A fair little world. I had thought so before; and I thought so now as I gazed at the asteroid hanging so close before our bow. A huge, thin crescent, with the Sun off to one side behind it. A silver crescent, tinged with red. From this near vantage point, all of the little globe's disc was visible. The seas lay in gray patches. The convexity of the disc was sharply defined. So small a world! Fair and beautiful, shrouded with clouded areas.
"Where is Miko?"
"In the lounge, Gregg?"
"Can we stop there?"
Moa turned into the lounge archway. Strange, tense scene. I saw Anita at once. Her robed figure lurked in an inconspicuous corner; her eyes were upon me as Moa and I entered, but she did not move. The thirty-odd passengers were huddled in a group. Solemn, white-faced men; frightened women. Some of them were sobbing. One Earth woman—a young widow—sat holding her little girl, and wailing with uncontrolled hysteria. The child knew me. As I appeared now, with my gold laced white coat over my shoulders, the little girl seemed to see in my uniform a mark of authority. She left her mother and ran to me.
"You—please, will you help us? My Moms is crying."
I sent her gently back. But there came upon me then a compassion for these innocent passengers, fated to have embarked on this ill-fated voyage. Herded here in this cabin, with brigands like pirates of old, guarding them. Waiting now to be marooned on an uninhabited asteroid roaming in space. A sense of responsibility swept me. I swung uponMiko. He stood with a nonchalant grace, lounging against the wall with a cylinder dangling in his hand. He anticipated me, and was the first to speak.
"So, Haljan, she put some sense into your head? No more trouble? Then get into the turret. Moa, stay there with him. Send Hahn here. Where is that ass, Coniston? We will be in the atmosphere shortly."
I said, "No more trouble from me, Miko. But these passengers—what preparation are you making for them on the asteroid?"
He stared in surprise. Then he laughed. "I am no murderer. The crew is preparing food, all we can spare. And tools. They can build themselves shelter—they will be picked up in a few weeks."
Dr. Frank was here. I caught his gaze but he did not speak. On the lounge couches there still lay the five bodies. Rankin, who had been killed by Blackstone in the fight; a man passenger killed; a woman and a man wounded, as well.
Miko added, "Dr. Frank will take his medical supplies and will care for the wounded. There are other bodies among the crew." His gesture was deprecating. "I have not buried them. We will put them ashore; easier that way."
The passengers were all eying me. I said:
"You have nothing to fear. I will guarantee you the best equipment we can spare." I turned to Miko. "You will give them apparatus with which to signal?"
"Yes. Get to the turret."
I turned away, with Moa after me. Again the little girl ran forward.
"Come ... speak to my Moms; she is crying."
It was across the cabin from Miko. Coniston had appeared from the deck; it created a slight diversion. He joined Miko.
"Wait," I said to Moa. "She is afraid of you. This is humanity."
I pushed Moa back. I followed the child. I had seen that Venza was sitting with the child's weeping mother. This was a ruse to get a word with me.
I stood before the terrified woman while the child clung to my legs.
I said gently, "Don't be so frightened. Dr. Frank will take care of you. There is no danger; you will be safer on the asteroid than here on the ship." I leaned down and touched her shoulder. "There is no danger."
I was between Venza and the open cabin. Venza whispered swiftly, "When we are landing, Gregg, I want you to make a commotion—anything—just as the women go ashore."
"Why? Of course you will have food, Mrs. Francis."
"Never mind details! An instant—just confusion. Go, Gregg—don't speak now!"
I raised the child. "You take care of Mother." I kissed her.
From across the cabin, Miko's sardonic voice made me turn. "Touching sentimentality, Haljan! Get to your post in the turret!"
His rasping note of annoyance brooked no delay. I set the child down. I said, "I will land us in an hour. Depend on it."
Hahn was at the controls when Moa and I reached the turret.
"You will land us safely, Haljan?" he demanded anxiously.
I pushed him away. "Miko wants you in the lounge."
"You take command here?"
"Yes. I am no more anxious for a crash than you are, Hahn."
He sighed with relief. "That is true, of course. I am no expert at atmospheric entry."
"Have no fear. Sit down, Moa."
I waved to the lookout in the forward watch tower, and got his routine gesture. I rang the corridor bells, and the normal signals came promptly back.
I turned to Hahn. "Get along, won't you? Tell Miko that things are all right here."
Hahn's small dark figure, lithe as a leopard in his tight fitting trousers and jacket with his robe now discarded, went swiftly down the spider incline and across the deck.
"Moa, where is Snap? By the infernal—if he has been injured—"
Up on the radio room bridge, the brigand guard still sat. Then I saw that Snap was out there sitting with him. I waved from the turret window, and Snap's cheery gesture answered me. His voice carried down through the silver moonlight: "Land us safely, Gregg. These weird amateur navigators!"
Within the hour I had us dropping into the asteroid's atmosphere. The ship heated steadily. The pressure went up. It kept me busy with the instruments and the calculations. But my signals were always promptly answered from below. The brigand crew did its part efficiently.
At a hundred and fifty thousand feet I shifted the gravity plates to the landing combinations, and started the electronic engines.
"All safe, Gregg?" Moa sat at my elbow; her eyes, with what seem a glow of admiration in them, followed my busy routine activities.
"Yes. The crew works well."
The electronic streams flowed out like a rocket tail behind us. ThePlanetaracaught their impetus. In the rarefied air, our bow lifted slightly, like a ship riding a gentle ground swell. At a hundred thousand feet we sailed gently forward, hull down to the asteroid's surface, cruising to seek a landing space.
A little sea was now beneath us. A shadowed sea, deep purple in the night down there. Occasional verdurous islands showed, with the lines of white surf marking them. Beyond the sea, a curving coastline was visible. Rocky headlines, behind which mountain foothills rose in serrated, verdurous ranks. The sunlight edged the distant mountains; and presently this rapidly turning little world brought the sunlight forward.
It was day beneath us. We slid gently downward. Thirty thousand feet now, above a sparkling blue ocean. The coastline was just ahead; green with a lush, tropical vegetation. Giant trees, huge-leaved. Long, dangling vines; airplants, with giant pods and vivid orchidlike blossoms.
I sat at the turret window, staring through my glasses. A fair, little world, yet obviously uninhabited. I could fancy that all this was newly sprung vegetation. This asteroid had whirled in from the cold of the interplanetary space, far outside our solar system. A few years ago—as time might be measured astronomically, it was no more than yesterday—this fair landscape was congealed white and bleak with a sweep of glacial ice. But the seeds of life miraculously were here. The miracle of life! Under the warming, germinating sunlight, the verdure had sprung.
