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The Moon Colony

by William Dixon Bell · English · Gutenberg #47576 · 312,306 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Moon Colony

Author: William Dixon Bell


        
Release date: December 7, 2014 [eBook #47576]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOON COLONY ***

THE MOON COLONY

BY WILLIAM DIXON BELL

THE GOLDSMITH PUBLISHING COMPANY

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS




Copyright 1937 by

The Goldsmith Publishing Company

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




CONTENTS

  I      Bullet Proof
  II     The Stowaway
  III    An Arctic Blizzard
  IV     A Flashing Cylinder
  V      Down into the Den
  VI     A Dangerous Scientist
  VII    Ready to Crush Out Life
  VIII   Billy Takes a Part
  IX     Start to the Moon
  X      Toplinsky Calls the Bluff
  XI     Tables Turned and No Eats
  XII    Toplinsky Grinned Slyly to Himself
  XIII   The Landing
  XIV    A Moon Army
  XV     Battling with Crickets
  XVI    Billy Disappears
  XVII   “Something’s Got Me”
  XVIII  In the Chamber of Horrors
  XIX    The Knife Dance
  XX     Mysterious Cavern Lamps
  XXI    Crickets Swarming to War
  XXII   The Wheezing Ramph
  XXIII  Sons of the Great Selina
  XXIV   Behind a Copper Wall
  XXV    Gunpowder vs. Chlorine Gas
  XXVI   Writhing, Wriggling Ramphs
  XXVII  Carza’s Use of Lava Streams
  XXVIII In the Armory
  XXIX   Out of the Depths




CHAPTER I

Bullet Proof


Julian Epworth reasoned that his departure from Salt Lake City was a
profound secret. The fact that an airship carrying gold was on the way
to Los Angeles convoyed by armed airplanes had been kept inside of the
office. Because of this Epworth thought that he had an easy job.

“What’s the big idea about all this fancy maneuvering?” Billy Sand
inquired curiously as Epworth gave the order to close up a little on
the other nine planes flying in a straight line ahead in military
formation. “You are acting as if there is a war on, and if we were
trying to hatch a machine gun nest.”

“Now that we are up in the air, and there is no chance of a leak I
will explain. The twin red and green lights that you see ahead are on
one of our airplanes carrying a gold shipment consigned to the mint.
Recently a plane similarly loaded disappeared, and our company lost a
million dollars. We do not propose that such a steal shall be
repeated.”

“A million! And this crate ahead is carrying that much?”

“It is carrying two million. But,” Epworth’s lips twisted
determinedly, “I do not think that an air pirate will be able to get
away with it—not as long as these ten little babies can shoot.”

Julian Epworth was the head of the secret service of the
Atlantic-Pacific Airlines, Inc., and he imagined that his plans had
been extremely well laid.

Billy glanced up at the clear sky, picked up the signals, and, in
obedience to Epworth’s command, closed in on the four planes flying on
the left of the large passenger ship in the lead. A ship launched
secretly into the air in the dead of night, and picked up on the
desert by an escort of ten planes, should certainly be safe from a
robber.

“Not a chance in a million that we will be stopped,” he remarked
thoughtfully. “Look at the moon and the stars! We could see a plane
ten miles away, and get it long before it could get in shooting
distance.”

Feeling in a good humor and perfectly safe, Epworth tuned in on the
radio—just loud enough to bring the news of the world to them, and not
loud enough to give a warning to any other flyer in the sky that might
be secretly approaching.

Suddenly Billy leaned toward his companion excitedly, and caught his
arm.

“Did you hear that? I am speaking about that noise that is coming over
the radio.”

“Of course I heard it.”

The radio was saying:

“This is Clarence Ainslee, astronomical observer at Mount Wilson
Observatory. Are you looking at the moon? If not, get a large
telescope and look at the extreme western extremity of the Sea of
Vapours. You will see something you never saw before. There is a lake
or sea forming there. At least that is the judgment of astronomers.”

“What do you think about it?” Billy asked.

“Horse radish.”

Both aviators looked toward the bright shining full moon.

“But,” Epworth remarked, “we could not tell anything with our naked
eyes.”

“In addition to the appearance of a new lake,” the radio continued,
“vegetation is appearing not far from the eastern border of the water.
The mystery of this is now puzzling the scientific world.”

“Let them puzzle,” Epworth muttered as he switched the radio dial. “I
should worry.”

“This is the news report from the morning _Blade_,” they heard the
radio say. “Station WGCF. The report has just come in that twenty
masked men, all of whom spoke a foreign tongue, have robbed the Swift
& Co. laboratory. They lined up the seventy chemists and their
assistants, and while the gunmen held them and their helpers the
bandits looted the plant. Thousands of dollars in liquid air,
saltpeter, and chemicals were carried off in two enormous airplanes,
dim shadowy things that stretched out two thousand feet in length.”

“Some little airplane. I’d like to see it!”

“Airplane?” Billy snorted indignantly. “They are using dirigibles of
course.”

“What do you suppose they wanted with all that nitrogen and
fertilizer?”

“Couldn’t guess in a million years.”

Epworth sat up straight. He had caught a view of two wriggling red
lights ahead.

“There are the signals,” he cried excitedly. “Something is going on
ahead.”

Both aviators went into action. Epworth seized the controls and Billy
grabbed a machine gun. Both were still thinking about the long
cylinder-like airplanes described by the radio. Epworth kept his eyes
fixed on the airship carrying the gold. A red rocket shot out suddenly
from the side of this airplane; followed by another. These signals
were answered by nine planes that were following Epworth’s guidance
through the silent night lanes.

To one who did not understand, the sky looked like a pyrotechnic
display.

               *       *       *       *       *

Like avenging demons the entire convoy started toward the plane
sending out the distress signals, sweeping through the sky without
lights, and their silencers hiding their approach. But what they saw
caused every aviator and every machine gunner to pause for a second in
astonishment.

An immense airship, not less than two thousand feet long, was hovering
over the passenger Douglas, guiding its movements, and twenty men were
running down a ladder that had been let down into the aviator’s seat
of the Douglas.

Epworth, who was leading the formation of five on the larboard side,
did not permit his astonishment to delay action. With a jerk he seized
the control, slammed the stick into his stomach, banked slightly,
leveled out until the side of the big airship was in line with his
machine gun, and with a hoarse cry opened a broadside at the sky
pirate—for pirate he was certain the big plane was.

When he fired he was not over one thousand feet from the pirate, and
it was impossible to miss. In addition to this he had come up with a
big surprise—feeling certain that the air bandits did not know that
the treasure ship was convoyed. He expected to see his rain of lead
tear through the cowling of the stranger and deal death and frenzy.
His example was followed by every scout plane on the larboard side. A
second later the five planes on the starboard swept up and poured a
fierce rain of lead at the stranger. It was a barrage from both sides
that it seemed would destroy anything earthly.

Yet the pirate floated serenely in the air as if it had been bombarded
with peanuts, its secretly-constructed armor turning machine bullets
like pellets.

Epworth give the signal, and again both formations poured their
hurricane of death at the pirate. But when this bombardment seemed to
pass harmlessly through the stranger, Epworth changed his tactics. He
aimed at four men who were climbing down the ladder from the pirate
into the Douglas. This time his shots cut the ladder into ribbons, and
the four men tumbled down into the Douglas. Epworth, while feeling
that he had full authority to do battle, wanted to capture the pirate
and not kill the men. In this he succeeded, as to the killing, as the
four pirates fell on top of the Douglas, or into the aviator’s seat.

At this moment the bandits got to fighting. Two sheets of mysterious
flames burst simultaneously from both sides of the immense thing, and
then all became still.

But those two broadsides were enough. The ten convoy airships conked,
whirled over in the air, and began to fall.

“Jump, Billy!” Epworth cried out loudly. “Jump!”

There was need. The battle was over, and the pirate plane, with the
stolen Douglas now under complete pirate control, passed away into a
dim shadow. The twenty occupants of the destroyed convoy planes jumped
out almost at the same second, and sprang as far away from their
falling crates as possible.

Epworth’s umbrella opened within ten seconds. He saw Billy shoot by
like a chunk of lead. Billy was his best chum, and his heart sank with
the thought that he would be dashed to pieces against the ground.
Frantically he leaned out. Other pilots were going by but he managed
to keep his eye on Billy. Finally he straightened up with a cry of
relief. Billy’s parachute was spreading.

“Safe,” he cried, “but great heavens what a battle! That plane’s sides
are bullet proof, and it rides the sky as if it owned it.”

He looked upward. All he could see above his head were the stars.
These were blotted out by the rapid approach of the earth, and the
peak of the high mountain passing by him.

He landed safely but what would the president of the Air Company say
when he returned with this terrible and unexpected disaster to report?




CHAPTER II

The Stowaway


They were seated in the living room of President Epworth’s palatial
residence in Hollywood. While the conversation was in a low tone and
seemingly calm there was an air of tenseness that got on the nerves of
the speakers.

“So you suggest——”

President Epworth paused, and looked interrogatingly at his nephew,
Julian Epworth.

“That we send out a dummy on an alleged trip to Japan, start it
secretly but with sufficient tips to permit the knowledge of its
departure to circulate. With it send a small shipment of money. Let
Billy Sand pilot the dummy, and I will follow in a swift scout plane
equipped to cross the Pacific. If the sky bandits attack, Billy is to
be instructed to offer no resistance, and I will lag behind and follow
the robbers to their lair. When I return we will fall on that bunch
with the entire United States army. Believe me I do not speak loosely
when I say that the army will be necessary. Those bandits have the
best fighting air vessel invented. They are far ahead of anything I
have ever heard of in the way of air pirates.”

“And that dummy should carry——”

“Enough gold to relieve it of the suspicion that it is a plant.”

The president tapped the table with his fingers.

“Our company cannot afford to lose any money.”

“My idea is to make the cargo large enough to pay a profit if it goes
across but not large enough to create a great loss. If the bandits
come I have a hunch that they will be connected with the men who
robbed Swift & Co., Ford, Dupont, and others. If I can trace them to
their lair we stand a chance to get all that back.”

“Notwithstanding the fact that you are my nephew, Julian, I placed you
at the head of our secret service because I knew that you had ability
in spite of your youthfulness. I am now putting a grave responsibility
on you. We cannot do business while a bunch of hijackers are running
the air lanes, and stealing everything valuable we send out. We must
stop business or catch the thieves. The first thing we know they will
be dropping bombs on our airports. I am going to put this matter up to
you.”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“I mean that you have the responsibility of catching these men. I am
turning the matter entirely over to you for action.”

“Very well, I accept the charge.”

As a result of this conversation Epworth concluded to send out the
Greyhound, a large 12-passenger Douglas—old but a good flyer. Billy
Sand was named as the pilot and entire crew. After studying weather
conditions closely it was decided to make the start the following
Thursday night.

So secret was Epworth in his method that he planted his small H.B. in
an open space near Hines Field, six miles from the airport of the
Atlantic-Pacific Company, and the only person he took completely into
his confidence was Billy Sand, his aviation buddy and chum. Billy did
not even let Bert Orme know that Epworth was to follow them. To Orme
it looked as if an honest-to-goodness flight was being made across the
Pacific Ocean.

Billy was instructed to show constantly by night three red lights, one
on each wing, and one on the tail of the Greyhound. These lights were
to be turned on every night at sundown during the entire trip. In
addition to this Epworth decided to fly the pursuit by himself.

At eleven forty-five the young man moved his plane from its hiding
place, and mounted into the air. He chuckled as he took the air. His
sister, Joan, was the only living person who knew where this plane had
been hidden and he felt certain that it could not have been
“doctored,” although he had been late in getting to it.

Unfortunately for his purpose the night was dark and a heavy fog had
come up from the ocean about ten o’clock, and for ten minutes he
feared that the fog banking against the windows of his cockpits would
prevent observation. With a snort of dismay he threw open the window,
and leaned out. The great City of Los Angeles, with its myriads of
beautiful lights spread beneath, and he lost three minutes locating
the five-pointed lights that marked the Atlantic-Pacific airport. He
was flying low, circling like an eagle, and he lost several seconds
more getting to the airport.

Had he arrived too late?

He anathematized himself, and snarled at the darkness that had caused
him to be late in getting to his plane. Billy, by this time, was
probably on his way.

He searched the sky with his binoculars. The three red lights the
Greyhound was to display were not visible. Was it possible that his
secret plans had already come to naught? Would Billy fly out over the
ocean and rush into the hands of the pirates without accomplishing any
good?

For a moment he had a spell of very bad humor; then he whirled the
nose of his plane out toward the Pacific Ocean. He knew the course the
Greyhound would travel. He had been careful with his instructions to
Billy about getting into the air and these instructions conveyed to
Billy the idea that he was to give no heed to the little plane that
followed him. This meant that Billy would take a direct bee line out
over the ocean, and expect him to follow as if there was to be an
ordinary oceanic flight.

Rising two thousand feet, he shot forward with all the speed his
wonderfully fast little bird could travel—three hundred miles an hour.
In a brief slip of time he was over San Pedro, and could hear the roar
of the ocean sweeping against the rocks north of Point Firmin. Bearing
N by W he flashed over the extreme end of Catalina Island on the
north. Still the dense fog rolled against his windows and into the
cabin; and the three red Greyhound lights were not visible.

He groaned in an agony of spirit. What would his Uncle William say to
this terrible waste of money and inefficiency?

“And what will Joan say?” he asked himself aloud in a strained hurt
way. “She also will think that I’m a slip-up.”

“She will say that you have a very fast little airplane, that you can
fly circles around the Greyhound, and that now is the time to fly
them.” A soft, mellow voice answered his query from the rear end of
the cabin. “Fly low, say one thousand feet above the water, and keep
your eyes glued to your field glasses. Joan will watch for you while
you manipulate the controls.”

A handsome, well-formed and athletic young girl, about eighteen years
old, crawled out of the tail of the fuselage, and dropped into the
aviator’s seat by his side.

“H-how did you get here?” Epworth blustered. “What do you mean by
butting in on a dangerous mission like this? How did you find out that
I was going to make this trip? Now I will have to turn around and take
you back. If you were not my sister I’d slam you overboard.”

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t throw me overboard. If you did that you wouldn’t
have a little sister to fuss about. As to all those other
questions—come at me easy. Put them one at a time. But before you
begin to propound them get into some kind of action. Go down a
thousand feet. You are too high in the air.”

This was good sense, and Epworth nose-dived immediately. When he
straightened out on the thousand foot line he leveled his nose
northward into a vast encircling movement.

“You needn’t go any further north,” Joan remarked casually. “I see
your three little old red lights out toward the west.”

Epworth heaved a sigh of relief; and then turned angrily on his
sister.

“Now talk up. You have balled things up terribly. When daylight comes
I will have to signal Billy to go back so that I can take you back
home. You are set for college, young lady, and it is nearing the
opening of the year.”

“I am not going back. My brother is out here on a life and death
mission, my uncle stands to go broke if this mission fails, and I’m
going to help. Get that, Mister Bossy.”

“But you can’t go, Joan. This task may take me to the North Pole, or
to some island in the South Pacific, or to Siam.”

“I am going with you or I am going to jump over the side of this plane
into the ocean.”

There was a finality about her words that carried conviction. That was
Joan all over. She was very quiet, very self-possessed, very polite,
but she was like the Rock of Gibraltar when she made up her mind.

Epworth did not reply. Now that he was actually following the
Greyhound he did not want to desert his task. He pushed nearer to the
three red lights. Billy was purposely running with his cut-outs open,
and he could hear the roar of the Greyhound’s engines. This was
another evidence that he was trailing the right airplane. At this time
all other planes that sailed the air were as silent as birds.

“Now let me hear how you got on to this job?”

“You talk too much,” Joan rebuked severely. “I heard you talking to
Billy last night when he came up to the house.”

“Then if you know about it I guess the bandits know something about it
also,” he chuckled.

Joan did not answer, and for an hour Epworth ran to the starboard of
the Greyhound, and several hundred feet higher.

“There is a shadow hanging over the Greyhound,” Joan observed
presently. “Is it a cloud?”

“So soon!” Epworth exclaimed in astonishment. “Those robbers are
certainly wise ones, and the leak out of the Atlantic-Pacific Airlines
must be as big as a river.”

“I do not seem to get you,” Joan replied slangily. She had been
associating so much with aviators and air men that she had become one.
“Spring a little larger leak in your gas line.”

“You are now going to view the methods of the sky bandits,” he said
slowly, handing her his binoculars. “Keep your eyes fixed on that
shadow, and I will manipulate the plane nearer so that you will be
certain.”

Within three minutes they were close enough to see a sky hold-up. A
long cylinder, tremendously long it seemed to her as she viewed it
through the fog, swung gracefully and easily into position over the
Greyhound, and for several moments ran along smoothly as if it were a
part of the lower airship. Then a trap door opened in the bottom of
the cylinder, a rope fell into the aviator’s seat of the Greyhound,
and ten men descended quickly. For several seconds the ladder swung to
and fro over the Greyhound but when a signal whistle, sharp and clear,
rang out from the aviator’s seat of the Greyhound, the great cylinder
whirled with lightning speed and darted away directly north. It was
swallowed up so quickly in the fog that Joan could only stare at it
with open-mouthed surprise.

When she thought to look back at the Greyhound the captured vessel had
swung into the course of the cylinder.

“It is impossible to follow that thing,” she whispered in awe. “Why it
flies—it flies—like—like——”

“A ball out of a cannon,” Epworth finished. “But fortunately I did not
contemplate following it. We will follow the Greyhound. I knew before
we started out on this trip that those cylinders could gain a speed of
six hundred miles an hour, and my plot was to get them to capture the
Greyhound, and follow it. They have fallen into the plot, and now a
sky bandit, and not Billy, is piloting the plane.”

With a careful movement he dropped in behind the Greyhound, and
climbed up over it. But presently he discovered that he would have to
go higher. The Greyhound was gradually seeking altitude in a long
upward nose sweep. This movement was continued until an altitude of
five thousand feet had been attained. At this altitude the Greyhound
leveled out, put on more speed, and darted courageously toward the
frozen North. Epworth followed, easily keeping the three red lights in
view although the cut-out of the Greyhound was now closed.

“Six hundred miles an hour!” Joan’s voice contained an element of
doubt. “How could they attain such a speed? There is no known force
that will pull them that fast.”

“Goddard’s liquid rockets,” Epworth answered briefly. “I was studying
their explosion when the hold-up was taking place. They have a soft,
low, whirling explosion but these men have gone the scientist one
better. They have found a method of silencing the explosions and still
retaining all the force.”

“My, I wonder where they are taking the Greyhound?”

“We are following them to find out.”

“I am still wondering how the cylinders can give such speed.”

“The rockets are propelled by the steady combustion of carbon in
liquid oxygen.”

“I have an idea that they must be taking the Greyhound a long distance
from home.”

They were.

Four days later Epworth and his sister, Joan, were still following the
stolen airship—and were flying over an unknown portion of the Arctic
Ocean. Below them there was a vast sea of ice.




CHAPTER III

An Arctic Blizzard


On and on, over pale gray wastes, above fleecy clouds and heavy fogs;
high up over tossing waters, and floating mountains of ice—not a stop
for fuel, with engines silenced until they flew like bats in the
night, the Greyhound leading the way, and Epworth sticking to it like
a dark, hungry shadow with his ship lines camouflaged by sky blue
paint, and his eyes ever vigilant.

How Billy managed to keep the three red lights going notwithstanding
the fact that he was a captive was a mystery that Epworth did not
attempt to solve. It was being done, and Epworth was contented to
follow.

At last Northeastern Siberia, and a mysterious range of mountains.
Epworth, taking his position, knew them for the Cherski Mountains,
recently discovered and completely unexplored—a barren, cold, lifeless
region bordering on the Arctic Ocean a thousand miles from the outmost
limits.

How long would this journey last? Where would the Greyhound lead? Had
the sky bandits discovered that they were being followed, and were
they leading him into a death trap amid a vast wilderness of ice?

He examined his gas supply. Joan looked at him inquiringly.

“Just about enough to take us back to Point Hope.”

Her eyes sought the cowling of the little machine fearfully.

“Shall we go back?”

She pointed at the Greyhound.

“Billy is in that ship,” she replied softly. “We cannot leave him. His
liberty, and very likely his life, depend upon our actions.”

He put his hand affectionately on her shoulder—just like a chum. Few
brothers loved their sisters as Epworth loved Joan.

“You are the bravest, squarest girl in the world. I knew you would say
it. But——”

He shook his head.

“We will have to depend upon stealing enough gas from the tank of the
Greyhound to get back,” she added smilingly.

Now the Greyhound turned abruptly westward, and followed the Cherski
Mountains, lowering its altitude to five hundred feet above the
highest peak. Epworth followed persistently, keeping a higher
altitude.

“Small wonder,” Joan remarked as she watched the shadow of the
Greyhound flit swiftly over the face of the white-capped ridges, “that
the governments could not locate them. With their swift airplanes they
dart down on the commerce of the world like Omar on a desert caravan,
and are back in their hidden North Pole lair before the robbery is
known by the authorities. Where are we?”

