Project Gutenberg's The Finding of Haldgren, by Charles Willard Diffin
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Title: The Finding of Haldgren
Author: Charles Willard Diffin
Release Date: August 17, 2009 [EBook #29717]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FINDING OF HALDGREN ***
Produced by Greg Weeks, Graeme Mackreth and the Online
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Transcribers note: This etext was produced from Astounding Stories
April 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
[Illustration]
[Chet Ballard answers the pinpoint of light that from the
craggy desolation of the moon stabs out man's old call for help.]
The Finding of Haldgren
_A Complete Novelette_
By Charles Willard Diffin
CHAPTER I
SOS
The venerable President of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale
had been speaking. He paused now to look out over the sea of faces that
filled the great hall in serried waves. He half turned that he might let
his eyes pass over the massed company on the platform with him. The
Stratosphere Control Board--and they had called in their representatives
from the far corners of Earth to hear the memorable words of this aged
man.
[Illustration: _The beasts fell into the pit beyond; their screams rang
horribly as they fell._]
From the waiting audience came no slightest sound; the men and women
were as silent as that other audience listening and watching in every
hamlet of the world, wherever radio and television reached. Again the
figure of the President was drawn erect; the scanty, white hair was
thrown back from his forehead; he was speaking:
" ... And this vast development has come within the memory of one man.
I, speaking to you here in this year of 1974, have seen it all come to
pass. And now I am overwhelmed with the wonder of it, even as I was when
those two Americans first flew at Kittyhawk.
"I, myself, saw that. I saw with these eyes the first crude
engine-bearing kites; I saw them from 1914 to 1918 tempered and
perfected in the furnace of war; I saw the coming of detonite and the
beginning of our air-transport of to-day. And always I have seen brave
men--men who smiled grimly as they took those first crude controls in
their hands; who laughed and waved to us as they took off in the 'flying
coffins' of the great war; who had the courage to dare the unknown
dangers of the high levels and who first threw their ships through the
Repelling Area and blazed the air-trails of a new world.
"And to-day I, who have seen all this, stand before you and say: 'Thank
God that the spirit of brave men goes on!'
* * * * *
"It has never ended--that adventurer strain--that race of Viking men. We
have two of them here to-night. The whole world is pausing this instant
wherever men are on land or water or air to do honor to these two.
"They do not know why they are here. They have been summoned by the
Stratosphere Control Board which has delegated to me the honor of making
the announcement."
The tall figure was commandingly erect; for an instant the fire of youth
had returned to him.
"Walter Harkness!" he called. "Chester Bullard! Stand forth that the
eyes of the world may see!"
Two men arose from among the members of the Board and came hesitantly
forward. Strongly contrasting was the darkly handsome face of Harkness,
man of wealth and Pilot of the Second Class, and the no less pleasing
features of Chet Bullard, Master Pilot of the World. For Bullard's
curling hair was as golden as the triple star upon his chest that
proclaimed his standing to the world and all the air above.
The speaker was facing them; he turned away for a moment that he might
bow to a girl who was still seated next to the chair where Walt
Harkness had been.
"To Mrs. Harkness," he said, "who, until one month ago, was Mademoiselle
Delacouer of our own beloved France, I shall have something further to
say. She, too, has been summoned by the Board, but, for now, I address
these two."
* * * * *
Again he was facing the two men; and now he was speaking directly to
them:
"Pilot Harkness and Master Pilot Bullard, for you the world has been
forced to create a new honor, a new mark of the world's esteem. For you
two have done what never men have done before. We who have preceded you
have subdued the air; but you, gentlemen, you--the first of all created
beings to do so--have conquered space.
"And to you, because of your courage; because of your dauntless pioneer
spirit; because of the unconquerable will that drove you and the
inventive genius that made it possible--because all these have set you
above us more ordinary men, since they have made you the first men to
fly through space--it is my privilege now to show you the honor in which
you are held by the whole world."
The firm voice quavered; for a moment the old hands trembled as they
lifted a blazing gem from its velvet case.
"Chester Bullard, Master Pilot, on behalf of the Stratosphere Control
Board I bestow upon you--"
"Stop!"
* * * * *
Every radiophone in the world must have echoed that sharp command; every
television screen must have shown to a breathless audience the figure
whose blond hair was awry, whose lean face was afire with protest, as
Chet Bullard sprang forward with upraised hand.
"You're wrong--dead wrong! You're making a mistake. I can't accept
that!"
The master pilot's voice was raised in earnest protest. He seemed, for
the moment, unaware of the thousands of eyes that were upon him;
heedless of the gasp of amazement that swept sibilantly over the vast
audience like a hissing wave breaking upon the beach. And then his face
flushed scarlet, though his eyes still held steadily upon the startled
countenance of the man who stood transfixed, while the jewel in his hand
took the light of the nitron illuminators above and shot it back in a
glory of rainbow hues.
From the seated group on the platform a man came forward. Commander of
the Air, this iron-gray man; he was head of the Stratosphere Control
Board, supreme authority on all matters that concerned the air levels of
the whole world; Commander-in-Chief of all men who laid hands on the
controls of a ship. He spoke quietly now, and Chet Bullard, at his first
word, snapped instantly to salute, then stood silently waiting.
"What is the meaning of this?" demanded the voice of authority. The
voice seemed soft, almost gentle, yet each syllable carried throughout
the hall with an unmistakable hint of the hardness of a steelite shell
beneath the words.
"The eyes of the world are upon us here; the whole world is gathered to
do you honor. Is it possible that you are refusing that which we offer?
Why? You will speak, please!"
And Chet Bullard, standing stiffly at attention before his commander,
spoke in a tone rendered almost boyish by embarrassment.
* * * * *
"I can't accept, sir. Pilot Harkness will bear me out in this. You would
decorate us for being the first to navigate space; but we are not the
first."
"Continue!" ordered the quiet voice as Chet paused. "You refer to
Haldgren, probably."
"To Pilot Haldgren, sir."
"This is absurd! Haldgren was lost. It is supposed that he fell back
into the sea, or struck some untraveled part of Earth."
"I have checked over his data, sir. It is my opinion that he did not
fall; his figures indicate that he must have thrown his ship beyond the
gravitational influence of Earth."
The Commander eyed the master pilot coldly. "And because you _think_
that your conclusions are more accurate than those of my own
investigating committee, you refuse this honor!
"Attention!" he snapped sharply. "The entire Service of Air is being
rendered ridiculous by your conduct! I command you to accept this
decoration."
"You are exceeding your authority, sir. I refuse!"
Suddenly the frozen quiet of the Commander's face was flushed red with
rage. "Give me that insignia!" he demanded, and pointed to the triple
star on Chet Bullard's breast. "Your commission is revoked!"
* * * * *
To the last breathless spectator in the farthest end of the great hall
the white pallor of Chet Bullard's face must have been apparent. One
hand moved toward the emblem on his blouse, the cherished triple star of
a master pilot of the World; then the hand paused.
"I have still another reason for believing Haldgren is alive," he said
in a cold and carefully emotionless voice. "Are you interested in
hearing it?"
"Speak!" ordered the Commander.
Chet Bullard, still wearing the triple star, crossed quickly to a phone
panel in the speaker's stand at one side of the stage. He jerked out an
instrument. The buzz of excited whispering that had swept the audience
gave place to utter silence. Each quiet, incisive word that Chet spoke
was clearly heard. He gave his call number.
"Bullard; Master Pilot, First Class; Number U.S. 1; calling Doctor Roche
at Allied Observatory, Mount Everest. Micro-wave, please, and connect
through for telefoto-projection."
A few breathless seconds passed, while Chet aimed an instrument of
gleaming chromium and glass, whose cable connections vanished in the
phone panel recess. He focused it upon an artificially darkened screen
above and behind the grouped figures on the stage. Then:
"Doctor Roche?" Chet queried.
And, before the whole audience, the dark screen came to life to show a
clear-cut picture of a man who sat at a telescope; whose hand held a
radiophone; and who glanced up frowningly and said: "Yes, this is Doctor
Roche."
Chet's response was immediate.
"Bullard speaking; Chet Bullard, at New York. When I was in your
observatory yesterday, Doctor, you said that you had seen flashes of
light on the Moon. You remember that, don't you? You saw them some
months ago while I was on the Dark Moon."
* * * * *
The man in that distant observatory was no longer scowling at this
interruption of his work. His smile was echoed by the cordial tone of
his voice that rang clearly through the great hall.
"Correct, Mr. Bullard. An observer at our two hundred-inch reflector
reported them on two successive nights. They were inside the crater of
Hercules."
From his place at the center of the stage the waiting Commander of Air
protested:
"Come--come! We know all about that, Bullard. Are you trying to say--"
The voice of the astronomer was speaking again:
"You will no doubt be interested to know that the lights occurred again
yesterday at about this time.... Let me see if they are on now. I will
have the two hundred-inch instrument used as before, and will show you
what we see.
"Watch your screen, but don't expect to find any substantiation of your
wild theory that these lights have a human origin." He laughed softly.
"No atmosphere to speak of there, you know; we have determined that very
definitely."
On the screen the picture of the smiling man flashed off; it was
replaced by an unflickering darkness that came abruptly into softly
shaded light. There was an expanse of volcanic terrain and a round
orifice of tremendous size, where the sunlight cast black shadows. Other
shaded portions about were like rocky, broken ground.
* * * * *
To Chet, staring at the strange conformation, came the quick sense of
hanging above that ground and looking down upon it. And he knew that in
New York he was looking through a great telescope down under the world
and was staring straight down into the throat of an extinct volcano on
the Moon.
There were few wonders of the modern world that could thrill the master
pilot with any feeling of amazement, but here was a new experience. He
would have spoken, would have ejaculated some word of wonder, but for
the new light that claimed his eyes and brain.
The volcano, even in death, was ages old; its cold desolation showing
plainly on the screen. No fires poured now from a hot throat; the
molten sea that once had raged within had hardened and choked that vast
throat with rock that had frozen to make one enormous plain. Ringed
about by the jagged sides of the tremendous volcano, the floor within
seemed smooth by comparison, except for another depression at its upper
edge.
Here was another and smaller crater inside the great ringed wall of
Hercules. The light of the sun struck slantingly across to throw one
side of the gigantic cup into shadow, while the opposite rim blared
brightly in the lunar dawn. And within the smaller crater, too, one side
was dead black with shadow.
Dead!--No moving thing--no sign of life or indication that life might
ever have been! A dead world, this!--its utter desolation struck Chet's
half-uttered exclamation to a hoarse whisper of dismay. In all the
universe what less likely place might one discover wherein to look for
man?
* * * * *
His gaze was held in fascinated hopelessness on the barren, mountainous
ring, on the inner inverted cone, on the shadow within that smaller
crater--_on a tiny pinpoint of light that was flashing there!_... He
hardly knew when he raised one trembling hand and pointed, while a voice
quite unlike his own said huskily:
"Look! Look! I told you it was so!... There! In that little
crater!--it's signaling! Three dots--now three dashes--three dots again!
The old S O S!--the old call for help! It's Haldgren!"
Again the screen showed the smiling scientist.
"Caught them just right," he said, "and glad to be of service. Now, if
there's anything else I can do--"
"Thanks!" said Chet in that same strained voice. "Thanks! There's
nothing else." A switch clicked beneath his hand, and once more the
screen was dark.
"Those dots and dashes! The old S O S! Who could doubt now?" Chet was
telling himself this when the Commander's voice broke in harshly.
"Even you must see the absurdity of this, Bullard. You have heard this
astronomer tell you what the rest of us knew for ourselves--that there
is no air on the Moon; that it is impossible for a human being to live
there. And you would have us believe that a man has lived there for five
years!
"But I am taking your distinguished record into account; I am
overlooking your insubordination and the folly of your reasoning.
Perhaps your feeling about Haldgren does you credit; but Haldgren is
dead. Now I am giving you another chance: I order you to come forward
and receive this honor, which is an honor to the entire Service of Air."
* * * * *
Chet was staring in open amazement. "No air on the Moon," this man had
said. And what of that? Neither was there air in interplanetary space,
yet he had traveled there. It was inconceivable that this imperious and
dictatorial man could be so blind.
"I can't do it, sir," he tried to explain. "You surely can't disregard
that message, the old call for help. We were using that, you know, when
Haldgren took off five years ago."
No longer did a masking softness overlay the hard brittleness of the
Commander's voice.
"Your star!" he snapped. "You are no longer in the Service, Bullard!"
But Chet Bullard, as he stepped forward that the Commander might rip the
triple star from his chest, was not alone. Walt Harkness was only a
Pilot of the Second Class, but he stripped the emblem from his own
silken blouse and placed it in the Commander's outstretched hand beside
Chet's star.
"Permit me, sir, to share Mr. Bullard's enviable humiliation," he
observed with venomous courtesy; and added:
"Whatever similar honors were in store for Mrs. Harkness and myself are
respectfully declined. We, too, are of the opinion that Pilot Haldgren
deserves them instead of us."
For an instant Chet's flashing smile drew his face into friendly lines.
"Thanks!" he said.
But all friendliness was erased as he swung back upon the Commander.
* * * * *
No thought now of the thousands of staring faces or of the millions
throughout the world who were watching him and were hearing his words.
Chet Bullard clipped those words into curt phrases, and he shot them at
his superior officer as if from a detonite gun:
"You think your judgment better than mine--you've dropped me from the
Service--and you've got the power to make that stick! But you're wrong,
sir, dead wrong! And I'll make you admit it, too.
"No--don't interrupt! I'm going to say what I please, and this is it,
Commander:
"Hang onto that jewel you were giving me. Keep it ready. For I'm going
to the Moon. I'm going to find Haldgren, if he's still living when I get
there. And, at the least, I will bring back some record to show he is
the man we should honor.
"Haldgren, alive or dead, was the first man to conquer space. Neither
Harkness nor I would steal an atom of his glory. I'll have the proof
when I come back. And when I come--"
* * * * *
For an instant the ready grin that marked Chet's irresistible good
nature lighted up his face with a silent echo of some laugh-provoking
thought occurring in his mind.
"--when I do come, Commander, I will make you eat your words. It's you
who will be out of the Service then, laughed out!"
The Commander smiled, too; smiled coldly, complacently, while his head
shook.
"Again you are mistaken," he told Chet; "never again will you fly as
much as one foot above Earth."
And still Chet's grin persisted. "Commander," he said, "a man in your
position should not make so many mistakes. I am going--I give you
warning now--going to the Moon. And you haven't enough Patrol Ships in
all the air levels of Earth to hold me back, once I'm on my way!"
And every television screen of Earth showed a remarkable scene: a
red-faced, choleric Commander of the Air, who shouted that a group of
officers might leap forward to do his bidding; a dark-haired man and a
girl who sprang beside him. The bodies of the two were interposed for an
instant between the officers' weapons and a fair-haired man.... And the
lean young man, with his shock of golden hair thrown back from his face,
leaped like a panther in that same instant; drew himself to an open
window; threw himself through, and vanished among the brilliant lights
and black shadows of a New York night.
But, as he fought his way free of the throng outside, there came above
the clamor of an excited crowd the voice of Walt Harkness in cryptic
words:
"The ship is yours, Chet," the fugitive heard Harkness call; "it's in
cold storage for you!"
CHAPTER II
_A Dirty Red Freighter...._
Chet Bullard was more at home among the air-lanes of Earth than he was
on solid ground. But he oriented himself in an instant; knew he was on a
cross street in the three hundred zone; and saw ahead of him, not a
hundred feet away, the green, glowing ring that marked a subway
escalator.
In the passing throng there were those who looked curiously at him. Chet
checked his first headlong flight and dropped to an unhurried walk.
About him, as he well knew, the air was filled with silent radio waves
that were sounding the alarm in every sentry box of the great city. They
would reach the aircraft terminals and the control room of every ship
within a fixed radius. He had dared the wrath of one of the most
powerful officials of Earth; no effort would be spared to run him down;
his picture would be flashing within ten minutes on every television
screen of the Air Patrol. And Chet Bullard knew only one way to go.
Of course they would be watching for him at the airports, yet he knew he
must get away somehow; escape quickly--and find some corner of the world
where he could hide.
He was in the escalator, and wild plans were flashing through his mind
as he watched the levels go past. "First Level; Trains North and South;
Local Service. Second Level; Express Stop for North-shore Lines. Third
Level; Airport Loop Lines; Transatlantic Terminals--"
Chet Bullard, his hair still tangled on his hatless head, his blouse
torn where a hand had ripped off the Master Pilot's emblem, stepped from
the escalator to a platform, then to a cylindrical car that slid
silently in before him and whose flashing announcement-board proclaimed:
"_Hoover Airport Express. No Intermediate Stops._"
* * * * *
Would they be watching for him at the great Hoover Terminal on the tip
of Long Island? Chet assured himself silently that he would tell the
world they would be. But even a fugitive may have friends--if he has
been a master pilot and has a lean, likable face with a most disarming
grin.
Where would he go? He did not know; he had been bluffing a bit and the
Commander had called him when his hand was weak; he had no least idea
where he could find their ship. If only he had had a chance for a word
with Walt Harkness: Walt had been flying it; he had left it apparently
in a storage hangar.
But where? And what was it that Walt had called out? Chet was racking
his brains to remember.
"The ship is yours," Walt had shouted ... and something about "storage."
But why should he have laid up the ship; why should he have stored it?
Chet saw the lights of subterranean stations flashing past as the car
that held him rode silently through a tube that it touched not at all.
He knew that magnetic rails made a grillwork that surrounded the car and
that drew it on at terrific speed while suspending it in air. But he
would infinitely have preferred the freedom of the high levels, and his
own hand on a ship's controls.
A ship!--any ship!--but preferably his ship and Walt's. And Walt had
said something of "_storage--cold storage_." The words seemed written
before him in fiery lines. It was a moment before he knew what he had
recalled. Then a slow smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and he
turned and stared through a window that showed only blackness.