"Can you find landing space, Gregg?" Moa's question brought back my wandering fancies. I saw an upland glade, a level spread of ferns with the forest banked around it. A cliff height nearby, frowning down at the sea.
"Yes. I can land us there." I showed her through the glasses. I rang the sirens, and we spiraled, descending further. The mountain tops were now close beneath us. Clouds were overhead, white masses with blue sky behind them. A day of brilliant sunlight. But soon, with our forward cruising, it was night. The sunlight dropped beneath the sharply convex horizon; the sea and the land went purple.
A night of brilliant stars; the Earth was a blazing blue-red point of light. The heavens visibly were revolving; in an hour or so it would be daylight again.
On the forward deck now Coniston had appeared, commanding half a dozen of the crew. They were carrying up caskets of food and the equipment which was to be given the marooned passengers. And making ready the disembarking incline, loosening the seals of the side dome windows.
Sternward on the deck, by the lounge oval, I could see Miko standing. And occasionally the roar of his voice at the passengers, sounded.
My vagrant thoughts flung back into Earth's history. Like this, ancient travelers of the surface of the sea were herded by pirates to walk the plank, or be put ashore, marooned upon some fair desert island of the tropic Spanish main.
Hahn came mounting our turret incline. "All is well, Gregg Haljan?"
"Get to your work," Moa told him sharply.
He retreated, joining the bustle and confusion which now was beginning on the deck. It struck me—could I turn that confusion to account? Would it be possible, now at the last moment, to attack these brigands? Snap still sat outside the radio room doorway. But his guard was alert with upraised projector. And that guard, I saw, in his position, commanded all the deck.
And I saw too, as the passengers now were herded in a line from the lounge oval, that Miko had roped and bound all of the men, a clanking chain connected them. They came like a line of convicts, marching forward, and stopped on the open deck near the base of the turret. Dr. Frank's grim face gazed up at me.
Miko ordered the women and children in a group beside the chained men. His words to them reached me: "You are in no danger. When we land, be careful. You will find gravity very different—this is a very small world."
I flung on the landing lights; the deck glowed with the blue radiance; the searchbeams shot down beside our hull. We hung now a thousand feet above the forest glade. I cut off the electronic streams. We poised, with the gravity plates set at normal, and only a gentle night breeze to give us a slight side drift. This I could control with the lateral propeller rudders.
For all my busy landing routine, my mind was on other things. Venza's swift words back there in the lounge. I was to create a commotion while the passengers were landing. Why? Had she and Dr. Frank some last minute desperate purposes?
I determined I would do what she said. Shout, or mis-order the lights. That would be easy.
I was glad it was night. I had, indeed, calculated our descent so that the landing would be in darkness. But to what purpose? These brigands were very alert. There wasnothing I could think of to do which would avail us anything more than a probable swift death under Miko's anger.
"Well done, Gregg!" said Moa.
I cut off the last of the propellers. With scarcely a perceptible jar, thePlanetaragrounded, rose like a feather, and settled to rest in the glade. The deep purple night with stars overhead was around us. I hissed out our interior air through the dome and hull ports, and admitted the night air of the asteroid. My calculations—of necessity mere mathematical approximations—proved fairly accurate. In temperature and pressure there was no radical change as the dome windows slid back.
We had landed. Whatever Venza's purpose, her moment was at hand. I was tense. But I was aware also, that beside me Moa was very alert. I had thought her unarmed. She was not. She sat back from me; in her hand was a long thin knife blade.
She murmured tensely, "You have done your part, Gregg. Well and skillfully done. Now we will sit here quietly and watch them land."
Snap's guard was standing, keenly watching. The lookouts in the forward and stern towers were also armed; I could see them both gazing keenly down at the confusion of the blue lit deck.
The incline went over the hull side and touched the ground.
"Enough!" Miko roared. "The men first. Hahn, move the women back! Coniston, pile those caskets to the side. Get out of the way, Prince."
Anita was down there. I saw her at the edge of the group of women. Venza was near her.
Miko shoved her. "Get out of the way, Prince. You can help Coniston. Have the things ready to throw off."
Five of the steward crew were at the head of the incline. Miko shouted up at me:
"Haljan, hold our shipboard gravity normal."
"Yes."
The line of men were first to descend. Dr. Frank led them. He flashed a look of farewell up at me and Snap as he went down the incline with the chained men passengers after him.
Motley procession! Twenty odd, disheveled, half-clothed men of these worlds. The changing, lightening gravity on the incline caught them. Dr. Frank bounded up to the rail under the impetus of his step; caught and held himself. Drew himself back. The line swayed. In the dim, blue lit glare it seemed unreal, crazy. A grotesque dream of men descending a plank.
They reached the forest glade. Stood swaying, afraid at first to move. The purple night crowded them; they stood gazing at this strange world, their new prison.
"Now the women."
Miko was shoving the women to the head of the incline. I could feel Moa's gaze upon me. Her knife gleamed in the turret light.
She murmured again, "In a few moments you can bring us away, Gregg."
I felt like an actor awaiting his cue in the wings of some turgid drama the plot of which he did not know. Venza was near the head of the incline. Some of the women and children were on it. A woman screamed. Her child had slipped from her hand; bounded up over the rail and fallen. Hardly fallen—floated down to the ground, with flailing arms and legs, landing in the dark ferns unharmed. Its terrified wail came up.
There was a confusion on the incline. Venza, still on the deck, seemed to send a look of appeal to the turret. My cue?
I slid my hand to the light switchboard. It was near my knees. I pulled a switch. The blue lit deck beneath the turret went dark.
I recall an instant of horrible, tense silence, and in the gloom beside me I was aware of Moa moving. I felt a thrill of instinctive fear—would she plunge that knife into me?
The silence of the darkened deck was broken with a confusion of sounds. A babble of voices; a woman passenger's scream; shuffling feet; and above it all, Miko's roar:
"Stand quiet! Everyone! No movement!"
On the descending incline there was chaos. The disembarking women were clinging to the gang rail; some of them had evidently surged forward and fallen. Down on the ground in the purple-shadowed starlight, I could vaguely see the chained line of men. They too, were in confusion, trying to shove themselves toward the fallen women.
Miko roared: "Light those tubes! Gregg Haljan! By the Almighty, Moa, are you up there? What is wrong? The light tubes—"
Dark drama of unknown plot! I wondered if I should try and leave the turret. Where was Anita? She had been down there on the deck when I flung out the lights.
I think twenty seconds would have covered it all. I had not moved. I thought, "Is Snap concerned with this?"
Moa's knife could have stabbed me. I felt her lunge against me. And suddenly I was gripping her, twisting her wrist. But she flung the knife away. Her strength was almost the equal of my own. Her hand went for my throat, and with the other hand she was fumbling.
