Whittaker, unable to spit, was having difficulties. Heroically, he swallowed his chew.
They weren’t on the same wavelength with the Russians and the approaching detachment came within a quarter of a mile before they saw it. The group was tearing along, bouncing like a herd of kangaroos, sending up puffs of pumice at each leap. They came alongside the ship in a moment and, without any greeting to the newcomers, scrambled up inside.
The officer came back and peered out at the horizon and then ducked in again. It was very difficult to see through the metal helmets of these people but they looked hungry.
Angel went up and stood in the space door. The Russians had left the inner airtight open and all the atmosphere had rushed from the ship. Like madmen they were ripping at the boxes and stuffing chocolate and biscuit into their capacious bags. This was evidently personal loot and the way they were going at it looked bad for the boys who had stayed behind.
Nobody paid any attention to Angel, not even glancing his way, until the officer motioned Boyd and Whittaker into the ship and then unceremoniously herded the three of them into the forward hold and bolted a door on them.
Through a forward port Angel saw the two tractors approach. They were made of aluminum mostly, and they seemed to run out of a propane type tank. They threw hooks into the skids of the ship and, their huge treads soundlessly clanking, began to yank the ship toward the king-size grand canyon.
After an hour or so of tugging they came to the brink and were snaked around until they fitted on an oblong metal stage which, carrying tractors and all, promptly began to descend.
The ship lurched in the lower blackness and then lights flared up by which the stage could be seen to rise into place above them.
Eager crews of spacesuited men swarmed out of an airtight set in a blank wall and in a few moments a stream of supplies was being shuttled, bucket-brigade fashion, toward the entrance.
It was a weird ballet of monsters in metal. The supplies, so heavy on Earth, were tossed lightly from monster to monster which added to the illusion. Big crates of dehydrated sailed along like chips.
The unloading took three hours and eight minutes by Angel’s watch and then the line cleared away. Belatedly somebody thought of the crew and unlocked the door. At pistol point they were rushed out, down the ladder and to the airtight. The gutted ship stood forlornly behind them, their only contact with home, associating now with six other monsters, the Stars and Stripes outnumbered.
In the dank corridor behind the second airtight, men were standing around in various stages of relaxation and undress. They kept halting to gloat over the supplies which left one Russian still in helmet but without pack or gloves, another stripped to underwear, a third in pack and all. Nobody glanced at them.
Their guard shoved them into another tunnel and they wound down a gentle grade between basalt walls until they came to another series of airtights. At the end they were shoved into a chamber walled all in metal, a sort of giant strongbox with doors at each of the five sides.
A desk made of packing boxes stood in the center. A rubber mattress bed was several feet behind it. A crude hat tree bore the fragments of a space suit. The place was a combination of arsenal, bedroom and office, sealed in, double-bolted, entrenched and triple-guarded.
At the desk sat a singularly dirty man, covered with matted black hair, clad in pants, glistening with perspiration and scowling furiously under crew-cut bristles.
This was Slavinsky, Vladimir, onetime general of Russia, currently dictator of the world.
The guard had got out of his clumsy space helmet. “The ship crew, Ruler,” he said in English.
Whittaker had taken off his helmet and was biting at a plug of Ole Mule. Boyd was examining his fingernails.
Only Angel was still fully suited and helmeted.
“Who is commander?” barked Slavinsky, black eyes screwing up.
Boyd glanced up.
“I am Lieutenant Cannon Gray,” he said with blue eyes wide.
“Don’t forget the dispatches, Lootenant,” said Whittaker.
Boyd tossed the packet on the desk. It floated down.
“I am displeased,” said Slavinsky.
“I’m sorry to hear it,” said bogus Gray. “I’ll sure tell the president when I get back.”
“You’re not going back!” said Slavinsky. “You have failed.”
“Looks to me like we brought a lot of supplies,” said Boyd.
“You brought no cigarettes!” said Slavinsky.
“Well, if that ain’t something,” said Boyd. “I tell you them quartermasters ought to be horsewhipped and that’s a fact. Well, well. No cigarettes. You sure you checked the inventory, general?”
“The title of address is ‘Ruler’! And I’ll have no questioning of our actions. You brought no cigarettes and there’s not a single pack on the moon.”
“Well, if it’s okay with you,” said Whittaker, “we’ll just trot down and fetch you a couple cartons.”
“That’s impertinence! Lieutenant, have you no control over your men? Are you certain we have emptied all storage compartments of your ship?”
“Well, can’t say. Back in the tube room we had a little layout for the return trip but you wouldn’t want to take that away.”
“Aha!” said Slavinsky, jumping up to his full five feet.
He pushed down a communicator button and rattled orders into it.
Just as he finished a small bespectacled man entered timidly, his hands full of reports. “Ruler, I have just checked the supplies and I find them safe. I began when the first case entered and have just finished. The food is not poisoned.”
“So!” said Slavinsky to Boyd. “You knew better than to trip us up, did you. Ha!”
“I got to send my report to the president,” said Boyd.
