by Earl
“Formation—circle, revolving at five radii. Keep radios open for my orders. Down at the enemy!”
From the air-lock below again spewed forth the pirate ships. They took up a spreading formation and floated defiantly, close to the surface. The Ether Patrol’s circle descended in slow revolution.
Suddenly, when the attackers had descended to within a mile of the waiting pirate craft, a huge infra-bolt sprang from somewhere below and smashed one of Wright’s ships to falling pieces. A second later another white-hot bolt hurtled upward and sheered off the entire engine compartment of another attacking ship.
“Break formation and retreat!” Wright shouted to his fleet. With lightning swiftness, the Patrol shot upward.
Poised some ten miles above the Lunar surface, Wright contacted his officers, debating with them their next move. The conference resulted in a new formation. The fleet lowered in a widely separated expanse and increased speed. Then it swung like a dinner plate, end over end. Their second revolution brought them near enough to the pirates to use their guns, and as each section of the fleet arced down and away, a barrage of infra-bolts flew to the outlaws. In turn, the latter had adopted a weaving motion to disconcert their gunnery, and returned the fusillade.
A worried look came to Wright’s face after the skirmish. He saw five of his ships missing, whereas the pirates had lost but two! He and Brill had not been in the actual maneuvering. Wright knew that without a full gun crew of three it would have been folly to enter the affray. From his position above he had seen the destruction of his five ships. Somehow, that did not strike him right, all factors considered.
Once again hovering at ten miles with the fleet now reduced to twenty-three, Wright was contacted by Barly Moque.
“So, Major Wright, you have found Moque the Mocker no idle boaster! Where is the vaunted superiority of the mighty Ether Patrol! Two skirmishes and you have lost seven ships. Bah! It is slaughter. Have you the nerve, Major, to attack again?”
“To the last ship!” Wright boiled into the microphone.
But as he was about to snap orders to his men, he brought up short and whirled to Brill. “Did you notice anything peculiar about those infra-bolts that got our ships?”
“They looked mighty powerful to me,” Brill said. “Maybe they have new guns—”
“No, but they do have a giant pyro-gun of extended range on the ground beside the crater lock!” Wright said with a curse. “Why didn’t I suspect it before? That’s why Moque is so eager to have me attack!”
He thought swiftly. It was suicide to attack with a super-range ground gun against them. He snapped on the radio. “Moque, you’ve got a pyro-cannon down there.”
Moque’s answer was first a growl, then: “Since when are you the soul of caution? The daring, invincible Major Wright complains because he’s getting beaten for the first time! I thought you had nerve and—”
“Stow it, Moque,” Wright cut in. “Your ace in the hole played out. But I’m still spoiling for a fight with you. Now listen, I’ll bargain. If I wanted to I could merely stay here and wait for reinforcements. The N.P. Unit of fifty ships will be here in a few hours. If they aren’t enough, we’ll call several more units and finally crush you by sheer weight of numbers. Your ground gun won’t help you much if a hundred ships attack at once.
“Here’s the bargain. You’ve got sixty ships at present, and I have just twenty-three. If you’ll come up out of range of that ground gun and duel me in a true space battle. I’ll fight you to the last ship. If you win, you have the chance to win all!”
Barly Moque’s answer came after a pause: “All right, Major. We’ll fight it out. If I win, I’ll radio the N.P. Unit and throw them off the track and the universe will be ignorant of my secret. Prepare yourself, Wright!”
The pirate fleet, sixty strong, once again zoomed up from the surface with flaming rockets, in a saw-tooth formation. Barly Moque had one chance to save himself and his grand scheme—by destroying Major Wright and his handful of ships.
The Patrol ships looped in tight arcs past the saw-tooth outlaw fleet and belched infra-bolts. The pirates responded with heavy fire, but their gunners were disconcerted by the swiftness of the Patrol’s maneuvers. This skirmish took five ships from Moque and only one from Wright.