The deck abruptly sprang into light again. Moa had found the switch and threw it back.
She fought me as I tried to reach the switch. I saw down on the deck. Miko was gazing up at us. Moa panted, "Gregg—stop! If he sees you doing this, he'll kill you."
The scene down there was almost unchanged. I had answered my cue. To what purpose? I saw Anita near Miko. The last of the women were on the plank.
I had stopped struggling with Moa. She sat back, panting. And then she called:
"Sorry, Miko. It will not happen again."
Miko was in a towering rage. But he was too busy to bother with me; his anger swung on those nearest him. He shoved the last of the women violently at the incline. She bounded over. Her body, with the gravity pull of only a fewEarth pounds, sailed in an arc and dropped near the swaying line of men.
Miko swung back. "Get out of my way!" A sweep of his huge arm knocked Anita sidewise. "Prince, damn you, help me with those boxes!"
The frightened stewards were lifting the boxes, square metal storage chests each as long as a man, packed with food, tools, and equipment.
"Here, get out of my way! All of you!"
My breath came again; Anita nimbly retreated before Miko's angry rush. He dashed at the stewards. Three of them held a box. He took it from them; raised it at the top of the incline, poised it over his head an instant, with his massive arms like gray pillars beneath it; and flung it. The box catapulted, dropped; and then passing thePlanetara'sgravity area, it sailed in a long flat arc over the forest glade and crashed into the purple underbrush.
"Give me another!"
The stewards pushed another at him. Like an angry Titan, he flung it. And another. One by one the chests sailed out and crashed.
"There is your food. Go pick it up! Haljan, make ready to ring us away!"
On the deck lay the dead body of Rance Rankin, which the stewards had carried out. Miko seized it: flung it.
"There! Go to your last resting place!"
And the other bodies, Balch, Blackstone, Captain Carter, Johnson—Miko flung them all. And the course masters and those of our crew who had been killed.
The passengers were all on the ground now. It was dim down there. I tried to distinguish Venza, but could not. I could see Dr. Frank's figure at the end of the chained line of men. The passengers were gazing in horror at the bodies hurtling over them.
"Ready, Haljan?"
Moa prompted me. "Tell him yes!"
I called, "Yes!" Had Venza failed in her unknown purpose? It seemed so. On the radio room bridge Snap and his guard stood like silent statues in the blue lit gloom.
The disembarkation was over.
"Close the ports!" Miko commanded.
The incline came folding up with a clatter. The port and dome windows slid closed. Moa hissed against my ear:
"If you want life, Gregg Haljan, you will start your duties!"
Venza had failed. Whatever it was, it had come to nothing. Down in the purple forest, disconnected now from the ship, the last of our friends stood marooned. I could distinguish them through the blur of the closed dome—only a swaying, huddled group was visible. But my fancy pictured this last sight of them, Dr. Frank, Venza, Shac and Dud Ardley.
They were gone. There were left only Snap, Anita and myself.
I was mechanically ringing us away. I heard my sirens sounding down below, with the answering clangs here in the turret. ThePlanetara'srespiratory controls started; the pressure equalizers began operating; and the gravity plates began shifting into lifting combinations.
The ship was hissing and quivering with it, combined with the grating of the last of the dome ports. And Miko's command:
"Lift, Haljan!"
Hahn had been mingling with the confusion of the deck though I had hardly noticed him. Coniston had remained below with the crew answering my signals. Hahn stood now with Miko, gazing down through a deck window. Anita was alone at another.
"Lift, Haljan!"
I lifted up gently, bow first, with a repulsion of the bow plates. And started the central electronic engine. Its thrust from the stern moved us diagonally over the purple forest trees.
The glade slid downward and away. I caught a last vagueglimpse of the huddled group of marooned passengers, staring up at us. Left to their fate, alone on this deserted world.
With the three engines going, we slid smoothly upward. The forest dropped, a purple spread of treetops edged with starlight and Earthlight. The sharply curving horizon seemed to follow us upward. I swung on all the power. We mounted at a forty degree angle, slowly circling, with a bank of clouds over us to the side and the shining little sea beneath.
"Very good, Gregg." In the turret light Moa's eyes blazed at me. "I do not know what you meant by darkening the deck lights." Her fingers dug at my shoulders. "I will tell my brother it was an error."
I said, "An error—yes."
"I didn't know what it was. But you have me to deal with now. You understand? I will tell my brother so. You said, 'On Earth a man may kill the thing he loves.' A woman of Mars may do that! Beware of me, Gregg Haljan."
Her passion-filled eyes bored into me. Love? Hate? The venom of a woman scorned—a mingling of turgid emotions....
I twisted back from her grip and ignored her. She sat back, silently watching my busy activities: the calculations of the shifting conditions of gravity, pressures, temperatures; a checking of the instruments on the board before me.
Mechanical routine. My mind went to Venza, back there on the asteroid. The wandering little world was already shrinking to a convex surface beneath us. Venza, with her last unknown play, gone to failure. Had I missed my cue? Whatever my part, it seemed now that I must have horribly misacted it.
The crescent Earth was presently swinging over our bow. We rocketed out of the asteroid's shadow. The glowing, flaming Sun appeared, making a crescent of the Earth. With the glass I could see our tiny Moon, visually seeming to hug the limb of its parent Earth.
We were on our course to the Moon. My mind flung ahead. Grantline with his treasure, unsuspecting this brigand ship. And suddenly, beyond all thought of Grantline, there came to me a fear for Anita. In God's truth I had been, so far, a very stumbling, inept champion, doomed to failure with everything I tried. Why had I not contrived to have Anita desert at the asteroid? Would it not have been far better for her there, taking her chance for rescue with Dr. Frank, Venza and the others?
But no! I had, like a fool, never thought of that! Had let her remain here on board at the mercy of these outlaws.
And I swore now, that beyond everything, I would protect her.
Futile oath! If I could have seen ahead a few hours! But I sensed the catastrophe. There was a shudder within me as I sat in that turret, docilely guiding us out through the asteroid's atmosphere, heading us upon our course for the Moon.
"Try again. By the infernal, Snap Dean, if you do anything to balk us, you die!"
Miko scanned the apparatus with keen eyes. How much technical knowledge of signaling instruments did this brigand leader have? I was tense and cold with apprehension as I sat in a corner of the radio room, watching Snap. Could Miko be fooled? Snap, I knew, was trying to fool him.
The Moon spread close beneath us. My log-chart, computed up to thirty minutes past, showed us barely some thirty thousand miles over the Moon's surface. A silver quadrant. The sunset caught the Lunar mountains, flung slanting shadows over the Lunar plains. All the disc was plainly visible. The mellow Earthlight glowed serene and pale to illumine the Lunar night.
