by Various
The men gazed in awed silence. The Planetara coming....
But the altimeter needle was motionless. The Planetara was hanging poised.
A sudden gasp went about the room. The men stood with whitening faces, gazing at the Planetara's image. And at the altimeter needle. It was moving. The Planetara was descending. But not with an orderly swoop.
The image showed the ship clearly. The bow tilted up, then dipped down. But then in a moment it swung up again. The ship turned partly over. Righted itself. Then swayed again, drunkenly.
The watching men were stricken into horrified silence. The Planetara's image momentarily, horribly, grew larger. Swaying. Then turning completely over, rotating slowly end over end.
The Planetara, out of control, was falling!
CHAPTER XXI - The Wreck of the Planetara
On the Planetara, in the helio-room, Snap and I stood with Moa's weapon upon us. Miko held Anita. Triumphant. Possessive. Then as she struggled, a gentleness came to this strange Martian giant. Perhaps he really loved her. Looking back on it, I sometimes think so.
"Anita, do not fear me." He held her away from him. "I would not harm you. I want your love." Irony came to him. "And I thought I had killed you! But it was only your brother."
He partly turned. I was aware of how alert was his attention. He grinned. "Hold them, Moa--don't let them do anything foolish. So, Anita, you were masquerading to spy upon me? That was wrong of you." He was again ironic.
Anita had not spoken. She held herself tensely away from Miko; she had flashed me a look--just one. What horrible mischance to have brought this catastrophe!
The completion of Grantline's message had come unnoticed by us all.
"Look! Grantline again!" Snap said abruptly.
But the mirrors were steadying. We had no recording-tape apparatus; the rest of the message was lost. The mirrors pulsed and then steadied.
No further message came. There was an interval while Miko waited. He held Anita in the hollow of his great arm.
"Quiet, little bird. Do not fear me. I have work to do, Anita--this is our great adventure. We will be rich, you and I. All the luxuries three worlds can offer, all for us when this is over. Careful, Moa! This Haljan has no wit."
Well could he say it! I, who had been so witless to let this come upon us! Moa's weapon prodded me. Her voice hissed at me with all the venom of a reptile enraged. "So that was your game, Gregg Haljan! And I was so graceless to admit love for you!"
* * * * *
Snap murmured in my ear, "Don't move, Gregg! She's reckless."
She heard it. She whirled on him. "We have lost George Prince, it seems. Well, we will survive without his ore knowledge. And you, Dean--and this Haljan--mark me, I will kill you both if you cause trouble!"
Miko was gloating. "Don't kill them yet, Moa. What was it Grantline said? Near the crater of Archimedes? Ring us down, Haljan! We'll land."
He signaled the turret. Gave Coniston the Grantline message, and audiphoned it below to Hahn. The news spread about the ship. The bandits were jubilant.
"We'll land now, Haljan. Ring us down. Come, Anita and I will go with you to the turret."
I found my voice. "To what destination?"
"Near Archimedes. The Apennine side. Keep well away from the Grantline camp. We will probably sight it as we descend."
There was no trajectory needed. We were almost over Archimedes now. I could drop us with a visible, instrumental course. My mind was whirling with a confusion of thoughts. What could we do? What could we dare attempt to do? I met Snap's gaze.
"Ring us down, Gregg," he said quietly.
I nodded. I pushed Moa's weapon away. "You don't need that. I obey orders."
* * * * *
We went to the turret. Moa watched me and Snap, a grim, cold Amazon. She avoided looking at Anita, whom Miko helped down the ladders with a strange mixture of courtierlike grace and amused irony. Coniston gazed at Anita with falling jaw.
"I say! Not George Prince? The girl--"
"No time for argument now," Miko commanded. "It's the girl, masquerading as her brother. Get below, Coniston. Haljan takes us down."
The astounded Englishman continued gazing at Anita. "I mean to say, where to on the Moon? Not to encounter Grantline at once, Miko? Our equipment is not ready."
