by Anthology
Had Miko rejoined his party, left his camp and come here like ourselves to climb Archimedes? Or was our assumption wholly wrong: perhaps the brigand ship would not land near here at all!
Sweeping around from the Mare Imbrium, the plains were less smooth. The little crater which concealed the Grantline camp was off in the crater-scarred region beyond which the distant Apennines raised their terraced walls. There was nothing to mark it from here.
"Gregg, do you see anything up there?" She added, "There seems to be a blur."
Her sight, sharper than mine, had picked it out. The descending brigand ship! A faintest, tiny blur against the stars, a few of them occulted as though an invisible shadow were upon them. A growing shadow, materializing into a blur--a blob, a shape faintly defined. Then sharper until we were sure of what we saw. It was the brigand ship. It was dropping slowly, silently down.
We crouched on the little ledge. A cave mouth was behind us. A gully was beside us, a break in the ledge; and at our feet the sheer wall dropped.
We had extinguished our lights. We crouched, silently gazing up into the stars.
The ship, when we first distinguished it, was centered over Archimedes. We thought for a while that it might descend into the crater. But it did not; it came sailing forward.
I whispered into the audiphone, "It's coming over the crater."
Her hand pressed my arm in answer.
I recalled that when, from the Planetara, Miko had forced Snap to signal this brigand band on Mars, Miko's only information as to the whereabouts of the Grantline camp was that it lay between Archimedes and the Apennines. The brigands now were following that information.
A tense interval passed. We could see the ship plainly above us now, a gray-black shape among the stars up beyond the shaggy, towering crater rim. The vessel came upon a level keel, hull down. Slowly circling, looking for Miko's signal, no doubt, or for possible lights from Grantline's camp. They might also be picking a landing place.
We saw it soon as a cylindrical, cigarlike shape, rather smaller than the Planetara, but similar of design. It bore lights now. The ports of its hull were tiny rows of illumination, and the glow of light under its rounding upper dome was faintly visible.
A bandit ship, no doubt of that. Its identification keel plate was empty of official pass code lights. These brigands had not attempted to secure official sailing lights when leaving Ferrok-Shahn. It was unmistakably an outlaw ship. And here upon the deserted Moon there was no need for secrecy. Its lights were openly displayed, that Miko might see it and join it.
It went slowly past us, only a few thousand feet higher than our level. We could see the whole outline of its pointed cylinder hull, with the rounded dome on top. And under the dome was its open deck with a little cabin superstructure in the center.
I thought for a moment that by some unfortunate chance it might land quite near us. But it went past. And then I saw that it was heading for a level, plateaulike surface a few miles further on. It dropped, cautiously floating down.
There was still no sign of Miko. But I realized that haste was necessary. We must be the first to join the brigand ship.
I lifted Anita to her feet. "I don't think we should signal from here."
"No. Miko might see it."
We could not tell where he was. Down on the plains, perhaps? Or up here, somewhere in these miles of towering rocks?
"Are you ready, Anita?"
"Yes, Gregg."
I stared through the visors at her white solemn face.
"Yes, I'm ready," she repeated.
Her hand pressure seemed to me suddenly like a farewell. We were plunging rashly into what was destined to mean our death? Was this a farewell?
An instinct told me not to do this thing. Why, in a few hours I could have Anita back to the comparative safety of the Grantline camp. The exit ports would doubtless be repaired by now. I could get her inside.
She had bounded away from me, leaped down some thirty feet into the broken gully, to cross it and then up on the other side. I stood for an instant watching her fantastic shape, with the great rounded, goggled, trunked helmet and the lump on her shoulders which held the little Erentz motors. Then I hurried after her.
It did not take us long--two or three miles of circling along the giant wall. The ship lay only a few hundred feet above our level.
We stood at last on a buttelike pinnacle. The lights of the ship were close over us. And there were moving lights up there, tiny moving spots on the adjacent rocks. The brigands had come out, prowling about to investigate their location.