ThePlanetarawas bathed in silver. A brilliant silver glare swept the forward deck, clean white and splashedwith black shadows. We had partly circled the Moon so as now to approach it from the Earthward side.
Miko for a time had been at my side in the turret. I had not seen Coniston or Hahn of recent hours. I had slept, awakened refreshed, and had a meal. Coniston and Hahn remained below, one or other of them always with the crew to execute my sirened orders. Then Coniston came to take my place in the turret, and I went with Miko to the radio room.
"You are skillful, Haljan." A measure of grim approval was in his voice. "You evidently have no wish to try and fool me in this navigation."
I had not, indeed. It is delicate work at best, coping with the intricacies of celestial mechanics upon a semicircular trajectory with retarding velocity, and with a makeshift crew we could easily have come upon real difficulty.
We hung at last, hull down, facing the Earthward hemisphere of the Lunar disc. The giant ball of the Earth lay behind and above us—the Sun over our stern quarter. With forward velocity almost checked, we poised, and Snap began his signals to the unsuspecting Grantline.
My work momentarily was over. I sat watching the radio room. Moa was here, close beside me. I felt always her watchful gaze, so that even the play of my emotions needed reining.
Miko worked with Snap. Anita too was here. To Miko and Moa it was the somber, taciturn George Prince, shrouded always in his black mourning cloak, disinclined to talk; sitting alone, brooding and sullen. This is how they thought of Anita.
Miko repeated: "By the infernal, if you try to fool me, Snap Dean!"
The small metal room, with its grid floor and low arched ceiling, glared with moonlight through its window. The moving figures of Snap and Miko were aped by the grotesque, misshapen shadows of them on the walls. Miko gigantic—a great menacing ogre. Snap small and alert—atrim, pale figure in his tight-fitting white trousers, broad-flowing belt, and white shirt open at the throat. His face was pale and drawn from lack of sleep and the torture to which Miko had subjected him earlier on the voyage. But he grinned at the brigand's words, and pushed his straggling hair closer under the red eyeshade.
The room over long periods was deadly silent, with Miko and Snap bending watchfully at the crowded banks of instruments. A silence in which my own pounding heart seemed to echo. I did not dare look at Anita, nor she at me. Snap was trying to signal Earth, not the Moon! His main grids were set in the reverse. The infra-red waves, flung from the bow window, were of a frequency which Snap and I believed that Grantline could not pick up. And over against the wall, close beside me and seemingly ignored by Snap, there was a tiny ultra-violet sender. Its faint hum and the quivering of its mirrors had so far passed unnoticed.
Would some Earth station pick it up? I prayed so. There was a thumbnail mirror here which would bring an answer.
Would some Earth telescope be able to see us? I doubted it. The pinpoint of thePlanetara'sinfinitesimal bulk would be beyond vision.
Long silences, broken only by the faint hiss and murmur of Snap's instruments.
"Shall I try the graphs, Miko?"
"Yes."
I helped him with the spectro. At every level the plates showed us nothing save the scarred and pitted Moon surface. We worked for an hour. There was nothing. Bleak cold night on the Moon here beneath us. A touch of fading sunlight upon the Apennines. Up near the South Pole, Tycho with its radiating open rills stood like a grim dark maw.
Miko bent over a plate. "Something here? Is there?"
An abnormality upon the frowning ragged cliffs of Tycho? We thought so. But then it seemed not.
Another hour. No signal came from Earth. If Snap's calls were getting through we had no evidence of it. Abruptly Miko strode at me from across the room. I went cold and tense; Moa shifted, alert to my every movement. But Miko was not interested in me. A sweep of his clenched fist knocked the ultra-violet sender and its coils and mirrors in a tinkling crash to the grid at my feet.
"We don't need that, whatever it is!" He rubbed his knuckles where the violet waves had tinged them, and turned grimly back to Snap.
"Where are your ray mirrors? If the treasure lies exposed—"
This Martian's knowledge was far greater than we believed. He grinned sardonically at Anita. "If our treasure is here on this hemisphere, Prince, we should pick up its rays. Don't you think so? Or is Grantline too cautious to leave it exposed?"
Anita spoke in a careful, throaty drawl. "The rays came through enough when we passed here on the way out."
"You should know," grinned Miko. "An expert eavesdropper, Prince, I will say that for you.... Come, Dean, try something else. By God, if Grantline does not signal us, I will be likely to blame you—my patience is shortening. Shall we go closer, Haljan?"
"I don't think it would help," I said.
He nodded. "Perhaps not. Are we checked?"
"Yes." We were poised very nearly motionless. "If you wish an advance, I can ring it. But we need a surface destination now."
"True, Haljan." He stood thinking. "Would a zed-ray penetrate those crater cliffs? Tycho, for instance, at this angle?"
"It might," Snap agreed. "You think he may be on the northern inner Tycho?"
"He may be anywhere," said Miko shortly.
"If you think that," Snap persisted, "suppose we swing thePlanetaraover the South Pole. Tycho, viewed from there—"
"And take another quarter day of time?" Miko sneered."Flash on your zed-ray; help him hook it up, Haljan."
I moved to the lens box of the spectroheliograph. It seemed that Snap was very strangely reluctant. Was it because he knew that the Grantline camp lay concealed on the north inner wall of Tycho's giant ring? I thought so. But Snap flashed a queer look at Anita. She did not see it, but I did. And I could not understand it.
My accursed, witless incapacity! If only I had taken warning!
"Here," commanded Miko. "A score of 'graphs with the zed-ray. I tell you I will comb this surface if we have to stay here until our ship comes from Ferrok-Shahn to join us!"
The Martian brigands were coming. Miko's signals had been answered. In ten days the other brigand ship, adequately manned and armed, would be here.
Snap helped me connect the zed-ray. He did not dare even to whisper to me, with Moa hovering always so close. And for all Miko's sardonic smiling, we knew that he would tolerate nothing from us now. He was fully armed and so was Moa.
I recall that several times Snap endeavored to touch me significantly. Oh, if only I had taken warning!
We finished our connecting. The dull gray point of zed-ray gleamed through the prisms to mingle with the moonlight entering the main lens. I stood with the shutter trip.
"The same interval, Snap?"
"Yes."
Beside me, I was aware of a faint reflection of the zed-ray—a gray cathedral shaft crossing the room and falling upon the opposite wall. An unreality there, as the zed-ray faintly strove to penetrate the metal room side.
I said, "Shall I make the exposure?"
Snap nodded. But that 'graph was never made. An exclamation from Moa made us all turn. The gamma mirrors were quivering! Grantline had picked our signals! With what was undoubtedly an intensified receiving equipment whichSnap had not thought Grantline able to use, he had caught our faint zed-rays, which Snap was sending only to deceive Miko. And Grantline had recognized thePlanetara, and had released his occulting screens surrounding the ore.