"Of course not. We will land well away. He won't be suspicious--we can signal him again after we land. We will have time to plan, to assemble the equipment. Get below, I told you."
The reluctant Coniston left us. I took the controls. Miko, still holding Anita as though she were a child, sat beside me. "We will watch him, little Anita. A skilled fellow at this sort of work."
I rang my signals for the shifting of the gravity plates. The answer should have come from below within a second or two. But it did not. Miko regarded me with his great bushy eyebrows upraised.
"Ring again, Haljan."
I duplicated. No answer. The silence was frightening. Ominous.
Miko muttered, "That accursed Hahn. Ring again!"
I sent the imperative emergency demand.
* * * * *
No answer. A second or two. Then all of us in the turret were startled. Transfixed. From below came a sudden hiss. It sounded in the turret: it came from shifting-room call-grid. The hissing of the pneumatic valves of the plate-shifters in the lower control room. The valves were opening; the plates automatically shifting into neutral, and disconnecting!
An instant of startled silence. Miko may have realized the significance of what had happened. Certainly Snap and I did. The hissing ceased. I gripped the emergency plate-shifter switch which hung over my head. Its disc was dead! The plates were dead in neutral. In the positions they were only placed while in port! And their shifting mechanisms were imperative!
I was on my feet. "Snap! Good God, we're in neutral!"
Miko, if he had not realized it before, was aware if it now. The Moon-disc moved visibly as the Planetara lurched. The vault of the heavens was slowly swinging.
Miko ripped out a heavy oath. "Haljan! What is this?"
He stood up, still holding Anita. But there was nothing that he could do in this emergency. "Haljan--what--"
The heavens turned with a giant swoop. The Moon was over us. It swung in dizzying arc. Overhead, then back past our stern; under us, then appearing over our bow.
The Planetara had turned over. Upending. Rotating, end over end.
For a moment or two I think all of us in that turret stood and clung. The Moon-disc, the Earth, Sun and all the stars were swinging past our windows. So horribly dizzying. The Planetara seemed lurching and tumbling. But it was an optical effect only. I stared with grim determination at my feet. The turret seemed to steady.
Then I looked again. That horrible swoop of all the heavens! And the Moon, as it went past, seemed expanded. We were falling! Out of control, with the Moon-gravity pulling us inexorably down!
"That accursed Hahn--" Miko, stricken with his lack of knowledge of these controls, was wholly confused.
* * * * *
A moment only had passed. My fancy that the Moon-disc was enlarged was merely the horror of my imagination. We had not fallen far enough yet for that.
But we were falling. Unless I could do something, we would crash upon the Lunar surface.
Anita, killed in this Planetara turret. The end of everything for us.
Action came to me. I gasped, "Miko, you stay here! The controls are dead! You stay here--hold Anita."
I ignored Moa's weapon which she was still clutching mechanically. Snap thrust her away.
"Sit back! Let us alone! We're falling! Don't you understand?"
This deadly danger, to level us all! No longer were we captors and captured. Not brigands for this moment. No thought of Grantline's treasure! Trapped humans only! Leveled by the common, instinct of self-preservation. Trapped here together, fighting for our lives.
Miko gasped. "Can you--check us? What happened?"
"I don't kn
ow. I'll try."
I stood clinging. This dizzying whirl! From the audiphone grid Coniston's voice sounded.
"I say, Haljan, something's wrong! Hahn doesn't signal."
The look-out in the forward tower was clinging to his window. On the deck below our turret a member of the crew appeared, stood lurching for a moment, then shouted, and turned and ran, swaying, aimless. From the lower hull-corridors our grids sounded with the tramping of running steps. Panic among the crew was spreading over the ship. A chaos below decks.
* * * * *
I pulled at the emergency switch again. Dead....
But down below there was the manual controls.
"Snap, we must get down. The signals."
"Yes."
Coniston's voice came like a scream from the grid. "Hahn is dead--the controls are broken! Hahn is dead!"
We barely heard him. I shouted, "Miko--hold Anita! Come on, Snap!"
