by Earl
“An elaborate outlay,” Wright said calmly, “that will someday crumble before the guns of the Ether Patrol.”
“You think so?” the pirate mocked. “Only that the excellent patrol will never suspect this place. Remember, I have plundered four ships already, bearing each a sizeable fortune, and Earth is humming at the great mystery.
I come like a shadow; I strike silently, swiftly, and then I am gone, and the fuming Patrol burns up the void. And so it will go on.
“For a year or two I will steadily transfer the system’s bullion to my coffers. Then with that wealth I will buy out the biggest interplanetary lines and become the greatest power in the system!”
“Oh, I see,” said Wright slowly. “I thought there must be something behind all this greater than mere piracy. Thanks for the information.”
“You’ll never use it,” Barly Moque returned, suavely, confidently. “I’ve got you fast and sure, Major Wright, and you’re the last person in the universe I want out there against me. Really, you were most careless. But I never credited you with the foolhardiness of chasing me with a tub. You see, I’ve got a meteor-mass indicator mounted outside the lock. It detects ships that approach this part of the moon. Just another of my clever precautions. The operator notified me a ship was up there tailing us, and I knew it would be but one person—with that much nerve—the honorable Cedric Wright. So here you are.”
“I know the proposition,” Wright said without emotion. “You offer me a choice of taking up your piratical banner or—dying.”
“Right, Wright,” punned Barly Moque. “After all, you are a clever man of the ether-ways. You can handle fleets of thirty. You have a brain. You will be more use to me alive than dead. At the slight sacrifice of your vows to the law, you can become wealthy.”
“I guessed your proposition,” Wright said. “You ought to guess my answer.” Barly Moque contracted his brows. “Obviously you want to die!”
Wright came to his feet. “What you call a choice is no choice to me. When you ask me to renounce law and duty and take up the code of plunder, you’re wasting words.”
Suddenly Moque’s suavity vanished. He snatched his pistol from the shoulder holster and pointed it at the rigid major.
“Wright,” he grated, “nothing would give me greater pleasure than to shoot you down like a dog. Ten years ago you ruined my plans, and for a while I vowed to hunt you down. Then I conceived this project and temporarily forgot you. But now I have your life in my hands!”
Murch and Brill cowered away from the enraged pirate, expecting that he would shoot them all dead on the spot. But Wright stood his ground silently, an open dare in his eyes. It was said of him that at one time, with a bullet in his lung, he had attacked and beaten two fleeing criminals whom he had cornered after they had disarmed him.
Barly Moque hesitated. Then he slipped the pistol back into its holster.
“You’ve got nerve,” he grunted admiringly.
“Listen, Wright,” he went on, “I’ll give you three days’ time to change your mind. I’m going to put you in a rock prison which has no lights, and only a few holes for ventilation. I’ll feed you for three days. Then, if you still buck my will, I’ll just forget to give you food!”
“You’re the king,” Wright said.
“You’re the fool,” returned Moque angrily. Then he turned to the President Roosevelt men.
“As for you two, in you go with Wright unless you want to join me. I can always use men. You get full privileges, if you join, just like the rest. What’s the answer?”
“I stick with Major Wright,” shot out Brill quickly. But Murch hesitated, looking at Wright. Clearly, he was undecided.
“It’s up to you,” Wright said quietly. “Although I drafted you to serve the Ether Patrol, you have made no vows.”
“Vows, bah!” Moque put in, hoping to gain Murch as a recruit. “You fellows will be ten times better off with me than with the President Roosevelt’s crew.”
But Murch, in a weak voice, held to his better principles and stepped to the side of Wright.
In answer to a button on the pirate chief’s desk, three of his men entered the room.
“Take these fools to the prison. And Major Wright, I hope you’ll enjoy my hospitality!”
His grating laugh of mockery followed them as they left under armed escort. From the pirate chief’s office, the prisoners were marched to one side of the grouped structures, toward the crater’s wall directly opposite the space reserved for the ships.
Cut into the wall was an artificial grotto whose end lost itself in darkness. The leader carried a flashlight. Its beam revealed smooth walls without indenture, except at one place. Here a hole bored into the wall. Tilted back from it was a huge wedge of stone, so balanced that slight effort could swing it up against the hole, effectively sealing it. A man from the outside might conceivably push the wedge aside alone, but any person or persons inside the cell to which the hole led could never budge it, for leverage could be applied only near the base, where it would be ineffective.
Into the hole the three captives were forced to crawl on hands and knees, under threat of pistols in the hands of hard-faced captors.
CHAPTER IV
Murch Weakens
THE wedge of stone banged into place thunderously and the three prisoners found themselves in stygian darkness. For a long minute they stood motionless. The only sound was their own breathing that sounded loud in the confined space. Gradually the darkness lightened, however, as their eyes adjusted to the conditions. Although they could see nothing of the outline of their prison, the ventilation holes near the door, each about four inches in diameter, shone grey with stray light from the crater.
Murch was the first to break the silence. “Damn!” he said with something of a quaver in his voice. “Those pirates are heartless wretches!”
