued to storm:
"And if you put another damned merclite-crazy blunker[1] on guard in
this place I'll have your commission. Hear?"
"Yes, sir."
[Footnote 1: Blunker--a blunderer, an oaf. Mechanical recording had
preserved the language in much of its original form, but new words did
creep in.]
* * * * *
A quick decision was necessary, and Mich'l acted without hesitation.
The guard had rolled over on his back, so that his face was out of the
water, and he was breathing with quick, painful gasps. Mich'l dragged
him up under the concealing shelter of the fountain spray, and there
changed clothes with him. In the meantime the flowing water washed
away the red stain of blood. When the captain returned with his guard,
Mich'l was lying realistically in the pool, apparently deep in drugged
sleep, the little kepi tilted rakishly over his face.
He was roughly seized and dragged out of the water to the
accompaniment of much cursing. A fist crashed into his face.
Suddenly the soldiers felt the supine figure under their hands explode
into energy. Elbows and fists seemed to fly from all directions at
once. A needle-ray appeared, and before they could draw their own
weapons they were howling with pain as searing welts drew over their
bodies. With one accord they plunged into the pool. Only the officer
remained, and he fell to the mosaic floor, his weapon half raised, the
small black hole in his chest giving off a burnt odor.
Mich'l appropriated the officer's brassard of rank, and, menacing the
cowed guards, forced them to herd into a nearby room, carrying the
body of the officer with them. Mich'l locked the door and looked
around. He saw no one observing him, and could count on carrying a
pretty good bluff in his uniform, which was rapidly shedding its
water. With a firm step Mich'l walked to Lane Mollon's door, threw it
open, and entered.
* * * * *
Lane sat up on his couch, his feet striking the floor with an angry
thump. But when he recognized Mich'l he paled slightly.
"Where is she?" Mich'l demanded roughly, "before I burn you down!"
"You said once," Lane began sneeringly, "that you wanted to fight me.
Now, if you'll just put down that--"
"Not now," Mich'l dissented with deadly coldness. "Where is Nida?
Speak fast."
Lane did so.
"She isn't here. The little short[2] crowned me with a chair, and
slipped out. How did I--"
[Footnote 2: Short--trouble-maker, spitfire. A colloquialism probably
growing out of the once frequently used electrical term
"short-circuit."]
"When? Hurry up!"
"Hardly an hour ago. She walked down the corridor, showed a
thick-witted guard my own executive pass, and got away. But I got that
guard--"
"Never mind what you did to the guard--"
Suddenly the image of an officer strange to Mich'l stood in the room
and saluted smartly.
"Has Captain Ilgen Mr. Lane Mollon's leave to stay?" he asked.
Mollon started forward, but before he could disclose his predicament
Mich'l had sidled over to him and thrown one arm affectionately over
his shoulder. In his hand, concealed by the rich folds of Lane's robe,
Mich'l held his needle-ray, and it was pressed firmly against Lane's
ribs.
"Mr. Mollon will be glad to hear you," Mich'l said smoothly.
* * * * *
He fancied that the eyes of the officer's image dilated slightly, but
it lost none of its military rigor. But some explanation of his
presence there in his still damp uniform must be given Ilgen, so he
growled, in a voice that he tried to make a bit thick, as if he had
chewed too much merclite:
"At ease, Captain. At ease! Damn it man, you don't have to be so
damned military. You're among friends!" And he towseled Lane's dark
hair affectionately.
Captain Ilgen looked his disgust.
"Sir," he said to Lane, "we recaptured Nida Mane as she tried to board
a public car near the Executive Mansion."
The black lens at the end of Mich'l's needle-ray pressed hard, and
Lane said naturally:
"You have her in custody?"
"Sir, we have." And to Mich'l's dismay, Nida, defiant, her lovely form
half revealed by rents in her garments, seemed to materialize beside
the officer. Her wrathful eyes were fixed on Lane, and then she saw
Mich'l.
The technie put all his will into the pleading stare which he
returned, and she understood. She gave no sign of recognition, but
favored both Lane and Mich'l equally with the chill of her disdain.
"Sir, what are your orders?"
Lane glanced aside at Mich'l, acutely conscious of the lethal pressure
in his ribs.
"'Sall right with me, old fellow," Mich'l squawked good-humoredly.
"This your girl that got away from you? Let's both go over and bring
her back."
Lane nodded assent. The soldier saluted, and his vision and that of
the girl disappeared.
"And we're going to do just that!" Mich'l added in an entirely changed
voice. "Get up, you. Act right, speak right, do right, and you may
live to see another day."
* * * * *
So the two left the warren in apparent amity, and walked the beautiful
street, with its richly formed, brightly colored arches, its seemingly
illimitable vistas, its luxuriant, pampered decorative vegetation, its
blazing lights--until at last they came to Administration Circle, and
entered the ponderous gates behind which lay the very heart of the
Government.
They were challenged at once. Although the officer of the guard knew
Lane, usage required the showing of the daily pass. Many high officers
of the Government had in years past fallen from grace overnight.
This formality complied with, Lane and Mich'l, the latter with his
ray-needle ever ready, sat down to wait in the guard room. And Lane,
under Mich'l's quiet prompting, ordered that Nida and her father be
brought to him.