No signal yet from Miko. But it might come at any moment.
"I'll flash now," I whispered.
"Yes."
The brigands had probably not yet seen us. I took the lamp from my helmet. My hand was trembling. Suppose my signal were answered by a shot? A flash from some giant projector mounted on the ship?
Anita crouched behind a rock, as she had promised. I stood with my torch and flung its switch. My puny light beam shot up. I waved it, touched the ship with its faint glowing circle of illumination.
They saw me. There was a sudden movement among the lights up there.
I semaphored:
I am from Miko. Do not fire.
I used open universal code. In Martian first, and then in English.
There was no answer, but no attack. I tried again.
This is Haljan, one of the Planetara. George Prince's sister is with me. There has been disaster to Miko.
A small light beam came down from the brink of the overhead cliff beside the ship.
Continue.
I went steadily on: Disaster--the Planetara is wrecked. All killed but me and Prince's sister. We want to join you.
I flashed off my light. The answer came:
Where is the Grantline Camp?
Near here. The Mare Imbrium.
As though to answer my lie, from down on the Earthlit plains, some ten miles or so from the crater base, a tiny signal light shot up. Anita saw it and gripped me.
"There is Miko's light!"
It spelled in Martian, Come down. Land Mare Imbrium.
Miko had seen the signaling up here and had joined it! He repeated, Land Mare Imbrium.
I flashed a protest up to the ship: Beware. That is Grantline! Trickery.
From the ship the summons came, Come up.
We had won this first encounter! Miko must have realized his disadvantage. His distant light went out.
"Come, Anita."
There was no retreat now. But again I seemed to feel in the pressure of her hand that vague farewell. Her voice whispered, "We must do our best, act our best to be convincing."
In the white glow of a searchbeam we climbed the crags, reached the broad upper ledge. Helmeted figures rushed at us, searched us for weapons, seized our helmet lights. The evil face of a giant Martian peered at me through the visors. Two other monstrous, towering figures seized Anita.
We were shoved toward the port locks at the base of the ship's hull. Above the hull bulge I could see the grids of projectors mounted on the dome side, and the figures of men standing on the deck, peering down at us.
We went through the admission locks into a hull corridor, up an incline passage, and reached the lighted deck. The Martian brigands crowded around us.
XXIX
Anita's words echoed in my memory: "We must do our best to be convincing." It was not her ability that I doubted, as much as my own. She had played the part of George Prince cleverly, unmasked only by an evil chance.
I steeled myself to face the searching glances of the brigands as they shoved around us. This was a desperate game into which we had plunged. For all our acting, how easy it would be for some small chance thing abruptly to undo us! I realized it, and now, as I gazed into the peering faces of these men from Mars, I cursed myself for the witless rashness which had brought Anita into this!
The brigands--some ten or fifteen of them here on deck--stood in a ring around us. T
hey were all big men, nearly of a seven-foot average, dressed in leather jerkins and short leather breeches, with bare knees and flaring leather boots. Piratical swaggering fellows, knife-blades mingled with small hand projectors fastened to their belts. Gray, heavy faces, some with scraggly, unshaven beards. They plucked at us, jabbering in Martian.
One of them seemed the leader. I said sharply, "Are you the commander here? You speak the Earth English?"
"Yes," he said readily. "I am commander here." He spoke English with the same freedom and accent as Miko. "Is this George Prince's sister?"
"Yes. Her name is Anita Prince. Tell your men to take their hands off her."
He waved his men away. They all seemed more interested in Anita than in me. He added:
"I am Set Potan." He addressed Anita. "George Prince's sister? You are called Anita? I have heard of you. I knew your brother--indeed, you look very much like him."
He swept his plumed hat to the grid with a swaggering gesture of homage. A courtierlike fellow this, debonair as a Venus cavalier!
