The Moon Colony

by William Dixon Bell

  CHAPTER XVI

  Billy Disappears

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

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

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

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

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

  Accompanied by Joan, Epworth entered his glider and flew over to theAerolite. They were greeted as conquering heroes, and Epworth wasimmediately put in charge of the camp. First, he established a strongmilitary organization with Michael as the commanding officer, andarranged to materialize all the stores of the Aerolite into defenseweapons. When this work was completed he created a council of five,and had the colonists elect the members. This council was to be thegoverning power, and he bound the pirates by firm obligations to forceToplinsky to obey the orders of this council.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Find out where they went and follow them.”

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

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

  “Then they discovered him while we were at the Aerolite, and havetaken him to the northern range of hills—where they carriedToplinsky.”

  “Sounds likely.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Epworth jockeyed his glider close to his sister.

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

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

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

  Joan shuddered.

  “Go into the darkness of all these holes?”

  She was terrified at the thought.

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

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

  “I am more cheerful. These crickets were led by pigmy men. It is notlikely that the pigmies live in holes, although, I am free to confessthat I would naturally expect the crickets to be crawling around indark places.”

  With a slight shrug of her shoulders, Joan turned her glider towardthe peak that Epworth had declared was the Crater Agrippa. In twominutes Epworth was in the lead. They were both determined, but theirhearts were beating furiously.

  What dangers would they meet d
eep in the bowels of the moon? What kindof life could they expect to find? Was Billy alive or dead? Had theytaken him to join Toplinsky or would they have to make separate huntsfor the two men?

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