“Eight hundred miles north by west of Bogosloff Island, perhaps a
thousand miles.”

“So far,” Joan observed patiently, “we have had unusually even
weather. Now we are going to have an Arctic blizzard.”

She pointed north over the long reach of ocean that came up to lash
the mountains beneath them. Epworth shivered. Then he smiled.

“We have a mighty staunch little airship.”

She did not answer for several moments. Would these bandits go on
forever? Was there no hole anywhere for them to hide in?

“The Greyhound has disappeared,” Joan suddenly broke out excitedly. “I
saw it just a moment ago behind that distant peak.”

Epworth glanced out of the window. A sudden sheet of frozen snow and a
rain of heavy chunks of ice struck the window. It came with terrific
fury, unexpected. However, he had adjusted the stabilizer, and
notwithstanding the fact that the little ship was tossed up and down
like a feather and went lop-sided for a second it weathered the
furious burst, and staggered on like a wounded bird.

Epworth gave one more look for the Greyhound. Not a thing was now
visible—not even the rugged snow mountains below. With a grave face he
banked and faced the storm, putting on every ounce of power the engine
would carry. The little plane stood still, poised like an eagle, with
the bronzed shadow of its wings dipped in the immensity of gray storm
and whirling, shrieking wind.

On the windows of his ship the rubber vacuum wipers stopped, choked
immovable by lumps of ice hurled against the glazed surface. To see
out was impossible—he was shooting through darkness, a howling,
shrieking, terrifying murk created by storm. He glanced at Joan. She
smiled at him to cheer him, but it was a courageous effort to conquer
a mighty fear.

He must see out. If they moved forward in the direction they were
headed they would be forced out over the ocean, away from the sky
bandits’ retreat. That camp was somewhere in this range of mountains.
He had a hunch that it was not far away. If he succeeded in his
mission he must keep the mountains in view and make a search when the
frenzy of the storm had passed.

Nevertheless he moved with slow deliberation. He pasted a small strip
of inch-thick Balsa wood beneath the wipers on the window, lighted two
candles and stuck them on the Balsa shelf thus made. It was
dangerous—deadly dangerous. If the storm shot a flash of that blaze
into the gas tank the end would be instantaneous. He smiled grimly,
and nodded at his sister. The girl bowed her head in acquiescence. She
also realized the danger of a flame of fire at this time.

The heat of the candles warmed the window and the wipers began to
move, clearing the space for visibility.

His observations were useless. All he could see was a world of
whirling snow and ice.

He sought altitude. But the higher he ascended the fiercer grew the
storm. Then he nosed down slowly until he stood a thousand feet above
the highest mountain. Then he slowed his engines and allowed the storm
to push him backwards. He was seeking the neighborhood where he had
last seen the Greyhound.

Again he turned his eyes on Joan. She was taking the battle like a
Trojan.

“You are very brave,” he said gently.

“And the boy with me is not a coward,” she replied softly.

She gave him her hand, and there was not a tremble in it.

“I have lost our reckoning, but——”

The sentence was not completed. The tempest increased with
irresistible fury, and shot them down obliquely, catching the
starboard wing, and with weird, demoniacal power whirled the plane
over and over in a rush of air that the propellers were unable to
stop.

Joan was hurled into Epworth’s arms, and both were tossed up and down
in their seats, and against the light cowling. Each second they
expected to be hurled out of the cabin. In order to lessen the danger
Epworth shut off the engine. At least there would be no fire.

“We must jump,” he explained briefly. “The plane is whirling over and
over and will strike a peak soon.”

“Small chance for an umbrella in a storm like this,” Joan returned
quite calmly. “It will be whipped into strips.”

“Yet the parachute is our only hope.”

He hooked the package around her shoulders and adjusted it carefully.
Then he put one around his own shoulders, and handed her a package
that he took from a pocket in the fuselage.

“Some useful articles, and a little food and water,” he informed her.
“May come in useful. We can’t tell what is ahead of us.”

“Good bye, sister.”

“Good bye, brother.”

They smiled at each other, and jumped.




CHAPTER IV

A Flashing Cylinder


Joan was caught in the mighty whirl of the blizzard, her parachute
opened with a spurt, and she was jerked back and forth like a feather
while large chunks of ice shot against her face with sufficient force
to lacerate the skin. She was a brave girl but now a great fear
overpowered her, and she sent out a wild cry of terror.

Her scream reached the ears of her brother over the howling storm, and
his heart went dead. What was happening to Joan? Would it be possible
that she could still have a thread of her parachute left, and that the
wind was ripping it apart?

With feverish eyes he sought in every direction. He could not see her.
Then he realized how puerile his thoughts were. If he chanced to see
her there was nothing that he could do to aid her.

Both parachutes had been made to stand up against hard storms, and
they held notwithstanding the fact that they were whirled over and
over in the rushing air.

After that one wild shout of fear Epworth heard nothing more from
Joan, and now his own danger was such that he had little time to worry
about her. He had to give his own chute all his mind. Drifting swiftly
he was held up by the wind that got under his parachute. Frequently
the umbrella tilted and he thought that it would turn inside out but
his weight held it down in proper shape, and he raced onward. Suddenly
a mountain of snow and ice shot up in front of him. He was on the peak
so quickly that he had little time to think or act. Would he be
slammed against a jagged rock by the terrible wind, and his head
smashed, or would he be dropped into a deep crevasse from which there
would be no possible escape—a place where he would freeze quickly or
else starve?

He was blown over the summit with a scarce twenty feet to spare, and
felt himself falling. He had not fallen far before he discovered that
the mountain sheered off at this point with a deep precipitous cliff.
This cliff shut off the wind, and he began to fall slowly. Looking
down he saw no bottom. He was still in the air.

A sudden gust of wind, a wild shriek and something bumped against him.
Before he realized what was taking place a pair of arms passed around
his waist, and clutched him spasmodically. He recovered his surprise
instantly, and in turn threw his arms around Joan in order that they
should not be separated. The two parachutes had bumped together in an
eddy, and now the ropes were entangled so that they could not separate
if they desired. With a gentle hand he pulled the girl up to his
level.

“Oh, very well,” she said calmly, when she discovered the situation,
“we will die together. It is best.”

She was cold, wet, frightened, but was taking her medicine like a
soldier.

When he looked around the blizzard seemed to be losing its force. He
understood the reason. They had been blown over the top of the
mountains and were falling on the opposite side, and the mountains
shut off the wind. As they fell steadily and their parachutes became
more stable he realized that so far as the storm was concerned they
were safe.

But what would they fall into? He could not look down and see but
presently they slipped into a deep recess in the mountains, and the
noise of the blizzard slackened materially, and they began to descend
faster. Epworth felt as if he wanted to guide the things that were
holding them up to a soft spot—if there was such a thing in this wild,
terrible country—but he was helpless. All he could do was to hold his
sister, and look wild-eyed in all directions.

They were laced together beyond separation, and this gave him comfort.
They would land together; they would meet the same fate; and perhaps
he might be able to save her from death after all.

Now he looked toward the north, and saw some mountains free from snow.
How could this be in this land of perpetual ice? He glanced down, and
discovered that they were falling into a valley several miles long
protected by four immense peaks. As they descended lower the air
became milder, the intense cold, which almost froze his face,
decreased perceptibly, and the wind stopped entirely.

Looking upward he saw the blizzard covering the sky with a sheet of
snow; looking down he saw green spruce trees, and a stretch of sand.

“Snap into it, Joan!” he exclaimed cheerfully, sweet hope springing up
in his heart. “We are going to make a safe landing.”

Joan opened her eyes and shivered.

“A-a-are—we—dead?” she gasped. “This is too awful for life.”

She lifted her head and looked around, and when she saw the rugged
mountains she blanched, but made no comment. He caught her suddenly in
his arms and lifted her above his head.

“W-w-what are you doing?” she whispered faintly. “Let me——”

They landed on a stretch of soft sand before she finished her remark,
and he ran with her for a few steps and stopped. Then, still holding
her, he cut the cords that bound them to the two parachutes. Relieved
of their burden the parachutes tumbled away and disappeared.

When they were able to stand steadily they discovered that they had
stopped just in time to keep from going over and down another steep
precipice.

“I see,” Joan grumbled, “trying to keep me from being hurt. I will
have you know, Mister Man, that I take my share of all the dangers.”

Epworth did not answer. He was looking down into a deep valley alive
with men, women and children—a valley heated by slow, spluttering
volcanic fires that came up out of the earth. While he was still
staring there came a muffled explosion, a humming noise, and there
flashed into the sky a streak of bright aluminum. It shot upward with
such swiftness that it was barely visible for a fraction of a second,
leaving behind a somewhat lurid trail that hung in the air for a
second and then disappeared.

“W-w-what was it?” Joan gasped.

Epworth gave no heed to the question. He was staring, open-mouthed at
the spot where the cylinder came from. He was still staring when it
seemed to him that the earth opened, and another flash of aluminum
shot into the sky, followed by a muffled explosion.

“W-what the Sam Hill?”

Epworth could get no farther. His astonishment choked him.




CHAPTER V

Down into the Den


Joan shook her glossy hair as Epworth sat up and looked around, and
twisted her eyebrows in a puzzled way.

“It came out of that round black tube buried in earth at the far side
of the valley; or, perhaps, it was one of the mysterious flying
machines that the newspapers talked about—like the one that captured
the Greyhound. You can readily see that this is the lair of the sky
bandits. There is the Greyhound.”

Epworth drew out his powerful field glasses. He never failed to carry
them with him. In fact, he had become so accustomed to searching the
earth for miles around as he flew over it that it had become as much
of a habit to carry binoculars as it was to wear his nose. His
observations corroborated Joan’s statement concerning the Greyhound.
In addition to that plane he saw a number of other machines that
belonged to the Atlantic-Pacific Airlines, Inc., and bags of saltpeter
piled indiscriminately around a large warehouse made of corrugated
iron.

But there were no indications of idleness in the camp. Even the women
and children were doing some kind of work, and the men—more than a
thousand of them—were rushing pell mell hither and yon, gathering up
large quantities of stuff, pushing it into containers, and piling the
containers systematically into cylinders at least two thousand feet
long.

“No, it was not an airship. It was one of those long aluminum
cylinders that are being loaded by the men at work. It was shot up
into the air by some kind of machinery. But why do they do it, and
where is the machinery?”

“In that hole in the ground,” Joan explained, as she glanced through
the binoculars. “There seems to be a round pit over there.”

“Well, we are going down there and find out what it all means. Very
likely the crews of all the airships stolen are down there. I am quite
sure that Billy Sand is there.”

“Going to walk right in, turn right around, and walk right out with
all the airships and the rescued crews?”

Her tone was quite sarcastic.

“I hardly think that we will work that fast but if we are not able to
sneak into that place and get the Greyhound there is very little hope
of ever returning to dear old Uncle Sam.”

“There are forty of the new-style airships,” she pointed out, “and it
would be easy for them to overtake the Greyhound.”

“We will have to risk something. We will never——”

He was stopped by a giant cylinder being catapulted out of one of the
dark tubes, and flashing away into space. They stood staring for
fifteen minutes, and another cylinder followed. Then the hum of the
machinery quieted down. Epworth drew out his watch. “It has been just
ninety minutes since the first cylinder was fired,” he asserted. “The
second the cylinder goes into space the men below get awful busy
loading another. They are—yes, I really believe that they are
systematically shooting something into space.”

“Are they crazy?” Joan looked around apprehensively. “I would rather
run into a nest of robbers than a camp of crazy people.”

“We will try to get down there, and get away without being seen.
Around the side of the cliff I see a place where it will be possible
to slip down without hurting ourselves, although it is steep.”

“I don’t like the looks of things down there,” his sister objected.
“Look at that ugly giant!”

She gave Epworth the field glasses, and pointed to a certain man. He
was a great giant, long-bearded, hairy, and powerful. He was viciously
whipping a smaller man while four men held the small man a prisoner
with his face to the wall of a big corrugated iron building.

“Slave drivers,” Epworth observed sharply, his mouth twitching
angrily. “I wonder if the little fellow can be Billy?”

Joan shuddered. She was thinking of the gallant young aviator flying
away into the night to give himself voluntarily into captivity for the
sake of the men who employed him—a captivity that at present looked as
if it was the most vicious of all tyranny.

“We’ve got to get away, and send help,” she whispered fiercely. “This
racket must be cleaned out if it takes the entire United States army.”

“The United States army cannot come into this country. It is foreign
soil. The easiest thing to do is to steal the plane.”

“I’ll venture there are a thousand eyes watching it.”

“You’d throw cold water on a fish,” Epworth grumbled. “But just the
same we shall make the attempt.”

At this moment a door in one of the large corrugated iron buildings
opened, an enormous cylinder was rolled out, twenty men got aboard,
and it shot up into the air with incredible rapidity.

“How would the Greyhound get away from an airship like that?”

Joan’s eyes fastened on the disappearing ship with intense
fascination.

“I do not see any propellers,” she added thoughtfully.

“It is a rocket plane, I previously described, the latest improvement
on the German idea of shooting an airship forward with liquid rockets.
However, let’s be moving.”

They ate from the lunch boxes that Epworth had hastily snatched up
when they jumped into the air, and with stealthy steps descended the
steep incline, hiding frequently behind the large boulders on the
hillside. Fortunately the men in the valley, or rather huge crater—for
it was patent that it had one time been a volcano and the fires were
only now simmering in spots—were busy and did not see them, and they
finally got safely behind the large hangar that protected twenty or
more of the big airships. Inside of the building the men at work were
talking in a strange language but when Epworth peeped around the
corner he discovered the coast to the Greyhound seemed clear.

Slipping from behind the hangar they darted across the open space, and
gained the protection of another building without being seen.
Repeating this maneuver several times they finally came up to several
of the American planes. But they had been purposely battered. A wing
had been destroyed, an engine had been put out of running, the
propeller had been broken, or the fuselage and rudders shot to pieces.
The Greyhound had not been in camp long, and seemed to be in working
condition. They centered their attention on it.

First Epworth surveyed the field. The crater pit was swarming with
men, and weaving in between them were hundreds of women and children.
Obviously it was some kind of a colony, and Epworth caught himself
wondering what all these people meant by coming this far from
civilization to live.

Some distance away the young man saw a body of American aviators. They
were shoveling saltpeter into an enormous vat, and were being herded
around by heavily armed guards. Frequently a heavy whip was used on
the back of a prisoner to expedite his movements.

When Epworth saw this he realized that it would not be long before the
Greyhound would be dismantled. The pirates did not intend to give the
prisoners a chance to escape.

Again he gave the Greyhound a careful study. It was guarded by four
men who were seated on a boulder on the side of the mountain opposite
from his possible approach. He and Joan would have to get to the
Greyhound, get in it, rev up, and get away with a swiftness that was
almost an impossibility.

Still it was their only chance. He would make a stagger at gaining his
liberty. If they remained in this crater it would be only a matter of
a short time before they would be discovered.

To make the break Joan must go also, and it would be hard to slip into
the plane without one of them being seen.

“Concealment is useless,” he asserted. “We must run for it. When you
get there jump in, and if we are attacked I will try to hold them off
while you start the engine.”

Fleet as swallows the two darted forward. Epworth, an all-round
athlete, timed his speed to keep even with the girl. They got to the
door, Joan’s hand was on it, when the four guards ran around the
plane, gave a shout and closed in on them.

“Jump in!” Epworth urged. “Snap at it. I will hold them.”

He whirled like a lion, dodged, and caught the leading guard a heavy
blow in the stomach. The man doubled up with a grunt, and Epworth,
foot-working swiftly and dodging with the expertness of a prize
fighter, evaded a rush by two men, and caught the fourth a right hand
body blow on the run. His victim toppled over sideways.

Not for a second did he pause. He was fighting for life. These men
were unscrupulous robbers. He knew this by the way in which they
destroyed airplanes. They would not hesitate to slug him, and make
Joan’s future life miserable.

Wheeling fiercely he flung himself on the other two men. This time he
made a football rush, jerked a man’s legs from under him, and crashed
his head against the ground. Before the other man could catch him he
bounded to his feet, and struck him a vicious blow under the chin. The
man toppled like a tenpin.

All this time the man he had punched in the stomach was doubled up
groaning. Now he lifted his head, and straightened up. But before he
could advance Epworth bounced forward, leaped into the open door of
the Greyhound, and dropped into the aviator’s seat, panting from his
violent exertion.

The next second the Greyhound was spluttering loudly and taxying
across the rocky ground. If the engine would pick up a little safety
was in sight.

It did. After popping loudly for several seconds it purred down and
the Greyhound lifted its wheels from the ground.

At this moment a huge giant stepped out of the most pretentious house
in the place. In his hand he held a light machine gun. Leveling it at
the Greyhound he began to shoot. There were three propellers, and one
by one, with uncanny aim, the giant disabled the blades and just as
escape seemed at hand the airship staggered, slumped like a wounded
bird, and struck the ground with powerful impact.

Joan, seeing inevitable fall, braced herself with her feet, and
escaped with a slight jar.

Epworth, in a vain attempt to lift the nose of the ship upward, was
hurled against the cowling with a force that knocked him unconscious.




CHAPTER VI

A Dangerous Scientist


Julian Epworth returned to consciousness on a luxurious day bed in a
pleasant plastered room tinted a light green. For several moments he
did not comprehend. Presently he put his hand up to his head, and
found a bandage.

“Just what happened?” he asked curiously, not expecting a reply.

“Take it calmly,” Joan advised. She was sitting by him in a dejected
attitude. “We’re prisoners, and——”

“Where are we?” he demanded impatiently.

She placed her finger on her lips, and pointed at an open door. The
only thing the young man could see through the door was another
plastered room tinted blue, and a radio receiving set.

“This is KFI, Los Angeles, California,” he heard come over the radio.
“We are now going to hear from Professor Ainslee, the distinguished
astronomer of Mount Wilson Observatory. He is going to tell you
something about the things that are going on in the moon.”

There was a brief delay, and then Prof. Ainslee’s well-known voice
came over the air.

“Greetings, ladies and gentlemen of Radio Land: Continuing my short
talks about the marvelous growth on our satellite, I will state that
the newly discovered lake in the extreme western part of the Sea of
Vapours is rapidly getting larger. I should say that it is about a
mile in diameter at this time. Of course it cannot be water as water
cannot exist on the moon. The heat of the sun, shining steadily for
fourteen days, would dry it up as there is no air on the moon to give
the water protection. As all readers are aware air forms a blanket
over water, and prevents its gradual evaporation. But there is
certainly a dark spot at the point indicated, and the scientific world
is studying it thoughtfully. The spectroscopic investigation states
absolutely that it is water. This increases the mystery.”

“Ah, ha,” a shrill voice broke out in the adjoining room, “I, the
greatest and mightiest scientist in the world, am the only man who can
answer this mystery. Bring in the prisoners, Kosloff, and let them
hear the rest of this astronomical lecture. Perhaps they may be
interested to discover how ignorant their scientists are.”

The speaker had hardly finished when the door was pushed open, and
four men sprang into the green-tinted room, covering Epworth and Joan
with their guns.

“Come,” one of the men commanded in broken English, “the general
wishes to speak to you.”

Epworth got up from the bed, and followed by Joan passed through the
door guarded by the gunmen. Their captors stopped them in front of a
large mahogany desk. Seated behind this desk was an enormous giant.
Epworth instantly recognized him as the man who had prevented the
get-away in the Greyhound with a machine gun.

The giant stood up and made an elaborate bow, drawing his immense
height erect. He was fully eight feet tall, and extended an arm almost
as large as Joan’s body. Epworth weighed 160 pounds, and mentally
compared his weight with the appearance of the giant. He was willing
to wager that the giant would weigh 350 pounds, and that there was not
an ounce of surplus fat about the man’s red-haired body. He thought of
red hair all over the man because the giant’s shirt was open at the
throat and a huge mat of red hair was visible. In addition to this he
had a mass of tousled red hair on his head and a long red beard, which
came almost to his waist. He was, in fact, a Man Mountain Dean, beard
and all.

He smiled at Epworth and Joan, and they thought of horse teeth, and
the nose of Cyrano de Bergerac.

As Joan stepped in front of him he leaned forward, and gave her a hard
stare out of his small, twinkling pale blue eyes. At first there was a
slight pucker of puzzlement around his big mouth. Then he spoke in
good English in a small shrill voice. His voice was so small and sharp
that it was all Joan could do to keep from laughing. Epworth saw that
she was about to smile, and punched her lightly in the side, shaking
his head vigorously in the negative.

“It will never do to laugh at him,” he whispered out of the corner of
his mouth. “Our lives are in his hands.”

“Ah, ha! The beautiful Miss Joan Epworth, flying sister of the noted
air man, Julian Epworth,” the giant exclaimed. “I think that she walks
like a fly into our trap.”

He opened a drawer in the mahogany table and pulled out a Los Angeles
magazine. Opening the magazine at a certain page he whirled the sheet
around so that she could see. Then he stared at her again. Joan shrank
back from that stare. There was something dangerous about it that she
could not understand.