And upon their heels came Grantline's message. Not in the secret system he had arranged with Snap, but unsuspectingly in open code. I could read the swinging mirror, and so could Miko.
And Miko decoded it triumphantly aloud:
"Surprised but pleased your return. Approach Mid-Northern Hemisphere region of Archimedes, forty thousand off nearest Apennine range."
The message broke off. But even its importance was overshadowed. Miko stood in the center of the radio room, triumphantly reading the little indicator. Its beam swung on the scale, which chanced to be almost directly over Anita's head. I saw Miko's expression change.... A look of surprise, amazement, came over him.
"Why—"
He gasped. He stood staring. Almost stupidly staring, for an instant. And as I regarded him with fascinated horror, there came upon his heavy gray face a look of dawning comprehension. And I heard Snap's startled intake of breath. He moved to the spectro, where the zed-ray connections were still humming.
But, with a leap, Miko flung him away. "Off with you! Moa, watch him! Haljan, don't move!"
Again Miko stood staring. I saw now that he was staring at Anita!
"Why, George Prince! How strange you look!"
Anita did not move. She was stricken with horror; she shrank back against the wall, huddled in her cloak. Miko's sardonic voice came again:
"How strange you look, Prince!" He took a step forward. He was grim and calm. Horribly calm. Deliberate. Gloating like a great gray monster in human form toying with a fascinated, imprisoned bird.
"Move just a little, Prince. Let the zed-ray light fall more fully."
Anita's head was bare. That pale, Hamlet-like face. Dear God, the zed-ray light lay gray and penetrating upon it!
Miko took another step. Peering. Grinning. "How amazing, George Prince! Why, I can hardly believe it!"
Moa was armed with an electronic cylinder now. For all her amazement—what turgid emotions sweeping her I can only guess—she never took her eyes from Snap and me.
"Back! Don't move either of you!" she hissed at us.
Then Miko leaped at Anita like a giant gray leopard pouncing.
"Away with that cloak, Prince!"
I stood cold and numbed. And realization came at last. The faint zed-light had fallen by chance upon Anita's face. Penetrating the flesh; exposed, faintly glowing, the bone line of her jaw. Unmasked the art of Glutz.
Miko seized her wrists, drew her forward, beyond the shaft of zed-light, into the brilliant light of the Moon. And ripped her cloak from her. The gentle curves of her woman's figure were so unmistakable!
And as Miko gazed at them, all his calm triumph swept away.
"Why, Anita!"
I heard Moa mutter, "So that is it?" A venomous flashing look—a shaft from me to Anita and back again. "So that is it?"
"Why, Anita!"
Miko's great arms gathered her up as though she were a child. "So I have you back! From the dead, delivered back to me!"
"Gregg!" Snap's warning, and his grip on my shoulders brought me a measure of sanity. I had tensed to spring. I stood quivering, and Moa thrust her weapon against my face. The grids were swaying again with a message from Grantline. But it was ignored.
In the glare of moonlight by the forward window, Mikoheld Anita, his great hands pawing her with triumphant possessive caresses.
"So, little Anita, you are given back to me!"
Moonlight upon Earth so gently shines to make romantic a lover's smile! But the reality of the Lunar night is cold beyond human belief. Cold and darkly silent. Grim desolation. Awesome. Majestic. A frowning majesty that even to the most intrepid human beholder is inconceivably forbidding.
And there were humans here now. On this tumbled plain, between Archimedes and the mountains, one small crater amid the million of its fellows was distinguished this night by the presence of humans. The Grantline camp! It huddled in the deepest purple shadows on the side of a bowl-like pit, a crudely circular orifice with a scant two miles across its rippling rim. There was faint light here to mark the presence of the living intruders. The blue glow radiance of Morrell tube lights under a spread of glassite.
The Grantline camp stood midway up one of the inner cliff walls of the little crater. The broken, rock-strewn floor, two miles wide, lay five hundred feet below the camp. Behind it, the jagged, precipitous cliff rose another five hundred to the heights of the upper rim. A broad level shelf hung midway up the cliff, and upon it Grantline had built his little group of glassite dome shelters. Viewed from above there was the darkly purple crater floor, the upflung circular rim where the Earthlight tinged the spires and crags with yellow sheen; and on the shelf, like a huddled group of birds' nests, Grantline's domes hung and gazed down upon the inner valley.
The air here on the Moon surface was negligible—a scant one five-thousandth of the atmospheric pressure at the sea level on Earth. But within the glassite shelter, a normalEarth pressure must be maintained. Rigidly braced double walls to withstand the explosive tendency, with no external pressure to counteract it. A tremendous necessity for mechanical equipment had burdened Grantline's small ship to capacity. The chemistry of manufactured air, the pressure equalizers, renewers, respirators, the lighting and temperature maintenance of a space-flyer was here.
There was this main Grantline building, stretched low and rectangular along the front edge of the ledge. Within it were living rooms, mess hall and kitchen. Fifty feet behind it, connected by a narrow passage of glassite, was a similar though smaller structure. The mechanical control rooms, with their humming, vibrating mechanisms were here. And an instrument room with signaling apparatus, senders, receivers, mirror-grids and audiphones of several varieties. And an electro-telescope, small but modern, with dome overhead like a little Earth observatory.
From this instrument building, beside the connecting pedestrian passage, wire cables for light, and air tubes and strings and bundles of instrument wires ran to the main structure—gray snakes upon the porous, gray Lunar rock.
The third building seemed a lean-to banked against the cliff wall, a slanting shed-wall of glassite fifty feet high and two hundred in length. Under it, for months Grantline's bores had dug into the cliff. Braced tunnels were here, penetrating back and downward into the vein of rock.
The work was over. The borers had been dismantled and packed away. At one end of the cliff the mining equipment lay piled in a litter. There was a heap of discarded ore where Grantline had carted and dumped it after his first crude refining process had yielded it as waste. The ore slag lay like gray powder flakes strewn down the cliff. Trucks and ore carts along the ledge stood discarded, mute evidence of the weeks and months of work these helmeted miners had undergone, struggling upon this airless, frowning world.
But now all that was finished. The catalytic ore was sufficiently concentrated. It lay—this treasure—in a seventyfoot pile behind the glassite lean-to, with a cage of wires over it and an insulation barrage hiding its presence.
The ore shelter was dark; the other two buildings were lighted. And there were small lights mounted at intervals about the camp and along the edge of the ledge. A spider ladder, with tiny platforms some twenty feet one above the other, hung precariously to the cliff-face. It descended the five hundred feet to the crater floor; and, behind the camp, it mounted the jagged cliff-face to the upper rim height, where a small observatory platform was placed.