"_Cold storage!_" That was good work on Walt's part. He had been forced
to shout the directions before them all, yet tell none of those others
about him where the ship was hidden. Chet was picturing that place of
"cold storage" as he smiled. The fact that it was some thousands of
miles away troubled him not at all.
* * * * *
The great Hoover Terminal was a place where night never came. Its
daylight tubes wove a network of light about the stupendous enclosure,
their almost silent hissing merged to an unceasing rush of sound, so
soft as to be unheard through the scuffing feet and chattering voices of
the ever-hurrying crowds.
From subways the impatient people came and went, and from highway
stations where busses and private cars drove in and away. The clock in
the squat tower swung its electrically driven hands toward the figure
22; there lacked but two hours of midnight, and a steady stream of
aircraft came dropping down the shaft of green light that reached to and
through the clouds. There would be many liners leaving on the hour;
these that were coming in were private craft that spun their flashing
helicopters like giant emeralds in the green descending light, while the
noise of their beating blades filled the air with a rush of sound.
Outside the entrance to the Passenger Station, Chet Bullard withdrew
himself from the surging press of hurrying men and women and slipped
into a shadowed alcove. Two passing figures in the gray and gold of the
Air Patrol scanned the crowd closely; Chet drew himself into the deeper
shadows and waited until they were by before he emerged and followed
the shelter of a coffee-house that extended toward another entrance to
the field, where pilots and mechanics passed in and out.
* * * * *
A bulletin board showed in changing letters of light the official
assignment of landing space. And, though every passing eye was turned
toward it, Chet knew that each man was intent upon the board and not on
the shadowed niche in the building behind it. He watched his chance and
slipped into that shadow.
Unseen, he could see them as they approached: men in the multicolored
uniforms of many lines, who paused to read, to exchange bantering
shop-talk--and to pass on.
Many voices: "Storm area, over the South-shore up to Level Six. You
birds on the local runs had better watch your step" ... "--coming down
at Calcutta. Yeah, a dirty, red-bottomed freighter that rammed him. I
saw it take off two of his fans, but Shorty set the old girl down like a
feather on the lift of the four fans he had left. You said it--Shorty's
a real pilot...."
Another pause; then a growling voice that proclaimed complainingly:
"Lord, but I'm tired! All right, Spud; grin, you damned Irishman! But if
you had been hauling the Commander all over Alaska to-day and then got
ordered out again just as you were set for a good sleep, you'd be sore.
What in thunder does he want his ship for to-night, I ask you?"
* * * * *
Chet, crouching still lower in the little retreat, stiffened to
attention at the reference to the Commander. So the "big boss" had
ordered out his own cruiser again! He listened still more intently to
the voice that replied.
"Sure, and it's thankful you sh'u'd be to be holdin' the controls on a
fine, big cruiser like that; though, betwixt you and me, 'tis myself
that don't envy you your job. Me and my old freighter, we go wallowin'
along. And to-night I'm takin' her home for repairs--back to the fact'ry
in Rooshia where they made her; and the devil of a job it will be, for
she handles with all the grace of a pig in a puddle."
Chet risked a glance when the sound of heavy footsteps indicated that
one of the two speakers had gone on alone to the pilots' gate. Before
the huge bulletin board, in pilot's uniform and with the markings of a
low-level man on his sleeve, stood the sturdy figure of the man called
Spud. He started back at sight of the face peering out at him, but Chet
whispered a command, and the man moved closer to the hiding place behind
the board.
There were others coming in a laughing group up the walk; daylight tubes
illuminated the approach. Chet spoke hurriedly.
"I'm in a devil of a mess, Spud. Will you lend a hand? Will you stand by
for rescue work?"
And Spud studied the bulletin board as he growled:
"Lend a hand?--yes, and the arm with it, Mr. Bullard. You stud by me
once whin I needed help; and now you ask will I stand by for rescue
work. Till we crash--that's all, me bhoy!"
* * * * *
Spud's speech was tinged with the brogue of Erin; it grew perceptibly
more pronounced as his quick emotions took hold of him.
"Quiet!" said Chet. "Wait till they pass!"
The newcomers stopped for no more than a glance. Then:
"I'm demoted," Chet told the round-eyed man who stared unbelievingly at
the vacant place on Chet's blouse. "The air's hot with orders for my
arrest. I've got to get out, and I've got to do it quick."
And now there was only a trace of the brogue in Spud's voice. Chet knew
the trick of the man's speech; touch his heart and his tongue would grow
thick; place him face to face with an emergency and he would go cold and
hard, while the good-natured phrasing of his native sod went from him
and he talked fast and straight.
"The devil you say!" exclaimed Spud. "What you've done I don't know, nor
yet why you did it. But, whatever it was, I don't believe you let that
triple star go for less than a damned good reason. Now, let me think;
let--me--think--"
A figure in gray and gold was approaching, a member of the Air Patrol.
Spud's tongue was lively with good-natured raillery as he fell into step
and drew the officer with him through the pilots' gate, while Chet, from
his shadow, saw with satisfaction the apparent desertion. He had known
Spud O'Malley of old. Spud was square--and Spud had wanted time for
thinking.
There were many who passed Chet's hiding place before a cautious whisper
came to him and he saw a hand that thrust a roll of clothing around the
edge of the bulletin board.
"Put 'em on!" was the order of Spud. "And smear your yellah hair with
the grease! Work fast, me bhoy!"
* * * * *
The command was no less imperative for being spoken beneath Spud's
breath, and for the first time Chet's hopes soared high within him. It
had all been so hopeless, the prospect of actual escape from the net
that was closing about him. And now--!
He unrolled the tight package of cloth to find a small can of black
graphite lubricant done up in a jacket and blouse. Both were stained and
smeared with grease; they were amply large. Chet did not bother to strip
off his own blouse; he pulled on the other clothes over his own, and his
face was alight with a grin of appreciation of Spud's attention to
details as he took a daub of the grease, rubbed it on his hands, then
passed them through his hair.
"Yellah," Spud had said, but the description was no longer apt. And the
man who stepped forth beside Spud O'Malley in the uniform of an engineer
of a tramp freighter looked like nothing else in the world but just
that.
"Come on, now!" ordered Spud harshly, as a figure in gray and gold
appeared around the corner of the coffee shop. "You're plinty late, me
fine lad! Now get in there and clean up that dirty motor and get her
runnin'! Try out every fan on the old boat; then we'll be off.
"You're number CG41!" he whispered. And Chet repeated the number as he
followed the pilot through the gate.
"O.K.," said the guard at the gate, "and I'll bet he gives you hell and
to spare!"
Chet slouched his shoulders to disguise his real height and followed
where Spud O'Malley, with every indication of righteous anger, strode
indignantly down the pavement, at the far end of which was a battered
and service-stained ship.
* * * * *
Her hull of dirty red showed mottlings of brown; she was sadly in need
of a painter's gun. She would groan and squeal, Chet knew, when the fans
lifted her from the hold-down clutch; and she couldn't fly at over
twenty thousand without leaking her internal pressure through a thousand
cracks that made her porous as an old balloon--but to Chet's eyes the
old relic of the years was a thing of sheer beauty and grace.
O'Malley was leading through an open freight hatch; Chet followed, and,
at his beckoning hand, slipped into a dingy cabin.
"Lay low there," the pilot ordered, and still, as Chet observed, his
speech showed how clearly the man was thinking, since the emergency
still existed "I've cleared some time ago, Mr. Bullard; we're ready to
leave as soon as we get the dispatcher's O.K."
The minutes were long where Chet waited in the pilot's cabin. Each sound
might mean a last-minute search of departing ships, but he tried to tell
himself that the attention of the officers would be centered upon the
passenger liners.
Beyond, where he could see out into the control room, a white light
flashed. He heard the bellowing orders of the Irishman at the controls.
And, as other sounds reached his ears, he had to grip his hands hard
while he fought for control of the laughter that was almost hysterical.
For, beneath him, he felt the sluggish lift of the ship, and, from every
joint and plate of this old-timer of the air, came squawking protests
against the cruel fates that drove her forth again to face the
buffeting, racking gales.
But the blue light of an ascending area was about them, and Spud
O'Malley was shouting from the control room:
"Sure, and we're off, Mr. Bullard. Now do ye come up here and tell me
all about it--but I warn you, I'll not be believin' a word--"
CHAPTER III
_Up From Earth_
Chet had plenty of time in which to acquaint Pilot O'Malley with the
facts. And, when he had told his story, it did his sick and worried
mind good to hear the explosive stream of expletives that came from the
other's lips. Yet, despite the Irishman's anger, it was noticeable that
he closed the tight door of the control room before he said a word.
"Only a skeleton crew," he explained. "Just the relief pilot and the
engineers and a man or two in the galley, and I trust 'em all. But you
can't be too careful.
"The Commander," he concluded, "is gettin' to be more an emperor than a
Commander, and somethin's got to be done. Discipline we must have, 'tis
true; but this kotowin' to His Royal Highness and all o' that--devil a
bit do I like it! If only you could show him up, Mr. Bullard--but of
course you can't."
"I'm not so sure," Chet responded. "What I told the big boss wasn't all
bluff. Haldgren _did_ go out, five years ago this month. We have the
record of a Crescent liner's captain who saw Haldgren's little ship
shoot through the R.A. and go on out as if it were going somewhere. And
now we have these flashes!
"Do you see what that means, Spud? An SOS! Nobody but an Earth-man would
send that, and we wouldn't do it now. We would just press the lever of
our emergency-call, and every receiver within a thousand miles would
pick up the scream of it.
"But we've had this Dunston Emergency Transmitter less than four years.
Haldgren knew only the old S O S. And remember this: three dots, three
dashes and three dots don't just happen. They showed up on the Moon.
They were repeated the next night. _Somebody sent them!_ Who was it?"
* * * * *
And Pilot O'Malley gave the only obvious answer:
"There's only yourself and Mr. Harkness and Pilot Haldgren that could
have got there. 'Twas Haldgren, of course! What a pity that you can't
go; 'tis likely the poor bhoy needs help."
"Five years!" mused Chet. "Five long years since he left! He must have
landed safely--and then what? After five years comes a signal and that
signal a call for help that no pilot worthy the name would disregard....
"Where are we bound?" he demanded abruptly.
"Rooshia," said O'Malley. "I disremember the name--'tis on my
orders--but I know it's a long way up north."
"Spud," said Chet, "you're a rotten pilot; you're one of the worst I
ever knew. Careless--that's your worst fault--and if anybody doubts that
they'll believe it after this trip. For, Spud, if you're any friend of
mine, and I know you are, you're going to lose your bearings, and kick
this old sky-hog a long way beyond that factory she is bound for. And
you're going to set me down in a God-forsaken spot in the arctic where
I'm pretty sure I'll find a ship waiting for me.
"And, if you just stick around for a while after that, you will see me
take off for the Moon. Then, if Haldgren is there--"
Chet failed to finish the sentence; he was staring through a rear
lookout, where, over the arc of the Earth's horizon, could be seen a
thin crescent Moon; about it drifting clouds made a halo.
The eyes of Spud O'Malley followed Chet's, and his imaginative faculties
must have been stimulated by Chet's words, for he gazed open-mouthed, as
if for the first time he visioned that golden scimitar as something more
substantial than a high-hung light. He drew one long incredulous breath
before he answered.
"What position, sir? Say the word and I'll lose myself so bad we'll be
over the Pole and half-way to the equator again!"
"Not that bad," was Chet's assurance. "Just spot this ship over 82:14
north, 93:20 east, and I'll give you local bearings from there."
Then to himself: "'Cold storage,' Walt said; he meant our old shop, of
course. Probably had a hunch we would need it."
But to the pilot he said only the one word: "Thanks!"--though the grip
of his hand must have spoken more eloquently.
* * * * *
The eastbound lanes of the five thousand level saw them plod slowly
along, while faster and better-groomed ships slipped smoothly past; then
the red hull rose to Level Twelve and swung out upon the great circle
course that would bear them more nearly in the direction of the
destination Chet had given. There were free levels higher up in which
they could have laid a direct course, but the Irish pilot did not need
Chet to tell him that the old hull would never stand it. Her internal
pressure could never have been maintained at any density such as human
lungs demanded.
But they were on their way, and Chet's customary genial expression gave
place to one of more grim determination as he watched the white-flecked
ocean drift slowly past below.
Once a patrol ship spoke to them. Daylight had come to show plainly the
silver hull with the distinctive red markings of the Service that
slipped smoothly down from above to hang poised under flashing fans like
a giant humming-bird. Her directed radio beam flashed the yellow call
signal in O'Malley's control room.
* * * * *
Chet was beside him, and the two exchanged silent glances before
O'Malley cut in his transmitter. He must give name and number--this
signal was a demand that could not be disregarded--but on the old
freighter was no automatic sender that would flash the information
across to the other ship; the pilot's voice must serve instead.
"Number three--seven--G--four--two!" he thundered into the radiophone.
"Freighter of the Intercolonial Line, without cargo--"
"For the love of Pete," shouted the loudspeaker beside him in volume to
drown out the pilot's words, "are you sending this by short wave, or are
you just yelling across to me? Calm down, you Irish terrier!"
Then, before the pilot could reply, the voice from the silver and red
patrol ship dropped into an exaggerated mimicry of the O'Malley brogue--
"And did yez say 'twas a freighter you had there? Sure, I thot at th'
very last 'twas a foine big liner from the Orient and Transpolar run,
dropped down here from the hoigh livils! All right, Spud; on your way!
But don't crowd the bottom of the Twelve Level so close. This is
O--sixteen--L; Jimmy Maddux. By--by! I'll report you O.K."
* * * * *
Again Chet looked at the pilot silently before he glanced back at the
vanishing ship, already small in the distance. He repeated the Patrol
Captain's words:
"You will 'report us O.K.'--yes, Jimmy, you'll do that, and if they want
to find us again you can tell them right where to look."
"I'm pushin' her all I can, Mr. Bullard," said Spud. "'Tis all she can
do.... And now do ye go into my cabin--there's two berths there--and
we'll just turn in and sleep while my relief man takes his turn. But go
in before I call him; there's not a soul on the ship besides ourselves
knows that you're here."
And, in the cabin a short time later, Pilot O'Malley chuckled as he
whispered: "I gave the lad his course. And Mac will follow it, but it'll
niver take him near to the part of Rooshia he expects it to. Still, the
record's clear as far as he's concerned; I've got it in the log. Mac's a
good lad, and I wouldn't have him get into trouble over this."
* * * * *
In the freighter's cabin the chronometer was again approaching the hour
of twenty-two; for nearly twenty-four hours the ship had been on her
plodding way. And, lacking the A.D.D.--the Automatic Destination
Detector--and other refinements of instrumental installations of the
passenger ships, Pilot O'Malley had to work out his position for
himself.
And where a faster craft would have driven through with scarcely a
quiver, the big ship trembled with the buffets and suction of a wintry
blast that drove dry snow like sand across the lookout glasses. The
twelve thousand level was an unbroken cloud of snow--a gray smother
where the red ship's blunt and rusty bow nosed through.
O'Malley clung to the chart table as the air gave way beneath them and
the ship fell a hundred feet or more before her racing fans took hold
and jerked her back to an even keel. He managed to check his figures,
then moved to the door of his cabin, opened it and called softly.
Chet was beside him in an instant. It had seemed best that he remain in
hiding, and he knew what the pilot's call meant. "Made it, did you!" he
exclaimed. "Now I'll take a look about and pick up my bearing points."
But one look at the ports and he shook his head.
"That's dirty," he told O'Malley, and his eyes twinkled as he felt the
old ship rear and plunge with the lift of a driving gale; "and how the
old girl does feel it! She can't rip through, and she can't go above.
You've had some trip, Spud; it's been mighty decent of you to go to all
this--"
* * * * *
A flashing of yellow light on the instrument panel brought his thanks to
a sudden halt. A voice, startling in its sudden loudness, filled the
little room.
"Calling three--seven--G--four--two! Stand by for orders! Patrol
O--sixteen--L sending; acknowledge, please!"
Chet's eyes were staring into those of O'Malley. "That's Jimmy Maddux
back on our trail," he said. "Now, what has got them suspicious?"
He glanced once at the collision instrument. "He's right overhead at
thirty thousand," he added; "and there are more of them coming in from
all sides. Now what the devil--"
Spud O'Malley had his hand on the voice switch. "Be quiet!" he
commanded; then spoke into the transmitter--
"Three--seven--G--four--two acknowledging!" he said, and again Chet
observed how all trace of accent had departed from his voice; it was an
indication of the moment's tenseness and of the pilot's full
understanding of their position.
The answering order was crisply spoken; this was a different Jimmy
Maddux from the one who had chaffed the Irish pilot some hours before.
"Stand by! We're coming down! Records at Hoover Terminal show two men
reporting at pilots' gate under the number of your engineer, CG41. Hold
your ship exactly where you are; we're sending a man aboard!"
* * * * *
Chet had moved silently to the controls. The old multiple-lever
instrument--he knew it well! But he looked at Spud O'Malley and waited
for his nod of assent before he presumed to trespass on another pilot's
domain. Then he shifted two little levers, and the ship fell away
beneath them as it plunged toward the Earth.
And Pilot O'Malley was explaining to the Patrol Ship Captain as best he
could for the rolling plunge of the careening ship:
"I can't hold her, sir. And you'd best be keepin' away. It's stormin'
fearful down here, and I can't rise above it! Keep clear!--I'm warnin'
you!" The hum of their helicopters rose to a shrill whine as Chet drove
the ship out and down through the smothering clouds. "You must hear her
fans on your instruments; you can see how we're pitchin'!"
He switched off the transmitter for a moment and faced Chet. "They've
been checkin' close," he stated. "That was my engineer's number I gave
you as we came through the gate. And, of course, he had given it before
when he reported in. Now we're up against it."
The collision instrument was humming with the sound of many motors, and
warning lights were giving their silent alarm of the oncoming ships.
"They're comin' in," Spud went on hopelessly, "like a flock of kites in
the tropics when one of them's found somethin' dead--and it's us that's
the carcass!"