He accepted us. I realized that Anita's presence was extremely valuable in making us convincing. Yet there was about this Potan--as with Miko--a disturbing suggestion of irony. I could not make him out. I decided that we had fooled him. Then I remarked the steely glitter of his eyes as he turned to me.
"You were an officer of the Planetara?"
The insignia of my rank was visible on my white jacket collar which showed beneath the Erentz suit now that my helmet was off.
"Yes. I was supposed to be. But a year ago I embarked upon this adventure with Miko."
He was leading us to his cabin. "The Planetara wrecked? Miko dead?"
"And Hahn and Coniston. George Prince too. We are the only survivors."
While we divested ourselves of the Erentz suits, at his command, I told him briefly of the Planetara's fall. All had been killed on board, save Anita and me. We had escaped, awaited his coming. The treasure was here; we had located the Grantline camp, and were ready to lead him to it.
Did he believe me? He listened quietly. He seemed not shocked at the death of his comrades. Nor yet pleased: merely imperturbable.
I added with a sly, sidelong glance, "There were too many of us on the Planetara. The purser had joined us and many of the crew. And there was Miko's sister, the Setta Moa--too many. The treasure divides better among less."
An amused smile played on his thin gray lips. But he nodded. The fear which had leaped at me was allayed by his next words.
"True enough, Haljan. He was a domineering fellow, Miko. A third of it all was for him alone. But now...."
The third would go to this sub-leader, Potan! The implication was obvious.
I said, "Before we go any further, I can trust you for my share?"
"Of course."
I figured that my very boldness in bargaining so prematurely would convince him. I insisted, "Miss Prince will have her brother's share?"
Clever Anita! She put in swiftly, "Oh, I give no information until you promise! We know the location of the Grantline camp, its weapons, its defences, the amount and location of the treasure. I warn you, if you do not play us fair...."
He laughed heartily. He seemed to like us. He spread his huge legs as he lounged in his settle, and drank of the bowl which one of his men set before him.
"Little tigress! Fear me not--I play fair!" He pushed two of the bowls across the table. "Drink, Haljan. All is well with us and I am glad to know it. Miss Prince, drink my health as your leader."
I waved it away from Anita. "We need all our wits; your strong Martian drinks are dangerous. Look here, I'll tell you just how the situation stands--"
I plunged into a glib account of our supposed wanderings to find the Grantline camp: its location off the Mare Imbrium--hidden in a cavern there. Potan, with the drink, and under the gaze of Anita's eyes, was in high good humor. He laughed when I told him that we had dared to invade the Grantline camp, had smashed its exit ports, had even gotten up to have a look where the treasure was piled.
"Well done, Haljan. You're a fellow to my liking!" But his gaze was on Anita. "You dress like a man or a charming boy."
She still wore the dark clothes of her brother. She said, "I am used to action. Man's garb pleases me. You shall treat me like a man and give me my share of gold leaf."
He had already demanded the reason for the signal from the Mare Imbrium. Miko's signal! It had not come again, though any moment I feared it. I told him that Grantline doubtless had repaired his damaged ports and sallied out to assail me in reprisal. And, seeing the brigand ship landing on Archimedes, had tried to lure him into a trap.
I wondered if my explanation was convincing: it did not sound so. But he was flushed now with drink, and Anita added:
"Grantline knows the territory near his camp very well. But he is equipped only for short range fighting."
I took it up. "It's like this, Potan: if he could get you to land unsuspectingly near his cavern--"
I pictured how Grantline might have figured on a sudden surprise attack upon the ship. It was his only chance to catch it unprepared.
We were all three in friendly, intimate mood now. Potan said, "We'll land down there right enough! But I need a few hours for my assembling."
"He will not dare advance," I said.
Anita put in, smiling, "He knows by now that we have unmasked his lure. Haljan and I, joining you--that silenced him. His light went out very promptly, didn't it?"