Such was the outer aspect of the Grantline Treasure Camp near the beginning of this Lunar night, when, unknown to Grantline and his men, thePlanetarawith its brigands was approaching. The night was perhaps a sixth advanced. Full night. No breath of cloud to mar the brilliant starry heavens. The quadrant Earth hung poised like a giant mellow moon over Grantline's crater. A bright Earth, yet no air was here on this Lunar surface to spread its light. Only a glow, mingling with the spots of blue tube light on the poles along the cliff, and the radiance from the lighted buildings.
No evidence of movement showed about the silent camp. Then a pressure door in an end of the main building opened its tiny series of locks. A bent figure came out. The lock closed. The figure straightened and gazed about the camp. Grotesque, bloated semblance of a man! Helmeted, with rounded dome hood, suggestion of an ancient sea diver, yet goggled and trunked like a gas-masked fighter of the twentieth century.
He stopped presently and disconnected metal weights which were upon his shoes.
Then he stood erect again, and with giant strides bounded along the cliff. Fantastic figure in the blue lit gloom! A child's dream of crags and rocks and strange lights with a single monstrous figure in seven league boots.
He went the length of the ledge with his twenty foot strides, inspected the lights, and made adjustments. Cameback, and climbed with agile, bounding leaps up the spider ladder to the dome of the crater top. A light flashed on up there. Then it was extinguished.
The goggled, bloated figure came leaping down after a moment. Grantline's exterior watchman making his rounds. He came back to the main building. Fastened the weights on his shoes. Signaled.
The lock opened. The figure went inside.
It was early evening. After the dinner hour and before the time of sleep according to the camp routine Grantline was maintaining. Ninep.m.of Earth Eastern American time, recorded now upon his Earth chronometer. In the living room of the main building Johnny Grantline sat with a dozen of his men dispersed about the room, whiling away as best they could the lonesome hours.
"All as usual. This cursed Moon! When I get home—if I ever do—"
"Say your say, Wilks. But you'll spend your share of the gold leaf and thank your constellations that you had your chance to make it."
"Let him alone! Come on, Wilks, take a hand here. This game is not any good with three."
The man who had been outside flung his hissing helmet recklessly to the floor and unsealed his suit. "Here, get me out of this. No, I won't play. I can't play your cursed game with nothing at stake!"
A laugh went up at the sharp look Johnny Grantline flung from where he sat reading in a corner of the room.
"Commander's orders. No gambling gold leafers tolerated here."
"Play the game, Wilks," Grantline said quietly. "We all know it's infernal—this doing nothing."
"He's been struck by Earthlight," another man laughed. "Commander, I told you not to let that guy Wilks out at night."
A rough but good-natured lot of men. Jolly and raucous by nature in their leisure hours. But there was too muchleisure here now. Their mirth had a hollow sound. In older times, explorers of the frozen Polar zones had to cope with inactivity, loneliness and despair. But at least they were on their native world. The grimness of the Moon was eating into the courage of Grantline's men. An unreality here. A weirdness. These fantastic crags. The deadly silence. The nights, almost two weeks of Earth time in length, congealed by the deadly frigidity of space. The days of black sky, blazing stars and flaming Sun, with no atmosphere to diffuse the Sun's heat radiating so swiftly from the naked Lunar surface that the outer temperature still was cold. And day and night, always the beloved Earth disc hanging poised up near the zenith. From thinnest crescent to full Earth, then back to crescent.
All so abnormal, irrational, disturbing to human senses.
With the mining work over, an irritability grew upon Grantline's men. And perhaps since the human mind is so wonderful, elusive a thing, there lay upon these men an indefinable sense of disaster. Johnny Grantline felt it. He thought about it now as he sat in the room corner watching Wilks being forced into the plaget game, and he found the premonition strong within him. Unreasonably, ominous depression! Barring the accident which had disabled his little spaceship when they reached this small crater hole, his expedition had gone well. His instruments, and the information he had from the former explorers, had enabled him to pick up the catalyst vein with only one month of search.
The vein had now been exhausted; but the treasure was here—enough to supply every need on his Earth! Nothing was left but to wait for thePlanetara. The men were talking of that now.
"She ought to be well midway from Ferrok-Shahn by now. When do you figure she'll be back here and signal us?"
"Twenty days. Give her another five now to Mars, and five in port. That's ten. We'll pick her signals in three weeks, mark me!"
"Three weeks. Just give me three weeks of reasonablesunrise and sunset! This cursed Moon! You mean, Williams, next daylight."
"Ha! He's inventing a Lunar language. You'll be a Moon man yet."
Olaf Swenson, the big blond fellow from the Scandia fiords, came and flung himself down beside Grantline.
"Ay tank they bane without enough to do, Commander ——"
"Three weeks isn't very long, Ole."
"No. Maybe not."
From across the room somebody was saying, "If theComethadn't smashed on us, damn me but I'd ask the Commander to let some of us take her back."
"Shut up, Billy. Sheissmashed."
"You all agreed to things as they are," Johnny said shortly. "We all took the same chances—voluntarily."
A dynamic little fellow, this Johnny Grantline. Short of temper sometimes, but always just, and a perfect leader of men. In stature he was almost as small as Snap. But he was thick-set, with a smooth-shaven, keen-eyed, square-jawed face; and a shock of brown tousled hair. A man of thirty-five, though the decision of his manner, the quiet dominance of his voice made him seem older. He stood up now, surveying the blue lit glassite room with its low ceiling close overhead. He was bow-legged; in movement he seemed to roll with a stiff-legged gait like some sea captains of former days on the deck of his swaying ship. Odd looking figure! Heavy flannel shirt and trousers, boots heavily weighted, and bulky metal-loaded belt strapped about his waist.
He grinned at Swenson. "When the time comes to divide this treasure, everyone will be happy, Ole."
The treasure was estimated to be the equivalent of ninety millions in gold leaf. A hundred and ten millions in the gross as it now stood, with twenty millions to be deducted by the Federated Refiners for reducing it to the standard purity for commercial use. Ninety millions, with only a million and a half to come off for expedition expenses, and thePlanetara'sshare another million. A nice little stake.
Grantline strode across the room with his rolling gait.
"Cheer up, boys. Who's winning there? I say, you fellows—"
An audiphone buzzer interrupted him, a call from the duty man in the instrument room of the nearby building.
Grantline clicked the receiver. The room fell into silence. Any call was unusual—nothing ever happened here in the camp.
The duty man's voice sounded over the room.
"Signals coming! Not clear. Will you come over, Commander?"
Signals!