* * * * *
But Chet was not listening. The snowy clouds had broken for an instant;
their ship had driven through and beneath them. Through the wild,
whirling chaos of white there came for an instant a rift--and far across
an icy expanse Chet glimpsed a range of black hills!
He spoke sharply to the pilot. "That's Jimmy Maddux above us--kid him
along, Spud! Tell him we're coming up, don't let him grab us with his
magnets! This is putting you in a devil of a hole, old man. I'm
sorry!--but we've got to see it through now.
"You can never set this ship down, Spud; that patrol would be on our
backs in half a second. And they'd knock me out with one shot the minute
I stepped outside."
The clear space in the storm had filled again with the dirty gray of
wind-whipped snow; off at the right a dim glow of distant fires was the
midnight sun as it shone for a brief moment. One blast, more malignant
in its fury than those that had come before, tore first at the blunt
bow, then caught them amidships to roll the big, sluggish freighter till
her racked framework shrieked and chattered.
Spud pointed through a rear lookout where a silvery Patrol Ship flashed
down through the clouds. "There's Jimmy!" he shouted. "He's takin' no
chances of our landing--he's right on our tail!"
* * * * *
But Chet Bullard, his hands working at the control levers, was staring
straight ahead into that gray blast; and his eyes were shining as he
pulled back on a lever that threw them once more into the concealment of
the whirling clouds above.
"Spud," he was shouting, "have you got a 'chute? You freighters have 'em
sometimes. Get me a 'chute and I'll fool them yet! I saw the shed--our
hangars--our work shop! There's where our ship is!"
They were lost once more in the snow that seemed to be driving past in
solid drifts. Chet heard Spud shouting down a voice tube. And,
curiously, it was plain that the Irish pilot had lost all tenseness from
his voice; he was happy and as carefree as if he had found the answer
to all his perplexing questions. He was calling an order to his relief
pilot.
"Mac--do ye break out two parachutes, me lad! Bring 'em up here, and
shake a leg! No, there's nothin' to worry about--divil a thing!"
Then, into the transmitter, he shouted thickly as he switched the
instrument on:
"Jimmy, me bhoy, kape away! Kape away, I'm tellin' you, or ye'll have me
Irish temper disturbed, and I'm a divil whin I'm roused! What do I know
about your twin ingineers? Wan of thim makes trouble enough for me! Now
take yourself away, and don't step on the tail of this ship or we'll go
down to glory together!--unless we go to another terminal and find
oursilves in hell, and us all covered wid snow. Think how divilish
conspicuous you'd be feelin'--"
* * * * *
A discord of voices silenced his laughing banter; on the instrument
board the warning light was flashing imperatively. Above the bedlam of
voices one stood out, and all other commands went silent before the
voice of authority.
"Silence! This is the Commander of Air! Orders for O--sixteen--L: seize
that ship! Your magnets!--disregard damage!--get your magnets on that
ship and hold her. We are coming down--"
Chet reached for the transmitter switch and opened it that their voices
might not go beyond the control room.
"Lots of company; they seem pretty certain that they're on the right
track. And the big boss himself is coming down to call. Can't you hurry
those 'chutes?"
The control room door was flung open as the figure of a young man
stumbled through and dropped two bundles of cloth and webbing upon the
floor. He clung to the door-frame as Chet threw the big freighter into
a totally unexpected maneuver that rolled them down and away from a
silver-bellied ship above. Then the levers moved again, and the ship
went hard-a-port as Chet caught again one fleeting glimpse of shadow
below that could only be the markings of a building he had known well.
"Hold her there, Spud!" he shouted. "He'll be back in a minute or two!
He'll get us next time!"
Chet was reaching for the straps of a 'chute. He had the webbing about
him when he stopped to waste precious seconds in wide-eyed staring at
the figure of Spud O'Malley.
* * * * *
Spud was pulling at a recalcitrant buckle. He had motioned the relief
pilot to take the controls, and now the bulk of a parachute pack hung
awkwardly behind him.
"Spud!" Chet shouted. "You're not stepping out too! It's no sure thing
with these old 'chutes; they're probably rotten! Stay here! Tell 'em I
stuck you up with a gun!--tell 'em I made you bring me--"
"If you must talk," said Spud O'Malley calmly, and pulled a strap tight
across his chest, "do ye be tryin to work while you talk. Get that
harness on! If I let you stow away on my ship you can do no less than
take me along on yours!"
A crashing impact drove the men to the floor in a sprawling heap; Chet
pulled the last strap tight as he lay there. The lookouts were black
above where the belly of a Patrol Ship clung close.
"Jimmy knows how to obey orders," said Chet as he came to his feet. "No
cable magnets for Jimmy! He just smashed down on top of us, ripped off
our fans and grabbed hold." He was helping Spud to his feet as he spoke.
"Mac, me bhoy," the pilot told his assistant, "the log has it all, the
whole story. There'll be no trouble for you at all."
He yanked quickly at the port-opening switch, and the big steel disk
backed slowly out of its threaded seat and swung wide.
* * * * *
Chet drew back one involuntary step as a blast of icy wind drove
stinging snow into his face. Then, without a word, he gave Spud O'Malley
a joyous grin and threw himself out into the void....
And, later, as he released the 'chute where a wind was dragging him
violently across an icy expanse, he was laughing exultantly to see
another 'chute whirled into the enshrouding drifts, while the chunky
figure of a man came scrambling to his feet that he might shake a fist
into the air toward some hidden enemy and shout into the storm epithets
only half-heard.
"--and be damned to ye!" Chet heard him conclude; then was close enough
to throw one arm about the figure and draw him after where he made his
way toward a building that was like a mountain of snow.
Spud must have marveled at the craft within; at her sleek, shining
sides; the flat nose that ended in a black exhaust port. He was
examining the other exhausts that ringed her round when Chet pulled out
a lever from the streamlined surface and swung open an entrance port.
He motioned Spud into the brilliantly lighted interior, where nitron
illuminators were almost blinding as they shone of gleaming levers and
dials of a control room like none that Spud O'Malley had ever seen.
Chet had thrown the building's doors open wide; a whirling motor had
drawn them back on hidden tracks. Now he closed the entrance port with
care, then glanced at his instruments before he placed his hand on a
metal ball.
* * * * *
It hung suspended in air within a cage of curved bars. It was a
modification of the high-liner ball-control, and it was new. Walt
Harkness had had it installed to replace a more crudely fashioned
substitute that had brought them safely back from the Dark Moon. The
name of that new satellite was on Chet's lips as his thin hand rested
delicately upon the ball.
"It's not the Dark Moon this time, old girl," he told the ship, "though
you've taken me there twice. But we're going up just the same, and I
told the Commander he hasn't Patrol Ships enough to hold us back." His
fingers were gripping the little ball--lifting it--moving it forward....
And, as if he lifted the ship itself, the silent cylinder came roaring
into life. Within the great building was a thundering blast that made
the voice of the storm less than a whispering breath. It came but
faintly through the heavily insulated walls, but Chet felt the lift of
the ship, and that joyous smile was crinkling about his eyes as the
silvery cylinder floated smoothly out of her shelter into the grip of
the wind.
His eyes were on an upper lookout, where clouds were driving away like a
curtain unrolled. More cloud banks were coming, but, for a time, the
heavens were clear where the great red hull of a rusty freighter hung
helpless beneath a red and silver Patrol Ship whose magnets held fast to
its prey.
* * * * *
There were other shapes in the markings of the Service that shot
slantingly down. Chet thought again of the carrion birds; then he saw
the gold star on the bow of a great cruiser and knew from that ship that
the Commander must be seeing their own below. Then he eased gently
forward on a tiny ball--forward and forward, while the compensating
floor of the control room swung up behind them and seemed thrusting up
with unbearable weight.
There were flashes from the cruisers above, and flashes of red on the
ice behind with fountains of shattered ice and rock; detonite works its
most terrible destruction on a surface that is brittle and hard. But of
what avail are detonite shells against a craft whose speed builds up to
something greater than the muzzle velocity of a shell?--a silvery craft
that sweeps out and out toward a black mountain range; then swings
slowly up in a curve of sheer beauty that bends into banked masses of
clouds--and ends.
But within the control room, Chet Bullard, no longer Master Pilot of the
World, but master, in all truth, of space, knew that his ship's flight
was far from ending. He turned to grin happily at his companion.
"We're off!" he shouted. "And it's thanks to you that we made it. If
Haldgren's alive he'll have you to thank; for it's you that has done the
trick so far!"
But Spud O'Malley answered soberly as he stared up and out into the
blackness of levels he had never seen.
"I've helped," he admitted; "I've helped a bit. But it's a divil of a
job of navigatin' that's ahead. And that's up to you, Chet Bullard; 'tis
no job for an old omadhaun like mesilf!"
Chet felt the lift of the Repelling Area as they shot through. Ahead was
the black velvet night that he knew so well; its silent emptiness was
pricked through with bright points of fire.
"I found the Dark Moon," he said slowly, "and that you can't see at all.
This other will be easy."
There was no boastfulness in the tone, and Spud O'Malley nodded as he
glanced respectfully at the young man who threw back his disheveled mop
of hair from a lean face and marked down some cryptic figures on a
record sheet.
Chet Bullard was on the job ... and his passenger, it would seem, was
satisfied that his unbelievable adventure was well begun.
CHAPTER IV
_Life Monstrous and Horrible_
"It looks," said Spud O'Malley, "as if some bad little spalpeen of the
skies had thrown pebbles at it when 'twas soft. It's fair pockmarked
with places where the stones have hit."
He was staring through a forward lookout, where the whole sky seemed
filled with a tremendous disk. One quarter was brilliantly alight; it
formed a fat crescent within whose arms the rest of the globe was held
in fainter glowing. By comparison, this greater portion was dark, though
illuminated by earthlight far brighter than any moonlight on Earth.
But light or dark, the surface showed nothing but an appalling
desolation where the rocky expanse had been still further torn and
disrupted--pockmarked, as O'Malley had said, with great rings that had
been the walls of tremendous volcanoes.
Chet was consulting a map where a similar area of circular markings had
been named by scientists of an earlier day.
"Hercules," he mused, and stared out at the great circle of the moon.
"The crater of Hercules! Yes, that must be it. That dark area off to one
side is the Lake of Dreams; below it is the Lake of Death. Atlas!
Hercules! Suffering cats, what volcanoes they must have been!"
"I don't like your names," objected O'Malley. "Lake of Death! That's
not so good. And I don't see any lake, and the whole Moon is wrong side
up, according to your map."
Chet reached for the ball-control, moved it, and swung their ship in a
slow, rotary motion. The result was an apparent revolution of the Moon.
"There, it's right side up," Chet laughed; "that is, if you can tell me
what direction is 'up' out here in space. And, as for the names, don't
let them disturb you; they don't mean anything. Some old-timer with a
little three-inch telescope probably named them. The darker areas looked
like seas to them. Astronomers have known better for a long time; and
you and I--we're darned sure of it now."
* * * * *
The great sea of shadow, a darker area within the shaded portion whose
only light came from the Earth, was plainly a vast expanse of blackened
rock. An immense depression, like the bottom of some earlier sea, it was
heaved into corrugations that Chet knew would be mountain-high at close
range. Marked with the orifices of what once had been volcanoes, the
floor of that Lake of Death was hundreds of miles in extent.
But as for seas and lakes, there was no sign of water in the whole,
vast, desolate globe. An unlikely place, Chet admitted, for the
beginning of their search, and yet--those flashes of light!--the S O S!
They had been real!
The bow blast had been roaring for over an hour; their strong
deceleration made the forward part of the ship seem "down." And down it
was, too, by reason of the pull of the great globe they were
approaching. But the roaring exhaust up ahead was checking their speed;
Chet measured and timed the apparent growth of the Moon-disk and nodded
his satisfaction at their reduced speed.
"This will stop us," he said. "I didn't know but we would have to swing
off, shoot past, and return under control. But we're all right, and
there is the place we are looking for--the big ring of Hercules, the
level floor of rock inside it. And over at one side the smaller
crater--"
* * * * *
He was gazing entranced at the mammoth circle that had been a volcano's
throat--the very one he had seen flashed on the screen. He moved the
control to open a side exhaust and change their direction of fall. He
was still staring, with emotions too overwhelming for words, and Spud
O'Malley was silent beside him, as the great ring spread out and became
an up-thrust circle of torn, jagged mountains some thirty or more miles
across and directly below.
They fell softly into that circle. Its mountainous sides were high; they
blocked off the view of the enormous terraces beyond that had been the
crater's sloping sides.
From the direction that had suddenly become "east," the rising sun's
strong light struck in a slant to make the bar rocks seem incandescent.
On one side the giant rim of the encircling mountains was black with
shadow. The shadow reached out across the vast, rocky floor almost to
the foot of the opposite wall many miles away. It enveloped their
falling ship like a cushioning, ethereal sea: velvety, softly black,
almost palpable.
It was wrapping them about in the darkness of night as Chet's slender
hand touched so delicately upon the ball-control--checked them, eased
off, drew back again until the thundering exhausts echoed softly where
their ship hung suspended a hundred feet above a rocky floor. The
shrouding darkness erased the harsh contours of mountain and plain; it
seemed shielding this place of desolation and horror from critical,
perhaps unfriendly eyes of these beings from another world. And Chet
laid their ship down gently and silently on the earthlit plain as if he,
too, felt this sense of intrusion--as if there might be those who would
resent the trespass of unwanted guests.
But Spud O'Malley must have experienced no such delicacy of feeling. He
let go one long pent-up breath.
"And may the saints protect us!" he said. "The Lake of Death outside,
and inside here is purgatory itself, or I don't know my geography. But
you made it, Chet, me bhoy; you made it! What a sweet little pilot you
are!"
* * * * *
"There's air here," Chet was telling his companion later; "air of a
sort, but it's no good to us."
He pointed to the spectro-analyzer with its groupings of lines and light
bands. "Carbon dioxide," he explained, "and some nitrogen, but mighty
little of either. See the pressure gage; it's way down.
"But that won't bother us too much. We've got some suits stowed away in
the supplies that will hold an atmosphere of pressure, and their oxygen
tanks will do the rest. We were ready for anything we might find on our
Dark Moon trip, but we didn't need them there. Now they'll come in
handy."
"That's all right," O'Malley assured him; "I've gone down under water in
a diving suit; I've gone outside a ship for emergency repairs in a suit
like yours when the air was as thin as this; I can stand it either way.
But what I want to know is this:
"What the divil chance is there of findin' your man, Haldgren, in such
a frozen corner of purgatory as this? How could he live here? Here
you've come in a fine, big ship, and his was a little bit of a bullet by
comparison. Yet I doubt if you could live here for five years with all
your big oxygen supply. Now, how could he have done it with his little
outfit?
"And what has he eaten? Does this look like a likely place for shootin'
rabbits, I ask you? Can a man catch a mess of fish in that empty Lake of
Death? Or did Haldgren bring a sandwich with him, it may be?"
* * * * *
Chet Bullard shook his head doubtfully.
"Don't get sarcastic!" he grinned. "You can't think of any wilder
questions than I have asked myself.
"He couldn't have lived here, Spud; that's the only answer. It just
isn't humanly possible. All I know is that he did it. I can't tell you
how I know it, but I do. Those lights were a human call for help. No
living man but Haldgren could have flashed them. He's alive--or he was
then; that's all I know."
Spud crossed the control room as he had done a score of times to look
through a glass port at the world outside. Chet, too, turned to the
lookout by which he stood and stared through it. The men had found
themselves surprisingly light within the ship. They had been compelled
to guard against sudden motion; a step, instead of carrying them one
stride, might hurl them the length of the room. This lowered
gravitational pull helped to explain to the pilot that outer world.
There, close by, was the rocky plain on which he had landed the ship:
Smooth and shiny as obsidian in places, again it was spongy gray, the
color of volcanic rock, bubbling with imprisoned gases at the instant
of hardening. It stretched out and down, that gently rolling plain, for
a thousand yards or more, then ended in a welter of nightmare forms done
in stone. It was like the work of some demented sculptor's tortured
brain.
* * * * *
Jutting tongues of rock stood in air for a hundred--two hundred--feet.
Chet hardly dared estimate size in this place where all was so strange
and unearthly. The hot rock had spouted high in the thin air, and it had
frozen as it threw itself frantically out from the inferno of heat that
had given it birth. The jets sprayed out like spume-topped waves; they
were whipped into ribbons that the winds of this world could not tear
down, and the ribbons shone, waving white in the earthlight. The
tortured stone was torn and ripped into twisted contortions whose very
writhing told of the hell this had been. Its grotesque horror struck
through to the deeper levels of Chet's mind with a feeling he could not
have depicted in words.
From the higher elevation where their ship lay he could look out and
across this welter of storm-lashed rock to see it level off, then vanish
where another crater mouth yawned black. Here was the inner crater! It
had seemed small before; it was huge now--a place of mystery, a black,
waiting throat into which Chet knew he must go--a place of indefinable
terror.
But it was the place, too, whence strange flashes had come, flashes that
had told of the distress and suffering of men since the time when
wireless waves had been widely used. The old call--the S O S!--it had
come from that throat; it had seemed a call sent directly to him! And
Chet Bullard's eyes held steadily toward that place of mystery and of a
sender unknown.
"I'm going down," he told himself more than O'Malley. "There's something
about it I can't understand, something pretty damnable about it, I
admit. But, whatever it is, that's what I am here to find out."
"'Tis a divil of a place to die," said O'Malley, "and not one I'd pick
out at all. But it may be we won't have to. I'm goin' along, of course."
* * * * *
The master pilot was reaching for the flexible metal suit he had brought
from the store room. It was air-tight, gas-proof; it would hold an
internal pressure far beyond anything the wearer would demand; and its
headpiece was flexible like the body of the suit, and would fit him
closely.
He drew the suit up over the clothes he wore and closed the front with
one pull of a metal tab. Within, soft rubber-faced cushions had
interlocked; the body would fasten to the headpiece in the same way. But
Chet paused with the headpiece in his hand.