But she understood the picture in the magazine. It was her own
picture.

“My lady,” continued the giant with distinguished courtesy of speech
but with a sarcastic stare in his eyes, “that magazine is a year old.
I have been keeping it for a purpose. I planned in the near future to
visit Los Angeles with one of my fastest airships, and kidnap you.
That picture told me that you were a very charming and fascinating
young lady. Now that I see you I realize that the magazine did not
tell half of the truth.”

“Just what do you mean by that speech?” Epworth demanded sharply. “I
will have you to understand this girl is my sister, and is not to be
hurt or insulted.”

“I am not going to hurt her. I wouldn’t hurt her for a million
dollars. All I am going to do is to make her my wife. We are a little
short of women up here in the colony, and I have known for a year that
she would fit in admirably.”

“Marry you, you red-haired brute?” Joan cried passionately. “I shall
never marry you. Besides I do not want a husband. I am just a school
girl. I will not be thinking of marrying for ten years.”

“You are old enough—quite old enough. I like them young. But you will
have to be satisfied with a rather crude ceremony. We go very little
on ceremonies here, especially religious ceremonies. There are no
priests here, no churches here, no god to solemnize a marriage. I am
the only god here, but believe me I am a big one. I make and unmake
worlds.”

“You will never call this girl wife,” Epworth said softly. “Not as
long as I live.”

“Then you would fight for her? Fine.” He paused and looked at them
with narrowing eyes. “But I am forgetting the astronomical lecture. I
am the man who is doing things with the moon. I am transforming that
satellite, which is a boiling caldron for fourteen days and then a
freezing Arctic Ocean for fourteen days, into a pleasant place to
live. It will be a place where I can take my sweet comrades, and
establish a colony which will not be annoyed by world dictators or
tyrannical democracies.”

He paused and drew his hand across his huge mouth, exposing his horse
teeth as his hand left his face. The act proved so repulsive to Joan
that she turned her head. The giant noted this and frowned. The frown
was not pleasant to behold.

“The moon you are aware has for untold centuries been a dead planet,”
he continued without rebuking the girl but with a sinister contortion
of his under lip. “The scientists tell us that there is no atmosphere
there; no plant life; no water; and that men cannot live there even if
they could go there. I am fixing that all up, working the moon over so
that we will find life quite pleasant when we go there. I am sending
rocket projectiles loaded with water from the Arctic Ocean to the
moon. A projectile leaves here loaded with ice; immediately behind it
goes another projectile carrying liquid air, hydrogen and oxygen. Both
projectiles hit in the same spot on the moon, and the liquid air
explodes and forms a protecting velvet for the ice water when it
melts.”

He paused, and began to laugh, his sides shaking up and down
ludicrously. Again Joan had to turn her head; again he eyed her
savagely without saying anything for a second. When he spoke there was
a threat in his voice.

“When you are my wife you’re going to have to watch your
risibilities,” he said gently. “But to proceed. We delay—spread out
too much for your small minds. Taking cognizance of my projectiles,
you see the beginning to the Lake of Vapours. Fearing that there may
be no nitrogen on the moon I am sending frequent projectiles loaded
with saltpeter to unite with the supposed volcanic soils, and make
vegetable life possible. In addition I am sending all kinds of
seeds—vegetable seeds, flower seeds, fruit tree seeds, cereal seeds.
They go mixed with commercial fertilizer liquidized.”

“And you get the saltpeter and fertilizer from——”

The giant did not wait for Epworth to finish his sentence.

“Various and sundry plants in the United States—from Ford, Dupont,
etc. The wholesale robberies you were about to speak of are not what
one would call stealing. We need these things to start a great
civilization on another planet. Your people have them. Unfortunately
we have not the money to buy all we need; and consequently we are
forced to adopt the methods of other nations. We take them.”

“And you think that this crazy idea is going to work?”

“Ha, ha! Do you know who I am?”

Without realizing that she was speaking to the man Joan shook her
head.

“I am Herman Toplinsky, the greatest scientist in the world. I have
been run out of my home country because I am too smart for the other
scientists. I am being hunted like a wild animal by all the
governments of the earth. This is why I am hiding in this remote place
with my comrades, and using my airships to get chemicals, supplies,
gold, and all the things I need. Am I a bandit? Nay, nay. I am simply
a wronged scientist—a smart man without a country. I cannot help the
antagonisms of rude and ignorant men.”

Epworth had heard of the man. He was no idle boaster. Before he had
been chased out of his home country he had stood at the head of
International Science.

The scientist turned his eyes on Joan. She had her fingers pressed on
her nose, and could not remove them before he discovered her act. He
smiled, and sprang nimbly forward.

“What you smell is my chemical laboratory,” he explained. “It is in
here.” He threw open a door. The scent that came from the inner room
caused the girl to draw back quickly. “I have just removed my hands
from a vat of NH₃.”

It was the smell of rotten eggs accentuated a hundred times, and
Epworth now knew that what had been so repulsive to his nostrils since
he had been in the room was hydrogen mixed with sulphur and nitrogen.




CHAPTER VII

Ready to Crush Out Life


The guards, at a motion from the giant, pushed the prisoners inside of
the laboratory. Toplinsky shot his eyes around the room for a second,
and then bounded forward with energetic fury across the floor to where
ten men were working as if death was just ahead of them.

With a light slap of his big hand he turned a man upside down, and
rolled him across the floor.

“That for your ignorance,” he shrilled. “Have not I, the great Herman
Toplinsky, repeatedly told you nitrogen is an inert element—that it
does not care to unite with other elements, and that we must be very
careful at the beginning if we want to live when we get to the moon?
We cannot wait until we can grow vegetables. We must have nitrogen
free for the atmosphere, and we must also have it _fixed_ so that we
can charge the new atmosphere with electric currents and cause it to
rain on the face of the moon. Yes, I, the great Toplinsky, tell you
all these things, and yet you attend to this apparatus slothfully—you
do not complete the electric arc; you do not hook three hydrogen atoms
to one of nitrogen. Ah, ha! Do I not tell you again, and again, that
as condensed ammonia we shoot it easily into the moon, and that when
it releases it becomes again hydrogen and nitrogen?”

He kicked the prostrate form of the unfortunate worker, who was an
American aviator, and turned amiably to Joan and Epworth, all traces
of anger disappearing. Epworth and his sister looked at each other in
a puzzled way. Was the giant crazy? The idea of shooting hydrogen and
nitrogen at the moon in small packages indicated that he was.

“My friends, it is so.” Toplinsky smiled amiably. He was pleased with
the impression he was making. “I, the great Toplinsky, do more than
shoot packages of NH₃ to the moon. I shoot everything I need, and
soon—well, we shall see what we shall see. In the meantime——”

He bowed like a diplomat to Epworth. The young American caught the
intent.

“Did I understand you to say that you objected so violently to my
marrying this young maiden that you were ready to fight for her?”

Epworth shivered slightly. This was the biggest man he had ever seen—a
man as strong as Samson. If he went into a fight with him it would be
a very desperate affair. He glanced at Joan. She was looking at the
giant with a loathing that she did not attempt to disguise, and she
was his sister.

“Yes, I am ready to fight for my sister. She shall marry when she
pleases, and the man she wants.”

Joan gave him a look of intense gratitude. She had great confidence in
her brother’s fighting ability.

Toplinsky turned away as if the matter was of no more interest, and
passed out of the house. As he walked from the big building he waved
his hand in an explanatory way at two giant tubes buried in the
ground.

“Beneath these two tubes,” he remarked casually, “I have a powerful
power plant, and much complicated machinery. With the electric current
generated by the ebb and flow of the Arctic Ocean I load the cylinders
with heavy blocks of ice, and then give the projectiles a start into
space. Lean heavily, my dear bantam, lean heavily on this point. The
projectile I shoot leaves the earth at a speed of 6.77 miles per
second; that speed carries it beyond the gravity clutch of the earth.
When it gets a certain distance, in order to land it at a certain spot
on the moon, its speed is accelerated by the explosion of a liquid
rocket, fired by clock work. It is easy when you know how.”

“Mercy!” Joan ejaculated in admiration. “Why do you shoot so
accurately? Why not scatter your stuff all over the moon?”

“It would be wasted,” he responded mildly. “I am working on the same
plan one acts when he builds a dam in a flowing stream. Little by
little I build outward, making the territory around the point I have
selected inhabitable. In fact, in addition to creating vegetation on
the moon, I am preparing a livable climate where I anticipate
establishing my colony. I am doing this—first, by locating my site in
a deep valley between two high ranges of mountains. Here my lake and
vegetation are established in a spot where the sun shines one day out
of the twenty-eight, and then not with great heat. The rest of the
time the colony will be shaded from the sun by the high mountains, and
yet the valley will have ample light. For heat during the long
fourteen days of night I expect to erect a solar heater on the top of
the mountains, and reflect the rays of the sun into Paradise Valley
with big mirrors. But let us hasten to the conflict. I have not had a
real good fight since I was a boy.”

Joan’s spirits dropped. The giant had been acting so indifferently
that she had come to the conclusion that he had been bluffing about
wanting to fight her brother, and that he was simply trying to annoy
her with his talk about marrying her. Now she discovered that she was
mistaken.

She had not seen Toplinsky give a command but as they approached the
large hangar it seemed as if the entire population had assembled for a
celebration. Against the walls of the hangar had been placed a table,
a space had been roped off in front of the table, and a temporary
arena made. Toplinsky mounted the table, and addressed the crowd.

“Do you see this lovely maiden?” he shrilled out in his small voice.
“I think that she will make an excellent mate for your leader. But
notwithstanding the fact that I want her there is a ruling among us
that a man can keep his wife just as long as he is able to do so by
main strength,—provided some other man wants her. Unfortunately for me
this lady has a brother, and he is not willing to allow me to take her
for wife. But——”

He paused and looked down thoughtfully.

“Really, I had forgotten something. I might buy the lady. Mr. Epworth,
I will give you twenty thousand dollars for your permission as
guardian to make this girl my wife.”

Epworth looked at the giant apprehensively, saw that he was soft, and
shook his head decidedly.

“He seems uppish about it,” the giant grinned. “Very well, I shall
_kill him with these great bare hands_! I have said. It shall be an
open fight, and no favors.”

He threw off a long robe, and dropped to the ground. Epworth was
surprised to see that he was clothed in tights, and that his massive
chest swelled out like a steam engine expansion.

The colonists gave a wild cheer. It was plain that they liked a
spectacular scrimmage.

“Bring in the girl and set her on the table,” Toplinsky cried, “and
then put fighting clothes on this Lilliputian.”

Joan was seated on the table in great state while the guards with rare
good humor took Epworth into the hangar and forced him to don tights.
When the young American came back to the arena and confronted
Toplinsky it was in reality a contest between a Lilliputian and a
giant, although Epworth’s figure was beautifully shaped, symmetrical,
smooth, and well muscled for his age.

When the American prisoners saw the difference in weight they groaned.
Joan heard the groan and paled. If Epworth was defeated she would take
the first possible chance to commit suicide. Life with the giant
monster was nauseating, horrifying. She thought that she preferred
death a hundred times. When Epworth passed in front of the table on
which she was seated as if on a throne her heart went cold. The hairy
giant would crush him with ease, and there would be no help for him.
Those mighty hands would clench around the boy’s neck, and he would
never utter a sound until choked to death.

Toplinsky meant to kill him. She did not have to be told. Intuitively
she recognized the fact that beneath the giant’s sarcastic talk and
extravagant boasting there was a great hatred of Epworth. True she had
not seen the big scientist before this but he had kept her picture for
a year; had thumb-marked it until it was black with grime and dirt.
She groaned inwardly. This came of too much publicity. How she hated
herself for letting that reporter get her picture in his magazine.
Vanity—how she hated her vanity now that it was going to cost her the
life of the only companion she could trust.

“Ah, he is a bantam, a mere child!” There was a smirk of satisfaction
on Toplinsky’s face. “Yet he has the temerity to stand up in front of
me—the great Toplinsky. Friends, comrades,” he made a grandiloquent
flourish with his hand, “it is not often that I diverge but when I do
it becomes great sport. And this young lady—now hear me. I want her
badly but if this bantam wins he shall have her. What I have said I
have said. The great Toplinsky never goes back on his word. So shall
it be. Herloff, announce the approach.”

A bugle sounded, a drum beat musically, a guard jabbered in a strange
language; then in broken English he turned to the American prisoners.

“When this fight is over,” he said coldly, “this young American will
be dead.”

The calm statement, authoritatively made, caused Joan to scream.

“Now, young sir, be on your guard. This is a fight regardless of
Marquis of Queensbury rules.”

Epworth was considerably astonished at the agile rapidity with which
the giant sprang forward. His movements were graceful and as lithe as
a panther. But the American was ready for him. He had been taught
boxing and wrestling by skilled men. He waited like a post until Billy
Sand, watching with feverish excitement, shouted:

“Snap into it, kid. For the love of Mike, snap into it! You’re
fighting for your life!”

Still he waited until the giant was at his elbow; then he dodged with
seeming lack of haste beneath Toplinsky’s extended arms, and planted a
heavy jab into the man’s stomach. Then he turned his eyes on Billy,
and nodded. He was pleased to see Billy still alive.

But Toplinsky’s stomach was cast iron and copper bottomed, and just a
slight hesitation flickered across his face. Epworth paled slightly.
He had to subdue this man by constant, steady, repeated body blows. To
strike him on the head, was like butting into a brick wall with his
fist, and the first blow indicated that the soft portions of
Toplinsky’s body were as hard as his head.

Toplinsky whirled like an automaton, and rushed with clenched hands.
If he landed his blow Epworth would be knocked cold. But it seemed as
if Epworth did not see his danger.

“Hey, kid!” Billy howled. “Look out for that John L. rush.”

Billy’s voice was instantly checked by a guard who put his hand over
his mouth and jabbed a gun into his side. Epworth, however, caught the
feeling of sympathy, and waved his hand. It did him good to know that
Billy was at hand to cheer him.

But he did not need the warning.

His footwork was smooth, and the giant pounded air. Again Epworth’s
right found lodging in the giant’s abdomen, and he grunted a little,
faintly, and advanced with fists on guard.

It was evident that he knew a little about boxing, and Epworth’s heart
weakened. He had been counting on Toplinsky’s ignorance. If the man
was only partially skilled his great weight, long reach, and massive
power gave him the decided advantage. Yet the young American, though a
little doubtful, had no intention of permitting fear to gain
possession of him. Fear, he knew, would result in quick defeat.

He sprang forward like a catapult, dodged downward just as the giant
met him with a terrific blow at his face, and got in two good blows
before Toplinsky could regain his equilibrium. Then with deft footwork
he slipped beneath the giant’s arms, battered him in the rear of his
short ribs, and darted out of reach.

“Atta boy! At——”

But again Billy’s mouth was choked off.

Toplinsky did not speak. Very quietly he paused, and studied his
opponent attentively. It was a menacing, cruel, determined gaze. Joan
caught his facial expression and suppressed a cry of terror. She was
beginning to think that Epworth was a great fighter for one so small
and that he might whip this enormous beast but that if he did
Toplinsky would break his promise, and be more terrifying in defeat
than in victory. His cruel red face expressed this thought. She
shuddered, and glanced helplessly at the colonists who were backing
Toplinsky. They were grim visaged and fierce, and there was small
promise of help in that mass of intent, unsympathetic faces.

Her thoughts were broken by Epworth. The American made a dash as if he
intended to strike the giant in the face. Toplinsky covered and shot
his hands up in front of his face. Instantly Epworth stopped his rush,
and kicked his opponent with all the force of his leg and foot in the
pit of the stomach. The giant doubled up with a groan, and instantly
Epworth sent a mighty right hand blow to the back of his neck.

Toplinsky went down, his followers groaned, and the Americans sent up
a shout of triumph.

It was short-lived. The giant in falling threw out his right and
encircled Epworth’s neck. When he got to his feet with his hands
around the American’s neck he gave a ferocious grin, and stuck his
face, streaming with blood, against Epworth, at the same time jabbing
the American with his left. Epworth retaliated with a short hand jab
into the scientist’s stomach. Again the giant’s mighty left landed in
the American’s face. If he could not soon break loose from the
terrific embrace around the neck his face would be pounded to a jelly.

Bending his head he lifted his feet, permitting the giant to sustain
his weight for a fraction of moment, and doubling up slammed both feet
with all of his strength into Toplinsky’s abdomen. In order to sustain
his footing the giant held him up, and then slammed his terrible left
on his nose. The blood spurted out like a pump working but in
regaining his equilibrium Toplinsky slightly relieved the strangle
hold around the American’s neck. Taking the blow in his face, quick as
thought Epworth struck back with all of his strength, landing beneath
the giant’s chin. He had his mouth open at the time, and his tongue
was caught between his teeth.

It was not a severe blow but it caused Toplinsky to bite his tongue.
The pain was so severe that for a second he released his grip around
Epworth’s neck. Epworth slid out of the clinch, and feeble-footed
aside. He was sick and groggy from that awful left hand, and yet he
realized that if the man had been hammering him with his right instead
of his left the fight would have ended quickly.

Toplinsky, recognizing his advantage, rushed him, giving him no time
to recover from the shock of the clinch. Unable to strike Epworth
dodged. In this he was far superior to his enemy. Now he darted right
and left, and remained out of reach of those mighty arms. Thus he
began to regain his breath.

“Keep away from him, kid,” Billy howled. “Don’t try any more stunts.
Give him shots in the stomach.”

Epworth kept away for a time but he couldn’t knock a man out running
from him, and when he recovered somewhat he wheeled as if to run into
the giant, who was chasing him around in a circle. Toplinsky stopped
to throw up his guard, and envelop the American again with his great
arms. He failed. Epworth shot in two punches, and got away, although
he was sighing for a gong to sound to end a round.

But this was not a battle by rounds, and now a scheme entered his mind
to tire out the giant. Still dizzy and with his eye closing he began
to invite the giant to chase him. Toplinsky, foolishly thinking that
he was weakening, made repeated rushes. Epworth avoided them as if
weary and lacking energy.

The scientist’s admirers now sent up a whoop of triumph. It looked as
if the American was whipped.

Toplinsky chased until he began to blow slightly. This was what
Epworth was waiting for. Wheeling, while seeming to run away, he
charged into Toplinsky’s face. To the observer it looked as if he was
running into certain destruction. Billy was the first to groan; his
fellow countrymen followed. The colonists cheered.

Toplinsky smiled, showing his horse teeth in pleasant good humor. He
would catch this young American by the nape of the neck and crush the
life out of him. First, however, he would cover his face and protect
himself from the American’s blow.

It was a terrible mistake. Never before had Epworth driven a body blow
with such terrific force. He put all of his strength and the full
weight of his body, and landed in the giant’s stomach.

To the great astonishment of the observers Toplinsky staggered, and
before he could regain his footing Epworth landed another under his
chin, a fierce swipe. The last blow rolled the giant over. But he was
down for only a second. In getting up he ran into some angry punches
below the belt. They made him sick, weakened him, but he struck the
American angrily in the face, peeling the skin from beneath Epworth’s
eyes, and staggering him. Again the American got in his fast footwork,
backed away, and returned with another rush into the giant’s stomach.

Strong as he was this rush doubled Toplinsky again, and before he
could straighten up Epworth was hammering him from the left side below
the belt. With a mighty effort the giant closed his eyes to the pain,
and jabbed with all of his strength. Epworth caught the blow on his
chest, and struck the ground on his back. Behind it there was enough
power to knock down a horse.

With a shrill scream like a wild animal Toplinsky plunged at him.
Epworth had just enough energy to lift his foot and kick the rusher in
the stomach. The kick landed by accident in the exact spot where the
American’s fist had been hammering. Toplinsky stopped short, turned
white, and hunched over.

Hope swept again into Epworth’s heart, and with a bound he was on his
feet. Now he danced around Toplinsky like a bull fighter. Flashing in
and out, his swift blows were delivered into the unprotected part of
the giant’s anatomy, finding soft places. Twice he struck at the
giant’s face, closing both eyes. This however only served to give
Toplinsky some relief from his abdomen pains, and he rushed.

But Epworth was now going strong, and was wary.

He foot-worked, dodged in and out, and kept his enemy breathing hard.
Never for a second would he permit those giant hands to get to his
body or face. In and out, like a shadow, quick as a wink, he pounded
without getting anything in return, seeking the vulnerable spots.

With a sudden howl of anger Toplinsky dropped his guard, and sprang at
him. If he could just get his hands on this fleet-footed foe. If——

But he spent his energy in the rush, and Epworth was not there.
Instead he was delivering those aggravating blows at the solar plexus.
Toplinsky paused, whirled half around, and snarled like a wild animal.
It was an unfortunate thing for him to do. Epworth rushed him, sent a
powerful blow into the lower regions and before the giant could
straighten up, or attempt to defend himself he slammed him along the
side of his left ear, and rolled him over. It was the first time that
Toplinsky had been floored until he could not readily get to his feet.