“I am afraid,” said Slavinsky, “that I shall have to attend to that. Now, to business. You will be separated from your men, of course. And then men we need in our labor gangs. We have all too few men, you see.
“But you, as an officer, according to the usages of war, need not work outside but may have some light job. The meteors have been bad lately and we have lost several people. Guard, take this officer to a cell and put the men to work on the missile emplacements instantly.”
“With a guard, Ruler?”
“No, blockhead. Where would they go? Ha, ha. Yes, indeed. Where would they go?”
Angel had been half through the act of unscrewing his helmet. Now he hastily replaced it. He and Whittaker were thrust outside and in a moment found themselves in the hands of a non-com who was organizing a work party.
A radio technician came up and adjusted their radios to proper wavelength and in a moment they were drowned in Russian.
Angel sighed with relief and looked back at the last of the doors which had led out from Slavinsky. Ruler of the world, was he?
Well, maybe he could manage to get some good out of it. But as for Angel, give him control over a bar stool of the Madrillon and Slavinsky could keep the moon.
Musing, he found himself in a column and outward bound.
CHAPTER FOUR
Wait for the Night
IT was still twilight on the surface and the earthlight was quite bright even where the blackness of airless night lay upon the stabbed and pitted world. The pumice-covered plains were upheaved into abrupt cliffs and slashed apart by ugly chasms.
It was a nightmare land where one bobbed in levitation-like gyrations, skating over soft and treacherous pumice bogs, plowing through the basalt dust of rays, all under an indigo sky.
Meteors landed soundlessly with the enormous explosions of bombs and each twenty-four hours millions fell. Sometimes clouds rose up to catch the higher rays of the slow-motion sun and hung there, twisting the light into colors.
Man was experiencing his first con
tact with the wild, garish, infinitely dangerous power of space, billions of times as strong, as capricious, as his ancient enemy the sea.
All was so slow, so quiet, so vastly untenanted. And far away the aura-crowned Earth hung silent, watchful in the sky, satellite of this dead world.
Their imperishable tracks stretched behind them as they drifted toward the emplacements. It was difficult to believe that these weird metal things were containers for human beings.
In ages to come, in scenes like these, men would sicken and madden and die just as the crews of tempest-driven barques have gripped insanity in the ages past.
Angel plowed through pumice and climbed the final bastion of the emplacement.
The great pilotless missile was shielded by an overhanging cliff against all but a freak meteor. Through a small opening this sleek white tube could fly, rushing to the execution of perhaps a million human beings. It stood quietly, waiting. It had all the dignity of the slave machine. It could wait.
Painted scarlet on its nose was—
CHICAGO
There was a buzz of cheerfulness from the Russians as they got out of the open. Eight of their number here had died—two from sun, one from cold, one from suffocation, four all at once under the smash of a thousand-ton meteor.
The mathematician amongst them sat down and began clumsy figures with his mitten-held pencil. A surveyor set up a transit. They were about to complete the orientation and construction of the rail tracks for Chicago.
Angel supposed he would remain here under guard. But the captain had ideas.
“You Yankees! There is rail material dumped in a small crater a few hundred yards from here. We have too few men as it is. You will begin the task of bringing them.”
The ground vibrated for an instant as a meteor struck above.
Angel said, “Come on, Whittaker.”
They crawled back over the entrance bulwark and regained the still twilight of the outside.
For a moment they stopped and adjusted the radio dials on each other’s helmets.
“I hope Boyd is all right,” said Angel.
“I hope we can find the place,” said Whittaker.
They turned and in great leaps began to scout for the incoming tracks of their ship. There were many such tracks and Angel had to take a quick orientation. Then they found theirs, neither older nor younger than any other tracks, and began to race back down it, taking broadjumps of forty feet with every step, trying to keep from sailing sky-high. The pumice was indifferent footing and clung to their duck shoes, leaving a slowly settling stream of particles in the half-light behind them.
They had gone five miles before they saw anything on their backtrack. And then it was obvious that somebody in the work party had begun pursuit after missing them.
The pursuit was specklike, unhurried as the weasel stalks. For who could find board and room on the moon?
Angel’s breath was hurtful in his lungs. Whittaker was lagging and the officer stopped to let him catch up. It was then he saw the motor sled. It was coming fast, so fast he could see it grow.
Desperately, Angel sprinted on. Ahead, with a yell of delight, he saw the end of the tracks and the strewn debris. He grabbed cans one after the other until he found the right one and hauled up its string. The first package came to light and then the string broke.
Whittaker dived headlong into the pumice to recover it. The second and third packages came to view.
Angel glanced back. The motor sled was almost there. He wrenched off the ties of the heaviest packet. Out rolled the sleek bombs of a bazooka and the instrument itself.
Whittaker seized the barrel and placed it over Angel’s shoulder. Angel found the trigger and knelt, sighting on the sled. Whittaker thrust the first rocket in place.
The sled was quite close now, trying to brake, throwing up lazy clouds of pumice.