He looked at the glass window that would be before his eyes; at the thin
diaphragms that would come over his ears and that would admit all
ordinary sounds; and he tried out the microphone attachment that he
could switch on to bring to his ears the faintest whisper from outside.
All this he examined with care while he seemed to be thinking deeply.
Then he straightened and looked at his companion.
"No, Spud, you're not going," he said. "This is my job. You'll stay with
the ship. You and I make a rather small army: we don't know yet what we
may be up against, and we mustn't risk all our forces in one advance.
I'll see what is there; and, in case anything happens, you can take the
ship back. I've taught you enough on the way over; I had this very
thing in mind."
He slipped the helmet over his blond head before O'Malley could reply.
* * * * *
The ear-pieces and the microphone allowed him to hear. Another diaphragm
in the center of the metal across his chest took his own voice and
shouted it into the room.
"Sure, I know you want to go. Spud; but you'll have to stay in reserve.
Now show me how well you can fly the ship. Lift her off; then drift over
that crater, and we'll have a look-see!"
Spud O'Malley's face was glum as he obeyed. Spud had seen nothing but
death in this place of horror--Chet had observed that plainly--yet it
was equally plain that the Irish pilot was finding the order to live in
safety a bitter dose. But Spud knew how to take orders; he lifted the
little ball gently and swung the ship out toward the blackness of that
deeper pit.
Chet was watching the changing terrain. He saw the place of
solid-spouted rock end; saw it flatten out to an undulating surface that
had rolled and heaved itself into many-colored shapes. Even in the
earthlight the kaleidoscopic colors were vivid in their changing reds
and blues and yellow sheens. Then this surface sloped sharply away,
though here it was rough with broken rock where half-hardened lava,
coughed from that throat, had fallen back and adhered to the molten
sides.
This rock in the inner crater was gray, pale and ghostly in the
earthlight. It went down and still down where Chet's eyes could not
follow--down to an utter blackness. Chet was staring speculatively at
that waiting dark when the first flash came.
Blindingly keen! A flash of white light!--another and another! It
blazed dazzlingly into their cabin in vivid dashes and dots--the same
signal as before was being repeated!
* * * * *
A hundred yards away was a little shelf of rock. Chet jerked at
O'Malley's shoulder with his metal-cased hand and pointed. "Set her
down!" he ordered "Let me out there! We can't put the ship down where
those lights are; the throat is too narrow; there may be air-currents
that would smash us on a sharp rock. I'll go down! You wait! I'll be
back."
He was opening the inner door of the entrance port. Another closure in
the outer shell made an air-lock. He took time for one grip at the hand
of Spud O'Malley, one grin of excited, adventurous joy that wrinkled
about his eyes behind the window of his helmet--then he picked up a
detonite pistol, examined again its charge of tiny shells, jammed it
firmly into the holster at his waist and swung the big door shut behind
him.
And Pilot O'Malley watched him go with a premonition that he dared not
speak. He heard the closing of the outer door; saw the tall, slender
figure in a metal suit like a knight of old as Chet waved once, settled
the oxygen tank across his shoulders and picked his way carefully over a
waste of shattered stone that led down and down into the dark.
Then the Irishman looked once at the suit he had expected to wear,
stared back where the figure of Chet had vanished, then dropped his head
upon his hands while his homely face was twisted convulsively.
* * * * *
It had come so soon! The great adventure was upon them before he had
realized. The reconnaissance--the flashes--and then Chet had gone! And
now he was alone in a silent ship that rested quietly in this soundless
world. The silence was heavy upon him; it seemed pressing in with actual
weight to bear him down. It was shattered at the last by the faintest of
whispered echoes from without.
Spud was on his feet in an instant, his eyes straining at one lookout
after another, each giving him a view of only the desolation he knew and
hated.
What could it have been? he demanded. He found and rejected a dozen
answers before he saw, far down in the black crater-mouth, a flash of
red; then heard again that ghost of a sound and knew it for what it was.
Thick walls, these of the space ship, and insulated well; and the thin
atmosphere of this wild world could cut a blast of sound to a mere
fraction of its volume! But the walls were admitting a fragmental echo
of what must have been a reverberating voice. They were quivering to the
roar of exploding detonite!
It was Chet! He was fighting, he was in trouble! Spud's trembling hands
steadied upon the metal control; he lifted the ship as smoothly as even
Chet might have done, and he drove it out and down into a throat too
narrow for safety, but where the tiny, red flash of a weapon had called
with an S O S as plain as any lettered call--a message to which brave
men have everywhere responded.
* * * * *
He saw Chet but once. The master pilot had shown him the flare release
lever; he moved it now, and the place of darkness was suddenly blinding
with light. There were rocks close at hand; the crater had narrowed to a
funnel throat that was cut and terraced as if by human hands. Below, it
ended in a smooth stone floor where the lava had sealed it shut.
From a terrace came the gleaming reflection of Chet's suit. Miraculously
the gleam was doubled, as if another in similar garb stood at his side.
And beyond, from blocks of stone, came leaping things--living creatures!
The light died. Spud realized he had not opened the release lever full.
He fumbled for it--found it, jammed it over! And in the light that
followed he saw only empty, terraced walls where nothing moved, and a
lava floor below that, for an instant, gaped open, then again was smooth
and firm.
And the thunder of his ship's exhausts came back to him from those
threatening walls to tell of a loneliness more certain and terrible than
any solitude he had found in the silence where he had waited above.
But through all his dismay ran an undercurrent of puzzled wonderment.
For here on a dead world, where all men agreed there could be no life,
he had seen the impossible.
Only one glimpse before the light had died; only for an instant had he
seen the things that leaped upon Chet--but he knew! Never again could
any man tell Spud O'Malley that the Moon was a lifeless globe ... and he
knew that the life was of a form monstrous and horrible and malign!
CHAPTER V
_"And I've Brought You to This!"_
The master pilot, when he stepped forth upon that weird globe which was
the Moon, found himself plunged into a spectral world. Even from within
the air-tight suit, through whose helmet-glass he peered, he sensed, as
he had not when inside the ship, the vast desolation, the frozen
emptiness of this rocky waste.
His suit of woven metal was lined throughout with heavy fabric of
insuline fibers, that strange product brought from the jungle heat of
the upper Amazon to keep out the bitter cold of this frozen world. His
ship was felted with the same material between its double walls; without
it there would have been no resisting the cold of these interstellar
reaches.
But, despite the padding within his suit, he felt the numbing cold of
this dead world strike through. And the bleak and frigid barrenness that
met his gaze was so implacably hostile to any living thing as to bring a
shudder of more than physical cold.
No warming sun, as yet, reflected from the rocks. About him was the
blackness of a fire-formed lithosphere, whose lighter veining and
occasional ashy fields were made ghostly in the earthlight.
One slow, all-seeing glance at this!--one moment of wondering amazement
when he tilted his head far back that he might look up to the mouth of
the crater and see, in a dead-black sky, the great crescent of earth--a
vast, incredible moon peeping over the serrate edge. Then, as if the
interval of time since leaving the ship had been measured in hours
instead of brief seconds, he remembered the flashing lights that had
signaled from below.
* * * * *
His first step carried him, slipping and sprawling awkwardly, across a
rocky slope white with the rime of carbon dioxide frost. He came to his
feet and turned once to wave toward the ship where he knew Spud O'Malley
must be watching from a lookout. Then, moving cautiously, to learn the
gage of his own strength in this world of diminished weights, he started
down.
Rough going, Chet found; the wall of this great throat had not hardened
without showing signs of its tortured coughing. But Chet learned to
judge distance, and he found that a fifty-foot chasm was a trifle to be
crossed in one leap; huge boulders, whose molten sides had frozen as
they ran and dripped, could be surmounted by the spring of his leg
muscles that could throw him incredibly through the air. And always he
went downward toward the place where the lights had flashed.
They came once more. He had descended a thousand feet, he was
estimating, when the black igneous rocks blazed blindingly with a
reflected light like that of a thousand suns.
Another hundred feet below, down a precipitous slope, was a broad table
of rock. He saw it in the instant before he threw one metal-clad arm
across the eye-piece of his helmet to shut out the glare. And he saw, in
that fraction of a second, a moving figure, another like himself, clad
in an armored suit whose curves and fine-woven mesh caught the light in
a million of sparkling flames.
It was Haldgren, he told himself; and there was something that came
chokingly into his throat at the thought. That lonely figure--one tiny
dot of life on a bleak and lifeless stage! It was pitiful, this undying
effort to signal, to let his own world know that he still lived.
* * * * *
Chet did not put it into coherent words, but there was an overwhelming
emotion that was part pity and part pride. He was suddenly glad and
thankful to belong to a race of men who could carry on like this--who
never said die. And, as the glare winked out, he threw himself
recklessly down that last slope and brought up in a huddle at the feet
of the one who had started back in affright. There was one metal-cased
hand that went in a helpless gesture to the throat; the figure, all
silvery white in the dim Earth-glow, staggered back against a wall of
rock; only by inches did it miss a fall from the precipice edge where
the rock platform ended.
From the floor, where his fall had flung him in awkward posture, Chet
saw this; saw it and marveled vaguely. What picture he had formed of
Haldgren--what he had expected of him--he could not have told. Certainly
it was not this slenderly youthful figure, nor this reaction that was
more of fright than startled amazement. And the voice! Surely he had
heard an involuntary, half-stifled scream!
He came slowly to his feet. And he was wondering now if his deductions
had been wrong. He had been to sure that the sender of those messages
was an Earth-man; he had been so certain of finding Haldgren.
* * * * *
Slowly he crossed the table of rock toward the waiting figure; gently he
extended his hands, palms upward, in a gesture of peaceful promise.
Whoever, whatever this was--this Moon-being who had signaled and in
doing so had happened upon the letters that had a definite meaning of
Earth--Chet knew he must not frighten him. One outstretched hand touched
the metal that cased an arm; moved upward to the headpiece, as
close-fitting as his own; tilted it that the light of Earth might shine
within and show him what manner of being he had found.
And Chet, who had seen strange creatures on that Dark Moon where he and
Harkness had explored, was prepared, despite the suit so like his own,
to see some weird being of this newer world. But for what the soft light
of that distant Earth disclosed he was entirely unprepared.
Eyes, blue and lovely as an azure sea but wide with terror and dismay;
eyes that showed plainly a consternation of unbelief that changed
slowly, as the blue eyes stared into Chet's gray ones, until they were
suddenly misty with tears; and the figure sagged and would have dropped
at his feet had he not caught it in his arms.
He heard his own voice exclaiming in wonderment: "A girl! One of our own
kind! Out here! On the Moon!"
And another voice, sweetly tremulous, replied:
"Oh, it's true--it's true! You have come! You read my call! Oh, I hardly
dared hope--"
Then the thrilling ecstasy of happiness in the voice gave place to
accents of dismay as some horror of fear swept in upon her.
"And I've brought you to this! You will be lost! Quick! Climb for your
life! I will come after. Quick! Quick!"
* * * * *
There was agony in the voice now, and the figure wrenched itself from
Chet's arms to point one slender hand upward in frantic urging, while
yet the head turned that the eyes might look backward as if some danger
threatened from below.
"I've got a ship," Chet assured her. "God knows who you are or how you
got here, but it's all right now. We'll leave."
He had regained his grip upon one of those slender hands and was
preparing to swing her up to the top of an incredibly high rock. Her
scream checked him and sent his one free hand to the detonite pistol at
his waist.
"Behind you!" she cried. "Look back! They have come out!"
The crater-pit behind and below them was black with the inky blackness
of smooth, fire-formed rock. Its many facets were smooth and polished;
they made mirrors, many of them, for the earthlight reflected from the
crater mouth. They served to diffuse this dim light and throw it again
upon the monstrous blacknesses that were swarming from below.
"Men!" thought Chef in one instant of half-comprehension. Then, as he
saw the chalk-white bodies, the dead and flabby whiteness of their faces
from which red eyes stared, he revised his estimate; here was nothing
human.
The pistol was in his hand, but as yet he had not fired. Only the terror
in the girl's voice had told him that these were enemies; he waited for
a closer view or for some direct attack, and needed to wait but a
moment.
Only an instant after he had seen, the chalk-white bodies clustered
below were in motion. They came leaping up the smooth expanses of rock,
and they were obscured at times as if by black curtains that were drawn
across their bodies. Then they would flash out again in dead-white
nakedness.
* * * * *
It was uncanny. Chet had a feeling that they were wrapping themselves in
black invisibility. Only when a score of the white things threw
themselves out into space did he know the truth.
Out and upward they sprang, to soar above Chet's head and land on the
slope above. All escape was cut off now; but it was not this thought
that held Chet motionless for that moment of horror. It was the glimpse
he had had against the light of the crater mouth of beating, flailing
wings that whipped the thin air above him; of curved claws; and of long,
horrible tails that might have belonged to giant rats. And the demoniac
cries that the thin air brought him were no more suggestive of devils
unleashed than were the leathery wings and the fleshy tails of the
beasts.
Yet it was not this alone that stunned the mind of the master pilot, but
the horrible incongruity, of this monstrous inhumanness allied with the
human form of their bodies. And throughout he observed, with a curious
sense of detachment, the furious beating of the wings, almost useless in
the thin air, and the expansion and contraction of sac-like membranes on
each side of the necks which he took to be auxiliary lungs.
* * * * *
It was the girl's action that brought Chet to his senses. She moved
slowly across the smooth table of rock toward the three or four beasts
who had gained its level. Her head was bowed in utter dejection; Chet
sensed it as plainly as if she had spoken. She held out her hands
helplessly toward the creatures--and in that instant Chet's pistol
spoke.
Tiny shells, those of a detonite pistol, and the grain of explosive in
the tip of each bullet is microscopic. But no body, human or inhuman, be
it made of flesh, can withstand the shattering concussion of that
exploding shell.
The beasts beside that figure, slenderly girlish even in its metal
sheath, fell into the pit beyond; their screams rang horribly as they
fell. There were others who took their places, and they, too, vanished
under the smashing shots.
And then, after timeless moments of waiting, while the only sound was
the half-audible voice of the girl who sobbed: "Now you are surely lost.
They will kill you--you should not have fired--I should never have
brought you here"--there came the familiar thunder of a ship's exhausts.
Down from above, a black shadow came silently crashing; a blaze of light
terrific in its brilliance brought an exclamation to Chet's lips and
hope to his heart.
"Spud! You old fool, you're coming to get us!"
But the words ended with an avalanche of bodies that threw themselves
down the black slope. There were others coming from below, leaping from
the stones. The ledge was filled with them.
Chet was firing blindly as he felt himself borne down--felt long fingers
that ripped, then closed about his throat and jammed the metal of his
suit in chokingly. He heard the beating of giant wings about him; felt
himself half-carried and half-thrown toward a floor of rock far below.
There was an opening that loomed blackly in that floor; one glimpse of
his surroundings Chet had before the press of bodies closed him in. They
were forcing the shining, silvery figure of a girl into that black
opening--dropping her! Then he felt himself hurled into the same void,
while above him a ship of space thundered vainly from her great exhausts
as if roaring in rage at her own futility.
CHAPTER VI
_Heart of the Moon_
In the grasp of the winged creatures' long, clawed hands Chet was
helpless. He was struggling vainly when they released their hold and he
felt himself falling into a pit that, as far as he knew, was a
bottomless abyss. He was still struggling to right himself in mid-air
when he struck.
To fall even so short a distance on Earth would have meant instant
death. Here, where gravitation's pull was but one-sixth that of Earth,
he still struck on a rocky floor with a thud that made him sick for lack
of breath.
Above him was a pale circle of light. Tipping the edge of a vast crater
mouth high above was a rim of brilliance. Earthlight! Chet was suddenly
certain that he was seeing that glow for the last time as the circle
went black, and there came to him the unmistakable clang of metal where
a door was shut.
Through the countless mingled emotions that filled him he was wondering
what manner of creatures these were into whose hands he had fallen.
Intelligent, beyond a doubt, in their own way; he could not question the
evidence of his own eyes and ears. They were able to work in metals and
to seal the mouth of this lunar tomb.
But he was still alive; he could not give up now. This adventure upon
which he had launched with such high hopes had turned out differently
than expected; but, he told himself, it was not ended yet.
And, instead of a lifeless globe, he had found this: a place peopled
with strange, half-human life. And, more marvelous still, instead of
Haldgren, whom he had come to seek, there had been a girl!
* * * * *
Chet had recovered his ability to breathe, had made sure that the oxygen
tank was intact; and now he called softly into the blackness of this
dark vault where he had seen her thrown.
"Are you alive?" he asked. "Can you hear me?"
For answer came quick rustling of moving bodies, the smooth rasping of
wings on leathery wings, hands that fumbled for him, then closed about
arms and legs and throat, while in his ears was a chattering of
high-pitched squeals. Again he was lifted in air, held there in the grip
of a score of lean, long-fingered hands. He was nerving himself to
undergo without flinching whatever new torture might be in store. Yet he
thrilled inexplicably as through the sounds of these things about him,
he heard a muffled: "Yes--yes! Oh, I am glad--"
The sentence was unfinished. Before Chet's eyes a light was growing. A
mere slit at first, it grew to a luminous circle in the rocky floor. And
as it opened, he felt the pressure of his metal suit upon his body,
where before it had been slightly ballooned by the pressure of oxygen he
had maintained.
With the opening of this door to another subterranean chamber had come a
renewed atmospheric pressure. And now, in the denser gas, he saw, in
ghastly silhouette against the lighted pit, flying figures that floated
and soared on outstretched wings of inky black.
* * * * *
Beside him and above he heard the swishing flutter of other wings; he
felt himself lifted from the floor; he was being floated out above the
luminous pit by the flying things that held him.
No direct glare came from below, but a soft violet radiance. It shone
full upon him--past him--to light up and give detail to those faces that
had been featureless before. Chet had just one moment of fascinated
staring into the diabolical, pasty faces where narrow, red eyes stared
back into his. Then the squealing voices were stilled!
One, louder than the rest, rasped an order. And again Chet felt the
hands relax; once more he was falling, down--down--and still down--until
he knew that his velocity of fall meant an impact he could never
survive.