Epworth saw his condition, and did not pause. Dropping on top of his
foe’s body, he pounded him on both sides of his abdomen with terrible
punches. He was getting a little weak himself, and realized that what
he did must be done quickly.

“Take him off!” Toplinsky gasped in terror. “Help! Quick, com——”

Epworth closed his mouth with a solar plexus blow that put him out.
Then he rose slowly and faced the arena. In front of him were over a
thousand frowning colonists, hard featured, cruel men, with guns in
their hands. They were eyeing him threateningly.

Joan saw the menacing glances, and cried out. She felt sure that these
maddened men would not do the fair thing by the brother who had fought
for her so gallantly—to the uttermost end of his strength. She also
feared for herself.

These men who did not hesitate to shoot down airships, and steal,
would shoot them later without mercy.




CHAPTER VIII

Billy Takes a Part


Six guards ran into the arena with a folding cot, and stretched
Toplinsky out comfortably on it. He groaned miserably, lay silent for
several moments, and then lifted his head on his elbow. In this
attitude he gazed threateningly at Epworth for several seconds without
speaking, his light blue eyes twinkling viciously.

“The woman is free,” he at last shrilled out. “I, the great Herman
Toplinsky have said, and it is so. But for him—that is another thing.
I have it. He has dodged about like a jack-in-the-box, he has run away
from me and would not fight where I could reach him with these strong
arms, he has pounded me in the softest parts of my anatomy when I
could not catch him. For that, ah, ha, he shall be whipped—whipped
until his back streams blood and he shouts aloud with pain, until his
head falls forward in a faint. Strap him up. I have said.”

With a deep groan he dropped back on the cot, lay on his back, for
several seconds, and then turned over so that he could view the
whipping.

“Oh, my! Oh, my! my stomach,” he half sobbed.

“How it hurts. Strap the rascal where I can see him wither and suffer.
I say that he shall suffer as I suffer.”

The six men jerked Epworth to a post in front of the giant and lashed
him face to the post, pulling down his tights so that his back was
exposed.

“Ah, ha, his back is smooth and white. I shall make it red and
striped, and then pour salt on it. Proceed, Kosloff, good comrade, and
spare not the rod.”

The man addressed as Kosloff, a big double-jointed man with a mean
countenance, seized a cat-o’-nine-tails, and began to whip Epworth
unmercifully on his back, each stroke cutting into the flesh and
leaving strips of red. Notwithstanding the fact that the pain was
excruciating Epworth clenched his teeth, and uttered not a sound.

“One, two, three, four, five, and fifteen,” roared the giant with
pleasure. “Make him howl if it takes two hundred. He’s a husky lad and
can stand a lot.”

“Hold! One more stroke and I’ll blow you to bits!”

Epworth twisted his head. He first caught a view of Joan with her face
buried in her hands, weeping hysterically; then his eyes flashed to
the rope, and he saw Billy standing inside with a gun frowning at
Kosloff. With a sudden dash he had grabbed a gun from one of the
guards and had covered the whipper before he could be stopped.

Kosloff stopped, and turned white. There was a note in the small
American’s voice that brooked no rebellion, and the gun pointed
menacingly.

“Go on,” Toplinsky snarled, “until I shout stop.”

“Let him have it, Billy,” twenty American throats shouted in unison.
“We are with you. Plug him between the eyes.”

“One more slash and he gets it,” Billy declared. “Go on, Kosloff, if
you have made your peace with God.”

“I’ll put you on bread and water,” Toplinsky threatened.

Kosloff held his whip undecidedly, and Billy stepped swiftly across
the intervening space and jabbed the gun against Toplinsky’s head.

“You’ve got nerve, Toplinsky,” he said with grudging admiration, “but
you are too healthy to be in a hurry to die, and I’m telling you that
you are mighty near death at this moment. I have been thinking mean
about you for the last hour and a half, and there is now going to be a
reckoning between us.”

Toplinsky, whose strength was coming back, sat up.

“Ah, ha, slave, do you talk of an agreement with your master?”

“Say, Whiskers, if you think I’m a slave you’ve got another think
coming. Right now you have a lot of men behind you but I’m holding the
trump card. If you do not come to my terms, and agree quickly, this
gun is going off. After that—well, you will not be interested in what
happens next.”

The grimness in the young aviator’s voice spoke volumes. The vast
crowd listened in silence.

“Yes,” he continued, “you are going to give an order that sticks. You
are going to say that there will be no more whippings in this camp.”

“What else?” Toplinsky sneered.

“And no killings.”

Toplinsky made an effort to stand up.

“Sit down!” Billy thundered. “This agreement is going to reach a
conclusion before you get up.”

“I will agree that there will be no more whippings,” Toplinsky said
quietly, “provided the work is done industriously. But the guards will
shoot the first American who makes a break for liberty. I have said.”

“I will not be unreasonable,” Billy returned slowly. “We will not ask
for freedom at this time but we must have fair treatment.”

“I will go no further than modify the regulations concerning
whippings,” Toplinsky declared firmly. “What I have said I have said.
Turn your gun over to one of the guards.”

With a sarcastic bow Billy obeyed. The act surprised Joan. She thought
that Billy had the advantage, and should force their release. But
Billy had saved Epworth from death, and Epworth and all the Americans
were well pleased with the result.

“Arrest that man!” Toplinsky screamed the moment Billy was disarmed.
“Put them together in the stocks and throw mud at them.” When they
were bound together and their feet thrust through an old-fashioned
stock that was dragged out, Toplinsky added slyly: “It may be
puritanical but I imagine that by the time my babies get through
playing with you, whippings will appear somewhat less painful.”

The mud was full of small sharp gravel and when it began to strike
their faces it left red smears. When Joan saw this she sprang off the
table, ran across the open space to where the two boys were fastened,
and threw herself in front of them as a protection from the gravel.

“Drag the wench back to her room,” Toplinsky called out with a loud,
shrill laugh, “and hold her there in the window where she can see
without being able to interfere.”

Epworth and Billy were finally taken out of the stocks in an
unconscious condition.




CHAPTER IX

Start to the Moon


Kosloff came into Joan’s room, and surveyed her with sneering eyes.

“Get ready! Quick! There is no time to lose. You are going with us.”

“Going with you? Where?”

Joan felt a sudden depression creep over her. Was this man going to
separate her from her brother?

“Ask the general, or wait and find out. I have my instructions.”

With another sneer Kosloff turned to the door, paused, and looked
back, and added:

“I am coming back in less than half an hour for you.”

“I must get word to Julian or Billy,” Joan gasped. “Where can they be
taking me? Once separated from my friends my life will be a constant
misery.”

She paused in her cogitations, and began to tremble. What could be
ahead of her? She did not find out, and threw herself across her bed.
She was still lying with her head buried in the bedspread when Kosloff
returned. This time he was accompanied by several guards, who were
none too polite. They lifted the girl in their arms, and carried her
aboard a large airship. While they were taking her up a steel-like
ladder Joan had an opportunity to observe the machine carefully. It
was the biggest thing she had ever seen in the way of an aircraft,
being eight hundred yards long, three hundred feet wide. In shape it
was an elongated cylinder, and she knew enough about modern metal to
discover that it was made of beryllium—a wonderful new material
impervious to heat or cold. The walls were hollow, and heavily armored
so that it was proof against the strongest shells. The openings were
sliding doors with an inner door of glass. Thus, when the outer door
was closed, the entire ship seemed compactly built without an opening.
It was propelled by rockets fired from long metal tubes located in the
bow, in the stern, and on both sides.

With rude hands her captors shoved her through an open door and along
a narrow companionway to a small cabin daintily and charmingly
furnished. Here they threw her on the floor and departed, slamming the
door behind them. The second they were gone she sprang to her feet.
When she tested the door she found that it had locked so that it would
be impossible to break out of the cabin. Then she began a search for a
window. There was none, and she ran around and around the small
chamber like a frightened rat without getting anywhere.

Presently she began to beat the walls with her clenched hands. She did
not expect to gain anything by this but it gave vent to her feelings.
In the rear of the room she accidentally struck a small round knob
with her thumb. The blow caused a secret panel to slide back and
expose an opening about eight inches square. The opening was above her
head but she found a stool and climbed up on it.

Her eyes took in a large warehouse-like room full of boxes and
supplies piled from the floor to the ceiling, and extending three
hundred feet toward the rear of the airship. Her mental comment was to
the effect that it was a mammoth apartment, and that it held supplies
enough to care for an army for several months.

But the most interesting part of the room that confronted her were the
men who were loading the airship. There were only three people in the
warehouse department, and two of them were Julian Epworth and Billy
Sand. They were being herded around by a single guard who talked to
them amiably and in a friendly manner.

Fortunately as she looked through the opening they passed very near,
and the guard lagged.

“Julian! Billy!” she whispered softly. “I have been locked up in this
place. Can’t you get me out?”

Epworth heard her but for some time he could not locate her. When he
did, the guard was hurrying them away. Joan saw them disappear behind
some boxes, and imagining that they had not heard her, allowed despair
to fill her soul. With a deep moan she sank on a couch near by and
buried her face in her hands, leaving the panel open slightly but held
firm by the spring. She thought that she was deserted, and her eyes
filled with tears.

Epworth, however, had no idea of deserting her. The second he heard
her voice he knew that she was entrapped on the airship and that he
must devise some scheme to save her. With this end in view, he dragged
slowly back of the guard. Billy, noticing this, fell behind to talk to
him.

“Where do you suppose this ship is going?” Billy asked indolently as
he lowered his last burden to the floor. “She seems to be loading up
for a trip around the world.”

“Worse than that,” the guard called out in an undertone. “That mighty
scientist, Herman Toplinsky, is going to try to go to the moon, and,
unfortunately, I have been detailed to go with the crew.”

“Say, sonny,” Billy exclaimed enthusiastically, “that sounds good to
me. I don’t care if he never gets back. Snap up, Epworth. We may find
a chance to break away while he is speeding along the interplanetary
ways.”

“I’m thinking of going with him,” Epworth whispered. “He is kidnaping
Joan, and taking her with him.”

Billy gulped.

“How’d you find out?”

“Get a move on you, slow boys!” the guard called out. “It is about
time you were leaving the ship.”

As he spoke he turned his back carelessly on the two Americans.
Epworth glanced at Billy; Billy nodded his head. Both edged up softly
toward the guard.

“Out you go,” the guard shouted again. “Drop down and I will stay on
top until she starts.”

With two bounds Epworth and Billy were on him. He was attacked
unexpectedly and before he recovered the two had him on the floor of
the airship, and his own gun sticking in his face.

“Not a word!” Epworth hissed.

“Not even a squeak,” Billy added.

The guard grinned up into their faces. It was a good natured smile and
half disarmed them.

“I do not get the idea,” he said in a low voice. “Are you two
contemplating a trip to the moon as a pleasure jaunt? If you hold me
here ten minutes you will be on your way.”

“We couldn’t part with you, Michael,” Billy lisped. “No indeed. We
love you too well.”

“We have known you long enough, Michael,” Epworth explained, “to know
that you are a good sort, and I will tell you what we are doing. My
sister has been put aboard this airship, and is now a prisoner in the
room adjoining the wareroom. We are staying to see that she is not
mistreated.”

“Toplinsky is a dirty scrub,” Michael burst out, angrily “and his
people would not stand for this—not after he had given his word.
Anyway I am not going to stand for it. Let me up—I am with you. I’ll
drop aboard and leave here, and get together a bunch of men who will
force Toplinsky to leave the girl here. I am sure——”

The airship trembled from stem to stem, a muffled explosion was heard
on the outside; there came a sudden upward jerk, and then a smooth,
even motion of acceleration.

“Too late,” Michael groaned nervously. “We are off, and Toplinsky will
boss you for several years longer unless we are lost in space.” He
paused and added. “Do you know, Americans,” he spoke very plain
English, “that I have always thought that man was crazy. He may have
been hitting the moon with his cylinder projectiles but I’ve always
doubted it, and I don’t feel good starting out to explore space. It
gives me the shakes.”

“Were it not for the fact that my sister is aboard this plane I would
feel the same way,” Epworth said. “But with her future unsettled I am
not thinking of what is in front of me.”




CHAPTER X

Toplinsky Calls the Bluff


The two Americans released Michael, and when he got to his feet the
three stood gazing at each other in silence for several moments.
Presently the air began to get extremely cold.

“S-say, fellows,” Billy grated with his lips trembling, “I don’t like
this. If the weather continues like this much longer I’ll become a
little snowball.”

Michael bounded up and slammed the hatch down. The atmosphere became
slightly warmer.

“We can’t stay in here,” he asserted presently. “This part of the
airship is not connected with the oxygen tanks, and we must have air
to live.”

He again opened the hatch and looked out. Epworth crowded up to him.
Overhead was space, all around them was space, and they were traveling
at a speed that took their breath. When they searched for a view of
the earth it was not to be seen, as the body of the airship obscured
it.

“We will try to get out and get into the other part of the ship,”
Epworth suggested.

“And Toplinsky will land on me for letting you and your companion come
aboard.”

Michael closed the hatch part way.

“Besides,” he added, “how will you pass that first hatch opening. If
you will look but again you will see Toplinsky standing with his head
out and an air helmet over his head. For some reason he is on the look
out.”

This time he let the hatch down softly and closed it firmly.

“We will fix you up with Toplinsky,” Epworth proposed. “We will tie
you up, then go below and inform Toplinsky that we made you a
prisoner.”

“Sounds fine, but it won’t work. Toplinsky will give me a beating for
getting where you could put your hands on me.”

The three men put their heads together. It was now getting terribly
cold, and for the first time they discovered that breathing was
painful.

“We’ve got to do something—and do it quick,” Billy asserted anxiously.
“I’m getting——”

He collapsed. Michael extended his hand to help him, and also
stumbled.

Like lightning Epworth acted. Grasping Billy by the collar in one hand
and Michael in the other he pulled them up to the point in the
warehouse where the panel opened into the chamber Joan was occupying,
and drawing a box up put them in a position where they could get a
breath of air through the hole. It was only a breath but he had
reasoned that Toplinsky would not put his sister where she would die
for want of atmosphere, and now found that he had reasoned correctly.
They could barely thrust a portion of their faces toward the hole. It
was not large enough for all three to get air, and heroically he
pushed his companions forward.

               *       *       *       *       *

Joan, stretched on her couch sobbing, heard a tap on the panel that
separated her compartment from the storeroom. Curiously she got up and
pushed back the panel. In front of her was Billy’s face and the face
of a guard. Both were chattering with cold.

“O-open the panel full out,” Billy choked. “We are dying for want of
air.”

“Mercy!” Joan ejaculated with infinite relief. “I thought you had left
the airship. Where is Julian?”

Billy shoved his head aside from the blessed air hole and caught
Epworth. He was just in time to keep his companion from falling.

“Here he is,” he replied. “Get your face away from the panel so we can
all get a breath of that air. This compartment is shut off from the
air tanks and we will soon die if we get away from this hole.”

However all three men soon revived, and pulled boxes up to the air
panel to stand on.

“We can’t stand here all our lives,” Billy grumbled. “My legs are
getting tired already.”

“Open your door and call some one,” Epworth instructed.

“It is locked,” Joan replied. “I have——”

The door opened and Herman Toplinsky stepped in.

“Ah, ha, ho, ho, it is a great voyage—a magnificent start.” Toplinsky
closed the door carefully. “Indeed a wonderful trip is ahead of us. We
leave the earth at a speed of six hundred miles an hour with our
liquid rockets working admirably. Fair Joan, do you know where we are
going?”

Joan was breathless with the fear that Toplinsky would discover
Epworth and Billy at the panel, but when she replied her voice was
cold and hard. At least she could put this man in his place.

“I haven’t the least idea, and my name—well, my name is a good name
and I am not ashamed of it. It is Miss Joan Epworth to you, sir.”

“Ah ha, ho, ho, high hatty—somewhat ritzy. Well, Miss Joan, we are on
the way to the moon. By the time we get there I am of the opinion that
you will be pleased to hear me call you Joan. This is our initial
trip—the first out—and I could not forego myself the pleasure of
seeing your beautiful face during the journey. In fact I am crazy
about you. Presently—ah, ha, we shall see what we shall see.”

There was a treacherous threat in the words that caused the girl to
grow cold and hot by turns. The words meant more than death to her.

“And how about that agreement with me?”

Toplinsky, startled with surprise, looked up at the panel. Epworth was
gazing at him with blazing eyes over the blue barrel of a gun.

“Ah, ha, ho, ho.” The giant was not in the least disconcerted. “Our
bantam fighter—our fast foot runner. Now I wonder how you got in
there? But that is a matter of indifference. Long before we get to the
moon you will be frozen into an Eskimo pie. It suits me well. I think
that I shall move this young lady into another apartment, and seal
this one. We can get along very well this trip without this room. Of
course——.” He paused as if thinking deeply, and an ugly sneer appeared
on his mouth. “Yes, I really believe that such an act would prevent
any air from getting back into the store room.”

The cool, devilish ingenuity of the man was appalling.

“Y-y-you mean that you will let these men die in there for lack of
breathing air?”

Joan’s face was deathly white as she asked this question.

“I didn’t tell them to go in there,” the giant apologized with
asperity. “Probably they were trying to hitch-hike a ride with us,
thinking that we were going to some other part of the world, and got
caught in their own trap. Why should I trouble myself about them? If
they die I assure you that decomposition will not commence during the
trip to the moon. The frigid air will act like a refrigeration
process, and preserve their bodies from offensive smells. We can dump
them out when we get to the moon. Their carcasses will make good
fertilizer.”

“Toplinsky, I confess that I do not get you.” Epworth spoke calmly. “I
do not understand your actions concerning Joan. You gave me your word,
and I thought that your word would stick.”

“I do stick to my word,” Toplinsky shrilled in intense anger. “The man
who says that Herman Toplinsky is not a man of his word is a liar—a
double-dyed liar by the town clock.”

“And yet my sister is here—kidnaped.”

“Just so.” The giant smiled broadly. “Still I have not broken my word.
I did not promise you that I would not take her with me to the moon. I
did not tell you that I would cut her off my visiting list. On the
contrary I have seen to it that she was treated like a great lady. She
has been given every comfort, and I intend to see that she is treated
with distinguished courtesy on this trip.”

He showed his teeth aggravatingly.

“Sounds fishy but you are going to put that down in writing. You are
going to sign a written agreement that she shall not be harmed or
insulted, and you are going to agree that we can go along to see that
you keep your word. With me is my chum, Billy Sand, and the guard you
put over us. These two are also going with you. I will add, in justice
to the guard, that we knocked him down and took his gun away from him,
making him a prisoner.”

“Really, my dear fellow, I am seriously afflicted with writer’s
cramp.” Toplinsky spoke politely. “I cannot put such an agreement in
writing. It would be very painful to me to have to write it.”

“We may never leave this store room alive,” Epworth said
threateningly, and it was evident that he meant what he said, “but as
sure as fate if you do not put that agreement in writing I shall shoot
you. One explosion will be all that will be necessary.”

The giant did not seem to be frightened. Quite the contrary. He
replied very quietly.

“Quite a marksman, eh?” Toplinsky’s smile was sneeringly cold and
mocking. “Do you know what will happen if I am killed? I hope I may
not seem pedantic if I modestly explain. I am the only person aboard
the Aerolite who can pilot it back to the earth, or to the moon. If
you shoot me, all on board will be lost in space. It is hardly
necessary to inform you that the moon does not stand still. It is
moving now in three ways. First it is rotating once every sixteen
hours on its axis; second it is moving around the world once every
twenty-eight days; third it is traveling through space in a giant
circle with the earth around the sun, making the circle once in three
hundred and sixty-five days. Off-hand I would suggest that these three
statements alone, especially numbers two and three, present to you, an
expert air navigator, something of a problem in the way of making the
moon a landing spot.”

He paused and grinned broadly, seeing a look of dismay appear on the
American’s face.

“Yes,” he continued pleasantly and in an academic manner, “the moon
moves 0633 miles each second—double the velocity of a cannon ball, and
add to this the encircling movement of one thousand miles an hour
around the sun, we have a decided mathematical calculation in
navigation—especially as our little ship is at present only making six
hundred miles an hour. Perhaps, a little later on we may get up to
eight hundred. But, my dear fellow, do I see you, even at a speed of
eight hundred miles an hour, overtaking the moon? I pause for a
scientific response.”

Epworth was obviously upset, and his hand trembled on the trigger.

“Toplinsky, it is all I can do to keep from killing you this instant.”

“If you really wish to see your sister live——. Well to be just a
little slangy, you will draw in your horns. Kill me and you also kill
her and the crew.”

“And you will leave my brother and his companions in there without air
to breathe?” Joan demanded heatedly.

“My dear young lady, really, we have no air to spare.” Toplinsky
lifted the palms of his hands outward, and shook his head. “We
manufacture our air with chemicals, and the supply is limited. In
making my preparations to visit the moon I did not anticipate the
presence of guests in a compartment where no air is needed. Our air is
confined entirely to the living-parts of the ship. Yours is the last
compartment supplied with air. There is no sense in wasting air and
running machinery for fun.”