It was never Grantline's way to enforce needless discipline. He offered no objection when every man in the camp rushed through the connecting passages. They crowded the instrument room where the tense duty man sat bending over his radio receivers. The mirrors were swaying.
The duty man looked up and met Grantline's gaze.
"I ran it up to the highest intensity, Commander. We ought to get it—"
"Low scale, Peter?"
"Yes. Weakest infra-red. I'm bringing it up, even though it uses too much of our power."
"Get it," said Grantline shortly.
"I got one slight television swing a minute ago—then it faded. I think it's thePlanetara."
"Planetara!" The crowding group of men chorused. How could it be thePlanetara?
But it was. The call came in presently. Unmistakably thePlanetara, turned back now from her course to Ferrok-Shahn.
"How far away, Peter?"
The duty man consulted the needles of his dial scale. "Close! Very weak infra-red. But close. Around thirty thousand miles, maybe. It's Snap Dean calling."
ThePlanetarahere within thirty thousand miles! Excitement and pleasure swept the room. ThePlanetarahad for so long been awaited eagerly!
The excitement communicated to Grantline. It was unlike him to be incautious; yet now with no thought save that some unforeseen and pleasing circumstance had brought thePlanetaraahead of time; incautious, Grantline certainly was!
"Raise the barrage."
"I'll go. My suit is here."
A willing volunteer rushed out to the shed.
"Can you send, Peter?" Grantline demanded.
"Yes. With more power."
"Use it."
Johnny dictated the message of his location which we received. In his incautious excitement he ignored the secret code.
An interval passed. No message had come from us—just Snap's routine signal in the weak infra-red, which we hoped Grantline would not get.
The men crowding Grantline's instrument room waited in tense silence. Then Grantline tried the television again. Its current weakened the lights with the drain upon the distributors, and cooled the room with a sudden deadly chill as the Erentz insulating system slowed down.
The duty man looked frightened. "You'll bulge out our walls, Commander. The internal pressure—"
"We'll chance it."
They picked up the image of thePlanetara. It shone clear on the grid—the segment of star-field with a tiny cigar-shaped blob. Clear enough to be unmistakable. ThePlanetara! Here now, over the Moon, almost directly overhead, poised at what the altimeter scale showed to be a fraction under thirty thousand miles.
The men gazed in awed silence. ThePlanetaracoming....
But the altimeter needle was motionless. ThePlanetarawas hanging poised.
A sudden gasp went about the room. The men stood with whitening faces, gazing at thePlanetara'simage. And at thealtimeter's needle. It was moving now. ThePlanetarawas descending. But not with an orderly swoop.
The grid showed the ship clearly. The bow tilted up, then dipped down. But then in a moment it swung up again. The ship turned partly over. Righted itself. Then swayed again, drunkenly.
The watching men were stricken in horrified silence. ThePlanetara'simage momentarily, horribly, grew larger. Swaying. Then turning completely over, rotating slowly end over end.
ThePlanetara, out of control, was falling!
On thePlanetara, in the radio room, Snap and I stood with Moa's weapon upon us. Miko held Anita. Triumphant, possessive. Then as she struggled, a gentleness came to this strange Martian giant. Perhaps he really loved her. Looking back on it, I sometimes think so.
"Anita, do not fear me." He held her away from him. "I would not harm you. I want your love." Irony came to him. "And I thought I had killed you. But it was only your brother."
He partly turned. I was aware of how alert was his attention. He grinned. "Hold them, Moa. Don't let them do anything foolish.... So, little Anita, you were masquerading to spy on me? That was wrong of you."
Anita had not spoken. She held herself tensely away from Miko. She had flashed me a look, just one. What horrible mischance to have brought on this catastrophe!
The completion of Grantline's message had come unnoticed by us all. We remained tense.
"Look! Grantline again!" Snap said abruptly.
But the mirrors were steadying. We had no recording mechanism; the rest of the message was lost.
No further message came. There was an interval whileMiko waited. He held Anita in the hollow of his great arm.
"Quiet, little bird. Do not fear me. I have work to do, Anita, this is our great adventure. We will be rich, you and I. All the luxuries these worlds can offer—all for us when this is over. Careful, Moa! This Haljan has no wit."
Well could he say it. I, who had been so witless as to let this come upon us! Moa's weapon prodded me. Her voice hissed at me with all the venom of a reptile enraged. "So that was your game, Gregg Haljan! And I was so graceless as to admit love for you!"
Snap murmured in my ear, "Don't move, Gregg! She's reckless."
She heard it. She whirled on him. "We have lost George Prince, it seems. Well, we will survive without his scientific knowledge. And you, Dean—and this Haljan, mark me—I will kill you both if you cause trouble!"
Miko was gloating. "Don't kill them yet, Moa. What was it Grantline said? Near the crater of Archimedes. Ring us down, Haljan. We'll land."
He signaled the turret, gave Coniston the Grantline message, and audiphoned it below to Hahn. The news spread about the ship. The bandits were jubilant.
"We'll land now, Haljan. Come, Anita and I will go with you to the turret."
I found my voice. "To what destination?"
"Near Archimedes. The Apennine side. Keep well away from the Grantline camp. We will probably sight it as we descend."
There was no trajectory needed. We were almost over Archimedes now. I could drop us with a visible, instrumental course. My mind was whirling with a confusion of thoughts. What could we do? I met Snap's gaze.
"Ring us down, Gregg," he said quietly.
I nodded. I pushed Moa's weapon away. "You don't need that—"
We went to the turret. Moa watched me and Snap, a grim, cold Amazon. She avoided looking at Anita, whomMiko helped down the ladders with a strange mixture of courtierlike grace and amused irony. Coniston stared at Anita.
"I say, not George Prince? The girl—"
"No time for explanations," Miko commanded. "It's the girl, masquerading as her brother. Get below, Coniston. Haljan takes us down."
The astounded Englishman continued to gaze at Anita. But he said, "I mean to say, where to on the Moon? Not to encounter Grantline at once, Miko? Our equipment is not ready."
"Of course not. We will land well away—"
The reluctant Coniston left us. I took the controls. Miko, still holding Anita as though she were a child, sat beside me. "We will watch him, Anita. A skilled fellow at this sort of work."
I rang my signals for the shifting of the gravity plates. The answer should have come from below within a second or two. But it did not. Miko regarded me with his great bushy eyebrows upraised.
"Ring again, Haljan."
I duplicated. No answer. The silence was ominous.
Miko muttered, "That accursed Hahn. Ring again!"
I sent the imperative emergency demand.
No answer. A second or two. Then all of us in the turret were startled. Transfixed. From below came a sudden hiss. It sounded in the turret; it came from the shifting room call grid. The hissing of the pneumatic valves of the plate shifters in the lower control room. The valves were opening; the plates automatically shifting into neutral, and disconnecting!