And, curiously, as he fell, his mind was entirely unconcerned with his
own fate. For himself, he had accepted death. But he saw for what seemed
like hours a vision of a familiar control room and an Irish pilot who
sat by the controls. He was looking sharply ahead, he was checking
speed, he was landing softly--safely--on a familiar field of Earth....
That passed; and, following, came a feeling of regret, a deep hurt and
a rage at his own inability to be of help. For, above him, through the
luminous air, he saw another body falling, and he knew that the girl,
too, had been thrown to the same fate.
* * * * *
Those eyes of blue had locked with his for but a few brief seconds. Who
she was--what she was--he had no way of knowing. But in that instant of
mental meeting there had passed a flash between the two that had burned
deeply into Chet's real and hidden self.
Chet, himself, had he been in laughing mood, might have smiled at the
idea of affection being born in that brief time. Yet he might have asked
instead how long was needed to bridge the sharp gap of a radio-power
transmitter; how much time was needed for anode and cathode each to
recognize the other. Something of this was passing in confusion through
his mind while his more conscious faculties were tensing his body for
the fatal impact he knew must come.
Without thinking the thought in words he knew that the luminous walls
had receded. They were more distant now; their glow came to him from far
above, and, as his falling body turned again and again in air, he saw
that below him was nothing but a vast emptiness filled with luminous
vapors that swirled and writhed.
Then the last gleam of lighted walls faded; he was falling at terrific
speed through a black tempest whose winds tore and screamed about him.
* * * * *
It was his own falling speed that made these winds; there remained with
him enough of reasoning power to realize this. And he waited, and
marveled that he could fall so tremendous a distance. First had been
the great shaft down which he had plunged; then, as it widened, had come
this greater void. The crater of Hercules must have opened, into a vast
shell or a cavern of incredible depth. The winged things of the Moon
knew of it; they had cast him to his death--him and the girl.
Her slowly turning body was not far away; it was as if they two hung
suspended in air, while frightful blasts of whatever gas filled this
space whipped and shrieked past and wrapped them round with a terrific
pressure. And then the tempest ceased. Slowly the blasts diminished; the
pressure relaxed; gradually the sense of falling passed away, and with
this there came a glimpse of light.
Again the walls glowed as they had before, but far off in the distance.
Chet saw them grow luminous while he seemed hung motionless in space.
Then once more they drew away from him; once more he knew he was falling
away from that light--plunging again into the depths he had traversed.
And now, despite the oxygen that came to him uninterruptedly, he found
his head swimming. The limit of human endurance had been reached.
Desperately he tried to bring his reason to bear upon this miracle that
had happened. He had not struck; instead of falling to his death he had
cushioned against something; he was falling again where, not far away,
another metal-clad figure hung limply in air and fell as he fell. And
with that knowledge the whirling turmoil within his brain ended in a
blood-red flashing that went finally to merciful darkness....
* * * * *
That darkness still wrapped him thickly about when he regained
consciousness--a darkness saved from utter black only by a faint
luminosity that seemed to penetrate and be part of the air about him.
Still hardly more than half-conscious, lying, it seemed, on a soft bed
where he was weightless, he stirred and flung out one arm. From his
fingertips he saw whirls of violet light sweep out and away, as vortices
might have been set in motion by a swimmer in a more liquid medium.
Fascinated, failing utterly to comprehend where he was, he moved his
hands deliberately, swept one arm from side to side--and a number of
luminous whirlpools went spinning out into space. And then he
remembered.
He remembered the terrific fall that miraculously brought him back to a
place of light like that where his fall had begun. He remembered
beginning the second fall; and, while he still could not know what it
meant, he knew that he must have been unconscious for hours. And, with
that, his thoughts came back to the girl. For the first time he found
leisure to give mental voice to his wonderment.
The mystery of it all!--of her presence here on the Moon! Again he was
overwhelmed with the wonder of his surprising discovery. It was nearly
beyond belief; almost he doubted the reality of what his own eyes had
seen.
* * * * *
But there was no doubting his own presence here in this strange place.
The unreality of it--the strangeness of his own sensations--were borne
in upon him. Where was he? he asked. What was this soft cushion upon
which he rested so lightly? He tried to sit up and found that he merely
twisted his body and set other eddies of light into motion.
Cautiously, he swung one arm out as far as he could reach. There was
nothing there. He moved the arm down; reached with his hand beneath
him--and still there was nothing tangible! Through his mind swept a
gripping fear, a wordless, incoherent terror of something he could not
name. Desperately he wanted to touch something firm and solid; lay his
hands upon something he knew was real; and he flung out arms and legs in
a paroxysm of futile effort.
He seemed hung in nothingness, an utter emptiness where nothing moved;
only the ghostly whirls of light that ran lazily away from his beating
hands until they died silently away into darkness, swallowed up in this
unspeakable horror of soundless space. And, when he had quieted again,
he knew with a dreadful certainty that there was nothing there; he was
suspended in a great void--immersed in an ocean of some unknown gas.
The sense of loneliness that filled him was devastating. He could have
faced death as he had faced it before, unflinchingly; that was all in
the day's work. But here was something that tested sanity itself. Could
he but touch something substantial, he told himself, it would help him
to keep a grip on reality; even to see and feel one of the winged
horrors would be in a way a relief.
* * * * *
His struggles had ceased; all about him the atmosphere was quivering and
writhing with whirling light that swirled and danced and mingled one
glowing vortex with another. Then it, too, died; and, through the dark
that was relieved only by the faint luminosity of the quiescent gas, he
saw far off a point of light.
Here was something to which he could pin his eyes; something outside of
himself and the horror of nothingness in which he was immersed. He
stared through the window of his helmet while the light grew and
expanded into nebulous, cloudy glowing that faded and was gone.
Again it came and died; and a third time. And then Chet Bullard swore
loudly and harshly within the silence of his own metal sheath, while he
cursed his own dullness that had kept him from instant comprehension.
That light was far away, but, "Keep moving!" Chet called, hoping that
his voice might span the void. "Keep moving so I can see your light!
I'll try to swim over."
He threw himself over with a convulsive jerk and flattened the palms of
his hands in a breaststroke, while he kicked with his feet against the
dense atmosphere about him. And he saw with delight that the whirling
ripples of light moved back of him; he felt that he was making some
headway, slight though it must be.
* * * * *
He saw her at last, and heard her call:
"I am swimming, too," she cried. "How wonderful to see you! This
loneliness! It is horrible--unbearable!"
"I understand," Chet said; "it is pretty bad."
Then, at sound of a stifled sob, he gripped one reaching hand hard and
tried to bring himself out from under the pall that numbed his own mind;
he even attempted to force a note of lightness into his words.
"I've flown everything with wings," he told her, "but this is the first
time I ever flew myself. Guess I was never properly designed."
Feeble, this attempt at humor; but there was none to note the strained
edge in his tone, only a girl, whose metal-clad hand closed in a tight
hold upon his.
"You can joke--_now_," she said with a catch in her voice that showed
how desperately hard she was trying to meet Chet's fortitude and force
her own words to steadiness. "That takes--real nerve. I like that!"
Then she added: "But it's hopeless; you know that. They've got us. And
now that some of them have been killed they will--they will--"
And the trace of Chet's strained smile that lingered on his lips, could
she have seen it, would have appeared grim.
"Whatever it was you didn't say, I agree with. I imagine the finish will
not be pleasant." Once more he was facing the inevitable; and, as
before, he faced it squarely and knowingly, then put it completely from
his mind. There was so much he must know before that adventure's end was
reached.
"Tell me," he demanded, "who are 'they'? Where are they? How many are
there of them? And where have they got us? What kind of a place is this,
where all natural laws are suspended, where gravitation is at zero?
"And, for heaven's sake, tell me: who are you? Where are you from? How
did you get here on the Moon?"
* * * * *
That uncontrollable catch in the girl's voice had taken on a trace of
brave laughter that overlay the trembling sob in her throat.
"That is a lot of information," she said, "and I am afraid it will not
make much difference if you know. Oh, I wish I had some atom of
encouragement for you! I do not know who you are either--and you have
been so brave! You have come here, I brought you with my signals for
help--brought you to your death.
"For it _is_ death! This is the end of our adventuring--mine and yours
as well--here at the center, the exact center of the Moon."
"Ah-h!" answered Chet Bullard softly, as understanding came to him. "I
should have guessed it. The atmospheric pressure and density--and we
fell past the center, then back again; we've been vibrating back and
forth until we came to rest at last. And now we die! Well, it might have
been worse."
He was staring out through the little window of his helmet, staring into
the faintly luminous atmosphere, facing the end of his brave fling with
fortune. It was an instant before he realized that there was something
moving in the void. He pressed softly upon the hand he held and pointed.
"See!" he said in a hushed tone. "There is something there!"
* * * * *
It took form slowly, a shapeless, round blur in the pale light. Inch by
inch it drifted toward them, until Chet moved one hand abruptly and
found he had created a ripple of light by which he could see more
clearly. And he saw before him a bulging, membraneous sac.
It had been smoothly spherical before; it heaved itself into strange
protuberances as he watched. He flipped his hand to set up another
vortex of light, and he saw the first rip that formed in the membrane.
Before his staring eyes the bag burst open; and Chet, who had wished for
some substantial thing, even a denizen of this wild world, found his
wish fulfilled. For the thin membrane tore in a score of places to
release a body from within--a shapeless, huddled mass of chalk-white
flesh in a wrapping of black leather that unfolded before his eyes and
became wings which waved feebly in their first attempt at flight.
The pallid body, supple as a giant worm, jerked spasmodically and turned
sightless eyes toward the watching Earth-folk. Then, as if drawn by some
magnet, invisible in the distance, the black wings began to beat the
air, and the creature moved off in a straight line toward some unknown
goal.
* * * * *
Another of the membraneous spheres drifted past in the light that came
from those fluttering wings. A second showed in repulsive shininess.
Chet was aware that there were many of the things about.
"Eggs!" he exclaimed with a disgust that partook of nausea, "And the
damnable thing hatched--right here!--before our eyes!"
And the girl gave the final explanation: "The Moon is just a great
shell. They lay their eggs, these half-human creatures that you saw, and
attach them to the inner surface of that shell. Then at a certain period
they come loose and float away. I never knew what became of them; now I
understand at last."
"You know all this!" protested Chet. "How can you know it? How long have
you been here?"
"I kept track of time for a while," said the voice beside him; "then I
forgot it when they took Frithjof away. But it must be about five years.
Five years of terror and vain hopes and wild plans for escape! And now
it ends--after five years!"
And Chet Bullard, within his metal helmet, was repeating in
bewilderment: "Five years! Haldgren left five years ago! What does it
mean?"
Nor did he pause to realize that through his amazement was woven a
thread of another hue, tinged faintly with jealousy that demanded of
him: "Frithjof! Who is Frithjof who was taken away?"
Chet's mind was filled with a confusion of questions that jostled one
another to silence when he tried to give them expression. And there was
little time for questioning.
* * * * *
He saw other floating eggs whose membraneous coverings had turned
leathery and opaque. And he saw white phantom figures who gathered those
eggs. One came near till Chet could make out the repulsive face and
black, staring eyes with their fiery red center. It was one of the
things that had captured him; he saw it move swiftly on broad wings. It
held a leathery egg in its curled-claw hands while its long tail whipped
around and laid the egg open with one slash of a sharp spiked point.
One more of the young of this horrible species was liberated and went
winging away into the dark, only the whirls of light in the atmosphere
marking the beating of its wings.
Chet's eyes followed it to see far out beyond a light that expanded as
it drew near. The beaten atmospheric gas was whipped to cold flame where
some ten or a dozen phantom demons came swiftly on toward the waiting
humans.
They were swarming about in an instant. Chet had no time for even a
shouted warning before he felt himself seized by their long, bony claws.
Then a net of rough-fibered rope was flung about him, and he felt it
draw tight as the winged beasts lifted him up and out into the void.
"Wrong again!" Chet told himself ruefully. "We don't die at the center
of the Moon, after all!" But, as the whipping wings drove whirling
blasts of violet light back upon him he could find nothing of comfort in
the thought that some different experience still lay ahead.
CHAPTER VII
_The Gateway to Hell_
Spud O'Malley, at the controls of the ship, held the craft in a vertical
lift while his eyes clung in horrible fascination to the mirrors that
showed from a lower lookout the volcanic floor falling away. Amazement
had almost stifled his breathing, until at last he let go a long breath
that ended in a curse.
"The outrageous, damned things!" he breathed. "Jumping, they were, and
leaping, and flying on their leather wings like a lot of black bats out
o' hell! And I'm thinkin' that's where they've taken Chet Bullard, and
never again will he hold a ship like 'twas in the hollow of his hand,
and him settin' it down like a feather!
"And: 'Fly back home!' he says to me. I can do it, too; thanks to his
teachin'. But fly back and leave that bhoy in the hands of those
murderin' devils!--'tis little he knows the Irish!"
He was talking half under his breath, murmuring to himself as if it
helped him to see clearly the situation that must be faced.
"But to get to him--that's the trouble. I saw a big door go shut in that
stone floor. They're cunnin', clever beasts; I'll say that for 'em. And
there was a raft of 'em; and plenty more down in hell where they live,
I've no doubt."
He moved forward on the ball-control, and the great ship swept like a
silvery shadow through the night toward the distant, lighted crater rim.
This he could see clearly, but the other side of the ring of mountains
was black with shadow.
And, far out beyond, spread like a cloud over all the desolate world,
was blackness. Spud drove the ship up another five thousand feet, and
still that darkness spread out in inky pools where only an occasional
mountain peak caught the flat rays of the sun.
* * * * *
And what had Chet called these dark areas? "Lake of Dreams" and "Lake of
Death." Spud's superstitious mind was a-quiver with dread and an
ominous premonition to which the empty, frozen wastes below him gave
added force.
"I'll have to wait," he told himself. "The light of the Moon--I mean the
Earth--is bright, but not bright enough. I'll just wait till the Sun
climbs higher. When it shines down into that hole that is the gateway to
hell--and well I know it--then I can see what is there. Then, maybe, I
can find some way to get inside; and I hope the lad lives till I get
there."
He circled back; swept down in a long, leisurely flight, and came again
to the place of gently sloping rock where Chet had first landed. And he
searched till he found the identical spot and laid the ship down on a
level keel.
Far away the Sun was gilding the hard outlines of mountains that ringed
them in. Spud did not know how long he must wait. Had he realized that
it must be a matter of days it is probable he would have donned the
metal suit and started out. But instead he busied himself in a careful
investigation of the storeroom and a check-up of ammunition and supplies
that were there.
* * * * *
The lunar day, as all Earth-men know, is a matter of nearly fifteen of
Earth's days. Spud O'Malley was wild with impatience when at last the
Sun was striking less flatly across the land and he knew that the time
had come when he could start.
He had sensed the change that took place in the world outside; from the
lookouts of the control room he had seen the bare rocks lose their white
markings of hoar frost and at last actually quiver with heat as the Sun
beat upon them. He had seen the growing things that crept from every
crevice and hollow--pale, colorless mosses that threw out long tendrils
which licked across the hot rocks as if hungry for the nourishment the
thin air brought.
Spud knew nothing of the carbon dioxide which these pale green growths
could combine with water under the Sun's hot rays and build into
vegetable tissue. But he marveled again and again at the hungry things
that made a mesh of ropy strands across the smooth area about the ship.
They even hung in drooping masses from the weird rocks beyond; and, so
light they were, they raised their heads hungrily in air, while the
corded tendrils even threw themselves in contorted writhings at times
when the Sun struck with increasing warmth.
"A dead world!" said Spud scornfully. "How much the scientists back
there don't know! First those livin', flyin' devils; and now this! The
whole place is fairly wrigglin' with life."
* * * * *
It was then that he made one last flight over the inner crater and saw
light on the floor of stone in the funneled depths. Then he sent the
ship like a rocket down to the shelf of rock where Chet had begun his
descent; and he worked with trembling fingers to adjust the metal suit
and regulate the oxygen supply.
He waited only to strap a couple of detonite pistols about him; then,
with never a backward look, he let himself out through the air-locking
doors and started pell-mell toward the inner crater.
Like Chet, he had learned to gage his tremendous strength; like the
master pilot, he threw himself down the rocky slope. But where Chet had
leaped and stumbled in the darkness, O'Malley worked in full light.
He came at last to the rocky floor where molten stone in ages past had
hardened to seal the throat of this vent. Hundreds of feet across, Spud
estimated; smooth in appearance from above, but broken with deep
crevasses and excrescences where hot, fluid stone had frozen in its
moment of bubbling turbulence. And, in one place, where the floor was
smooth, Spud found what he was searching for: a circular, metal ledge
that projected above the smooth rock; and, within it, a still smoother
sheet of what appeared to be hammered metal.
"A door it is," whispered the pilot, half-fearful of listening ears,
"and the gateway to Hell!" He grinned broadly at some thought. "And here
I've been told 'twas, of all places, the easiest to get into; one little
slip from grace and there you were! Sure, and the priests were as wrong
as the scientists. It must be Heaven that's easy to crash, for the front
door of Hades is shut fast without even a keyhole to peep through."
* * * * *
Then his face sobered to its customary homely lines. "The poor bhoy!" he
exclaimed. "I've got to get in some way. I wonder how hard and thick it
is."
He was raising a mass of black, shining rock in his hands--a fragment
that his strength would not have moved a fraction of an inch on Earth.
He steadied it above his head, preparing to crash it upon the metal
door; then waited; stared incredulously at the black metal sheet;
lowered the great stone silently and turned to leap mightily yet with
never a sound for the shelter of an upflung saw-toothed ridge.
And, from its shelter, he watched the black door swing smoothly into the
air, while, from the gaping black mouth of the pit beneath, incredible
man-shapes of fish-belly white drew themselves up to the edge of the pit
and perched there, where they might stretch their long necks into the
light of the Sun.