Again he opened his hands expansively, and showed his horse teeth
apologetically.

“And—and——”

“So there you are,” he finished.

Epworth lowered his gun.

“Toplinsky, you win. I cannot endanger the lives of all the people
aboard this airship.”

The giant grinned good humoredly. He had been very close to death, and
he realized that his escape had been narrow.

“Don’t kill them that way,” Joan moaned. “I shall not give you any
trouble. I——”

“Joan, that is enough!” Epworth hissed. “You are going to obey me, and
you are going to stay right in this room during the entire trip—stay
where I can keep my eyes on you.”

“Where you can keep your eyes on her, ha, ha!”

Toplinsky smiled crookedly.




CHAPTER XI

Tables Turned and No Eats


With a cautious movement that did not attract Toplinsky’s attention
Billy Sand touched Epworth on the shoulder.

“The hatches may be closed but not locked,” he suggested in a whisper.
“Perhaps we can get out on the top of the old crate, and find a way to
get inside of the airchambers.”

Epworth dropped down as silently as possible from the air hole. The
second he was away from the hole, Toplinsky popped up, and slammed the
panel shut.

“Ah, ha, my young cockerel,” they heard him exclaim exultantly, “I
guess that will fix you. I have not promised that I would save your
life when it was in jeopardy. True I have said that I would not kill
you. While this was under durance I shall stick up to it. However I am
not responsible for the temperature of space. You should have remained
where you belong.”

They heard him cackling shrilly but without pausing to hear more,
accompanied by Michael, who had informed them that his last name was
Strauss, they ran hurriedly to the hatch, pushing it open.

“Lady Luck,” Epworth exclaimed as he stepped out on the top of the
airship. “Not a living object in view, but——”

He was going to speak of the force of the wind but realized with
surprise that there was no wind. They were already beyond the earth’s
stratosphere.

They climbed out of the storeroom, dropped the hatch door into place,
and started to walk along the narrow runway over the top of the plane.
Epworth, who was in the lead, glanced outward.

Six hundred miles an hour, and no place to fall. In every direction
extended a dense black sky, lighted by gleaming balls of red that he
knew were stars and the sun—nothing above, nothing below, and on each
side endless ether. If they fell off this ship going with incredible
swiftness, where would they go? They were now too far away from the
earth to fall back on the terrestrial globe, and even if the gravital
drag of the earth grasped them they would be frozen stiff before they
got there, or shattered into fragments if they landed. It was a cold,
clammy, helpless feeling. Once off that ship they would go nowhere;
they would find death in endless space, where it is supposed to be
439° below zero.

Aside from this they realized that they had very few minutes to spare.
They must get below into the air chambers very quickly or perish with
cold, or in the rare atmospheric void.

All three were suddenly afflicted with vertigo, and began to reel
along dangerously near the edges of the little platform-run. Realizing
that this was certain destruction, they gained control of their
faculties by sheer force of will power, and holding their breath
dashed up to the first hatchway, and pulled at the ring.

It was locked on the inside, and therefore immovable.

For a second Epworth was appalled. Had Toplinsky beaten him to the
idea of escape? If so they were doomed. Already it was too late for
them to run back to the storeroom hatch opening. They were too far
spent to undertake it.

Had they simply jumped from one death to another in leaving the
storeroom? Epworth shivered at the thought—with cold as well as the
fear of death. For the first time he thought of his body floating
through space, embalmed in ice.

Then gathering his courage he ran on to the next hatch opening. By
this time he had discovered that the openings in the top of the
airship were four in number and about equal distances apart.

Glory be! The hatch door was locked but a small, slender stairway ran
down the side of the ship to a side door. Like a monkey he flashed
down this stairway followed by his companions. They dropped onto a
small square platform, and Epworth caught the bright knob of the door.
If it was locked they were as good as dead men. They were still
holding their breath, and life hung by a hair.

He jerked at the door nervously. It slid open, and he darted in
instantly. As his companions came down the ladder he caught each
frantically and pulled him inside, closing the door.

With one motion the three opened their mouths, and gulped down the
living, warm air. They were all but gone, and it required several
seconds for them to recover.

They were treading softly down the narrow companionway when a door
opened and Toplinsky came out of Joan’s room.

“By this time,” he was saying, “that young brother of yours is dead,
and I am going to change your place of abode.”

He extended his hand to pull the girl out of the room.

“I’m not going. I’m going to stay here, and get that panel open so my
brother can get air.”

She jerked back, and the giant put forth some force to move her.

Epworth bounded forward with fierce anger, and before the giant could
turn brought the butt of his gun down on the giant’s head.

“Get inside, and lock the door,” he urged. “Make it snappy—before some
one else drifts along.”

“Not by myself,” Joan protested quickly, sensing that in some
miraculous manner Epworth and his friend had escaped death in the
storeroom. “You and Billy must come in also.”

“Michael Strauss, the guard who is with us, must also come.”

“Just as you say.”

“In with you, Billy.”

Billy and Michael entered the room while Epworth guarded Toplinsky
with his gun. Just as Michael disappeared Toplinsky came around. He
had been knocked a little silly but was not totally out—just enough to
permit Billy and Michael to get into Joan’s room without being
discovered.

“Not a move! Not a whimper!” Epworth thundered when he discovered that
Toplinsky was coming back to the world. “There is not going to be a
loud noise.”

“Ah, ha, so you would threaten again,” Toplinsky shouted. “Ho,
comrades, this way.”

The scientist was demonstrating that he was a man without fear.

Epworth did not wait for the guards to appear, and from natural kind
heartedness did not strike the giant with the gun. Instead he slipped
into Joan’s room, and slammed and locked the door.

“So far so good,” he murmured. “Now if they do not shut off the supply
of air.”

“If he does that,” Michael explained, “we can knock a hole in the
door, and get air from the outside. The ship is constructed so that
the air is always inside of the companionway.”

“Fine and dandy,” Billy grinned in high good humor. “We are all
dressed up and on our way.”

“On our way,” Joan interposed, “but while we are traveling what will
we eat? I am already hungry.”

The three Americans looked at each other in dismay.




CHAPTER XII

Toplinsky Grinned Slyly to Himself


Without speaking his thoughts, Michael stepped to the side of the
room, and shoved a hidden panel aside, exposing to the view of his
companions a small room containing a lavatory and supplies. Thrusting
a plug in the white bowl he turned on a faucet and filled the bowl
with water.

“I did that,” he explained, “as a precaution in case the general turns
the water supply off of this apartment. It would necessitate
considerable work and a general overhauling but it is possible to stop
the water. With this bowl full we will have enough to drink until we
get to the moon—provided, of course, Toplinsky gets there in the time
he has allowed for the trip. But as for eats I am afraid that we will
have to get outside occasionally. My brother is the cook, and if I
could get out to the kitchen we could get a supply of edibles without
Toplinsky getting much too wise.”

Epworth tiptoed to the door of the companionway, opened it slyly, and
peeped out. A guard was standing in front of the entrance with a gun
in his hand. Toplinsky had disappeared.

“We will be watched constantly,” he explained, as he closed the door
softly. “There is a man out there with a gun on the door.”

He spoke despondently.

“Not so bad,” Michael said thoughtfully. “Probably he does not know
that Michael Strauss is in bad with the general. If I step out there
he may think that I have been placed inside as a guard, and I can get
a chance to knock him out.”

Epworth gave this idea consideration for some time. Finally he smiled.

“Did Toplinsky know that you were guarding us in the storeroom?”

“If he did it was an accident. He seldom pays attention to such small
details. I was sent in by Kosloff.”

“Fine. I see how we can eel out of this. You can go out, and talk to
the guard. While you are talking Billy and I will slip out and help
you knock him out; then we will drag him in here, put him in the
closet, and you can take his place. Toplinsky will not know that there
has been a change of guards, and will think that he is the man we
knocked out in the beginning.”

“Sounds easy.”

Michael nonchalantly opened the door, and slid out into the
companionway. Immediately the guard threw a gun down on him.

“You can’t come out here,” the guard snarled in a surly way. “The
general instructed me to let no one pass.”

“I’m not trying to pass,” Michael protested carelessly, “but I’m fed
up with guarding that bunch inside. How would you like to exchange
places?”

“Not me. I’m staying where the general put me.”

Michael carelessly stepped up to the guard.

“Got a cigarette?”

“Cigarette.” The guard smacked his lips. “I’m crazy for one but you’ve
got your crust asking for one. The general says that we are liable to
blow up the ship, as it is full of hydrogen gas. In fact, if he should
catch you smoking I’d hate to be in your shoes.”

Michael leaned negligently against the wall, and the guard lowered his
gun and turned half around. He was startled by a noise at the door. He
whirled but was too late. Epworth and Billy landed on his back like a
pile of brick, and Epworth’s hand closed over his mouth and throat.

Struggling fiercely the guard dropped his gun. Michael picked it up
with a chuckle, and slammed him on the head. The blow partially
stunned him and Epworth and Billy dragged him into Joan’s room, and
with a bedspread stripped into cords bound him. The second they
released his throat he sent up a loud shout for help.

“Take it easy,” Epworth advised, shoving the gun against his side. “If
there is any talking to be done Michael will do it.”

Michael did. Toplinsky heard the shouts and came running. When he got
to Joan’s room he found Michael on the outside acting as the guard.

“What is the matter here?” the general demanded harshly.

Michael saluted.

“They must be killing our comrade in there,” he responded somewhat
indifferently. “He has been howling loud enough to raise the dead.”

“Why do you not look inside?”

“You told me to stay here, and let no one come out,” Michael answered
stupidly. “I’m doing it.”

“Pig! All of you are pigs,” Toplinsky blustered. “I meant, of course,
for you to exercise some judgment.”

The giant turned the door knob and pushed. The door was fastened
tightly on the inside with a bolt but he heard a loud sputtering that
Epworth choked off quickly.

“Shut up!” Epworth roared. “I’ll choke the life out of you.”

“What are you doing to my comrade in there?” Toplinsky demanded. “I——”

“Just choking him a little,” Epworth responded amiably. “Of course you
do not mind a little thing like that. It hasn’t been two hours since
you left him in the storeroom to die. However, if he obeys me he will
not be hurt. I am only making a good fellow out of him.”

“Ah, ha, let it be so.” Toplinsky turned away. “He deserves some
punishment for falling into your hands.”

“Shall we leave our comrade in there without anything to eat?” Michael
asked innocently.

Toplinsky stopped short.

“We will have to feed them,” he replied thoughtfully. “I could not
think of leaving him there without food—or the girl either. As for the
two Americans—well we cannot feed our comrade and the girl without
feeding them, so when the dinner hour arrives you may instruct the
cook to bring them something to eat.”

Michael saluted and turned his face away to grin. Toplinsky strode
away angrily. He would fix the two Americans, he promised himself—fix
them plenty—when he got to the moon. They were prisoners aboard the
Aerolite, and he would find some method of disposing of them if they
undertook to leave the ship.

He grinned slyly to himself.

But he would have to dispose of them carefully. It would not do to
break his promise. No indeed. He must stand by his promises or his men
would go back on him. He couldn’t afford to allow this.

His method of eliminating that upstart Epworth must necessarily be
unique. But he mentally promised himself that it would be certain.




CHAPTER XIII

The Landing


A sudden burst of light, stronger than the meridian sun, flashed into
Epworth’s face, causing him to jump excitedly.

“Holy smoke!” he exclaimed. “Is the ship on fire?”

“The general is throwing open all the windows,” Michael Strauss
replied from outside of the door. “We are approaching the moon. Come
out and peep through a windowpane. It is safe. The crew is busy at the
far end.”

Epworth slipped out of Joan’s cabin into the companionway. From where
Michael stood they could see out and downward. Far below him Epworth
saw a rounding world, full of deep pits, enormous craters, steep
mountains. For several moments he gazed at it in silence and awe, and
then his mind flashed back to a previous air ride he had taken. This
was almost exactly like flying over Mount Vesuvius.

He was still standing at the window gazing downward when Joan and
Billy joined him.

“That prisoner in there,” Billy observed. “What are we going to do
with him if we make a landing? From what I see we are about ready to
drop.”

They shot suddenly across a range of high mountains and came to a long
level stretch of shimmering white.

“If a landing is made we will have to tie him up and——”

Epworth had not completed his sentence when the Aerolite dropped
downward and landed as light as a feather. When he turned to look out
again he discovered that they were located on the peak of a high
mountain that sheered off almost straight down for ten thousand feet
to a long level stretch of land composed of brownish colored soil.
This stretch of land sloped gradually eastward. Remembering that east
was west and west was east on the moon, Epworth tried to establish the
point of landing from his knowledge of the surface of the moon as
outlined by Flammarion. The moon, he knew, was now full, and the
entire surface was flashed with sunlight—that is the portion that
faced the earth.

But, to his astonishment, they were not landing in the light of the
sun.

When the ship came to a stop and he was able to get a better view of
their surroundings he discovered that they were surrounded by a dim
reflected light that came from the east. On the west the darkness was
steadily deepening. While he was still watching the darkness in
wonder, the colonists began to pour out of the ship onto the moon.

They looked strange—not at all like men—and Epworth gasped slightly as
he recognized the fact that they were encased in air helmets, and wore
heavy iron shoes to maintain a balance on the light gravity of the
small globe.

The moment they landed the men began to unload sheets of metal
silvered into giant reflectors.

“W-w-what are they going to do?” Joan gasped in astonishment. “Why all
those sheets of silvered metal?”

“That Toplinsky is a deep man,” Michael responded in awe. “He has
never been on the moon before, but he has a great scheme to make it
inhabitable by men. That silvered metal, when completed, and erected,
will be his first moon mirror. If you notice it is to be erected on a
particular point of this mountain—just beyond the part visible from
the earth. For fourteen days the sun will be reflected directly toward
the earth, and then the rays will move further westward, finally
presenting only a dark sphere to the earth. This results, Toplinsky
says, in the establishment of a line on the moon which is always
lighted by the appearance of the sun in the distance. This line
travels into the sunlight and retains the light of the sun while the
face of the moon fronting the earth is dark. Thus, at a point only
several miles removed, when the sun disappears from the Sea of
Vapours, we will say, it touches the mountain system on the west and
remains there until the moon’s movements shift it back again.
Toplinsky’s scheme is simple. He intends to locate mirrors on that
line, catch the light of the sun as it disappears from the part facing
the earth, and reflect its heat down into the valley. With the heat
naturally will come the reflected light. In this manner he will build
solar heaters to overcome the cold and darkness of the long night.
Naturally he will locate his colony close to the mountain where it
will be near the solar heaters.”

Hardly had Michael finished his explanation when some of the colonists
re-entered the airship, and started the machinery. Again they lifted
in the air. But they were not up long. For ten minutes they sailed
over a dark line where the rocks showed beneath them rugged and
mountainous, and then they flitted like a long silent streak across
the line of darkness into a brilliant sunlight. Here Toplinsky dropped
the airship quickly to the ground, and presently they landed in a
small, narrow valley on the bank of a lake half a mile in diameter.

“That is some more of Toplinsky’s work,” Michael explained. “He made
that lake by shooting rockets filled with water from the Arctic Ocean.
The rockets also contained liquid air and enough hydrogen and oxygen
to protect the water from evaporation.”

Epworth sauntered down the companionway, and peeped out of the door.
The colonists were again leaving the ship, protected by their air
helmets.

“Does he expect to find hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and other elements
here?” Joan asked.

“He left orders for the men behind to continue to shoot the rockets
filled with chemicals at a certain spot, gradually drawing eastward so
as to enlarge the lake.”

“It is light enough here,” Epworth observed, “but I perceive that
Toplinsky has landed in a spot where the country is shaded for ten
miles by the high mountain on which he left his mirrors. That mountain
must be six miles high.”

“Another part of his colonizing scheme,” Michael explained. “He thinks
that if men can be protected from the rays of the sun the heat will
not be unbearable during the long day.”

“I see.” Epworth was considerably astonished at the giant’s scientific
ideas. “The shadow of the mountain will certainly moderate the heat,
but I am yet to be convinced that he can generate enough heat with his
mirrors and solar heaters to warm up the valley during the long
night.”

“Leave it to him. See that long strip of light?”

Michael pointed to a narrow slit of sunlight that suddenly shot down
from the top of the mountain. It came straight down like a ladder,
piercing the darkness of its source and dropping down in brilliant
coruscations on the rugged rocks on the west end of the little lake,
and sweeping swiftly over the level stretch of land between the
mountain and the lake. It brought brilliant light and heat.

“I’m for getting out of here,” Billy put in.

“Fine,” Epworth replied scathingly, “but how are you going to live out
there? The colonists are wearing air helmets, and that indicates to us
that if we undertake to leave the Aerolite we must find some way to
store oxygen over our own heads.”

“There are air helmets in the storeroom,” Michael suggested, “and an
oxygen tank in the cook room. Perhaps——”

But without waiting for a command from Epworth, he sped down the
companionway into the kitchen. When he came back he was carrying three
air helmets.

“Here you are,” he said energetically. “I found them hanging near the
kitchen oxygen tank, and of course filled them so that you can use
them.”

“But, how will we refill them after we exhaust the supply now
imprisoned in them?” Epworth protested. “I——”

“I brought along a recharger, and——”

“Even so, one recharge will not last us long.”

“Perhaps we may not need them after all,” Joan suggested. “The
colonists are taking them off their heads.”

Epworth opened the window cautiously and stuck his head out.

“There is atmosphere here,” he observed slowly, “but it is exceedingly
thin.”

“It is not half as thin as these air helmets promise to become,” Billy
snorted, “and I think I can explain it. The astronomers on the earth
cannot see deep into these craters. They see only the tops of the
mountains, and the atmosphere has done the same as it does on the
earth—sought the lower levels, being pressed down from above and
gathering density in the holes and caves.”

“That being the case right here we separate from Toplinsky,” Epworth
decided quickly. “If we wait he will put a watch over the ship, and
cut off our escape.”

“You say that Toplinsky has been shooting liquid air, oxygen, nitrogen
and hydrogen up here?”

Joan put the question to Michael as if she had just heard this, and
Epworth looked at her in surprise.

“Of course,” Epworth answered, taking the words out of Michael’s
mouth. “That has been gone over half a dozen times.”

“True, but a new idea has just struck me. Perhaps the liquid air and
all the other ingredients that make air, which Toplinsky shot up here,
made good breathing air when the explosions occurred and that enough
have been unloaded from the earth to create a small air circle at this
point.”

“Such atmosphere would be held down at this point by the pressure from
above,” Epworth agreed, “and remain in natural form.”

“If my theory proves true,” Joan continued, “we can breathe only when
we are near the lake.”

“Be that as it may, we will go out and see how we get along but be
sure to hold on to your air helmets.”

Locking the prisoner inside of the small cabin the three Americans
moved softly down the companionway toward the kitchen. On the way they
caught a glimpse of Toplinsky and his men standing in a circle, with
their air helmets in their hands, while several of the company were
turning up the soil with shovels for Toplinsky to examine. The
scientist was doing this carefully, and Epworth could not restrain a
thought of admiration. The man was certainly a thorough scientist, and
in his scheme to make the moon inhabitable he would be sure to plant
vegetation that would grow prolifically.

Michael had informed them that there was a companionway beyond the
kitchen which would lead them to the opposite side of the ship, and
they had been thoughtful enough to get instructions that would enable
them to locate it. When they arrived at the kitchen they found it
deserted, the entire outfit having rushed to see the landing, and with
very little trouble they gained the companionway. But when they came
to the door that opened out on the small balcony on the opposite side
they found it locked.

For several moments the two men were puzzled. Epworth fumbled at the
lock without result, and then Billy took his place. Billy, being a
mechanic of great ability, used the blade of his knife and after
working for some time forced the bolt back, and pulled the door
inward. With beating hearts they ran down the ladder and stepped upon
terra firma.

Here they paused for a brief consultation. They were hidden from
Toplinsky’s men by the airship but it was evident that if they escaped
they would have to run for it in the open. The nearest protection
consisted of a range of small mountains on the south. There were other
mountains on the north but these were too far away, although they were
taller and more promising as a hiding place. Both ranges appeared
rocky and rugged, treeless and desolate. In front of the Aerolite,
stretching as far as the eye could reach was a pitted desert of white
ashy sand dunes; behind the machine was the newly made lake which
rippled softly on a nearby beach; beyond this the mountain with the
solar heat.

“We will have to try the southern mountains,” Epworth said briefly,
“and run like scared rabbits. It is lucky, Joan, that you are wearing
short skirts.”

“Let us scatter,” Billy proposed, “and meet at that large rock which
is projecting over that lower mountain.”

“Not me,” Joan objected quickly. “I’m staying close to Julian. I might
need his strong right arm.”

“Then all together.”

They kept the Aerolite between them and their enemies as long as
possible, and then broke into a run.