We clung to the ladders. Snap was behind me. "Careful, Gregg! Good God!"
This dizzying whirl. I tried not to look. The deck under me was now a blurred kaleidoscope of swinging patches of moonlight and shadow.
We reached the deck. Ran, swaying, lurching.
It seemed that from the turret Anita's voice followed us. "Be careful!"
Within the ship our senses steadied. With the rotating, reeling, heavens shut out, there were only the shouts and tramping steps of the panic-stricken crew to mark that anything was amiss. That, and a pseudo-sensation of lurching caused by the pulsing of gravity--a pull when the Moon was beneath our hull to combine its force with our magnetizers; a lightening when it was overhead. A throbbing, pendulum lurch--that was all.
We ran down to the corridor incline. A white-faced member of the crew, came running up.
"What's happened? Haljan, what's happened?"
"We're falling!" I gripped him. "Get below. Come on with us!"
But he jerked away from me. "Falling?"
A steward came running. "Falling? My God!"
Snap swung at them. "Get ahead of us! The manual controls--our only chance--we need all you men at the compressor pumps!"
But it was an instinct to try and get on deck, as though here below we were rats caught in a trap. The men tore away from me and ran. Their shouts of panic resounded through the dim, blue-lit corridors.
* * * * *
Coniston came lurching from the control room. "I say--falling! Haljan, my God, look at him!"
Hahn was sprawled at the gravity-plate switchboard. Sprawled, head-down. Dead. Killed by something? Or a suicide?
I bent over him. His hands gripped the main switch. He had ripped it loose. And his left hand had reached and broken the fragile line of tubes that intensified the current of the pneumatic plate-shifters. A suicide? With his last frenzy determined to kill us all?
Then I saw that Hahn had been killed! Not a suicide! In his hand he gripped a small segment of black fabric, a piece torn from an invisible cloak? Was it?
The questions were swept away by the necessity for action. Snap was rigging the hand-compressors. If he could get the pressure back in the tanks....
I swung on Coniston. "You armed?"
"Yes." He was white-faced and confused, but not in a panic. He showed me his heat-ray cylinder. "What do you want me to do?"
"Round up the crew. Get all you can. Bring them here to man these pumps."
He dashed away. Snap shouted after him. "Kill them down if they argue!"
Miko's voice sounded from the turret call grid: "Falling! Haljan, you can see it now! Check us!"
I did not answer that. I pumped with Snap.
Desperate moments. Or was it an hour? Coniston brought the men. He stood over them with menacing weapon.
We had all the pumps going. The pressure rose a little in the tanks. Enough to shift a bow-plate. I tried it. The plate slowly clicked into a new combination. A gravity repulsion just in the bow-tip.
* * * * *
I signaled Miko. "Have we stopped swinging?"
"No. But slower."
I could feel it, that lurch of the gravity. But not steady now. A limp. The tendency of our bow was to stay up.
"More pressure, Snap."
"Yes."
One of the crew rebelled, tried to bolt from the room. "God, we'll crash, caught in here!"
Coniston shot him down.
I shifted another bow-plate. Then two in the stern. The stern-plates seemed to move more readily than the others.
"Run all the stern-plates," Snap advised.
I tried it. The lurching stopped. Miko called. "We're bow down. Falling!"
But not falling free. The Moon-gravity pull upon us was more than half neutralized.
"I'll go up, Snap, and try the engines. You don't mind staying down? Executing my signals?"
"You idiot!" He gripped my shoulders. His eyes were gleaming, his face haggard, but his pale lips twitched with a smile.
"Maybe it's good-by, Gregg. We'll fall--fighting."
"Yes. Fighting. Coniston, you keep the pressure up."
With the broken set-tubes it took nearly all the pressure to maintain the few plates I had shifted. One slipped back to neutral. Then the pumps gained on it, and it shifted again.
I dashed up to the deck. Ah, the Moon was so close now! So horribly close! The deck shadows were still. Through the forward bow windows the Moon surface glared up at us.