The saw-tooth then made a large circle and again bore down swiftly on the gyrating, dancing ships under Major Wright’s command. Again barrages and broadsides of infra-bolts bridged the void, most of them dissipating harmlessly into space, missing their mark. But once more the highly trained Patrol gunners had proven their superiority in such battling. Moque lost six to Wright’s two.
The pirate chief next tried a cone formation that was to turn inside out from its point and engulf the much smaller opposing fleet like an octopus. But at the last moment, a dozen of Wright’s ships careened away from the fleet and poured a devastating fire on the pirates as their terrific speed carried them directly into the convergence of most of the Patrol’s infra-bolts.
Moque lost ten ships—Wright only three.
Then Barly Moque decided a mass attack was his best bet and suddenly his entire fleet came upward in a phalanx. The Patrol ships scattered like melting snow and came at them from all sides. It became a series of duels, then, each seeking out an enemy and trying to outmaneuver and outsmart the other.
Major Wright turned grimly smiling eyes to Brill as they hovered high above, watching. “In duelling, Brill old boy,” he exclaimed, “the Ether Patrol is worth ten times its number of pirates!”
And so it proved to be. It took just a half hour to convince the pirates that they were defeated. A pitiful remnant of five ships finally broke away and dipped in the acknowledged way of surrendering in space.
But Wright saw a ship arise from the shadows of a ravine on the Lunar surface and scuttle to the air-lock. It entered the crater.
“Quick, Brill!” cried Wright. “Barly Moque wasn’t in the battling anymore than I was. He was hiding in the ravine and directing the formations. Now he has slipped into the crater. Down, Brill. He might be hatching something again—”
An automatic relay, which later proved to be an affair of mirrors, worked the air-lock from the outside, and they descended into the crater.
Wright had Brill halt the ship above the zone of lights while he looked cautiously downward. All seemed in order. The sun-lamps were burning and lit up an absolutely deserted crater floor.
Then Wright saw two figures emerge from a building and race across the flat toward another building.
“Put her down fast, Brill!”
Wright picked up a pistol that hung in a holster on the wall and jumped from the ship when it landed bumpily. At the same moment a figure leaped from Moque’s office and raced away. The major needed no second glance to tell him it was Moque himself. He raised the pistol deliberately, pulled the trigger. The figure crumpled to the floor and rolled over. Then it lay still.
Wright, followed by Brill, dashed over to it. Then he gasped. It was not Barly Moque but another man dressed in his clothes!
Brill started stupefied. “That building, Major—several men ran there! Maybe it’s a—ugh—”
Brill stopped, choking. His horrified eyes fastened on Wright, whose skin had turned feverishly red.
Both knew without saying what had happened—the air was being drained out of the crater. It would quickly become a vacuum!
Brill never knew how he reached the ship, but he remembered a strong arm pulling him into the hatch. Then a stab of sweet, blessed air in his lungs revived him. He caught Major Wright’s eye and smiled weakly. Another few seconds and their blood vessels would have burst. As it was, both of them had bloody noses and bloodshot eyes.
“Well, at least,” Brill said, “we’re sure that Moque died. His idea, I guess, was to get you, even at the sacrifice of his own life.”
Wright had a doubtful look in his eye as he said: “Brill, I’m going to have this crater aerated again. I’m going to see whether all the
men down here—including Moque the Mocker—died when the air supply vanished, or whether—they didn’t die!”
Their ship arose past the locks to the Lunar surface, above which hovered the twelve Patrol ships that had survived the battle.
“One thing is sure, though,” Brill said suddenly. “There’s nothing finer than the Ether Patrol!”
Wright smiled. The look that was now in the young pilot’s eye was the same he had had himself twelve years before.
VIA DEATH
Alone On a Satellite of Doom, a Brave Band of Men Participate in a Grim Cosmic Drama!
HELLO Earth! Martian Expedition Number One resuming contact via etherline radio. Operator Gillway speaking.
Eight hundred and forty-seventh day since leaving Earth at last opposition. Forty-first day since leaving Mars. Batteries only at half-charge, since the sunpower mirror needs polishing, but presume this is going through to you as we are now within a half million miles of Earth.