Their attempt to run was at first ludicrous. Being used to the gravity
drag of the earth they put forward all their efforts in taking long
quick steps. Instead of steps these muscular movements proved to be
jumps, and they moved like Jack in the Magic Boots, covering about
thirty yards in a single step, and jerking their legs up ludicrously
when they took the next step. In fact, after getting off the ground it
took an effort to put their feet back.

Joan immediately tumbled over, laughing somewhat fearfully.

“This will not do,” she exclaimed anxiously, as she fell the second
time. “I can’t run. Let us walk.”

Epworth, the second step he took, discovered the situation, and was
moving in accordance with what he thought a moon action should be. It
was not perfect but it kept him from falling and was a rapid mode of
advance. He now stopped and gave them instructions in the way he
thought they should move. While he was doing this Toplinsky came
around the side of the Aerolite and discovered them. At the time they
were probably about twelve hundred feet distant.

“Ah, ha, they run,” he shrilled in that sharp voice they had learned
to dread. “Our guests are wearying of their entertainment. They would
leave us without bidding us farewell. Atta, boys, up and after them!”

He started on a big run for the Americans. Epworth expected to see him
fly up and turn over but the giant was too scientific-wise. He came on
with a hop-skip-and-jump that seemed to make him fairly skim over the
ground.

“A regular flying squirrel,” Billy grunted, “and dangerous as a
snake.”

Toplinsky landed in front of Epworth with a broad grin.

“Ah, ha, ho, ho, my bantam American pugilist, we meet again, and on
different footing. This time we shall fight in the same way, but with
different results. Then I shall be freed of my promise.”

He stared savagely for several seconds into the American’s face, and
then leaning forward, with his little eyes twinkling, he aimed an ugly
blow at Epworth’s head. The American attempted to dodge it but the
difference in the gravity pull made him clumsy and he half-floated to
one side, the blow striking him on the chest, spinning him around and
rolling him forty feet.

“Run, Joan,” he shouted. “Make for the mountains. I can’t fight here.
Billy will take care of you while I hold this great brute.”

He scrambled to his feet as Toplinsky tore down on him.

“Shall I shoot him?” Billy asked softly.

“And stay on the moon all the rest of your life?” Toplinsky shrilled.
“Shoot, will you? Shoot! I’m the only man who can take this expedition
back to the earth.”

He stopped, tore open his shirt and exposed his hairy chest.

“Run,” Epworth urged. “Keep your cartridges as long as possible. I
will attend to this gentleman.”

Without waiting to see what Billy did, Epworth squatted, sprang
forward, and threw his arms around Toplinsky’s legs, jerking at them
with all his strength. The result was exceedingly funny.

Toplinsky threw out both hands, waved them wildly, and attempted to
fasten himself down with his powerful leg muscles. But this time light
gravity aided the American, and he was able to shove the giant’s feet
from under him. For a second Toplinsky was a bundle of flying arms and
legs threshing the air and he fell in half a dozen directions. Joan,
looking back, laughed outright.

To be laughed at was the crudest punishment that could be inflicted on
the egotistical scientist. He let out a bellow like a bull, and made a
desperate, thoughtless effort to stand up. The effort proved a
contortion of muscles in the wrong way, and he sprawled in every
direction again.

There was now no mercy in Epworth’s battles with this man, and he was
not overlooking an opportunity. The first assault by the giant had
taught him caution, and now he moved slowly, thoughtfully. He was not
a man to draw a weapon carelessly on a man but he was fighting for the
lives of three people. He could not afford to be squeamish. This was
not like fighting on the earth. He was physically outclassed.

Drawing his gun he brought the butt down on Toplinsky’s head with all
the force he had in his arm.

The giant was like an ox but the blow knocked him out.

By this time Toplinsky’s men were stumbling over each other to get to
the fight, and pausing only for a second to get the direction in which
Joan and Billy had gone, Epworth adopted Toplinsky’s method of travel,
and departed with a hop-skip-and-jump. The progress he made was
startling, and very soon he was some distance away from the pirate
band, and had caught up with his companions.

“Do this,” he instructed. “Make it snappy. The giant will be after us
shortly.”

But again Toplinsky proved wise. When he discovered that his
companions could not master the art of advance, he did not give chase.
He knew now that Epworth had a gun, and he was not anxious to push a
contest where the gun would have to be used. Thus the three fugitives
reached the mountains, and found refuge in a cave, the entrance of
which they blocked with a large boulder.

“We’re sitting pretty now,” Billy remarked as he rolled a cigarette,
“but I am wondering what we are going to eat and drink?”

The three Americans looked gravely out at the dreary waste land. Not a
sprig of green grass, not a tree, not a sign of a spring—only barren
white sand dunes, climbing cliffs with crater-like holes in them, and
the food and water supply in the hands of men who would kill.




CHAPTER XIV

A Moon Army


The fact that they were physically comfortable gave the Americans much
satisfaction. They were not too warm, and not cold. Toplinsky had been
exceedingly wise in selecting a deep shaded valley for his colonizing
idea, and after being two days of twenty-four hours’ duration each, in
a cave hidden from the giant, Epworth concluded that Toplinsky’s
scheme of heating the valley by solar heat during the long night and
withdrawing the heat during the day might prove successful, and that
the air created by firing the projectiles from the earth might in the
course of time, provided the bombardment continued indefinitely,
spread all over the face of the moon.

He did not attempt to get food and water during this time, feeling
sure that Toplinsky would keep a careful watch, but after forty-eight
hours the necessity for water prompted action. He started out with
Billy to go to the Aerolite and attempt to steal into the storeroom.
They waited until the Aerolite seemed in a state of rest, and its
crew, Epworth reasoned, slept.

They had to be careful of footsteps because of the Lunar attraction.

Like shadows they flitted across the open space, and approached the
airship, gaining the sides of the vessel, they thought, without being
observed. Here they paused and Epworth placed his hand on the steel
ladder-steps, and glanced around. He was startled at the clearness of
the light. Men on guard would have had little trouble seeing them come
across the open space. He shuddered. It would be easy for Toplinsky to
prepare an ambush for him; and as easy for him to keep an eye on the
cave.

From where he stood he could readily make out the mouth of their
hiding place.

“Thank goodness,” he murmured, “he doesn’t know where we are hiding.”

He looked up at the deck of the plane. It was entirely too
still—suspiciously quiet. If he was preparing to receive an enemy in
secret he would maintain just such a stillness. He would lead his
victim on.

Nevertheless, it was board the Aerolite or starve.

With a cat-like step he climbed the ladder, gun in hand, his knife in
his mouth. At the balcony there was a dark shadow. Instantly he
covered it with his gun.

“Not a whimper!” he commanded in a low voice.

“Sh—h.” It was Michael Strauss, and he put up his gun. “Toplinsky is
expecting you just inside of the door,” Michael continued. “I let
myself down from the balcony on top of the airship when I saw you
coming. He has purposely left the door open in the hope that you will
push it, and walk in.”

“We must have food,” Epworth stated tersely. “Also water.”

“Slip back down the ladder, and go around to the rear of the ship. I
also have been waiting for you, and have dropped several days’
supplies on the ground. Take this, and come back the day after
tomorrow, when the coast is clear. By that time Toplinsky will think
that you have discovered other means of getting food. Then you can
keep coming back until you are well supplied. Fortunately Toplinsky
has not yet discovered that I aided you when you were on board.”

“Michael, you’re a fine sport,” Epworth whispered. “Some day I will
find a means of returning this great favor. By your efforts you save
the lives of three people.”

“It is enough for me to know that,” Michael replied quietly.

Epworth squeezed his hand, and dropped down the ladder.

They found the supplies where Michael had designated, and returned
with them to their cave. Two days later they made another trip, and
again Michael aided them. They kept this up for over a week, and
during this time Toplinsky and his men were busily engaged in building
a large house, which they supposed he would turn into a warehouse as
well as a barracks for his men. Another force erected the solar heater
on the rim of the northern range of mountains.

At the end of six days, they had enough food and water on hand to last
three months, and as a final inspiration Epworth got Michael to send
down material to use in the construction of gliders. With this
material they worked for another day, building three small gliders
propelled with foot-power and elevated by running down hill.

The gliders were, of course, a venture, constructed along original
lines, but when Epworth tried them out the night they were finished,
he found that he could easily float them in the air against the slight
gravity of the moon.

Quite pleased with their idea, and determined to fly over Toplinsky’s
camp the next day, they retired in high spirits to sleep like rocks
until quite late. They were awakened by loud shouts and the noise of
exploding guns. When they rushed to the mouth of their cave a strange
spectacle met their gaze.

Swarming across the space north between the Aerolite and the northern
range of mountains an army of mammoth cricket-shaped things were
approaching. They came in military formation, hopping with steady,
persistent leaps, measured to an exactness that enabled each company
to land and leave the ground at the same time and in perfect unison.
Each cricket was as large as a man, and possessed six legs and two
long sharp antennas extending straight out from the eyes. They
traveled on the four rear legs, and held long, sharp, steel-pointed
lances in their front antennas and two front legs. Their backs were
hard and black, and Epworth wondered as he noted the strength of the
coating if they were bullet proof.

That they were possessed of a rare degree of intelligence was
evidenced by their military approach, and their splendid formation.
That they could use these weapons the Americans did not doubt, and
congratulated themselves that they were not the objects of attack.

When he turned his eyes toward the Aerolite, Epworth saw that
Toplinsky was already fighting. Many of his men were backed against
the half-built wall of the house, and were sharp-shooting with their
rifles.

“If Toplinsky had only a few projectiles of liquid air,” Billy
observed regretfully, “he might teach these Things something about
war.”

“As it is he and his men are going to have the fight of their lives,”
Epworth replied soberly.

“Look at their leaders!” Joan exclaimed in amazement. “They have some
kind of marvelous growth on their backs.”

Epworth, who never went without a pair of binoculars, put the glasses
to his eyes, and studied the things she pointed out. The things he saw
on top of the crickets were more wonderful than the huge insects.

They were men-shaped humps riding on the back of the crickets. At
least their small bodies, legs and arms were shaped like men but their
heads were enormous knotty projections with eye openings an inch and a
half in diameter.

“Do I see properly?” the young man inquired, handing the glasses to
Joan. “Do I see some kind of a man with a metallic-like head?”

Joan examined the riders thoughtfully. They were now approaching with
incredible rapidity and she got a better view of them.




CHAPTER XV

Battling with Crickets


“They are little men with some kind of a device over their heads,” she
asserted with assurance. “And they are acting as the general and
commanding officers of the cricket army.”

“You’ve hit it,” Epworth declared excitedly. “They are wearing a
headgear to protect them from this outside atmosphere that has been
suddenly sent down upon them. At least——”

“Perhaps they do not know that there is an atmosphere,” Billy argued,
“Maybe they live some place where there is air, and think that they
must be prepared to travel through a world where there is no air.”

“G’wan,” Joan snorted slangily. “Do you mean to suggest that they came
here from some other world?”

“Probably they came up out of some of the holes in the moon. I have
heard it suggested that the moon is hollow, and that there is a
possibility of air inside.”

Before Joan could reply to this the battle began. Toplinsky, like a
good general, waited until the moon insects were quite close, and then
poured seven volleys from repeating rifles into their ranks. The
crickets went down by hundreds. The questions as to whether or not
their backs were bullet proof was answered.

Just for a second the lines wavered; then there rent the air a loud
musical chirp. It went up and down the various lines of cricket
soldiers in waves. It was not unpleasant to hear. In fact, it was
accompanied by notes. But it was none the less deadly and demoralizing
to the colonists, and sent a chill down the backs of the three
Americans, safe in their cave retreat.

Toplinsky shouted in his shrillest voice; from far in the rear of the
cricket army came an answering call. To the unbounded wonder of both
the Americans and the colonists this answer came back in English.

“Surrender, earth men,” it called out in broken but understandable
English, “or we will wipe you out, and not leave a single person
living.”

Toplinsky’s answer was a shower of lead in the direction of the voice.
Again hundreds of crickets fell; again the ranks closed in strong
formation and came forward as if there had been no deaths.

“These Things do not fear death,” Joan whispered in awe. “They do not
know what it is. They are just big insects.”

They were coming slowly now but surely, treading softly forward as if
sneaking up on an enemy. To the observers in the cave it looked as if
they were so many cats preparing to jump on a mouse. The colonists
fired desperately. Michael, who seemed to be leading one end of the
pirate gang, got a small machine gun out of the storehouse, and began
to mow them down like a health officer doping flies. Still they came
on—seemingly irresistible, holding their sharp prongs outward, and
leaping with invisible movements with their small thin legs.

Now they were fighting the colonists hand to hand. It was apparent
however that one colonist was more than a match for ten crickets, and
they were thrown back on their second rank, only to be pushed forward
again.

Nevertheless it was patent that in time the little band of colonists
would be wiped out. Epworth was of the opinion that the crickets would
eat them. This however was merely a hunch.

“I do not like those colonists,” he remarked, “but the idea of human
beings being cornered by enormous strange insects and turned into a
lunch does not appeal to me. These Things look as if they may be of
the Orthoptera family but one cannot tell. I’m for butting in.”

“Me too,” Billy agreed, “but how?”

“Follow me and we will see.”

Epworth ran to his newly constructed glider, fastened the plane around
his shoulders, and started down the mountainside for a take-off.

“Where are you going?” Joan inquired anxiously.

“We must get to the Aerolite storeroom, and see if we can unlimber
some of the heavy gas guns and nitroglycerine weapons. No time to
lose.”

All three ran down the mountainside, got into the air, and with the
bicycle motors they had attached to the planes directed their course
to the Aerolite. Finally they landed on top of the machine as gently
as birds. Entering the storeroom, the two men hastily put together one
of the large nitroglycerine guns, a big cannon, and a powder gatlin
gun Toplinsky had brought along as a measure of defense. These weapons
they rolled to the side of the machine from whence came the attack,
and both began a bombardment of the cricket army.

The result was startling.

At the first tremendous roar of the cannon, the crickets came to a
dead stop. Not since untold ages had such a noise been heard on the
face of the moon. Here was all stillness—a terrifying quietude, not
even the chirp of a bird or the whirr of a snake. The sudden
explosion, as if the entire face of the moon was bursting, and with it
was blowing into pieces a large number of crickets, frightened not
only the crickets but the little men who were riding on their backs,
and with one movement they turned and fled.

But as they departed they carried with them a number of colonists as
prisoners. Epworth shuddered as he saw the colonists captured. Their
fate was plainly apparent. They would not even get the treatment of a
fat missionary. There would be no preliminaries. They would be dragged
into a hole in the moon and eaten.

The two Americans fired another shot at the disappearing insects, saw
them go forward with great bounds like grasshoppers, and finally
disappear over the top of the highest northern mountains. It was
incredible the swiftness with which they left the scene of battle.

Supposing that Toplinsky would still be antagonistic the Americans
left the top of the Aerolite with leaps that lifted them into the air,
and soon were again hidden in their cave.

“Sup—pose the crickets come back,” Joan said fearfully as she removed
the shoulder straps of her glider. “They seemed highly intelligent,
and were led by minds that did not think of defeat. If they return
they will have a large increase in number, and——”

Billy drew his finger across his throat, and pointed at the colony
camp.




CHAPTER XVI

Billy Disappears


They were not in the cave over an hour when Michael appeared. He was
quite nervous, and greatly troubled.

“We want you, Mr. Epworth,” he greeted, “to come and take command of
the camp. Toplinsky has been carried off by the huge moon monsters of
insect creation, and we are not able to contend with what may come
up.”

“But suppose Toplinsky escapes and returns,” Joan objected. “Our heads
will not be worth much.”

“We have threshed that out, and the camp will, as one man, force him
to treat you kindly, and as an equal. In fact, they say that the
Americans won the day for them against these Lunar enemies, and that
hereafter they cannot afford to trust everything to the general. He
will have to divide authority with you, and agree to your terms.”

“Very well. We will come. Billy, remain here and put things in shape
to keep. We will not go off and leave ourselves without supplies in
case we have to come back. Later we will return and all of us will go
back to the Aerolite. I also think that we must band together to
protect ourselves from all kinds of Lunar enemies.”

Accompanied by Joan, Epworth entered his glider and flew over to the
Aerolite. They were greeted as conquering heroes, and Epworth was
immediately put in charge of the camp. First, he established a strong
military organization with Michael as the commanding officer, and
arranged to materialize all the stores of the Aerolite into defense
weapons. When this work was completed he created a council of five,
and had the colonists elect the members. This council was to be the
governing power, and he bound the pirates by firm obligations to force
Toplinsky to obey the orders of this council.

With this accomplished he and Joan returned, well satisfied, to their
cave, leaving the entire membership of the colony housed in the
Aerolite so that if any danger arose they could fly out of it.

“Hey, there, Billy!” Epworth shouted as he landed lightly in front of
the cave. “Snap out of it. We’re going to go to the Aerolite. From
this on, I think it will be perfectly safe for us.”

There was no answer, and with a frown on his face the young man
divested himself of his glider, and entered the cave.

Billy was not there, and his glider and all their supplies were
missing.

“W-w-what do you suppose happened to him?” Joan inquired nervously,
looking over Epworth’s shoulder. “We were not gone over two hours, and
yet all of our supplies are gone—things that it took us ten days to
cart from the Aerolite. Looks as if ghosts had been here.”

“Billy could not have moved them in this time,” Epworth reasoned.
“Something has happened to him.”

With the carefulness of a detective he began to search the cave for
evidence that would lead to the direction in which Billy had gone.
Every article they had left in the way of supplies was gone. Even the
water jars were missing, and the only evidence of the presence of
enemies consisted of numerous small lines in the sand of the floor.
These lines looked like finger marks. Billy’s foot prints, close to
the point where they had last seen his glider, were plainly evidenced,
but Epworth could not ascertain the direction he had gone when he
left. In fact, reasoning by his foot tracks, he went up into the air,
and he could not have gone far in this direction because the top of
the cave would have stopped him.

Running back in the cave the young American looked for evidence that
would indicate that the small finger tracks had gone that way. The
back of the cave, which they had not previously investigated, ran up
against a big pile of boulders and seemingly came to an end.

“These tracks,” he finally said to Joan in a hushed voice, “were
probably made by those cricket-like animals that attacked the
Aerolite. If so——”

“They have twelve hands and no feet. With their front hands they hold
their weapons, and are also able to use their four leg hands as feet
and hands.” She shivered. “It’s ghostly; it gives me the all-overs.
They came in here, captured Billy and disappeared in the air.”

“I reason the same way,” Epworth agreed. “But what are we going to do?
We must do something to help Billy.”

“Find out where they went and follow them.”

“Rather large order.” Epworth grinned dryly. “There may be two million
of them.”

“They didn’t go back into the cave,” Joan insisted heatedly;
“consequently they must have come up around the mountains and slipped
up on Billy.”

“Then they discovered him while we were at the Aerolite, and have
taken him to the northern range of hills—where they carried
Toplinsky.”

“Sounds likely.”

“Then it is me for the north. You go to the Aerolite, and wait until I
come back. I will make a thorough search in my glider.”

“Not me. Where you go I go also. I am not taking any chances of being
separated from you in this strange world. To be candid I don’t like
these cricket Things; and I don’t like the pigmy men who ride on them
and direct them in battle.”

“Have it your way. We will communicate with Michael, and tell him to
keep a constant watch, and that at the first approach of the enemies
get into the air with the Aerolite. I am quite sure that in the
airship they will be safe.”

But when they spoke to Michael and informed him that they contemplated
going in search of Billy and Toplinsky, the young guard demurred.

“Suppose you discover them prisoners in the hands of a large army?” he
suggested. “What will you do?”

“Scheme to free them. I certainly will not leave human beings at the
mercy of myriads of cricket-shaped Things that may eat them.”

Equipped with food to last for a week, armed with tear guns and
automatics, and carrying with them two large air helmets which they
thought they might need in case they were forced to seek high
altitude, they entered their gliders, and sailed toward the range of
mountains in the north. There were many tall peaks ahead of
them—mountains that stuck their noses high into the dark sky, and
which Epworth knew were pitted with enormous craters.

When they got to the point where the cricket army had disappeared,
they circled around for half an hour studying the country with their
glasses. In front of them, near the range of mountains which they
encircled, they saw another large valley, almost circular. Beyond this
valley came a rugged foothill country and further on there was an
immense peak, eighteen thousand feet high.

Epworth jockeyed his glider close to his sister.

“According to the maps of the earth astronomers,” he explained, “that
mountain is the Crater Agrippa. I’ve got a hunch that our crickets
dwell inside of that crater. It is deep down, over five miles, to the
bottom, and if my reasoning is sound the air in the bottom of the
crater is heavier than on the surface of the moon. It would, it seems,
make an ideal place for Things like these crickets to live. They are
thin of body, elongated in form, spread out broadly, light in weight
but strongly muscled, and the gravity of the moon would about fit
their physical shapes.”

“Granting all your science, what are you going to do?”

“Go to the bottom of that crater. If we find nothing there we will
search among these innumerable small pits that we see everywhere.”

Joan shuddered.

“Go into the darkness of all these holes?”

She was terrified at the thought.