"We shall bring the girl, yes," the astonished officer protested, "but
not Senator Mane. He is a prisoner of state."
"Perhaps you don't know, Captain," Mich'l suggested smoothly, "that it
is not wise to disregard the orders of the Provisional President's
son?"
"It would cost me my commission, perhaps my life!" the officer said.
"Neither would be worth much if you disobey!" Mich'l countered, a wire
edge creeping into his voice.
The officer looked into Lane's stormy face, then with great reluctance
retreated to carry out the order.
In about ten minutes he was back, with four guards and his prisoners.
He explained that Captain Ilgen was detained on official duty.
"You may go," said Lane, prompted by a jab in the ribs.
"A written receipt, please, sir, for the senator."
Glowering, Lane wrote out the desired document. At last they were
alone.
"Our program," Mich'l announced briskly, "is simple. You will conduct
us to one of the Government cars, and will ride with us to such places
as we may direct, and I shall release you when it pleases me. If you
then want to fight, I will accommodate you."
"I would be willing to fight you, as head of the technies," Lane
countered sullenly, "but I wouldn't be bothered with a rebel and a
traitor. You've overstepped yourself this time, my fine bolthead, and
all I ask is a front seat at your execution!"
* * * * *
They stepped into the brightly lighted hall, and in that instant
Mich'l felt a searing heat on his shoulder. Without a moment's pause
he hurled Senator Mane and the girl back into the room. At the same
moment he flung an arm around Lane's neck and pulled him back into the
doorway, where he could use him as a shield while he cautiously peered
out into the corridor. His shoulder throbbed painfully, but his
movement had prevented the needle-ray from penetrating deeply in any
one place.
A short distance up the corridor was a wider space, in the center of
which stood a large bronze urn filled with exotic plants. Behind this
urn were several soldiers, and Mich'l recognized the sharp-eyed
Captain Ilgen. So that officer had recognized the true state of
affairs, or had strong suspicions! But in his haste and eagerness he
had overlooked one important fact. In the guardroom, were riot-rays,
heavy replicas of the ordinary hand weapons. They had not been needed
for many years, but the technies had always kept them fully charged
and in order.
"Nida!" Mich'l called, not removing his eye from the doorway.
"Yes?" She was standing beside him, and Mich'l thrilled to the
admiration and positive affection in her intonation.
"Notice those short tubes mounted on light wheels over against the
walls? Those are riot-ray projectors. Wheel me over a couple."
Nida did as directed. Mich'l stuck the stubby muzzle of one of the
nearest weapons into the corridor, pulled the lever and swung the ray
in an arc toward the ambushed soldiers. There was a sharp crackling
noise and the heat chipped myriads of flakes off the stone walls,
leaving a gray path across the rich murals, and the air was filled
with flying particles. The heat was terrific. It beat back into the
doorway.
Captain Ilgen gave a short, sharp order, and he and his men retreated
before the bronze urn began to wilt and drip melted metal. He could
not be accused of cowardice, for his hand weapons were puny compared
to the riot-rays.
"Quick, before he gets in touch with the outer guard!" Mich'l urged
his prisoner forward, Senator Mane following. The grave patriarch of
rhetoric made a striking picture as he dragged the second riot-ray
along. The other one was abandoned, locked with full power on. It was
converting that corridor into an inferno, and there would be no
pursuit through that avenue.
* * * * *
Mich'l pushed open the metal door suddenly. Two guards on duty were
just coming in, their hand weapons ready. They never knew what struck
them for there was no time for compunction. But even as their bodies
sank to the paving there was the harsh clangor of alarm bells.
Soldiers dashed from everywhere and came running, their needle-rays
menacing.
"In there!" Mich'l shouted. He pointed to the doors, at the dead
guards. As they hesitated, he added:
"Revolution! They're storming the President's office! Hear the rays?"
Through the doors came a faint humming, an acrid smell of heat, of
stone and metal fumes. A corporal saluted Mich'l, recognized Lane's
haggard features, and Lane again felt that cogent persuader in his
ribs.
"That's right, Corporal!" he said bitterly.
"Is the guard room occupied, sir?"
"Not now, you fool!" Mich'l snapped at him. This resolved the last of
the corporal's misgivings. Giving an order, he led his men in,
gasping.
"Now we'll run!" Mich'l ordered, giving Lane a shove. "Coming, Nida?"
She was dragging her father along joyously. They crossed the broad
pedestrian walk, and in the street found an official car nestling on
one of the tracks.
"Heave in the riot-ray, will you, old fellow?" Mich'l requested
jovially, and Lane did. Then the listless chauffeur turned a
controller, and the big car rose a few inches, lightly as a feather,
and sped away swiftly through the maze of traffic.
* * * * *
Sometime later they were in a service lift; not one of the great
public lifts that carried their hundreds at a trip, but one of the
small lifts used mostly by the technies, and known to few outside
their ranks. Mich'l, standing blissfully close to Nida and her father,
enjoyed his moment of relaxation. Many things had been attended to.
Lane had been released at last, in one of the catacomb cemeteries. It
would take him at least two hours to find his way out. They were
discussing t
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