Please give return call immediately, acknowledging contact. Standing by. . . .
. . . Okay! Needless to say, we are glad to hear that a rescue ship is in readiness. We will undoubtedly have to land on the moon. Our fuel supply will be barely enough. Markers says, to brake against the moon’s small gravitation. Landing on Earth, we would not be able to reduce speed safely and would probably burn up in the atmosphere.
But believe me, we are happy to be once again near the Earth-Moon system, which is like home after our sojourn out Mars-way for over two years. Too bad Cruishank, Proosett and Alado can’t be with us. But they lie buried under the golden sands of Mars—martyrs to this venture.
We do not regret our adventure in the least. It has been a thrilling experience. We have viewed the hills and deserts of another world. We have seen alien creatures of another evolution. We have battled giant three-foot ant-creatures. We have discovered, pictures and records of a dead civilization, mysteriously linked with Earth’s past.
Yet the grandest moment of all came just yesterday, when Earth changed from a star to a small disc. Home! That was the simple, humble word that made us all choke when Dordeaux said it aloud. A moment later he wept unashamedly, but no one blamed him. I don’t think any of us were dry-eyed.
To recapitulate briefly: The asteroid Anteros, with its eccentric orbit, carried us faithfully from Mars’ orbit toward Earth’s in thirty-four days, as Markers calculated. We owe that tiny body a deep vote of thanks. Our limited fuel supply would not have been able to carry us across that forty-million-mile gulf in less than a year.
Will resume tomorrow; batteries low. Music would be much appreciated, if you can supply us.
EIGHT hundred and forty-eighth day.
All went well during the trip, though once our gyroscope stopped and we wobbled dangerously close to Anteros’ flinty surface before the mechanism could be fixed. We then resumed our short orbit around the asteroid, as its satellite.
We had a narrow escape yesterday when we prepared to tear away from Anteros’ gravity. Suddenly, our rockets went dead. It was imperative that we break immediately away from the asteroid’s gravitational grip—else it would carry us past Moon and Earth and sweep us outward again!
We went over the engines like maniacs. Parletti finally noticed that the fuel line was clogged. We had a laugh over that, for Parletti is a geologist and doesn’t know much about engines. The line fixed, our rockets easily floated us away from Anteros. We gave that little planetoid nomad of the void a rousing cheer as it receded.
But here we are, approaching the moon’s orbit at five miles a second. The moon, in turn, is bearing down toward our position at nine miles a second. It will take some neat figuring to escape a crash. Markers and Captain Atwell have worked forty hours consecutively on the computations. Because our coffee supply is exhausted, they take a swig of pure oxygen now and then as a stimulant.
We are now the same distance from Luna as Earth is, but on the other side. We have, been examining this mysterious Other Side, that Earth never sees, with our telescope. It looks no different from the Earth-side, with the usual craters, broad plains and sharp-edged mountain ranges. Naturally, one could not expect it to be different.
Power fading; au revoir till tomorrow.
* * * * *
Eight hundred and forty-ninth day.
Urgent!
Send the rescue ship immediately and have its radio open for our call.
A rather grave situation faces us. Originally, we had planned to land somewhere on the Earth-side, noting the approximate location according to the standard Lunar map. This would have simplified the rescue ship’s task of finding us.
But now, checking and rechecking the figures without avail, Captain Atwell announces that we must make a forced landing on the Other Side!
Our approach, of course, had been from Mars, toward the Other Side. Atwell had hoped to circle the moon halfway around with our momentum and land on Earth’s side. But due to adverse factors of orbits and speeds, this might result in a bad crash. Our only hope, it seems, is to bear down obliquely on the Other Side, take up the proper tangent, and brake with our last bit of fuel for a landing there.
We are now about ten thousand miles from the moon. We will land within-the next twelve hours. Swinerton is rapidly sketching in a general map of the Other Side. We will try to land in some wide, open space, in direct sunlight, and note the nearby landmarks. This will make it simpler for that rescue ship to find us.