“Certainly—if we fail to find our friend above the hollows that we
know are inside of the moon.”

“Hollows inside of the moon?” She dropped her eyes. She was startled,
made afraid. The idea of crawling around on her hands and knees
hunting for lunar crickets in dark holes was terrifying. “And—and—we
must crawl in——?”

“I am more cheerful. These crickets were led by pigmy men. It is not
likely that the pigmies live in holes, although, I am free to confess
that I would naturally expect the crickets to be crawling around in
dark places.”

With a slight shrug of her shoulders, Joan turned her glider toward
the peak that Epworth had declared was the Crater Agrippa. In two
minutes Epworth was in the lead. They were both determined, but their
hearts were beating furiously.

What dangers would they meet deep in the bowels of the moon? What kind
of life could they expect to find? Was Billy alive or dead? Had they
taken him to join Toplinsky or would they have to make separate hunts
for the two men?

To gain the summit of the high peak they had to go up in running
jumps. They would run several steps, then jump into the air, and pedal
to gain height. In this way they finally got to a point where they
could look down into a deep crater.




CHAPTER XVII

“Something’s Got Me”


Down, down—on into a pit of bottomless depth, circling slowly,
cautiously, and nosing steadily. Now they could look upward, and see
the stars shining out of a black sky, as if they were in a deep well;
and still they descended past steep cliffs of white rock, walls as
smooth as a rifle bore; then into a region of jagged walls, and stone
of volcanic ore; past innumerable dark holes that pierced gloomily
into dreadful, mysterious places under the ground; whirling all the
time within the grasp of a crater ten miles in diameter.

Suddenly it grew dark. The sun, in throwing its light into the crater
had been cut off by the slight rotations of the moon. It was a gloom
that caused Joan to close her eyes, and hold her breath.

Would they never reach the bottom?

Miles dropped away, and still the air held them up, and they sailed in
circles. That his companion might follow, Epworth turned on his flash
light, and attached it to the wing of his glider.

It was a flight like Mercury speeding as a messenger through
inscrutable space. Two little planes, with operators wearing air
helmets that dimmed vision, were slipping softly, silently, into the
bowels of the moon, hunting a strange land in an unknown world.

It necessitated matchless courage, and steady nerves. These two went
on seeking to save.

They went on until complete darkness engulfed them—a darkness that
grew steadily murky, oppressive, frightful. Still they continued.
Where Epworth led, Joan was determined to follow. Would they ever be
able to climb out? Would their small, inefficient gliders, the
invention of a moment, notwithstanding their propelling power, be able
to ascend that dizzy height? True that when they entered, the air was
so rare that they had to wear air helmets, and that now they put them
aside to find heavier and better breathing; but the space was limited,
there was no wind to get beneath the plane and elevate it; the whole
mysterious dark world was as still as death, and as creepy as the
grave.

Joan was on the verge of screaming aloud. Epworth was beginning to get
nervous.

He looked down, and thought he saw a light. Before he could settle his
mind on this point he bumped against the ground. It was a light shock,
and he felt no injury but it served to stop the flight of his glider.
The next moment Joan bumped into him and also came to a stop. The
contact came before he had an opportunity to call out to her to be on
guard.

“Julian! Julian!” she cried. “Where are you?”

“Do not be alarmed,” he reassured. “I am here.”

Disengaging the plane from her shoulders, and leaving the straps that
held it tight on the wing, she advanced toward him. When she came to
him he was stepping out of the glider.

“What now?” she inquired dryly. “We are in the bottom of Mount
Agrippa, and, if you will excuse the slang, it certainly has a grip I
do not like.”

“I believe I see a dim light off there,” he pointed out with his index
finger. “Do you see it?”

“Perhaps it is an underground volcano,” she suggested. “I feel warm.”

“Merely underground heat. Were it a volcano it would be brighter.
However we will not know unless we investigate.”

Shifting his tear gun, which he had attached to his belt, to a
convenient place, and holding his flash light in his hand, the young
man led the way cautiously. They were on a level, ashy floor, in which
their feet buried at each step; but without pausing to investigate the
character of the soil they strode forward steadily. It was a longer
walk than he thought it would be, and presently they became aware that
there was a roof over their heads—a roof of earth. When Joan made this
discovery she was for turning back.

“No,” Epworth decided. “The light ahead is getting stronger. Presently
we will be somewhere.”

This conclusion was not justified by what they saw but the light began
to get brighter, and after a time they could see each other.

“It is spooky,” Joan breathed out, lagging behind a little.
“Absolutely unhuman. There is no sun, there is no heat, but we can
see. What causes it?”

“It is a phosphorescent glow emanating from the walls of the crater,”
Julian replied thoughtfully. “That is the only ex——”

“Help! Help, Julian!” Joan screamed. “Something’s got me. Something——”

Her utterances were cut off by two long, thin, bone-like tentacles
twisting around her neck. At the same second Epworth was attacked.

The young man however was as swift as an eagle, and had been ever on
the alert. He recognized the fact instantly that the crickets were
upon them, and that he could not fight them with his flash light.
Dropping the light, which was attached to his clothing by a cord, he
drew his tear gun and swept a stream of tear gas into the face of the
Things around him. The gas stopped them instantly, and with an agile
bound he darted to Joan’s side. She was in the hands of six crickets,
their bodies dimly visible in the phosphorous light. They were
standing on their hind legs, and were making a saddle of their middle
extremities while pushing Joan into the saddle with their front hands.

Epworth’s tear gun proved highly efficient. It gassed the two who made
the saddle. This caused the other four to drop the girl. Instantly the
young man shot the tear gas above Joan’s head into their faces, caught
the girl and dragged her to him. A stream of the insects came at him,
chirping savagely. Darting to the side of the cave he carried his
companion with him.

The effort seemed useless, for now his retreat was cut off by an army
of the hopping monsters. The only thing left him was to back against
the wall, and use his tear gun. This he did.

The crickets, with their singing chirps, became suddenly appalling
with their din. Epworth shuddered, side stepped, and undertook to push
Joan behind him in order to protect her. The move was fatal. Stumbling
over a boulder, he fell backward head over heels into a hole in the
wall.

In a desperate effort to save Joan he twisted her in his arms, and
placed her above his body with a view of making a cushion of his body
when they struck terra firma. How far it was to the bottom of this
hole he had no way of ascertaining. It might be two thousand feet
deep. These moon holes were tremendous affairs. All he knew was that
he was falling and that the crickets were sending out musical notes of
triumph.

However, since coming to the moon he had discovered that he could jump
a long ways and land without being hurt; that he could even leap off a
high cliff without danger to life or limb, and now he found that they
were not falling fast, and this gave him encouragement.

They struck bottom abruptly. Epworth was jarred and bruised some, but
not seriously hurt although he lay as if stunned for several seconds.
Joan was unhurt, and during the descent had regained her full
faculties, which were leaving her under the choking power of the
cricket tentacles. The second they were still she twisted out of
Epworth’s arms, caught his flash light, which had been knocked out of
circuit by the fall, and began to work with it hysterically. In a
brief period she had it in action and was throwing a narrow stream of
light around.

They had landed on a large ledge suspended over a bottomless chasm,
and behind them there was a big tunnel. As they were dangerously close
to the edge of the precipice she staggered to her feet and pulled
Epworth away from the danger point.

“My,” she whispered, “I thought we were goners.”

Without waiting for Epworth to speak she stepped to the tunnel and
shot her light ray into its gloomy depth. For several seconds the
light pierced the gloom for fifteen feet, flickered, and died out. The
battery had been exhausted, and now they were in murky, terrifying
gloom with a deep chasm on three sides. In dying despair the girl
covered her face with her hands.

Epworth, breathing heavily, sat up.

“Let me have the flash light,” he suggested.

“It has gone out for good,” she replied in a hopeless voice, at the
same time handing him the tube. “I can’t get a ray out of it.”

Epworth fumbled with it for a moment in the dark.

“The batteries are dead,” he explained. “How foolish not to have
looked into this before we started.”

“Great heavens!” Joan moaned. “Lost in the center of the moon, and no
light to direct our steps.”

“Never say die,” the young man encouraged. “Take my hand. It is my
left. I am holding my automatic in my right.”

They groped forward. Action was at the moment necessary to keep Joan
from losing her mind. On and on they stumbled. Each step they expected
to plunge heels-over-head into another deep chasm but persistently
they followed the twisting meanderings of the passage.

Suddenly Joan stopped and sniffed the air, trembling violently.

“There—there—is something alive in this place,” she muttered feebly.
“I—I—smell something awful—horrid,
and—and—I—feel—a—sinister—presence.”

Epworth sniffed with his nostrils. The scent was now overpowering,
musty, terrifyingly rotten.

“You must be mistaken about there being living beings in here,” he
protested. “That smell would indicate that we have stumbled on the
crickets’ graveyard.”

“Or, or, or,” Joan caught his hand convulsively to keep from
screaming, “their commissary department. Maybe—maybe—living beings are
confined here until they rot, and are then eaten as food.”

Epworth could not suppress the shudder that swept over him from head
to foot.




CHAPTER XVIII

In the Chamber of Horrors


“It—it—is a chamber of horrors,” Joan gasped. “I know there is a ghost
in this place or some living thing. I can feel it; I can hear a slight
movement.”

Epworth strained his eyes in every direction. All was murky darkness,
Cimmerian gloom. If there was anything living near, the darkness
wrapped it in an envelop impossible to penetrate.

“You are certainly mistaken,” he soothed. “There is no living thing
here. It couldn’t——”

He paused. There came the suspicion of a sound to his ear. It was very
soft. A rat could not move with less noise; a cat in stepping would
have sounded like a cannon exploding. What could it be? Noiseless
crickets—a nest of young crickets expecting a mother? The cavern
seemed large and the air seemed pure but that animals or things could
live in such a place seemed impossible. He voiced his thoughts.

“It is strange that there is air in here,” Joan admitted, “and
stranger yet that I should think that there is life here. But this is
a strange world. We never saw a Thing on earth like these moon
crickets. Nor is there a pigmy on earth like the pigmies that rode on
the crickets; nor are there great hollows in the earth where the air
has congealed and left the outside cold and airless. It is a different
creation entirely. Mercy! I see—I see—eyes staring at me from out the
darkness. Holy angels, protect me! There are three of them, and they
are running me crazy to look at them.”

Her teeth chattered until Epworth could hear them, and she buried her
head in the young man’s shirt front. Now he also saw the eyes. There
were three—great red lights that flared in the darkness. Two on a
level, and one in the center. The center eye was enormous and
terrifying to the extreme. Brave as he was he shivered with terror.
There was something so ghostly, uncanny, about the Thing that his
nerves washed out.

Then it flashed by. A nasty-smelling Thing shot out of the gloom; a
Thing with a lizard-like, scaly body, long legs and antennas; a Thing
that carried a phosphorus glow that plainly disclosed its proportions.
It went by them like a railroad train, an enormous whirling, gliding
animal that chilled them unto death.

Joan screamed at the top of her voice, and fell limp. Epworth stumbled
and fell forward on his face. Each second they expected the Thing to
pounce on them, and mash them flat.

Then oblivion fell on both.

It seemed hours later that the two returned to consciousness. They
were on the same level, rocky floor, lying side by side, and Epworth
was holding his gun in his hand. It had not been discharged.

When he made this discovery he rose quickly to his feet. His first
thought was of the evil-smelling Thing that had appeared out of the
darkness. Where was it? Were there others back in this chamber of
horrors? Was the one he saw preparing another attack on them?

He looked around with fearful eyes. He could not see any signs of the
animal. That did not mean that it was not near. He thought that the
Thing could move with less noise than a cat, and with the swiftness of
an eel.

“W-w-what was it?” Joan stammered.

“I hope to high heaven I never find out,” Epworth breathed fervently.
“It was the most gosh-awful horror that ever stirred my nerves. It has
probably crawled back in its hole, which must be down this chamber. I
hope it dies before I see it again. At least I am going to go in the
direction directly opposite from that taken by the Thing—and I am
going as fast as my slow feet will let me.”

He sprang up, caught her hand, and ran hurriedly down the chamber,
stumbling over big rocks, and against the sides of the tunnel in his
desperate effort to leave the spot.

He had no idea where he was going. For all he knew he was going back
the way he came. He was getting away from that chamber of horrors as
speedily as possible.

They wandered on for an hour—two hours. There was no end to the dark
tunnel but they were moving and getting farther and farther away from
that hidden monster; and they were going swiftly, without thinking of
falling into another chasm. In fact any kind of a hole would have been
preferable to this, and they dared not stop.

Finally Joan looked ahead and saw a streak of light.

“Thank heavens,” she breathed. “At last we are coming to the end of
this horrible tunnel.”

Epworth did not reply. He was not so sure. On the contrary he could
not, by his greatest scientific legerdemain, figure how they would
ever get out of this crater.

The end came abruptly—butting up against a pile of large stones. There
were large cracks between the stones, and it was patent that
intelligent hands had placed them and not Nature. Some being or some
intelligent Thing had blocked up the passage purposely with loose
stones, to keep out the enormous reptiles.

But the light was streaming through the cracks, and the two were crazy
to get to light again. If this darkness enveloped them many hours
longer they would lose their minds. Both fell on the rocks with one
thought, and began to tear them aside.

When a crack large enough to see through was made they drew back
dismayed. The walls of the chamber ahead were lighted by a stream of
fiery lava, and there seemed no prospect of escaping from their cavern
prison. However the dim light was preferable to the intense gloom that
pervaded the passage they were in, and Epworth decided to dig in.

He attempted to survey the interior of the other chamber but his view
was shut off by the narrowness of the opening, and again he fell to
removing the loose stones. Soon he had an opening large enough to push
through.

When they stepped into the chamber their hearts jumped with surprise.
Billy Sand and Herman Toplinsky were lying on the floor near where
they entered with their hands bound, and their faces against the
floor. On a stone couch near them was a beautiful little woman, no
larger than a ten-year old girl. She was splendidly formed, and her
blonde hair was wrapped around her body in a braid and fell almost to
her feet. She also was bound hand and foot.

With a leap Epworth was by Billy’s side, slashing the cords that bound
him. When Billy was free Epworth released Toplinsky and the girl on
the couch in the same manner. When freed Toplinsky sat up lazily and
stretched his arms and legs.

“Ah, ha, the beautiful Joan—the lady who hates me,” he greeted
amiably. “Pleased to meet you—truly am—but before we make merry let us
hurriedly get away by the passage through which you entered. I fear
that we have very little time to lose. In fact——”

He was interrupted by a noise at the far end of the chamber. Glancing
in the direction they saw a large stone rolled away, and thirty
crickets, marching in military formation, came in, stepping carefully
over the stream of lava. They carried sharp steel-pronged spears, and
it was apparent that their intentions were not friendly.

They were led by five men and a woman. And such a woman! Like the
blonde girl on the couch she was no larger than a ten-year old child
but she was bewilderingly beautiful although her flesh was copper
colored. Her hair, a deep blue black, was twisted around her waist
over a richly colored red breech cloth. Otherwise she was naked. Her
eyes, slightly oblique, were slothful at times and at other times full
of fire, transforming her into a menacing dictator. She was ornamented
like a barbarous queen with bracelets on her arms, and a crown of
jewels on her head.

The men who led the crickets were also copper colored, and small in
stature, well-formed except their heads, which were just a trifle
large for their bodies. When Joan looked into their faces she closed
her eyes. The lines of the faces were badly wrinkled, the mouths were
contorted and there was a smirk of evil stamped over them. That they
were highly intelligent, however, she was soon to learn.

The woman, whose head was better formed, spoke, to their surprise, in
broken English with a peculiar pronunciation that caused them to bend
their ears attentively to comprehend.

“I am Carza, the queen of the moon.” She drew her form proudly erect
and stared arrogantly at the little blonde girl on the couch. “You are
aware of that now, Moawha,” she continued addressing the girl. “From
this on you are my slave. Perhaps, a little later I shall slay you,
and be rid of your pretensions forever.”

She paused, shrugged her shoulders, and smiled softly. It was not an
angelic expression but it exhibited her even, white teeth, and proved
exceedingly attractive to Toplinsky, and the others thought that she
was quite exquisite.

“You are earth men.” She turned imperiously to Toplinsky. “You are
wondering how I am able to speak to you in your own language? It is
simple. For years our scientists have been getting peculiar words out
of the air, and recording them on their space records. For a long time
they could make little out of the noises from space but in time they
concluded that they were hearing the people on the great world around
which our smaller planet revolves every twenty-eight days. Were they
correct in their surmise?”

She looked inquiringly at Toplinsky. He nodded in the affirmative, and
with the grace of a courtier.

“Ah, ha, it is so, your most gracious majesty. We are charmed to meet
a lady of such distinction.”

Carza knitted her eyebrows slightly, and then smiled sweetly at the
giant.

“So they put their intellects to work, and gradually worked out an
understanding of things that you call earthly as well as an ability to
talk in your language.”

“Wonderful! Wonderful!” Toplinsky added. “Did they also discover a way
of sending to the earth?”

She shook her head.

“Our instruments, it seemed, are not of a character that will put us
into direct communication. We can hear but not send. However I do not
understand how you gained your liberty. I was told that you were bound
hand and foot, and that my people only waited word from me to slay
you.”

One of the copper leaders approached deferentially, dropped to his
knees, and began to speak to her in an unknown tongue.

“So, so,” she mused when he had completed his explanation, “there were
only two men and Moawha when you were left here as prisoners, and you
have been hatching a man and woman.” She smiled artfully, and the
smile was more disagreeable than a threat. “Some of your friends have
been able to follow and have broken in to help you escape. Seize
them!”

She thundered the command shrilly, and drew back to lean against the
wall. The copper men, followed by the crickets, sprang forward giving
the cricket chirp of command.

“Keep them off!” Epworth commanded harshly. “They must not undertake
to touch us.”

“Must not,” sneered Queen Garza. “A bold word, Sir Earth Man. We shall
see. Have at them, Noble Tauran.”

The copper men and the crickets rushed in a body. Epworth knocked down
the leader with the butt of his gun, and Toplinsky, seizing a large
cricket by its rear legs, swung the insect around his head, and
charged, knocking the copper men and crickets around like marbles.

Queen Carza leaned negligently against the wall, and dropped her chin
nonchalantly into the palm of her hand. These men had been reported to
her to be great fighters, and she loved fighters. She watched with
keen interest. Frequently she nodded her head as if well satisfied.

Joan could not understand this satisfaction. The crickets and the
pigmy men were obviously unable to do harm to the three earthmen. But
the queen was only waiting. When she discovered that her body guard
was facing inevitable defeat she chirped through her teeth.

It was the musical chirp of the crickets, calling them to battle. They
came, swarming through the door and surrounding Toplinsky and the two
Americans like locusts. Billy, because of his small stature (he was
only five five) went down quickly; Epworth fought aggressively for
several moments but his long, fast and strenuous efforts in the cave
without water had weakened him temporarily, and finally he gave way,
his feet slipped, and a hundred crickets had him pinned to the floor.

“Ah, ha, ho, ho! The bantam fighter is down,” Toplinsky roared with a
laugh that sounded like a fiend. “It is sad indeed. Some day we will
renew that interesting contest for Lady Joan’s favor. At present
however——”

He backed against the wall, and began to use his arms like a windmill,
pushing the crickets and pigmies around like chaff. It seemed to the
onlookers as if flesh and blood could not battle in this manner. With
his pale blue eyes flashing fire, his long, shaggy hair whirled back
over the crown of his head, and his heavy red beard twisting from
right to left with each movement of his head, he looked like a fiend.

Epworth, Joan and Billy, and the girl called Moawha, by the queen,
were bound and placed with their backs to the wall, and still
Toplinsky fought. If his strength held out it seemed as if he would be
able to stand off a nation of crickets.

“Hold!”

The command came from the queen, and was accompanied by a cricket
chirp. Instantly her cohorts ceased fighting, and Toplinsky, smiling
as if in the face of death, extended his hand, jerked a toga off of
one of the pigmies, and wiped the blood from his forehead where he had
been hit by a spear.

Pushing aside the crickets and soldiers Carza strode fearlessly up to
the giant, and stopped to gaze into his face fascinated.

“You are a great fighter,” she said abruptly.

“I am,” Toplinsky agreed without modesty. “I am the greatest fighter
you ever saw, or ever will see.”

“Bend your head,” she commanded.

With a smile that displayed his huge teeth disagreeably Toplinsky
obeyed. The queen took the cloth from his hands, cleaned the blood
from his face, and thrust the bloody rag into her waist band.

“I have been looking for a man of mighty valor—a man like you. Yes,
you have been the search of my life. Come! Together we will go far.
You will aid me in destroying my enemies, and increase my power over
the whole world.”

“But how about me?” Toplinsky objected. “What do I get?”

“You will become the husband of the queen, and if I find that I love
you as I think I shall, you will become the leader above me.”

Toplinsky picked her up in his left hand, kissed her, and put her back
on the floor.

“It shall be as you say.”