“Pirates,” Wright said in steady tones, “of whatever age or time, have always followed a cruel, ruthless code. This is nothing new to Moque the Mocker. He is not only a thief; he is a murderer a hundred times over.”
“The beast! Why does he do this to us? How can he expect us to live in a hole like this without—”
“Hold on, Murch!” Wright interrupted. “Watch your nerves. I admire both of you for sticking with me, but don’t think you’re in for anything easy. As long as you’ve taken the hardest course, you’ve got to face things squarely. First of all, we’ll try to get some idea of what this cell is like.
“You, Murch, start at that last ventilation hole at the right facing the door and feel your way along the wall. Brill, you start at the left. Go slow now and watch your feet. It would be just like Moque to have a pit here someplace.” By the muffled sound of their voices, Wright surmised the room could not be large. When the other two started their courses, Wright put his back to the doorway and strode straight away from it, raising and lowering each foot tentatively before moving his body. He stretched one arm as high as he could reach. His feet encountered loose rocks as he progressed slowly and he heard Brill shuffle once and curse softly, having stumbled on a rock.
Fifteen feet from the door, Wright encountered ceiling with his hand and from there on it sloped rapidly to join the back wall, where the three men met. The other two reported unbroken walls. Wright then had them feel along the ceiling and wall as high as they could reach, up and down the place. Then he hoisted Brill to his shoulders and had him feel for the roof where none of them could reach it alone.
“That’s that,” Wright said finally. “Apparently we’re in a completely closed pocket off that passageway outside the door. It’s roughly egg-shaped and about thirty feet long.”
“You didn’t expect for a minute there’d be a door leading out, did you,” Murch said, unnerved by a sense of oppression that came upon them, thinking of their narrow space bounded by incalculable masses of solid rock.
“Naturally not, but it’s better knowing than guessing,” Wright returned sharply. “Now just as a precaution, we�
�ll try budging that wedge across the doorway.”
But strain as they would till their breath came short, the immovable wedge gave not an inch. “No use,” Brill said, panting. “Can’t apply leverage from here.”
Suddenly there was an ear-splitting crash that sounded as though two worlds had collided. “What was that!” Wright asked, addressing no one in particular.
Murch gave a short laugh that indicated frayed nerves. “Nothing. I just picked up a rock and threw it against the wall.”
“Why did you?” Wright asked quickly.
“Why—why?” cried the mechanic shrilly. “In plain disgust! Here we are like rats in a trap. No light, no bed, no chairs, no nothing. Just a bunch of rocks. And what’s the good of it? We may as well—”
He stopped, conscious that he had said too much.
“Careful! Pull yourself together,” admonished Brill. “We’re with Major Wright in this—both of us! See?”
For a moment Murch breathed hard, as though conquering some flaring emotion. Wright said nothing, waiting to see if the man had will power enough to subdue his own despair and fear.
“All right,” muttered Murch weakly. “But for God’s sake, let’s talk so this damned silence doesn’t get us. It’s worse than a lone routine on watch-deck ever was on the President Roosevelt.”
“Sure we’ll talk,” Wright said. “We can discuss Barly Moque and his ambitions. What do you think of the whole thing, Brill?”
“I don’t know what to think, sir. Moque seems to have gone into the project thoroughly. If he ever does get control of interplanetary trade, like he wants to, he can sure dictate as he pleases. Interplanetary trade is the biggest thing going these days. But, Major, if he keeps on plundering ships, won’t the Ether Patrol make a concerted effort sooner or later to put a stop to it?”
“They will try right enough,” Wright said. “But let’s look at it carefully. Moque has a fleet of wonderful ships, just as modern, well armed, and speedy as the Patrol’s, although I don’t think his men are as well trained. Nevertheless, he can plunder with impunity any time the Patrol is not around, and it’s physically impossible for the Patrol to give armed escort to every freighter with valuable cargo.
“Then having a base on the moon—which is something no one would ever suspect—makes it almost a sinecure for him. I just wish I had one—just one—chance to contact the Ether Patrol and tell them about this pirate nest. Or I’d rather have my fleet of thirty ships at my back, facing Moque the Mocker and his fleet for a battle to the finish.”
“I’d like to see that,” Brill said, picturing in his mind the two fleets circling and weaving, hurling white-hot infra-bolts at one another.
Again a moment of silence came upon them, and with crushing effect, the absence of sound seemed to roll over them and drench them with oppression. Wright realized the danger of listening to the silence, and hastily scraped his feet along the rock floor and spoke again, enlarging on the menace to society that Moque the Mocker bid fair to become.
Brill valiantly helped to sustain the conversation. Murch seemed sullen and moody. But whenever there was the slightest break in their talk, and the echoes had died to nothingness, the brooding silence engulfed them like a tidal wave.
It could almost be felt. No surface silence, nor the quietness of a freighter in mid-space, can ever equal the absolute muteness of rockbound underground chambers. Luna, long a dead and immobile world, made no faintest suggestion of sound in her lifeless bowels.
The dread silence, along with the unrelieved darkness, soon made an effect on the prisoners. Their conversation became stiff and forced. Their tongues moved mechanically. Even Wright, iron-nerved though he was, felt his spirit sagging. Brill bore up marvelously, for all of his inexperienced youth.