Below them, Spud saw, dangled long, rat-like tails; and their wings,
black and leathery, hung down too from their backs or dragged on the
rocks behind where some three or four of the owl-eyed creatures crawled
out and walked across the rock toward the place where an Irish pilot
waited and stared with unbelieving and horrified eyes from the
concealment of his rocky fort.
CHAPTER VIII
_The Fires_
Great vortices of whirling light rolled out to either side in an endless
pyrotechnical display to show the power of those flailing wings that
were bearing Chet and his companion through the dark void--bearing them
to some destination Chet could not envisage.
His body turned in space at times, and he saw the spreading cone of
luminous gas behind them like the wake of a great ship in a
phosphorescent sea. The hiss and threshing of many wings came
unceasingly. Once he swung close to another body clad like his own and,
like him, enmeshed in a net. And he saw in the light of the luminiferous
air the girl's wide, staring eyes. Then she was gone, and all about was
only the whip of wings and the flashing whirls of light.
He tried to form some picture of this sphere through whose center, empty
but for this gas, he was being swung. That first fall had carried him
down the tube of some volcanic blow-pipe; he had fallen straight for
what seemed like hours. And that had been through the crust of this
great, hollow globe. Then the center!--but of this he dared make no
estimate; he knew only that the huge leather wings were threshing the
dense air in an untiring rhythm and that he was being carried for a
tremendous distance at remarkable speed.
It became soothing, that rushing, swinging sweep of his body through
space. There was death ahead, without doubt--but what of that? He was
sleepy--sleepy--and beyond this nothing mattered. Just to sleep, to
drift off in spirit into a void like this through which he was
swinging....
And so traveled Chet Bullard, one time Master Pilot of Earth, through,
the heart of another world--on and endlessly on, while leather-winged
demons dragged him after, flying straight away from the center of the
Moon toward a place and events unknown.
But Chet Bullard had ceased to note the passing hours or the swirling
gases that came alight at the beating of those wings; he was asleep in a
stupor that was as deep as it was timeless.
* * * * *
He opened his eyes at last; it seemed but a moment that he had slept.
But now there was no rushing hiss of air, nor was he being lifted in a
great net. He lay instead upon a support of some kind, and about him all
was still.
Not at first did he observe the exquisite carving of the yellow bed on
which he lay; that came later. The fact that its massive gold and its
scrollwork of inlaid platinum were worth a fortune meant nothing to him
then. His eyes were held by the immensity of the great room and the
intricate series of arches that made up a vaulted ceiling.
It shone with a light of its own, that carved ceiling; no least lovely
detail was lost. And Chet found his eyes roving from one to another of
angel figures that seemed suspended in air.
The white of purest alabaster was theirs; and their outstretched wings,
too, were white. He realized confusedly that they were like the black
demons--like them and yet entirely unlike. For, where the black-winged
ones had been ugly of feature, with every mark of degeneracy, these were
the ultimate of loveliness in face and form. Figures of men he saw,
stalwart and strong, yet perfectly proportioned; and the others--the
women and girls--were superhuman in their ethereal beauty.
"Angels!" breathed Chet and turned his head slowly to see the exquisite
figures that seemed hovering above the whole vast room in silent
benediction. "Angels--no less! And they're carved from stone! Those
black devils never did it. What does it mean? What does it mean!"
And not until then did Chet realize a wonderful thing. So enthralled had
he been by the wonder of this hovering angel band he had not realized
that he was seeing them with no helmet glass between; he was lying
disrobed on his couch of pure gold.
* * * * *
For an instant, panic seized him. Without his helmet and the oxygen
supply, he must strangle. And then he knew that he was breathing
naturally in an atmosphere like that of Earth but for the strange
fragrances that swept to him on the soft, warm air.
He came slowly to his feet and steadied himself with one hand on the
scrollwork of the bed. Then memories rushed in upon him, and he lived
again the long, sickening fall through the heart of this world, the
finding of the girl of mystery, hung like himself in the immensity of
the inner world, their capture; and the band of black-winged ones who
swung them through space in nets that drew tightly about them.
The girl! Again he saw the clear look from those eyes of blue. It was
she who had signaled; it was she whom he had come through vast space to
rescue. And now she was lost!
Chet stared slowly about him at the magnificence of the tremendous room.
He saw more delicate figures done in inlay on the walls; he knew that he
was in a place whose beauty and wealth should have set his nerves
tingling; and all he sensed was the loneliness of this place where he
was the only living occupant.
* * * * *
He found his Earth-clothes beside the golden couch. He had put them on
and was examining the suit and helmet to learn with relief that they
were intact when the first sound came to him. From an arched entrance
across the room were coming shuffling figures whose black wings were
wrapped about their chalk-white bodies. Only their pallid faces showed,
ghastly and inhuman, as the eyes glowed redly from their deep black
sockets. Chet still held the suit in his hands as the black-winged ones
came toward him across the floor, and he carried it with him as he moved
unresistingly where they led him with the pull of their claw-like hands
upon his arms.
"No gun!" he told himself hopelessly. "Not a chance if I put up a fight!
They've got me and got me right. Now what I need to do is to be
good--lay low--find out something about all this, and find her!" He
could not name the girl whose eyes were haunting him in their appealing
loveliness; he could think of her only as the mystery girl, and he
accepted without surprise or denial the fact that the finding of her
outweighed all else that this new world might hold for him.
As the shuffling figures closed about him and led him away he found
relief in the thought of his ship, of Spud's safety, and of his return
to the world that they both knew as home.
"Never again for me!" said Chet softly beneath his breath. "But Spud
will get there. Perhaps he is there now--no telling how long I have
slept!"
* * * * *
He saw it all so plainly: saw the Irish pilot bringing the ship to rest
at the great Hoover Terminal. And he saw, too, a relief expedition that
would be organized by Harkness and that must arrive too late. To suppose
that any help might reach him here inside this wild world was too much;
Chet looked with judicially appraising eyes at the things about him and
could not allow himself to be deceived. There was no hope; but he made
one resolve and made it grimly in words that never reached his lips.
"Give me half a chance at them, Walt," he promised, "and if ever you do
get inside here, you'll know where I've been. I'll find the girl
first--I must do that--then I'll give these devils something to remember
me by before they put us away for good!" And now the face of the pilot
was almost happy as he stared at the snarling, twisted features of those
that led him unresistingly through a series of stone rooms that seemed
without beginning or end. He even disregarded the spiked tails that
whipped at him with heavy blows to hurry him along.
"If I had a gun," he told them inaudibly, "I'd take you on right now.
But you got that, or I lost it in the scuffle, so I'll just twist your
scrawny necks in my bare hands when the time comes. And it's coming, you
ugly devils! It's coming!"
Their claws pulled roughly at him to hurry him into another room. And
where before he could see nothing of a beautiful room because of the
absence of a pair of smiling eyes, he now saw nothing else for their
presence. For, across the great hall, whose walls and ceilings glowed
softly with yellow light, his eyes swept unerringly to a slim figure in
a pilot's suit--to an oval face and blue eyes and red lips that could
still curve into a trembling smile of welcome as he drew near.
* * * * *
Forgotten was the grip of sharp-spiked, clawing hands; even the
anticipated sweets of revenge were lost from Chet's mind. He knew only
that he had found her--the mystery girl--and that the blue eyes were
locked with his in an intimacy that set something deep within him into a
turmoil of emotion.
And instead of the countless questions he had expected to launch upon
her when again they met, he found his lips trembling and wordless--until
they uttered one hoarse ejaculation of: "Thank God!"
But the girl seemed to understand, for she reached one slender hand to
touch him lightly upon the arm where these gripping claws had been.
"Yes," she whispered; "I was afraid, too--afraid for you!"
More whispered words, but they were lost to Chet in the babel of sound
that engulfed them. Those who had brought him had moved silently, and
the throng of some hundred or more that waited beside the girl had been
mute. But now they burst into a chorus of shrill cries whose keenness
stabbed at Chet's ears.
A pandemonium of the same high-pitched squeals, he had heard
before--this was all that he could distinguish at first. Then the shrill
sounds broke into words and unintelligible phrases, and he knew they
were talking among themselves.
* * * * *
They quieted at a sound from the girl. She had turned to face them, and
she forced her own soft voice into a shrill pitch as she spoke to them.
Their clamor broke out once more as she ceased, but it was more
subdued. Chet could hear her as she turned toward him.
"They think you are Frithjof," she explained.
"You talked with them?" asked Chet incredulously.
"But certainly; have I not been here for five years? They have their
language--but enough of that now. They are angry. They sent Frithjof
away; they tell me now that he escaped; they think you are he--that you
have changed your appearance with magic--that the ship they saw was
summoned by your magic. They say they will kill us both; throw us to the
fires!"
"Wait!" almost shouted Chet to make himself heard above the din of
shrieking voices. "I've got to know! Who are you? Who is Frithjof? How
did you get here? Where are you from? Tell me quickly! It may give me
something to go on; it may mean a chance for delay."
And if Chet had not been out of breath from the shouted questions, he
would surely have been left breathless by their amazing answer.
"I thought you knew," said the girl as the din of shrillness subsided.
There seemed to Chet a note of hurt in her voice. "I thought you knew,
that you had come here knowing. I am Anita, and Frithjof is my
brother--Frithjof Haldgren! I stowed away on his ship; he did not know.
I was only thirteen then.... And now, is Frithjof forgotten back in that
world that we left?"
Again that note of disappointment; the pilot sensed it even through the
tenseness of the moment when both Earth-folk knew that death stood close
at their side. He answered quickly:
"I came for your brother. I saw your signals. I came to find Haldgren
and to save him. And I have failed. But if death, as you say, is all we
can expect, let me say this: 'I have failed, but I have found you; and
whatever comes I am content.'"
* * * * *
The blue eyes were wide; they were looking at him with a searching
glance that changed to a childish candor while a flush stole over the
pale face. She reached out one hand toward his. "We could have been
happy," she said simply; "and now--now we must face the
fires--together."
"I don't know just what you mean by that," spoke Chet softly, "but,
whatever it is, there is a little matter of a fight first."
He released her hand and moved swiftly between her and the nearer of the
throng; and his blood pulsed strongly through him as he faced a battery
of hostile red eyes and knew that he was preparing for his last fight.
A hand clutched at his arm. "Not now!" begged Anita Haldgren's voice.
"Wait! They will not all come. I too, can fight; but we cannot face so
many!"
The rat-tails of the nearest beasts were whipping to and fro; the eyes
in the chalky faces were like living coals where the ashes have been
freshly blown. Chet stepped back beside the girl, and he made no protest
as the black claws seized him and the sharp talons dug into his flesh.
But he whispered to the one who was hurried along beside him: "You are
right; I'll be good as long as we stay together. But if not--if we're
separated--if they take you away--"
And the girl nodded quick agreement with his unspoken words.
* * * * *
Chet set his teeth together to make more bearable the pain of those
gripping claws; but the hurt was easier to bear when he saw that the
girl was more carefully treated. She was close ahead as his captors
hustled him from this room into others and yet others, all carved from
the solid rock.
What a people this must be who could do such work as this! Again the
sense of amazement struck through to Chet despite the pain--amazement
and a feeling of an inexplicable incongruity when he saw the
leather-winged creatures that had him in their grip. And again there
were figures high overhead--white, floating figures on pinions of pure
white; their faces, kindly and serene, looked down upon the motley
throng.
"Look above you!" gasped Chet. "Anita! What are they? Not like these
devils!"
And the girl ahead half-turned her head to answer: "Ancestors! A
thousand generations back! They have come down to this state
now--degenerated."
Chet saw one of the beasts who held her jerk her sharply about, and he
knew that his remaining questions must wait--wait forever, perhaps, and
remain unsaid.
They came at last to a place where Chet found the answer to one question
he had not dared ask; a place where gaping chasms in the floor glowed
red with the wrath of unquenched fires. And the girl, Anita, when they
had been placed by themselves against a glowing, lighted wall of rock,
stared steadily at those pits and the sulphurous fumes that vomited out
at times; then turned and spoke to the pilot in a voice steady and sure.
"It will be over quickly," she assured him. "Frithjof said that the
heat, like the warmth of this whole inner world, comes from the
contraction of the rocks in the cold of night. There is great pressure
developed ... but he never learned the source of the light in the
walls."
* * * * *
Talking to still the beating of a heart pulsing with dread, perhaps!
Chet had no mind for explanations. Before him were a score of yawning
clefts in a rocky floor; one was larger than the rest; there were
figures whose white bodies glowed red in its reflected light as they
floated on black wings high above; the light of those hidden fires
blazed and died intermittently. There death was waiting, while these
demons--these degenerate half-men, living products of a dying
race--whipped the air in a frenzy of expectation as they darted above
those chasms that were like rifts in the rock roof of hell.
Chet did not answer the statements of the girl. Instead he turned and
gathered her once into his arms, while his lips met hers to find a ready
response. Her face, so calm and pale, was turned upward to his. And his
own voice trembled at first; then was steady and firm.
"I love you. I've come a long way to tell you, and I didn't know why I
came. And now it is too late."
"Anita Haldgren," he said, and let his voice linger as he repeated the
name, "Anita Haldgren--a beautiful name--a beautiful soul! And now--" He
released her quickly and swung to meet a rush of beastly things that
half-ran, half-flew across the great room.
* * * * *
Outstretched arms of white that ended in black claws! Snarling, grinning
teeth in faces of dead-white flesh! Barbed tails that hissed through the
air as they swung down upon him! And Chet Bullard, his blond hair
shining like the gold that was inlaid and encrusted upon the walls of
the room--Chet Bullard, Master Pilot, once, of a distant Earth--did not
wait for the assault to reach him, but sprang in upon the beastly things
with swinging fists that came up from beneath to crash into grinning
faces; to smash dully into white, scabrous flesh; or catch beneath the
angle of out-thrust jaws jolt the ghastly faces into awkward angles.
They went down before him at first. Then the long rat-tails came
whipping over, the demon-heads, ripping down with slashing blows on the
pilot's head and shoulders. Off at one side, a dozen paces away, a
slender figure tore loose from gripping claws. Chet saw it; he freed
himself for an instant to leap to her side. She was tugging at a bar of
gold, a scepter in the hands of a sculptured figure in the wall. It
would have been a serviceable weapon, but it bent slowly. Another of the
beasts was upon her as Chet sprang.
This one went down beneath the chopping right that Chet shot to a lean,
white jaw; then a barbed tail caught him a blow that laid his shoulder
open. Another descended--and another. The pilot sank to the floor. Anita
was beside him, shielding him with her own body from the rain of blows.
Then they were buried beneath a great weight of odorous bodies--till
Chet, after a time, felt himself dragged to his feet.
* * * * *
His head, was ringing with the shrieks of the shrill-voiced mob. He was
still struggling, still fighting blindly, as the clamor ceased. Then he
stood erect and motionless as he heard the voice of Anita Haldgren.
"It's Frithjof!" she cried. "Oh, my dear--my dear! It's Frithjof! I
heard him! But he can't reach us--he can't help us! I will try to
reason with these beasts--bargain with them--make them afraid! I will
tell them it is magic."
And, as her voice, high-pitched in the language of this race, rose in
protest against them, Chet heard what the girl had detected first: a
sharp, metallic rapping within the wall, a rapping that was dulled by
distance but whose separate blows were distinct; and he knew, with a
knowledge that came from somewhere else than his bewildered brain, that
the raps were forming dots and dashes. They were talking Morse!
The girl's frenzied appeal ended in a din of shrieks; a horde of
man-beasts swept into the air and launched themselves in a solid mass
upon the two. Chet saw Anita for one instant as he felt himself lifted
in air. About him was a pandemonium of flailing wings; ahead and below
was the red of hidden fires. They were being lifted out and over the
pits.
One instant only, while tortured eyes smiled bravely into his; then a
great pit-mouth that gaped a horrible welcome up ahead. So plainly Chet
saw it! He could not tear his eyes away. He saw the red, smoking breath
of it; he saw a rocky lip that shone like one great ruby.
* * * * *
It was impossible! Even the blast of air that tore at him meant nothing
at first! But it was happening! Before his eyes it was happening! Chet
watched dumbly, uncomprehendingly, as that great overhanging rock tore
itself into fragments that rose screamingly into the air or fell to the
depths beneath.
Another section of solid floor erupted a hundred feet across the room!
The destruction was being kept away, Chet knew. And then, while a roar
like all the thunders of Earth reverberated deafeningly through the rock
room, the claws that gripped him relaxed their hold.
He fell, nor felt the impact of his fall. He came to his feet, ran
stumblingly to the edge of the nearest pit where he threw his arms about
the body of a girl and dragged her to safety. And while he did it he
was babbling in broken sentences:
"It's detonite! Your brother!... Where did he get it?... Detonite!...
Oh, my dear--my dear!"
And his arms were tight about her while he held his body between her and
the explosions that tore at the floor in an inferno of crashing
explosions out beyond--until three of the demon-beasts, red with the
reflected fires of that subterranean hell, flew down like black-winged
bats bent on vengeance. And Chet, laughing at their numbers, sprang out
with hard fists swinging in well-directed blows, and welcomed them as
only an Earth-man could.
CHAPTER IX
_O'Malley Investigates_
Spud O'Malley's twinkling Irish eyes had seen strange sights in his
years of piloting an Intercolonial freighter; he had touched at odd
corners of the Earth. But never had he seen such creatures as confronted
him now.
Sheltered behind a jagged ridge of volcanic rock in the inner crater of
the great ring of Hercules, he stared in utter horror at the figures
that approached. For to Spud, with all his inherited ancestral faith in
gnomes and pixies, these bat-winged things were nothing less than people
of the under world--demons from some purgatory of the Moon--devils,
living and breathing, spewed out from that buried hell for a moment of
relaxation from their horrid work.
And, coming directly toward him across a level lava bed, three of the
things, with leather wings trailing, were approaching. Spud was
unmoving; his feet might have been one with the volcanic rock on which
he stood for any ability of his to raise them. Only his eyes turned
slowly in their sockets to stare wildly at the three who drew near; who
glimpsed his awe-stricken eyes behind his helmet glass; and who uttered
shrill, screaming cries that brought the rest of the unholy crew leaping
and flapping across the rocks.