The rocket trail was red flame in the twilight. The explosion was soundless but like a blow on the chest. Scarlet fire sucked sled and men into its ball and then spewed them forth in fragments which fell lazily, driftingly through the clouds.
Angel got up and would have mopped his brow until his hand, striking against the helmet, reminded him where he was. He turned to find that Whittaker was already slinging the string of grenades over his shoulder.
From the third packet they took the Tommy guns and ammunition. Armed then and in haste they started the backtrack.
Had they been able to afford more oxygen they would not have been so tired. Weightless walking took little energy and their burdens were feathers. It was rather insecure to feel a Tommy gun so light.
They oriented themselves and then Angel led off toward the chasm. They gained the shelter of this just as a meteor seemed to explode behind them. But it wasn’t a meteor. It was a rocket projectile of small caliber.
They floundered down to a ledge in the giant canyon and then, like two mountain goats of great power, began to leap from outcrop to outcrop.
They made time. The canyon had a bend which would protect them until the last.
But Chicago was there.
A slug struck the bazooka barrel and glanced soundlessly away. They instantly pressed against a jagged break in the wall and Angel adjusted his burdens. He looked up and saw that he could climb.
With a motion to Whittaker to stay put, Angel went up the basalt and found himself crawling over an unburned meteor of glittery sheen. There were diamonds in it.
On top he could crawl forward and peer down over the edge at the Chicago rampart. He glanced ahead and saw that there were fifteen other emplacements but the main entrance to the tunnels interposed.
Cautiously he laid down his weapons and then crept to the edge again, grenades in hand.
With sudden rapidity he pulled out pin after pin and pitched. It was like salvo ranging. How hard it was to estimate throwing distances!
But the cliff wall let them billiard. One, two, three, four they dropped into the emplacement.
He could see space suits down there scrambling back. Any slightest wound would be fatal. A slug tipped his mitten and then the first grenade went up.
The emplacement rocked. Four blasts belched out stone. The imperfectly held rocks folded in and an avalanche began a leisurely curtain into the bottomless canyon. There was no sign of the Chicago entrance.
While particles still drifted, Angel waved to Whittaker and they swiftly resumed their goat travel. The huge steel faces of the main tunnels remained solid and impassive, proof even against meteors.
No shot came.
Whittaker cautiously drew up to their faces until he could touch them. He found no chink in them.
“Up!” said Angel.
They scrambled and leaped and finally came to the plain. A rocket missile shook the ground near them and covered them with dust. They dived headlong into a crater.
Whittaker lifted his head above the rim. “Emplacement to repel ground troops. On that crater rim.”
“They must keep one manned continually as an alert,” said Angel. He thoughtfully sat down. Somewhere a meteor shook ground. The tip of the last rocket explosion was still rising, catching the sunlight in a turning glitter.
“The only available entrance into the tunnels must be through that guarded emplacement,” said Angel. He looked up. “There’s very little sun left. It will be dark in half an hour.”
Whittaker nodded inside his lucite casque. “It’ll get awful dark, Lootenant.”
“Fine,” said Angel. “Take bearings on the emplacement from the two rims of the crater. A man could get hurt stumbling around here without lights.”
Whittaker got busy with the engineer’s companion, an azimuth compass. It worked fairly well, though heaven knows where the magnetic pole of the moon might be. He made a small chart of prominent landmarks which would be easy to find in the dark.
Now and then a rocket would explode along the crater rim but such was the gravity problem that the alerts did not attempt the mortar effect.
Angel put a piece of chocolate into the miniature space lock of his helmet, closed the outer door, opened the inner one with his chin and worried it dog-fashion out of the compartment. He ate it reflectively.
“I hope Boyd is all right,” he said.
CHAPTER FIVE
Now I Lay Me …
DARK came as if someone had shut off an electric light in a coal cellar. The moment was well chosen. Dark wouldn’t come in such a fashion to this place again for twenty-nine and a half days, nor would it be light again until half that period had passed.
Soon it would get very cold, down to minus two hundred centigrade. These space suits were designed for that but they used up their batteries very quickly despite the eight thicknesses of asbestos on their outsides.
“Let’s go,” said Angel. “They may try a foray on their own.” The earthlight was wiped out by their colored helmets.
As nearly as they could calculate they covered the proper chart distances in a wide triangle which would bring them up the side of the alert post.
Soundlessly they made their debouch, fortunately having to take no care of tumbled meteor fragments beyond falling. And a fall was far from fatal.
They came to the slope and groped their way up.
Something round bumped Angel. He felt it and found it to be a metal pole. Some sort of aerial or light stand. He wondered if the Russians had shifted to other helmets which would permit them to see him in the earthlight. That he was still alive made him think not.
He felt the man-made smoothness of the pit edge and drew back. He stopped Whittaker and toothed out the pin of a grenade.
Rapidly they hurled four. The pumice shook like jelly under them under four explosions.
They dived over the edge. Only one Russian was there and nothing much of him was remaining.
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