Murch reeled from the verge of hysteria time and again. Once he had said in a ghastly tone: “I feel as though the walls are—are closing in!” Brill had sharply told him to shut up and think of less insane things.
It seemed days later that something came to interrupt the monotony, but Wright knew it was only a few hours, for none of them had slept. One of the ventilation holes winked to blackness and a scraping noise came from it.
“Hey, you in there!” a voice said. “Here’s something to eat and drink.”
With a gurgling cry of joy, Murch jumped up from the rock he had been sitting on and took from the hand that came through the ventilation hole several paper wrapped articles. Then three cups of water, which he placed carefully at his feet.
It was not much of a meal, consisting of hard biscuits of uncertain composition, a few meager dried fruits, and the water. The jailer left immediately, after a sort of hard chuckle when Murch asked, “Is that all?”
It was over all too soon, the welcome sounds of chewing teeth and licking lips. It left a void greater than before. Another eternity of fighting the hideous silence, struggling against the drug-like desire to listen to what could not be heard, and they felt sleep coming upon them. There was nothing better than bare rock upon which to lay their heads.
Wright awoke from a troubled sleep with a dull throb in his head. The air in the cell, little renewed by the crude ventilation, was warm and stuffy. As he sat up, his muscles cracked like dried leather. He cursed softly.
“Me too,” came Murch’s voice, listless and hollow. “Haven’t slept a bit—not really. Brill, there, is fast asleep—he’s young.”
When Brill awoke, he complained immediately that the air was foul. “By the end of three days, it will be pretty awful,” he predicted unnecessarily. They had nothing resembling a lavatory.
Not long after, the ventilation hole darkened again and a voice told them to take their second meal. Brill passed out the cups and they were returned with water. After the jailer left, they were surprised to hear noises outside. Then a new voice came to them, oily and mocking:
“How do you like it, Major Wright?”
“Fine up till I heard your voice,” Wright said flatly.
“Do you think you can stand it much longer?” asked Moque derisively.
“Longer than you could in any case,” Wright countered.
“Come to your senses,” Moque said with a serious note in his voice. “Stop playing the martyr, Wright, and accept my offer. Are you going to bury yourself and suffer a horrible death just for a few empty vows and principles? Listen, Wright, if you join up with me, I’ll make you co-partner in the organization. I’ve never offered another man that, but I’m willing to share with you because I know between us—”
“Tell it to the man in the moon,” Wright interrupted.
For a moment there was a strained silence. Then Moque’s voice came again: “You haven’t been in there long enough yet. The silence and the darkness and misery will drive you mad, but before that you’ll weaken and beg me to release you. I can wait, major—”
His mocking laughter trailed away from the prison. But suddenly Murch screamed and shouted for him to come back.
“What do you want?” queried the pirate chief, returning.
“Let me out of here! Let me out of here!” cried Murch hysterically. “I’ll do anything. I’ll join you! Only take me out!”
“Damn you!” Brill leaped for him, but Wright’s hand held him back.
“Don’t touch me!” shrieked Murch, thoroughly unnerved and broken, cowering fearfully against the wedge.
As Moque told him to wait a minute, Brill whispered fiercely to Wright: “Let me go. I want to choke some sense into that brainless traitor. Murch, I never thought you were a coward—”
“Shut up,” Wright said peremptorily, tightening his hold on Brill, who was trembling with blind anger. “Let him go—poor fellow.”
Outside, Moque blew a whistle. Pattering sounds approached the cell and suddenly a blinding beam of light shot into the prison as the wedge was tilted away. With a joyful sob, Murch stumbled out of the prison and fell at the pirate chief’s feet. Then the wedge fell back into place.
Moque’s mo
cking voice came through the ventilation holes to the remaining two prisoners: “You won’t last long, either, Wright!”
CHAPTER V
A Moon Pocket
BRILL spoke when all sound outside had died away: “Murch a coward and traitor! I’ve known him for years. Never suspected he was yellow.”
“Can’t blame him,” Wright said. “This sort of thing is pretty awful.”
Wright’s voice had become vibrant with emotion. Brill began to fear the iron major would succumb to the pressure. He did not know that what bothered Wright was not his own fate but a growing fear that the system was soon to feel the grinding shock of Moque’s mailed fist.
The next few hours till the jailer came with food were feverish and fraught with tenseness. After they had eaten, Wright paced the floor in a short path.
Brill, unable to think of anything to say, nervously began picking up little rock fragments and tossing them toward the back wall. The noise helped to keep away the dreaded silence.
Suddenly the shuffling of Wright’s feet stopped. Brill heard him step to the back wall and tap against it with a rock. As Wright changed position, the sound also changed from dull crashes to hollow rumbles.
“Brill,” he said finally, “the back wall at this spot must be comparatively thin—possibly thin enough to break through!”
“But how can that be?” the pilot said, puzzled. “This cell is cut in solid rock.”
“The moon is porous,” Wright said. “Without knowing it, the men who fashioned this cell almost broke through into a natural pocket in the rock. Now, if we take some of these bigger rocks and throw them with all our force at this thin partition, we’ll open this cell to the pocket.”