Must stop now. If our luck holds out, and we make a successful landing, we will contact the rescue ship immediately afterward.
EIGHT hundred and fiftieth day. Successful landing!
Martian Expedition Number One contacting the rescue ship. Received your call a few minutes ago. Captain Atwell sends his grateful thanks to your Captain Macklyn, his old friend, for his encouraging words—“We’ll find you if it takes a year!”
Our landing was fortunate. We scudded down in a large, smooth plain of cheeselike pumice stone. We missed a mountain peak by millimeters. The rear part of the hull sprung a small leak from the strain of the landing. Greaves agilely slapped a rubber patch over the slit before the air-pressure had dropped to half normal. All of us have bruises. Markers was knocked unconscious against the wall, and Dordeaux has a broken arm. Parletti already has it set and in splints.
Now we come to your problem of finding us. Frankly, it will be a task. We realize our chances are pretty slight. We are in a vast territory unidentifiable to either of us by definite landmarks. Your party must somehow locate our tiny speck of a ship in hundreds of square miles of limitless, jumbled topography.
We will try to guide you as best we can. Fortunately, the stars shine with the sun in this Lunar sky, making observations of positions possible. Markers has computed, as nearly as he can, that we are about thirty-one degrees from the western edge of the known Earth-side. And about seventeen degrees from the Lunar north pole.
Going by Swinerton’s sketch, the plateau we’ve landed on seems to be bordered a few miles west by a long range of mountains which run north and south. We can see their ragged peaks outlined against the stars. Just to the south of us, about five miles distant, is the rim of a crater that is probably fifty miles in diameter. This crater forms a triangle with two other large craters further east. From the glimpses we had while descending, the line of bisection of the base-line opposite the nearest crater, extended through the latter, points almost directly toward us.
Captain Atwell has thought of a way of indicating our position. He has just sent Greaves out in an air-helmet with our one remaining seleno-cell. Greaves placed it about three hundred yards from our ship. As soon as its charge builds up from the strong sunlight, it should start shooting out fat sparks, similar to those that killed the ants on Mars. There is just enough vapor-pressure here on the moon’s surface to duplicate the interior of a vacuum-tube, to carry the charge and ground it into the rock.
These sparks—there goes one now—are an intense bluish in color and will
be outlined strongly against the white plateau floor. You should be able to recognize them easily.
That is about all we can do. The rest is up to you.
And now something very vital. Markers has also calculated that the slow but certain Lunar-nightline is descending upon us. We have something like thirty hours of daylight left and then we will be engulfed in the total blackness of the moon’s long night of two weeks. Searching activities would be impossible during that time.
Since it is doubtful if our air supply would last that length of time, we can only hope that you will locate us in the next thirty hours.
I will keep in direct touch with you beginning in an hour, after I have gone outside the ship in an air-helmet and polished the sunpower mirror.
By the way, Greaves’ venture out has settled a long disputed question among scientists—as to whether a person would freeze quickly in the nearvacuum of space. Greaves was out for an hour, heavily bundled. He says he felt warmer than on Mars with its atmosphere. Evidently, the conduction-loss of body heat in a. cold atmosphere is greater than the radiation-loss in a vacuum.
Our morale is high. We are sure you will find us soon. We are looking forward to our arrival on Earth.
EIGHT HUNDRED and fifty-first day. (1 A.M.)
Captain Atwell to Captain Macklyn. Buck up, old boy! You must not condemn yourself so bitterly for not finding us in these last ten hours of search. You are searching a world, man! An unknown world. We know you are doing your best. We can ask no more.
Gillway speaking. The long narrow shadow of the nearest mountain peak crawls slowly along, but we are all in good spirits. The moon is an interesting, if cheerless, place.
Greaves, examining closely the shavings of pumicelike stone through which our ship plowed, announces that it is impregnated with silver. So the proverbial linking of Luna with argentum is not so far-fetched after all.