“If you take that woman for your queen you must slay thousands of
innocent people,” Moawha broke out passionately. “They are gentle,
kind-hearted, and constantly warred upon by these abominable
crickets—who eat them.”

Moawha also spoke in broken English but her words were not as clear as
those pronounced by the queen.

“I shall have your feet toasted in that nice little stream of fire,”
Carza said coldly, turning malevolently on Moawha. “You are not
interested in this.”

Her black eyes were flashing fiercely as she spoke but they cleared
instantly when she turned to Toplinsky.

“Yes, it pleases me. I shall make you king.”

“Ho, comrades!” Toplinsky called out to the little men. “See that
these Americans do not escape. Also look after this strange little
woman. Presently we shall slay the two men but not the earth woman.
Ha! ha!”

He laughed uproariously.

“Be sure to guard Moawha well,” the queen commanded, recognizing as
official the authority Toplinsky was grasping. “She shall die during
the crowning ceremonies.”




CHAPTER XIX

The Knife Dance


After two days, during which they were fed on water and dried fruit—a
variety that the Americans had never seen before—their captors entered
the prison, lifted them on to the backs of crickets, and marched them
along for hours through a vast underground world, lighted by a
phosphorescent glow, and teeming with crickets. The insects displayed
rare intelligence in the way they lived. They had traffic regulations,
certain paths of progress, large stacks of food guarded carefully by
armed crickets, and constantly added to and systematically given out,
playgrounds of peculiar construction, and places—or rather—spots
of—assemblage where they listened to each other chirp as if they were
singing.

The prisoners were hurried along so rapidly that they could see very
little of this life, and could only marvel at its strangeness.

Finally they came to a large underground palace. It was not a house
but Nature had built large pillars that extended upward several
hundred feet. They were composed of shining quartz interspersed with
uncut diamonds burned into the quartz by Nature.

As they entered through these portals they trod upon a yellow floor
that they soon discovered was panned gold dust.

At the entrance the crickets turned them over to a body guard of pigmy
men—fifteen in number. The pigmies cut the cords from around their
feet, and marched them into a large throne room with their spears
thrust against their sides and their hands tied behind their backs. At
the back end of the room was a throne ostentatiously ornamented with
gold and glittering jewels. Seated side by side on the throne were
Toplinsky and Queen Carza.

“Ah, ha, ho, ho, we meet again.” The giant looked at Joan with a glare
that caused her to shrink backward. “My statuesque blonde, again, but
I fear that I cannot offer her very great inducement at present. You
are invited to take part in the ceremonies that will make me king of
the moon, and join me in power with this lovely queen. Kneel to her!”

The last was whipped out like a lash, and Joan dropped thoughtlessly
on her knees, frightened at the giant’s tone of voice. The other three
prisoners, however, stood firmly erect.

“I kneel to God only,” Epworth declared vigorously. “If you wish to
take up with a female murderess that is your business, but we are
Americans.”

Queen Carza’s slothful eyes glittered ominously.

“The first part of the program,” she remarked as if Epworth had not
spoken, “will consist of a dance by the beautiful and accomplished
Moawha, formerly queen of the Selinites but now a mere dancing slave.
When the dance is finished we will eat some delicate fruit gathered
from the groves of her Land, and then—ah, then, my dear, I will have
your feet, and the feet of these other prisoners, thrust into that
smouldering fire.”

She pointed at a small stream of lava that spluttered softly over the
rocky bottom of the cavern, and flowed gently into a deep hole.

Joan dropped her head to repress a cry of alarm. Was this woman an
incarnate fiend that she loved to torture unto death innocent girls?

“Ah, ha! We win,” Toplinsky exclaimed as if in great admiration. “A
fit mate for the greatest scientist of the earth-world. We shall get
along admirably. But for the benefit of you Americans, who are going
to die presently—all of you except Joan whose death I shall endeavor
to have shifted to some remote period—I will say that Queen Carza and
I have some great plans ahead. Already I have discovered that her
people are gifted and know much science. True they do not live here
but we will soon be at home with them. Then we shall first conquer the
moon. I understand that there are about two million pigmies who give
allegiance to Moawha. We will capture them, and make slaves of them
although Carza has only an army of fifty thousand soldiers. To capture
them will be easy with Moawha dead, and my knowledge of gunpowder and
gas. When we have destroyed them and gained complete control over
crickets and pigmies I shall turn my attention to Capitalistic
America. I have always hated that country, and shall wipe it out.
First I will land my exploding projectiles on the City of New York.
Ah, ha, ho, ho!”

He paused and sneered evilly at Epworth, and the American felt a cold
chill pass over him. As a power for evil he admitted that Toplinsky
could be monstrous.

“Ah, ha, I laugh loudly! I roar with genuine amusement! I wring my
hands together with great pleasure! I see consternation and terrible
disaster sweep over fair America. Secure in my moon kingdom I shoot
deliberately, quietly, when I will, and I direct my projectiles by
radio. When I say unto myself ‘today I shall wipe out Chicago,’ that
day I will do it; when I look in the glass at the faces of myself and
my beloved queen and point at the map where there is now the City of
St. Louis, and say, ‘I will make a huge telescope and tomorrow week
you may watch that City and see it go up in smoke.’ Ah ha, it is so.
I, Herman Toplinsky, the greatest man that ever lived, have said, and
what I have said I have said.”

“Let the dance proceed,” Queen Carza commanded, placing her little
copper hand affectionately on the giant’s enormous hand, and dropping
her head into his lap. “I would see her dance the ‘Knife Dance’ for
the last time. I hear that the beautiful blond queen is the most
graceful dancer in our world. I wish to discover if this is true. If
she proves extraordinarily artistic I may conclude to dance with
her—or rather against her.”

Epworth and Joan glanced at each other.

“She is quite capricious,” Joan observed in a low voice.

“And as deadly as a rattlesnake.”

“I prefer the snake,” Billy put in. “In fact, I think you basely
slander the reptile.”

Moawha’s bonds were removed, a number of crickets and pigmy soldiers
moved up around her, cleared a space before the throne, and encircled
the space. Before she began the dance she was handed a long, sharp
two-edged knife. The blade was ten or twelve inches.

“I’d like to get hold of that knife,” Billy remarked whimsically in a
low voice.

Moawha flashed upon him an expressive glance, and then began her
pirouette mazes. With her long blond hair sweeping around her like a
cloak, she soon demonstrated that if she had a moon-wide reputation as
a dancer she could maintain it. It was a strange, wonderful, weird,
mystical terpsichorean exhibition during which she brandished the
knife she held in a seemingly reckless manner. Up to the throne, back
again, across the chamber, and each time that she neared the throne
her lithe form twisted gracefully, somersaulted over the knife held in
a dangerous manner, and the knife flashed wickedly toward the queen.

“Ah, it is so,” Toplinsky suddenly burst out. “Me-thinks that Queen
Carza is wise in watching this dance from an elevated platform. If the
fair blond came close enough I have an idea that her life would be a
short one, if not merry.”

He had scarcely finished his remark when Moawha darted backward,
flipped over with an athletic whirl, dropped down behind Billy’s back,
and whirled away.

But she had done much with that dexterous movement. Her keen knife had
slashed the bonds that bound Billy.

“Keep your hands behind your back,” she whispered to him. “Let them
appear tied.”

Before Toplinsky or the queen discovered her intention she made
another dexterous whirl, turned a somersault over Epworth’s head,
landed behind him and freed his hands. The next second she was
whirling away toward the throne. But this time she was a little too
slow. Toplinsky, who was quite observant, caught her freeing Epworth.

“Ah, ha, the little blond is——”

Like a cannon ball Epworth shot across the chamber, and landed in
front of Queen Carza.

“Call them off!” he hissed, seizing the queen by the arm with a
fierce, painful clutch. “Call them off, Toplinsky, or this lady is
going to be hurt.”

There was need of rapid action. Urged by the pigmy officers the
crickets were jumping forward directly at Billy and Joan. Billy pulled
his knife, and with one sweep cut the cords around Joan’s wrists.

“Use your tear gun!” Epworth called out. “Joan, you still have it in
your belt.”

Joan remembered the gun, and acted. With a single motion she swept a
circle around her.

“Get my automatic,” she whispered to Billy. “This promises to be
interesting. It is also in my belt.”

“Tell the queen to order them back,” Epworth again commanded.

There was no mistaking his intention. Toplinsky had previously braved
the American’s gun, and he responded to the threat. The queen obeyed
him, and the crickets slowly drew back as Queen Carza chirped at them.
Toplinsky made a move even in the face of Epworth’s threat.

“Slow down, Toplinsky!” Epworth growled. “Not a move or your
snake-like queen is going to begin to cry out loud.”

Toplinsky sneered a little. By this time he had regained his
composure, and was preparing to leap on Epworth. When he noticed the
glare in the young American’s eyes he slumped back. Epworth did not
realize it but many thoughts were racing through the giant’s mind.
Suppose Epworth should strangle the queen? He shivered. He really did
not think that Epworth would commit such an act but if he did he would
be in more danger than Epworth and his friends. With Queen Carza to
aid him he would soon be in complete control of the moon-world;
without her the crickets and pigmies would kill him instantly. He had
lorded it over them quite harshly during the few days he had been at
liberty and in power, and he had escaped death at their hands only
recently. Now he realized that the crickets and pigmies did not like
him. He had ruthlessly killed too many of them. True they did not
understand what death was but they knew enough to realize that this
big giant did not hesitate to wipe them out.

“Go easy, Epworth,” he said soberly. “You are standing on dynamite.
Perhaps we can ar——”

He was temporizing, preparing for a treacherous attack, and Epworth
knew it.

“I am going easy as long as you keep off your dogs of war but you are
not going to act funny.”

“So far so good,” Billy called out, “but where are we going—and how?”

It was a problem. For the moment they seemed to be on top—they had
their enemies tied. But this could not last. They were still in the
center of the great Crater Agrippa, buried alive amid thousands of
crickets that would eat them if they got a chance, with every avenue
of escape seemingly closed, and long, dark, terrifying tunnels between
them and the open air.

Joan breathed a breath of despair. Escape seemed impossible. They
could not march the queen through phalanx after phalanx of armed
crickets and intelligent pigmy men. Any second a number could sneak up
in their rear, or drop upon them out of one of the dark holes over
their heads. Yet this seemed to be the only way out.

But in what direction was _out_?

Epworth was asking himself that question fearfully. There were four
directions, and innumerable caverns penetrating the lighted chambers.
Only one of these passageways would lead back to their gliders.

He looked around at the frowning spear-tubes of the crickets
apprehensively.




CHAPTER XX

Mysterious Cavern Lamps


Epworth surveyed the chamber carefully. Behind the throne, about three
hundred feet distant, he saw one of the innumerable holes that pierced
the crater in all directions. There were few crickets between the
throne and this hole, and he inwardly decided that it would be the
best way out of the dilemma.

But he did not fool himself. He realized that once inside of that hole
he would again be in a corridor of death and darkness.

“Still,” he cogitated, “there is no possible chance of escaping in any
other way. We will at least be temporarily freed of cricket masters.”

“Follow me,” he urged in a low voice, “and, Billy, be sure to bring
the little girl. Joan can look out for herself.”

Lifting Queen Carza in his arms, holding her pressed tightly against
his chest with his right arm, and keeping a tear gun against her head,
he slid from the throne, and ran hurriedly across the chamber.

“Stop him!” Toplinsky roared in a loud voice. “St——”

“Dry up, Toplinsky, if you want to keep this girl whole. If you keep
your mouth shut I promise you that she shall not be hurt.”

Toplinsky quieted down, and waved the crickets and pigmies back. This
enabled the four to gain the dark passage. Unhesitatingly Epworth
plunged into the yawning darkness. As he and his companions
disappeared Queen Carza sent out a wild shout. She was being dragged
along with little regard for her queenly disposition, and she was
angry; not afraid. Wicked though she was, she knew no fear.

Her shout was answered by a squealing sound from her pigmy soldiers,
and scarcely were they inside of the hole when four pigmies dashed in
to aid their queen. They leaped upon the backs of Joan, Billy, and
Moawha. This caused Joan to send out a cry of alarm.

Epworth turned to go to Joan’s assistance. He could see the pigmies
plainly, although in the darkness they could not see him. As he
wheeled, Queen Carza wriggled out of his arms, and started to run.
Epworth did not stop her. He wanted to assist Joan; he did not wish to
injure the queen. Calmly he permitted the queen to escape.

But Joan did not need his help. Throwing off the pigmy with an effort
she darted back into the cave. By this time the struggle had carried
all of them back into the darkness, and they were hammering away at
each other in the gloom. At least the Americans were in the darkness,
but soon the pigmies demonstrated that they could see. This was
another surprise to Epworth but he had not time to hunt an explanation
at the moment.

Billy, at the outset, knocked his man out and turned to aid Moawha.
This was hard to do as he could not distinguish her from the other
pigmies in the gloom. The pigmies took advantage of this, and leaping
on the girl began to drag her back to the throne room.

“Help!” she screamed, and Billy rushed to her aid, pulling her away
from the pigmies who held her.

At this moment the crickets came crowding in from the throne room.

“Run for it!” Epworth shouted.

“No, no,” Moawha answered a little wildly. “Not yet. You will be lost
in the cave. Wait for me, and keep the crickets back.”

While they did not understand her purpose, Epworth and Billy stood up
side by side to fight. They were now far back in the cave and the
gloom was so dense they could barely see; but they knew that the
crickets were advancing. They could hear their silent, snoopy hands
creeping softly over the stones.

Moawha ran up to Epworth, and slammed something over his head.

“Adjust it to your eyes,” she whispered. “Hasten, and then rush the
crickets to stop them, while I cover the heads of the others.”

Epworth was too surprised to speak. A second and he was in terrible
darkness, thinking that they would be lost in a hole that wound around
in gloom forever; when Moawha left him he could see in front of him a
red world—Joan was red, Billy was red, Moawha was red; the crickets,
stealing up out of the darkness to leap upon them, were red.

He did not pause to inquire the explanation. Leaping forward he
crashed into the crickets with his automatic, showering surprise and
fear at them. There were only a few, and when they heard the awful
roar of his gun they fled backward to wait for their companions.

“Come,” Moawha cried. “They will be on us in a moment in great
numbers.”

Recklessly they fled down the dark passage—dark no longer; but now a
stream of crimson and a flash of red. Presently they came to three
intersections. It was no time to choose. Behind them came the musical
chirps of the crickets, and the whistles of the pigmy men. They darted
into the left hand passage, and hurried onward. When they had gone
some distance they looked back. The crickets had arrived at the
intersection and were dividing into three parties. They intended to
take no chances. Faster than race horses they ran on and on; they came
to a deep chasm, forty feet wide, and Moawha stopped with a cry of
despair.

“Lift her in your arms and jump,” Epworth urged as Billy also paused.
“The crickets are behind us.”

“But—but——”

Epworth lifted Joan, ran back a short distance in the cave, and
running forward with all of his speed, leaped into the air. He sailed
across the chasm like a bird.

“You can do it,” he called back to Billy. “Remember that this gravity
is twelve times less than the earth, and that you can do things that
you would not dream of on the earth.”

Billy picked Moawha up in his arms. Her heart was beating wildly, and
with a gentle hand he smoothed her face. She caught his hand and held
it, and he jumped. For a second his heart was in his mouth, and then
he dropped by the side of Epworth and Joan.

But the chasm did not stop the crickets. It only served to delay the
advance of the Americans, and in a split second they were again
chasing down a long corridor as fast as they could go. Now, they
discovered that they could outrun the crickets. It was a long
straight-a-way, and they could leap many feet in a single jump.

They came to another division of the passage, and Epworth started to
take the left hand. Joan stopped him.

“I may be wrong,” she said, “but I seem to have a natural orientation
that tells me that our planes are in this direction.”

“All dark holes in the moon look alike to me,” Epworth responded. “We
turn to the right to suit you.”

There was a delay, and they were not far down this new cavern when
they heard the patter of the crickets behind them. Now the cavern
twisted and turned; now the crickets began to chirp their musical
notes of triumph.

And their hearts went cold.

Joan stumbled, and Epworth stopped to help her. When he raised her and
looked upward he could not see the roof. Ahead he saw a wide open
space. When he looked to the right he heard a loud chirping of
crickets but could not see them. In other words, in one direction he
could see; in the other he could not.

“I can’t understand that,” he exclaimed aloud. “Why can I not see to
the right?”

“Because on your left there is darkness, and on the right there is
light. The light comes from the great cricket chamber. We have run
around in a half circle and are coming again to the hive of crickets.”

As Moawha spoke she lifted the head gear from Epworth’s head.

“I still do not understand.”

“Very simple,” Joan put in impatiently. “You are wearing——”

“Cavern lights,” Moawha explained. “An invention of the Taunan pigmies
which enables them to travel through the darkest recesses of the moon.
So far my people have not been able to make them.”

Epworth looked around thoughtfully.

“I believe this is where we left our gliders,” he exclaimed hopefully.
“Out toward the center of this ashy floor.”

“Joy be!” Joan shouted. “Put on your head gear, and let’s get to them.
I am certainly fed up of crickets.”

At this moment there came a warning chirp from their right. They did
not wait to ascertain how near the crickets were. Bolting forward
Epworth lifted Moawha in his arms and, followed by Joan and Billy, ran
rapidly across the deep ashes. They found their gliders almost by a
miracle. Joan drew the shoulder straps over her head and shoulders and
fastened them around her waist, and turned to Epworth.

“Let me have Moawha,” she entreated. “Billy will be too heavy in my
plane.”

Without a word Epworth placed the girl in Joan’s glider, and darted to
his own.

“Now, Billy, you and I together.”

While Billy was mounting Epworth’s shoulders, Joan placed Moawha’s
arms around her waist and supported her on the bar of the bicycle
power.

“All ready,” she called in a whisper. “Let us run together.”

“Circle around in a wide circle until I can find my second
flashlight,” Epworth suggested. “And——”

He was interrupted by a rush of crickets that began to swarm around
him. But he made no mistake. Finding an opening he ran forward and
jumped into the air, and began to work his pedals vigorously.

The glider went forward but did not rise. When he put his feet down to
make another start he could not touch ground.

He had jumped off into a bottomless crater, and instead of going up,
weighted with Billy, he was going down.

“Julian! Julian!” he heard a faint voice call. “Where are you? We are
falling, falling.”

With a dexterous movement Epworth whirled the glider in the direction
of Joan’s voice. Presently he saw her, and gave devout thanks for the
crater lamps. True she was red; the plane was red; the whole wide open
space was red; but he could see her.

“The explanation is simple,” he explained as he drew near her
fluttering plane. “Keep the glider on an even keel; never let it turn
over. With the weight of the girl you cannot fly but you can make a
parachute out of the glider and descend slowly. Take it easy. That is
the best we can do at present.”

               *       *       *       *       *

He did not tell her that his heart was blue with dark forebodings;
that he believed that they would never again see the sun or get out of
the awful darkness that encompassed them.

The only hope that he could hold out to himself was that they were
wearing a peculiar head gear that enabled them to see what was going
on around them notwithstanding the darkness. It was little to build
hope upon but he grasped it, and determined that he would go down into
this strange, terrible world with as much courage as possible.




CHAPTER XXI

Crickets Swarming to War


On and on, fluttering side by side, the two gliders descended,
circling hour after hour with sufficient motor power to keep them from
tumbling into a crack up, but continuing steadily downward—slowly but
surely. There was no possible escape. They would go on downward
forever or fall through the moon.

Through the mysterious cavern lamps which Moawha had taken from the
heads of the pigmies who attacked them in the cave they could see
quite plainly although everything appeared very strange. For a long
time Epworth watched the red planes of Joan’s glider anxiously but
finally ascertaining that she was following him closely and imitating
his movements he turned to Billy.

“Well, young fellow, give an account of yourself. We went to the cave
to find you and you had disappeared and taken with you all of our
supplies.”

“I disappeared but I did not take the supplies,” Billy replied. “Some
fairy got the supplies. I expect if you raked his back you would find
a cricket.”

And then he told of what had happened to him. Shortly after Epworth
and Joan went to the Aerolite, while he was standing by his glider
working with the bicycle pedals an army of crickets came out of the
rear of the cave and surrounded him so stealthily that he did not know
they were present until they had made him a prisoner. They carried him
back into the cave, moved the supplies quickly, and closed up the cave
with heavy boulders. Then they took him on a long journey through
numerous and winding dark caves, conveying him on the back of two of
the crickets bound hands and feet.

“Boy,” Billy whispered in awe, “that journey was ghostly. Two large
crickets lined up on each side of me, and believe it or not their
backs gave out a phosphorous glow that lighted up that cavern, and
made the journey easy for my captors. I have been wondering all this
time how it was that two crickets could give out a glow and the others
were black as midnight.”

“Easy, lad. They had rubbed some of that phosphorous mineral on their
backs. A mineral powerful enough to light up a whole crater miles in
circumference could readily be utilized as a personal light.”

“I’m handing it to you, boy,” Billy exclaimed admiringly. “You’ve got
a brain. I never thought of that.”

“Go on wit

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