And, within that helmet, Spud's lips moved unconsciously to repeat
prayers he would have sworn were forgotten these many years. There was a
pistol at his belt where his hand was resting; another hung at his other
side. But the man made no move to defend himself; he was struck numb and
nerveless, not through fear, but through that horror which comes with
seeing one's most gruesome superstitions come true. Spud O'Malley, who
would have laughed at devils and believed in them while he laughed, knew
now that they were real. They had captured Chet; they were about to take
him, too, to the hell that was their home.
* * * * *
And still he did not move while the demon figures pressed closer, while
their wild, shrieking cries echoed within his helmet; while they lashed
their scaly tails, and at last leaped in unison upon the helpless man.
And then, with that first touch, Spud O'Malley, who had not only seen
strange creatures but had fought with them, came to himself--and the
hand that rested upon a detonite pistol moved like the head of a
striking snake.
The roar of detonite was strained and thin in the light atmosphere of
this globe; it seemed futile compared with its usual thunderous report.
But its effects were the same as might have been expected on Earth!
Spud was hurled to the rocky floor, as much by the closeness of the
exploding shells as by the weight of the bodies that came upon him. He
fell free of the first leaping things that went to fragments in mid-air
as his pistol checked them. And he made no effort to arise, but lay
prostrate, while he swung that slender tube of death about him and saw
the winged beasts shattered and torn--until there were but five who ran
wildly with frantic, flapping wings; and these the tiny shells from
Spud's gun caught as they ran when the Irishman sprang to his feet and
took careful aim across the jagged rocks.
"Saints be praised!" the pilot was saying over and over. "Saints be
thanked!--even the Devil's imps can't stand up to detonite shells! And
Chet, the poor lad!--his gun must have been knocked from his hand; he
was fightin' in the dark, too! And they took him down there, they
did!--down where I'm goin' to see if the lad is still livin'."
And Spud O'Malley, though he believed fully in the demoniac nature of
these opponents and never for an instant thought but that he was
descending into an inferno of the Moon, strode with steady steps toward
the portal of that Plutonic region and lowered himself within.
* * * * *
That ring of metal, huge and accurately formed, made Spud pause in
thought; the massive metal door that came up from below to fit that ring
snugly--that, too, looked more like the work of human hands than of
demons. The pilot was frankly puzzled as he tentatively moved a lever
down below that door and saw the huge metal mass swing shut.
About him the walls were glowing. He saw, in the floor, another circular
door, but found no lever with which to operate it. Nor did he search for
one, since he could have no way of knowing that here was where Chet had
gone. But, from the corridor where he stood other lighted passages led;
and one slanted more steeply than the rest.
"That's the way I'm goin'," announced Spud. "I know that, and it's all I
do know; I'm goin' down till I find some place where the devils live and
where Chet may be."
The passage took him smoothly down. It turned at times, and smaller
branches split off, but he followed the main corridor that he had
selected for his route. And he paused, at last, beside a metal frame in
the rock wall, where the door that fitted so tightly in the frame was
not like the others he had seen. For the first ones, though cleverly
fashioned and machined, were of iron, rusted red with the ages; while
this one that was before him now was paneled and decorated with sweeping
scrolls. And, above this portal that seemed hermetically sealed, was a
white figure such as Chet had seen.
* * * * *
Spud's gaze traveled up to it slowly, and his knees were trembling as
they had not done when facing the black-winged ones. "'Tis an angel," he
whispered, "or the statue of one! And that explains it all. 'Tis them
that has done all this--these passages, and the sweet-fittin' doors. And
do they live here? I wonder. Heaven help me if I meet them, for never
could I shoot at one of them, the pretty things!"
He was still gazing in rapt wonder that was near to worship when the
great door began to move. He saw the first hair-line crack, and the thin
line of light was like a hot wire across his eyes, so quickly did he
respond. Beyond, where he had not yet gone, was a branching passage. All
the walls glowed softly with light--no shelter of darkness was his--but
Spud leaped for the little passage and raced down it until a turn
screened him from sight.
"That's movin'!" he congratulated himself. "What an athlete I'm
becomin'!" And it was fortunate for the pilot that the ceiling was high,
for his tremendous Earth-strength propelled him in unbelievable bounds.
He still moved on silently, for far ahead in the corridor something had
caught his eyes. And he stopped finally beside a little car; then saw
that he had been following a single rail, buried under the dust of ages
on the corridor floor.
The monorail car lay on its side. At one end of it was a motor. Not a
motor such as men had built, Spud confessed, but an electric motor none
the less. And beyond this, where the passage ended, was a wall veined
thickly with gold.
* * * * *
Ropy strands of the metal shone reddish-yellow in the soft light of the
walls; detached pieces lay on the floor and in the car itself. Spud
regarded it with amazement, but the wealth he was witnessing left him
cold; another thought was forcing itself into his brain.
That thought took more definite form when another corridor took him to
rooms where great metal cases were neatly stacked; other adjoining rooms
held strange machinery and appliances on metal stands.
"Lab'ratories!" said the amazed man explosively. "And storehouses, too!
Neither angels nor devils did this; 'tis the work of men--and I know how
to get along with men. I'll go find them. Belike they have saved the
lad, Chet, and he'll be waitin' to see me."
He raced back along the corridor, but stopped short at its end, where he
had taken flight from the larger passage. There was sound of shrieking
voices, and Spud dropped to the floor to present as small a view as
possible to the half-human things that trailed their black wings past
the metal entrance; then he crept cautiously to peer around the corner,
when the last one had gone.
They were waiting out beyond; Spud watched them intently. They had great
nets of rope in which were living things that struggled and writhed.
He saw one of the creatures stoop to break off a protruding end of
pinkish, nameless substance; the thing seemed to struggle in his hands
while he took it to his mouth and munched on it. Even when Spud realized
that this living food was vegetation of some sort, he was still sickened
with the sight of its being taken alive into the bodies of these
Moon-beasts.
* * * * *
One of the ugly figures raised a black-clawed hand to seize a lever let
flush into the wall. It had been concealed. Spud saw the door open; saw
the waiting horde troop through, dragging their loaded nets; and he saw
the door close silently, while the actuating lever moved back to its
former position.
And Spud, speaking half aloud, counted slowly to a hundred, then another
hundred, as a gage of the time while he waited for those beyond the door
to move on. But at the count of two hundred his eager hands were upon
the lever, while his eyes were hungry to stare beyond the opening door.
They found nothing but emptiness when the door swung wide. Another room
of luminous walls; another door in the farther wall. The man moved
slowly through the doorway one cautious step at a time and stared about.
He found a lever like the others, moved it--and saw the door close
silently behind him. Another lever was near the second door; he pulled
carefully, steadily, upon it.
There was no movement of the door, but something had occurred as he
knew by the hissing sound that came from above his head. Its source he
could not find; its result was most startling. For, where before his
suit had bulged out roundly with the inner pressure of one atmosphere,
it now became less taut--and it hung loosely about him when the hissing
ceased.
"An air-lock," said Spud joyfully, "or I'm a rat-tailed imp myself! That
means a heavier air-pressure inside. And now I know 'tis men folks I'm
goin' to see!"
* * * * *
The lever moved easily now, and the second door swung open and closed
behind him as before. Spud tore recklessly at the fastening of his suit,
regardless of the fact that an increased pressure might still come from
some gas that would mean death to a human. But, like Chet, he found the
air fragrant and pure, and he rid himself of the encumbering suit,
strapped the pistols at his waist, rolled the suit to a bundle he could
sling over one shoulder, and moved carefully as a cat as he went forward
through a corridor that led down and still down.
As he went the empty labyrinth of halls filled him with a horrible
depression; yet there was beauty everywhere--beauty whose delicacy of
curve and color filled even the untrained mind of Spud O'Malley with a
thrill of delight.
There were halls and vast rooms without number; there were carvings that
glowed with a light of their own--figures so filled with the very spirit
of livingness that they seemed stepping out from the cold walls to greet
him; there were more celestial hosts of purest white poised apparently
in mid-flight.
There were marvelous, rioting waves of color that pulsed and throbbed
through the walls and the very air of some rooms; and there were
articles of furniture--carved tables, chairs--objects whose purpose
Spud could not guess. But, except for the occasional sound of shrill,
squeaking voices in the distance, there was no sign of the presence of
the builders, the men Spud had hoped to find.
And he knew at last that his quest was hopeless. The dust of uncounted
centuries that lay thickly upon all was evidence as convincing as it was
mute.
"There's naught but the devils!" Spud despaired. "The others--saints be
helpin' of them!--have been gone for more years than a man dares think
of. So, the devils it is; I'll follow them--I'll go where they are. But
I'm not so sure at all of findin' the lad now."
* * * * *
That high-pitched chattering that had come to him at times was his only
guide now. It seemed echoing in greater volume from one passage that
slanted down more sharply than the rest. Spud followed it, clinging with
hands and feet to the steep-pitched floor; but some sudden impulse
seized him and compelled him to stop at intervals while he drew a pistol
from his belt. Its grip was of steelite that rang sharply as a bell when
he struck it upon the walls. And he tapped out the general call of the
Service time after time; then strained his faculties in eager listening
until he went hopelessly on.
But he repeated the call. "For the lad may hear it and be heartened," he
argued. "And if he's free to do it he'll answer--though I think I'd
break down and cry with joy did I hear an answerin' rap."
And still the chattering grew louder, while the watching, creeping man
moved stealthily on. A wave of gas came to him once and set him choking,
while far ahead he saw a reflected glow more red than the pale, lucent
shimmering of the walls.
He stopped dead still as once more there flooded through him a thousand
unnamed fears of this domain of the Evil One where he would trespass.
But he forced his feet to carry him on until he could peer down through
a rift in the rock floor to behold another room whose walls glowed redly
with the light of fires far down in hot-throated pits.
* * * * *
There were figures whose white bodies shone as redly in that
glow--figures that floated on outspread leather wings of dead black.
Small wonder that the mind of Spud O'Malley found here the confirmation
of his worst fears; small wonder that his trembling lips whispered:
"'Tis Hell! 'Tis Hell, at last!"
But there was that which froze his quivering nerves to cold quiet, which
set his lips into a grim, straight line and held him motionless above
the opening from which he saw the room below--as, from a flurry of
bodies against one far side, he saw a girl emerge.
She was in the hands of the black-winged beasts who carried her into the
air then swung out toward the fiery pit. And Spud's incredulous: "Oh,
the poor, beautiful darlin'!" rose unconsciously to his lips to die away
in a quick-drawn breath. For, from the mass of bodies, another figure
was tossed up into the air to be gripped by black, waiting claws--and
Spud knew that he was seeing Chet Bullard, fighting, struggling, in the
grasp of these demons from the Pit.
* * * * *
The fumes from that inferno rose straight up. They passed out at another
funnel-shaped throat except for an occasional eddy that whirled back
toward the watching man. But Spud O'Malley, hanging precariously from
that opening above, knew nothing of the sulphurous fumes or of the
tight band they clamped about his throat. He was taking careful aim at
the first of the flying beasts, found Chet in his line of fire, and
snapped forward his pistol to fire at the lip of the pit instead. And he
slipped forward the continuous discharge lever that caused the pistol to
shake in his hand as it emptied its capacious magazine in a furious rain
of bullets whose every end was tipped with the deadliest explosive of
Earth.
The floor rose up toward him in a spouting volcano of fire, while Spud
glared wildly through glazed and blinded eyes and swung his pistol to
rake the flying horde where he knew Chet was not.
He saw, through the haze that was sweeping before him, Chet's sprawled
body on the floor; he saw him leap to his feet and rush to the rescue of
the girl. Then the empty pistol slipped from Spud's nerveless hand; and
his other, that had clung with unshakable grip to a sharp edge of rock,
relaxed, while he plunged headlong toward the floor below.
CHAPTER X
_One Stroke for Freedom_
In that subterranean chamber of the Moon, where the angry red of still
deeper fires flared fitfully; where winged demons, like evil creatures
of a drug-crazed dreamer's mind, darted shrieking through the sulphurous
air, it was a slender, blue-eyed girl who took control of events.
She it was who, when the explosions of detonite had ceased, saw the fall
of a body from high above. She saw it strike upon a mound of dead
Moon-beasts; saw the homely, human features as the body rolled to the
floor; and it was she who threw herself upon it protectingly when one of
the enemy wounded dragged his broken wings trailing across the stone
that he might reach that human face with his distended claws.
"A man!" Anita Haldgren screamed. "It's a man--help me!" And Chet was
beside her in an instant to drag the limp body to safety.
"Spud!" he shouted. "It's Spud O'Malley! He never went back! He came
down here to save us!"
He grabbed up the gun where it had fallen; saw the empty magazine; then
flung himself down beside the unconscious figure of Spud while he tore
at the fastenings of the second weapon.
"His suit!" he shouted to the girl. "Get his suit! It's there where he
fell! Bring yours and mine, too!"
He was hardly able to gage his own strength here where all weights were
one-sixth of their equivalent on Earth. He stooped and swung the chunky
body of Spud across his shoulder as easily as he would have lifted a
child. And, having done it, he was entirely at a loss as to where to go.
Across the great room was a throng of leaping, flapping things; more
were pouring in from open doors. Chet stood hesitant and bewildered,
until Anita spoke.
"Come!" she called, and darted toward a narrow entrance.
* * * * *
The clamorous shrieking from the horde of Moon-beasts marked their
swooping assault upon the two, and Chet paused to send them three shots
that checked the advance. Then, with the body of Spud held tightly, he
sprang where Anita had gone.
She was waiting, but gave Chet no chance to question her. "Come!" she
commanded again, and ran on as before. But, as Chet gained her side, she
offered between gasping breaths an explanation.
"Five years they kept us ... like animals in a cage ... but there was a
place ... a sacred place ... they let us go there.... And they let us
make signal lights from outside ... they called it magic.
"And now Frithjof has escaped ... he will go to the sacred room ... only
there would he be safe...."
They had turned and twisted through narrow passages. Anita, it seemed,
was plotting a course through less frequented thoroughfares of this
strange city. But they came at last to a vast auditorium into which they
peered from a half-opened door.
The room was of preposterous size, and Chet marveled at the minds that
had conceived and wrought so tremendous an undertaking. And he saw
plainly in his own mind the throngs of serene-faced beings who must have
folded their white wings softly about them to gather there for worship.
But more plainly still he saw the jostling, squealing crowd that was
there that instant before his eyes.
Hundreds of them--thousands, it might be--and the sound of their shrill
voices made hideous echoes from the high-flung ceiling of the great
hall. The dry rustling of their leather wings was an unceasing rush of
sound.
* * * * *
Some who seemed to be leaders stood above the rest on a platform which
formed the base of a terraced formation against the far wall of the
room. Even at a distance Chet could see and wonder at the simple beauty
of that place of metals and jewels where the great ones of an earlier
race had once stood.
Back of those who harangued the crowd the terraces built themselves up
to a pyramid against the rock wall; and on either side, opening upon
the platform base, was a doorway of noble proportions, whose metal doors
of burnished reds and browns were closed.
"The sacred room," whispered Anita, "beyond those doors. Frithjof has
closed them. He is there. I know it--I know it!"
Chet was still holding the body of O'Malley. Only his choked breathing
showed that he still lived, but now he stirred and struggled in Chet's
grasp, while he struck out blindly and hoarse sounds came from his
throat.
Chet clapped one hand over the pilot's mouth. "For the love of heaven,
Spud," he said fiercely, "be still! Don't speak--don't say a word! It's
Chet--Chet Bullard! I've got you, we're all right!"
The pilot's struggles ceased, and Chet eased him to the floor where he
sat still gasping for breath; the fumes from that place of death had
been strangling in his throat.
Beside him Chet heard the girl repeating in softest tones the name she
had heard for the first time.
"Chet--Chet Bullard! How odd a name! But I love it--I couldn't help but
love it."
* * * * *
In the great room were some who had turned toward the sound of Chet's
scuffling; they were walking slowly toward the half-opened door.
"Come!" said Anita Haldgren again, and fled like a slender,
golden-haired wraith down the narrow hall.
More twisting passages until Chet was hopelessly lost. But he no longer
needed to carry O'Malley, who was running beside him, and he had
implicit faith in the girlish guide who went before. He was not
surprised when they came after many detours to a narrow door of wrought
metals in white and gold, whose inset designs were worked in glowing
jewels.
Nor was he surprised when the door opened in response to a series of
knocks from Anita's hand that spelled SOS in the code he knew, and a
man, whose long hair and beard hung about a face as handsome as that of
a Viking of old, stood motionless in that doorway.
But the surprise of that flaxen-haired giant can be only imagined when a
young man whom he had never seen on Earth or Moon stepped forward from
his sister's side with outstretched hand.
"I am Bullard," said the slim young man, "Master Pilot of the World--or
at least that was my rating up to the time I left in search of you. And
now, Pilot Haldgren, we've a ship outside, and, if you'd care to go back
with us--"
And with equal casualness the blond Viking replied: "You came in search
of us! You saw our signals! After all this time! Yes, we shall be glad
to go back with--we shall be glad--yes--"
But his deep, rumbling voice broke into something like a sob, and he
turned with outstretched arms to stumble blindly toward his sister, who
buried her face in his torn and ragged blouse.
* * * * *
"You came in search of us--you came through space just to find and
rescue us!" Haldgren, it seemed, could not recover from the effects of
this unbelievable fact. He was gripping hard at the hand of Chet
Bullard, while his other great arm was thrown about the shoulders of
Spud O'Malley.
"But now that you are here, what is to be done? Every exit will be
guarded; we are shut off from the outer world by a hundred locked doors
and by thousands of those beasts."
He took his arm from Spud's shoulder to point toward the great doors,
beyond which was a rising clamor of shrill sound.
"They will break in here soon; they would have been here before had they
known of the old lost entrance of the priests that Anita and I found.
We're as bad off as ever, I am afraid. There will be no holding them
now."