She flashed me a side gaze. Were we acting convincingly? But if Miko started up his signals again, they might so quickly betray us! Anita's thoughts were upon that, for she added:
"Grantline will not dare show his light! If he does, Set Potan, we can blast him from here with a ray. Can't we?"
"Yes," Potan agreed. "If he comes within ten miles, I have one powerful enough. We are assembling it now."
"And we have thirty men?" Anita persisted. "When we sail down to attack him, it should not be difficult to kill all the Grantline party."
"By heaven, Haljan, this girl of yours is small, but very bloodthirsty!"
"And I'm glad Miko is dead," Anita added.
I explained, "That accursed Miko murdered her brother."
Acting! And never once did we dare relax. If only Miko's signals would hold off and give us time!
* * * * *
We may have talked for half an hour. We were in a small steel-lined cubby, located in the forward deck of the ship. The dome was over it. I could see from where I sat at the table that there was a forward observatory tower under the dome quite near here. The ship was laid out in rather similar fashion to the Planetara, though considerably smaller.
Potan had dismissed his men from the cubby so as to be alone with us. Out on the deck I could see them dragging apparatus about, bringing the mechanisms of giant projectors up from below and beginning to assemble them. Occasionally some of the men would come to our cubby windows to peer in curiously.
My mind was roaming as I talked. For all my manner of casualness, I knew that haste was necessary. Whatever Anita and I were to do must be quickly done.
But to win this fellow's utter confidence first was necessary, so that we might have the freedom of the ship, might move about unnoticed, unwatched.
I was horribly tense inside. Through the dome windows across the deck from the cubby, the rocks of the Lunar landscape were visible. I could see the brink of this ledge upon which the ship lay, the descending crags down the precipitous wall of Archimedes to the Earthlit plains far below. Miko, Moa, and a few of the Planetara's crew were down there somewhere.
Anita and I had a fairly definite plan. We were now in Potan's confidence; this interview at an end, I felt that our status among the brigands would be established. We would be free to move about the ship, join in its activities. It ought to be possible to locate the signal room, get friendly with the operator there.
Perhaps we could find a secret opportunity to flash a signal to Earth. This ship
, I was confident, would have the power for a long range signal, if not of too sustained a length. It would be a desperate thing to attempt, but our whole procedure was desperate! Anita could lure the duty man from the signal room, I might send a single flash or two that would reach the Earth. Just a distress signal, signed "Grantline." If I could do that and not get caught!
Anita was engaging Potan in talking of his plans. The brigand leader was boasting of them: of his well equipped ship, the daring of his men. And questioning her about the size of the treasure. My thoughts were free to roam.
While we were making friends with this brigand, the longest range electronic projector was being assembled. Miko then could flash his signal and be damned to him! I would be on the deck with that projector. Its operator and I would turn it upon Miko--one flash of it and he and his little band would be wiped out.
But there was our escape to be thought of. We could not remain very long with these brigands. We could tell them that the Grantline camp was on the Mare Imbrium. It would delay them for a time, but our lie would soon be discovered. We must escape from them, get away and back to Grantline. With Miko dead, a distress signal to Earth, and Potan in ignorance of Grantline's location, the treasure would be safe until help arrived from Earth.
"By the infernal, little Anita, you look like a dove, but you're a tigress! A comrade after my own heart--bloodthirsty as a fire-worshipper!"
Her laugh rang out to mingle with his. "Oh no, Set Potan! I am treasure-thirsty."
"We'll get the treasure. Never fear, little Anita."
"With you to lead us, I'm sure we will."
A man entered the cubby. Potan looked frowningly around. "What is it, Argle?"
The fellow answered in Martian, leered at Anita and withdrew.
Potan stood up. I noticed that he was unsteady with the drink.
"They want me with the work at the projectors."
"Go ahead," I said.
He nodded. We were comrades now. "Amuse yourself, Haljan. Or come out on deck if you wish. I will tell my men you are one of us."