An instant of startled silence. Miko may have realized the significance of what had happened. Certainly Snap and I did. The hissing ceased. I gripped the emergency plate shifter switch which hung over my head. Its disc was dead! The plates were dead in neutral: in the position theywere placed only in port! And their shifting mechanisms were imperative!
I was on my feet. "We're in neutral!"
The Moon disc moved visibly as thePlanetaralurched. The vault of the heavens was slowly swinging.
Miko ripped out a heavy oath. "Haljan! What is this?"
The heavens turned with a giant swoop. The Moon was over us. It swung in a dizzying arc. Overhead, then back past our stern; under us, then appearing over our bow.
ThePlanetarahad turned over. Upending. Rotating, end over end.
For a moment I think all of us in the turret stood and clung. The Moon disc, the Earth, Sun and all the stars were swinging past our windows. So horribly dizzying. ThePlanetaraseemed lurching and tumbling. But it was an optical effect only. I stared with grim determination at my feet. The turret seemed to steady.
Then I looked again. That horrible swoop of all the heavens! And the Moon, as it went past seemed expanded. We were falling! Out of control, with the Moon gravity pulling us down!
"That accursed Hahn—"
A moment only had passed. My fancy that the Moon disc was enlarged was merely the horror of my imagination. We had not fallen far enough for that.
But we were falling. Unless I could do something, we would crash upon the Lunar surface.
Anita, killed in this turret: the end of everything—every hope.
Action came to me. I gasped, "Miko, you stay here! The controls are dead! You stay here and hold Anita—"
I ignored Moa's weapon. Snap thrust her away.
"We're falling, you fool—let us alone!"
Miko gasped, "Can you—check us? What happened?"
"I don't know—"
I stood clinging. This dizzying whirl. From the audiphone grid Coniston's voice sounded.
"I say, Haljan, something's wrong. Hahn doesn't signal."
The lookout in the forward tower was clinging to our window. On the deck below our turret a member of the crew appeared, stood lurching for a moment, then shouted and ran, swaying, aimless. From the lower hull corridors our grids sounded with the tramping of running steps. Panic among the crew was spreading over the ship. A chaos below deck.
I pulled at the emergency switch again. Dead....
"Snap, we must get down. The signals."
Coniston's voice came like a scream from the grid. "Hahn is dead. The controls are broken!"
I shouted, "Miko, hold Anita! Come on, Snap!"
We clung to the ladders. Snap was behind me. "Careful, Gregg! Good God!"
This dizzying whirl. I tried not to look. The deck under me was now a blurred kaleidoscope of swinging patches of moonlight and shadow.
We reached the deck. It seemed that from the turret Anita's voice followed us. "Be careful!"
Once inside the ship, our senses steadied. With the rotating, reeling heavens shut out, there were only the shouts and tramping steps of the panic-stricken crew to mark that there was anything amiss. That, and a pseudo sensation of lurching caused by the pulsing of gravity—a pull when the Moon was beneath our hull to combine its forces with our magnetizers; a lightening, when it was overhead. A throbbing, pendulum lurch!
We ran down to the corridor incline. A white-faced member of the crew came running up.
"What's happened, Haljan? What's happened?"
"We're falling!" I gripped him. "Get below. Come with us."
But he jerked away from me. "Falling?"
A steward came running. "Falling? My God!"
Snap swung at them. "Get ahead of us! The manual controls—our only chance—we need all you men at the compressor pumps!"
But it was instinct to try and get on deck, as though here below we were rats caught in a trap. The men tore away from us and ran. Their shouts of panic resounded through the dim, blue lit corridors.
Coniston came lurching from the control room. "I say—falling! Haljan, my God, look!"
Hahn was sprawled at the gravity plate switchboard. Sprawled, head down. Dead. Killed? Or a suicide?
I bent over him. His hands gripped the main switch. He had ripped it loose. And his left hand had reached and broken the fragile line of tubes that intensified the current of the pneumatic plate-shifters. A suicide? With his last frenzy, determined to kill us all? Why?
Then I saw that Hahn had been killed! Not a suicide! In his hand he gripped a small segment of black fabric, a piece torn from an invisible cloak!
Snap was rigging the hand compressors. If he could get the pressure back in the tanks....
I swung on Coniston. "You armed?"
"Yes." He was white-faced and confused, but not in a panic. He showed me his heat ray cylinder. "What do you want me to do?"
"Round up the crew. Get all you can. Bring them here to man the pumps."
He dashed away. Snap called after him, "Kill them if they argue!"
Miko's voice sounded from the turret call grid: "Falling! Haljan, you can see it now! Check us!"
Desperate moments. Or was it an hour? Coniston brought the men. He stood over them with menacing weapon.
We had all the pumps going. The pressure rose a little in the tanks. Enough to shift a bow plate. I tried it. The plate slowly clicked into a new combination. A gravity repulsion just in the bow-tip.
I signaled Miko. "Have we stopped swinging?"
"No. But slower."
I could feel it, that lurch of the gravity. But not steady now. A limp. The tendency of our bow was to stay up.
"More pressure, Snap."
One of the crew rebelled, tried to bolt from the room.
Coniston shot him down.
I shifted another bow plate. Then two in the stern. The stern plates seemed to move more readily than the others.
"Run all the stern plates," Snap advised.
I tried it. The lurching stopped. Miko called, "We're bow down. Falling!"
But not falling free. The Moon gravity pull on us was more than half neutralized.
"I'll go up, Snap, and try the engines. You don't mind staying down here? Executing my signals?"
"You idiot!" He gripped my shoulders. His eyes were gleaming, his face haggard, but his pale lips twitched with a smile.
"Maybe it's good-bye, Gregg. We'll fall—fighting."
"Yes. Fighting. Coniston, you keep the pressure up."
With the broken tubes it took nearly all the pressure to maintain the few plates I had shifted. One slipped back to neutral. Then the pumps gained on it, and it shifted again.
I dashed up to the deck. Oh, the Moon was so close now! So horribly close! The deck shadows were still. Through the forward bow windows the Moon surface glared up at us.
Those last horrible minutes were a blur. And there was always Anita's face. She left Miko. Faced with death, he sat clinging. Moa too, sat apart—staring.
And Anita crept to me. "Gregg, dear one. The end...."
I tried the electronic engines from the stern, setting them in reverse. The streams of their light glowed from the stern, forward along our hull, and flared down from our bow toward the Lunar surface. But no atmosphere was here to give resistance. Perhaps the electronic streams checked our fall a little. The pumps gave us pressure just in the lastminutes, to slide a few of the hull plates. But our bow stayed down. We slid, like a spent rocket falling.