"I can hold some," said Chet, and touched his weapon. Haldgren nodded
his shaggy head.
"Some, but not many of the thousands we must face before ever we fight
our way through to the outer world. No, my friend Bullard, that will
never save us; we are doomed!"
But Chet, unwilling to accept or share the other's convictions, was
seeing again the great room beyond those doors--a room of vast
proportions; of high-arched, vaulted ceiling where sweeping curves all
centered and ended in one tremendous central point. It hung down, that
point, a blazing pendant--an inverted keystone; through some magic of
that ancient people all the colors of the spectrum had been made to ebb
and flow like rainbows of living light.
* * * * *
But something deeper than the beauty of this had impressed Chet. A
master pilot does not study design of structures, even structures meant
for travel through the air, without gaining knowledge of architectural
fundamentals; his mind, subconsciously, had been following strains and
stresses through those super-imposed curves. He turned abruptly to
Haldgren with a question.
"It seemed to me when I was following Anita that we climbed upward; we
were always running upward through the passages. We must be near the
surface of the Moon; is that true?"
Haldgren nodded slowly. "I think so--yes! In the great room out there
are windows of quartz high in the ceiling. You could not see them from
where you were, but they are there. I have seen them lighted; I think it
was the light of the sun."
"In that case," said Chet quietly, "I will ask you to open those doors."
"But they will come in!" the big man protested.
"They will not come in."
Chet turned to the girl. "I will ask you, my dear, to accompany me--if
you have faith."
And, to that, Anita Haldgren granted not even a word of reply. She moved
more swiftly than her brother to a controlling lever in the wall ... and
the ponderous doors swung slowly back.
* * * * *
Beyond those opening doors a din of shrieks went abruptly still. They
rose again in a squeaking babel of amazement and again were silenced as
Chet Bullard stepped through the arch. Beside him was the slender figure
of Anita; following was a stocky man whose unhandsome, face was alight
with a broad grin.
"Go to it, my bhoy!" Spud O'Malley was saying. "I don't know what you're
up to, but you'll be countin' me in--and here's hopin' you give those
devils hell!"
And, behind them all, in great strides that brought him up with the
rest, came Haldgren, recovered now from the stupefaction that had held
him momentarily. The four went silently where Chet led to the highest
point of the great terraced rostrum.
It was a stepped pyramid, Chet found, split in half and the half placed
against the wall. There was a stairway of smaller steps where priests,
some thousands of years before, had made their way to the top. And the
dust of centuries arose in smoky puffs as the four trod that path where
the holy ones had gone. Below them the silence was ending in sibilant
hissing calls as the black-winged beast-men watched that procession to
the heights. Some few had launched themselves into the air, Chet saw
when he turned.
"Tell them to go back," he said to Anita; "tell them to listen to what I
have to say!" There followed immediately the sound of Anita's soft voice
distorted to shrill sounds that echoed throughout the hall.
"Tell them now," said Chet when the hall was still, "that I have come
from another world. Tell them that I hold the thunderbolts of their
ancient gods in my hands. Then tell them if they permit us to depart we
will go and leave them in peace. But if they try to harm us, the temple
of their gods will be destroyed, and they, too, shall die. Tell them!"
* * * * *
There was something of unwonted solemnity in the voice of the master
pilot--something of quiet power and the dignity that became a messenger
of the gods--as he gave his orders and faced the throng.
And there was the patience of a god who is sickened of slaughter as he
faced the discordant din and the threatening forward surge of the demon
throng below. The girl had spoken, and the air was black with their
threshing wings, while still Chet waited with outstretched hand.
To the creatures below--the things half-men and half-beasts--the shining
tube in that extended hand meant nothing of threat. And even to the
Irish pilot, who stood silently watching, the gesture seemed futile.
"You've overplayed your hand, lad," he said in a tone of despair. "'Tis
no little gun like that will stop them now!"
He was watching that hand and the shining tube; watching in amazement
as he saw it swing slowly up toward the advancing horde risen level with
them in the air--up above their massed blackness of wings--on and up,
until the tube was pointing toward the base of a carven pendant, whose
blending colors were fairy lights at play.
And still the weapon waited until the snarling faces of the enemy were
close. Then the pistol cracked once, and the roar of its exploding shell
came thundering after.
For an instant all motion ceased; the very wings of the flying beasts
seemed frozen rigid in mid-flight. Then the whole of the vast room was
in motion.
* * * * *
A rush of escaping air whirled upward the black-winged monsters in an
inverted maelstrom of shrieking winds. And, falling to meet them, came
an enormous pendant whose rioting colors seemed glorying in their own
death. And with that came the swift disintegration of the vaulted arches
where the one central supporting point of their intricate maze had been
shattered; till, with a crashing avalanche of sound that obliterated the
thundering echoes of the detonite charge, the entire ceiling, that
seemed now like the roof of a mighty world, roared down to destruction.
The pyramidal rostrum was at one side. A cascade of shattered rock fell
like a curtain before it--a kindly curtain that hid from human sight the
hideous slaughter of a demoniac mob. It was still falling; the
imprisoned air was gathering added force to rush upward, screaming as if
the very winds were insane with joy at their release, when the great
arms of Frithjof Haldgren closed about the others of the group and half
carried them, half hurled them, down the slope.
* * * * *
The echoing clang of great doors was still with them as the bellowing
voice of Haldgren was heard.
"Get into your suits! The internal pressure is lost." Even as he spoke
the big man was clutching at his throat, though the closing doors of the
sacred room had given them respite. "Quick! They have emergency doors.
They will close them--but this part is cut off. In only minutes there
will be no air!"
But it was Chet who snapped shut the closure of Anita Haldgren's suit
before he pulled on his own. And he grinned happily through the glass of
his helmet as he saw the others safely encased, while their suits slowly
bulged as the pressure of the air about them went down and their own
tanks of oxygen took up the task of maintaining one atmosphere of
pressure.
In silence the great doors of the sacred room swung back; in silence, as
before, the Earth-folk passed through where chaos had reigned. Chet
checked them; he threw one arm clumsily around the figure of Anita
Haldgren while he turned to her brother.
"The door is open, Frithjof Haldgren," he said, and pointed upward at
the black vault of the heavens where a massive ceiling had been. In that
immensity of space, framed in the torn outlines of a shattered world,
shone a great globe--a globe like a giant moon. The Earth, unbelievably
bright, was beckoning them once more.
"The door is open," Chet repeated; "do you still wish to go home?"
CHAPTER XI
_"Bullard, of the I.B.C.!"_
The controls of a meteor ship held steady without the touch of the
pilot's hand. Chet Bullard was staring at a radiocone on the instrument
board in the control room where a voice from some super-powered station
was calling. His own radio had been crackling a call, and now this
response was coming across the void.
"Orders from the Stratosphere Control Board: You will proceed at once to
New York. Radiobeacon 2X12 will guide you down. Your message received
and we acknowledge report of the finding of the space-flyer, Pilot
Haldgren. Do not discharge any passengers and land nowhere else than at
New York without direct orders of the Board. Keep your directional
signal on full power; our cruisers will pick you up in the highest
level. Signed: Commander of Air."
Spud O'Malley, it was, who broke the silence of the room where only the
sound of the terrific exhaust came thinly through.
"May divils confound him! And it's back on the Moon with those other
beasts I'm wishin' I was. At least a man can get close enough to slam
them in their ugly faces; but the Commander and his cruisers! Sure,
there's nothin' we can do!"
"Just take our medicine," said Chet Bullard quietly. "But I have proved
him wrong; Haldgren, here, is the living evidence of that. And I said I
would laugh him from the Service--well, I'm not so sure of that."
"But surely," broke in Haldgren's booming voice, "there will be only
praise for what you have done. I do not understand--"
"You don't know the Commander, my boy," Spud broke in dryly. "And you
don't know that the lad, here, defied him to his face and ran the
gantlet of his cruisers' guns to get away and go after you."
"Ah!" grunted the giant. "And now I understand. It is the old story--an
incompetent man in a place of authority--"
* * * * *
Chet broke in.
"Not quite right; this Commander of ours has done much--he is a driver
of men--but there are some of us who think he lacks vision. He can never
see beyond the stratosphere he rules so ably; and his position is
supreme."
"There is still the Governing Council--we will appeal--"
But the master pilot was not listening to Haldgren's words; his slim,
sensitive hand was reaching for the ball-control to build up still more
the tremendous blast of a forward exhaust that was checking their speed
and making them as heavy as if their bodies were of meteoric iron.
A forward lookout showed a black globe; its circle was rimmed with fire
from the Sun that it blotted out. A hemisphere of night lay below--the
black, mysterious night of a waiting Earth. But one strong signal came
in on the instruments at Chet's side to show him where on that horizon
was New York; and the call of a flagship of cruisers was flashing before
him as the lift of the Repelling Area was felt.
"Follow!" flashed the order. "You will follow to New York!" And, through
the black night, faint flashes of light marked the fleet of swift
guardians of the skies that closed in, then swept downward and out--an
impregnable convoy about the speeding, roaring ship.
And there was that in Chet's face as he handled the controls that
brought Anita Haldgren to his side that she might lift his free hand in
wordless comfort and press it to her face.
* * * * *
That venerable and beloved man, the President of the Federation
Aeronautique Internationale, stood silent before a vast audience.
Throughout the great auditorium was silence; each of the gathered
thousands was listening to the shrieking sirens from the landing field
on the roof overhead.
Skylights above showed the night air ablaze with red, through which the
vivid green of landing signals pierced in staccato bursts. From the roof
of that building to the highest level of the stratosphere the air was
cleared; no craft of the Service would venture to pierce the barrage of
light and radio waves that hemmed that aerial shaft. And down the shaft,
in a thunder of roaring exhausts, came a shining shape.
She sparkled and flashed in the crimson and green of that emergency
light, and from her bow poured a tornado that blasted the air, then
streamed out behind in hot gas like a comet of flame. Then the thunders
died; the shining shape turned once slowly in air to show her blunt nose
and cylindrical body before she settled softly as a homing bird to the
embrace of great waiting arms of steel. And, inside the building, a
white-haired man was saying:
"They are here! Thank God, they are here! Their radio has prepared us;
our signals have guided them home. And now it is not New York, nor even
the United States of America alone who attends; the whole world will be
summoned. Look!"
* * * * *
Behind, and high above him on a wall, was a radio panel. Its signal
lamps went suddenly dark. The thin, blue-veined hand of the speaker was
pointing.
"Only twice has the world-call flashed: once when the Molemen came and
the future of the world was at stake; once when the Dark Moon crashed
down from the void and the serpents of space menaced aerial traffic. And
now--once again!--the whole world is summoned! Every city and hamlet of
Earth--every ship of the air and the sea--every vessel on the ocean,
under the ocean, and in the air levels above--"
His voice broke sharply. From the panel there came a thin call, a
quivering that was more a trembling than a sound; it reached out to
touch raspingly the nerves of every listener. Then the whole board burst
forth in a flash of fire where a flaming crystal leaped to life--and
none could see that pulsing flame without thrilling to the knowledge
that it was calling a whole world with its wordless summons.
The light died; a television detector whined as its motors came to
speed; and each watcher knew that the waiting world was connected with
that auditorium in New York; all that happened, there--each sight and
sound--was circling the globe.
An announcer's voice roared briefly before the regulator cut down on its
volume.
"You are seeing the Radio-central Auditorium in New York. On the landing
stage above, after a journey of five hundred thousand miles, a strange
craft has settled to rest. Its pilot: Chester Bullard, once rated as
Master Pilot of the World! Its journey, now safely completed: from the
Earth to the Moon, and return!
"The world is waiting to greet Pilot Bullard, though of this he, as yet,
is unaware. World-wide radio control is now transferred to Radio-central
Auditorium in New York! They are coming! They are entering!"
* * * * *
But the thousands gathered in that great hall heard no other words from
the radiocone. Their attention was focused upon the broad stage, where,
descending from a lift, a strange group stepped out upon the stage,
stood an instant in startled wonder that was near embarrassment, then
took the seats to which they were shown.
And again the venerable President of the Federation Aeronautique
Internationale was speaking.
"It is less than a month since I stood here before you, when, as again
is true to-night, the entire personnel of the executives of the
Stratosphere Control Board was gathered to do honor to the pioneers of
space--the discoverer--"
On the stage near the speaker, Chet Bullard stared in consternation at a
girl in a pilot's suit as grimed and ragged as his own. His gaze passed
on to the set features of Pilot O'Malley--to the blue eyes of a
flaxen-haired giant--then on to where Walt Harkness and Diane, his wife,
sat regarding him with happy smiles. Dimly Chet heard the man at the
speakers' stand.
"--and on that other occasion, Mr. Bullard refused a decoration tendered
him and marking him as the first to travel through airless space.
"I have here"--the speaker smiled slightly as he extended his hand where
a jewel flashed fire from a velvet case--"the identical jewel and medal.
And to-night, while the peoples of Earth are gathered throughout the
world to do honor to Mr. Bullard, it has been given to me the proud
privilege of welcoming him home."
* * * * *
He turned and held out a beckoning hand toward Chet. In a daze the
younger man arose and moved beside the one who had called him.
"And now, Chester Bullard, on behalf of the Governing Council of the
Ruling Nations of this Earth, I greet you: Pilot of the Stratosphere no
longer--but Pilot of Endless Space! The world welcomes you; and, through
me, it places in your hands this jewel.
"But you will observe that we older ones may still learn, and we do not
repeat our former mistake. We hand you this medal, emblematic of the
first penetration of space, to do with as you will."
The thin hand was shaking as the speaker turned and swept the audience
with one all-inclusive gesture.
"To you who are before me now; to you out beyond wherever parallels of
longitude and latitude are known--I present the Columbus of the
Stars!--Chester Bullard!"
And suddenly Chet found himself alone in a pandemonium of sound. From
the countless faces that blurred into one unrecognizable sea came a roar
of human voices like waves thundering against storm-worn cliffs; above
the clamor was the sound of shrieking sirens; and through all, when it
seemed that no other sound could be heard, came the full-volume,
nerve-stunning clangor from the radiocone's wide-opened throat as the
trumpets and brass of all the monster bands of Earth broke forth, under
radio control, in one synchronous song--till even that was drowned under
the roaring welcomes in strange tongues as the nations of Earth cut in.
* * * * *
And Chet Bullard, his blouse still torn where a Commander of Air had
ripped off a three-starred emblem of a Master Pilot, shook his blond
head to clear it of the confusion that seemed beating him down. And he
stared and stared, not at the rioting throng before him, but at
something he could in part comprehend--a glowing, flashing jewel that
rested in his hand. And slowly there crept into his eyes a look of
understanding, while a ghost of a smile twitched and tugged at the
corners of his mouth.
The hall, which one instant was a bedlam of roaring voices, went silent
as Chet Bullard raised his hand. He was still smiling as he bowed toward
the white-haired man whose happy face belied the moisture in his eyes;
then he faced the throng, and his voice held no hint of trembling or
uncertainty.
"The Columbus of the Stars! I thank you for that title, which I can
accept only most humbly. For I ask you to go back with me into history
and remember, as I am remembering, that before Columbus there were
others whose names are lost.
"The Norsemen--those Vikings of old!--who dared the unknown seas, were
first. And again history repeats. But this time the pioneer will not
remain unknown. I have been to the Moon; I have reached out into
space--but I followed another's trail.
"Frithjof Haldgren!" he shouted, and extended a hand toward the gentle
giant whose face was aflame as he came to Chet's side. "Frithjof
Haldgren, I present you to the world. Only one can be the first; and
yours is the honor and glory. This medal is yours alone; I place it
where it belongs!"
* * * * *
And Frithjof Haldgren, white of face and lips now instead of fiery red,
stood silent and trembling while Chet fastened a jewel upon his grimy
tattered blouse; then retired to his chair as if beaten back by the
rolling waves of sound.
But to Chet, as he watched the man go, came a quick sense of
disappointment. Unconsciously, his hand went to the same place on his
own chest where had rested an emblem he had prized above all else--and
now his searching fingers found only the mark of his disgrace. Then he
knew again that the aged President was speaking, while he held Chet
beside him with one detaining hand.
"We older ones have served, perhaps; we have done what we could; we pray
that the world is better for our efforts! And we shall continue to
serve; yet it is to youth that we must look for the progress which is to
come.
"Today we face a new life whose horizons, once bounded by the limiting
air, have been pushed back. We have conquered space, and before us is
the waiting marvel of man's extension of his activities throughout the
universe.
"How far shall we go in this new and endless sphere? With interplanetary
travel, what is our goal? Only youth can give the answer. And in the
hands of youth must the command of this great adventure be placed.
* * * * *
"Gentlemen, the Governing Council of the Ruling Nations of this Earth
has created a new command. By the acts of this man who stands beside me,
and by his fellow-explorer, Walter Harkness, the Council has been forced
to take this step.
"That command will rank second only to the Governing Council itself; a
body of men shall compose it who shall be known as the Interstellar
Board of Control." He turned squarely toward Chet. "I am placing in
your hands, Mr. Bullard, your commission as Commander of that Board. The
best minds of all nations will be at your call. Will you accept--will
you gather these men about you and do your part in this great work for
the greater future of mankind?"
The ears of a listening world waited long for an answer. But the eyes of
that world saw a figure whose blond head was suddenly lowered as if to
hide a betrayal of what was in his heart; they saw him raise his bowed
head to stare mutely toward a girl whose eyes of blue were swimming with
happy tears as she gave him a trembling smile--and only then did they
see Chet Bullard draw himself erect, while his voice went out with the
speed of light to a waiting world.
"I accept, Mr. President. Proudly--humbly--I accept!"
And the eyes of the world, if they were understanding eyes, must have
smiled with his, as the Commander of the Interstellar Board of Control
grasped, among others, the congratulatory hand of his subordinate, the
Commander of Air.
But if there were any who expected to read mockery in those smiling
eyes, they had yet to learn the measure of Commander Bullard--"Bullard,
of the I.B.C.!"
End of Project Gutenberg's The Finding of Haldgren, by Charles Willard Diffin
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