* * * * *
I reached the turret. The Planetara was steady. Pitched bow-down, half falling, half sliding like a rocket downward. The scarred surface of the Moon spread wide under us.
These last horrible minutes were a blur. And there was always Anita's face. She left Miko. Faced with death, he sat clinging. Ignoring her, Moa, too, sat apart. Staring--
And Anita crept to me. "Gregg, dear one. The end...."
I tried the electronic engines from the stern, setting them in the reverse. The streams of their light glowed from the stern, forward along our hull, and flared down from our bow toward the Lunar surface. But no atmosphere was here to give resistance. Perhaps the electronic streams checked our fall a little. The pumps gave us pressure, just in the last minutes, to slide a few of the hull-plates. But our bow stayed down. We slid, like a spent rocket falling.
I recall the horror of that expanding Lunar surface. The maw of Archimedes yawning. A blob. Widening to a great pit. Then I saw it was to one side. Rushing upward.
A phantasmagoria of uprushing crags. Black and gray. Spires tinged with Earth-light.
"Gregg, dear one--good-by."
Her gentle arms around me. The end of everything for us. I recall murmuring, "Not falling free, Anita. Some hull-plates are set."
My dials showed another plate shifting, checking us a little further. Good old Snap.
I calculated the next best plate to shift. I tried it. Slid it over. Good old Snap....
Then everything faded but the feeling of Anita's arms around me.
"Gregg, dear one--"
The end of everything for us....
There was an up-rush of gray-black rock.
An impact....
CHAPTER XXII - The Hiss of Death
I opened my eyes to a dark blur of confusion. My shoulder hurt--a pain shooting through it. Something lay like a weight on me. I could not seem to move my left arm. Very queer! Then I moved it, and it hurt. I was lying twisted: I sat up. And with a rush, memory came. The crash was over. I am not dead. Anita--
She was lying beside me. There was a little light here in this silent blur--a soft, mellow Earth-light filtering in the window. The weight on me was Anita. She lay sprawled, her head and shoulders half way across my lap.
Not dead! Thank God, not dead! She moved. Her arms went around me, and I lifted her. The Earth-light glowed on her pale face; but her eyes opened and she faintly smiled.
"It's past, Anita! We've struck, and we're still alive."
I held her as though all life's turgid danger were powerless to touch us.
But in t
he silence my floating senses were brought back to reality by a faint sound forcing itself upon me. A little hiss. The faintest murmuring breath like a hiss. Escaping air!
I cast off her clinging arms. "Anita, this is madness!"
* * * * *
For minutes we must have been lying there in the heaven of our embrace. But air was escaping! The Planetara's dome was broken--or cracked--and our precious air was hissing out.
Full reality came to me at last. I was not seriously injured. I found that I could move freely. I could stand. A twisted shoulder, a limp left arm, but they were better in a moment.
And Anita did not seem to be hurt. Blood was upon her. But not her blood.
Beside Anita, stretched face down on the turret grid, was the giant figure of Miko. The blood lay in a small pool against his face. A widening pool.
Moa was here. I thought her body twitched; then was still. This soundless wreckage! In the dim glow of the wrecked turret with its two motionless, broken human figures, it seemed as though Anita and I were ghouls prowling. I saw that the turret had fallen over to the Planetara's deck. It lay dashed against the dome-side.
The deck was aslant. A litter of wreckage. A broken human figure showed--one of the crew, who at the last must have come running up. The forward observation tower was down on the chart-room roof: in its metal tangle I thought I could see the legs of the tower look-out.
So this was the end of the brigands' adventure! The Planetara's last voyage! How small and futile are human struggles! Miko's daring enterprise--so villainous, inhuman--brought all in a few moments to this silent tragedy. The Planetara had fallen thirty thousand miles. But why? What had happened to Hahn? And where was Coniston, down in this broken hull?
And Snap. I thought suddenly of Snap.
* * * * *
I clutched at my wandering wits. This inactivity was death. The escaping air hissed in my ears. Our precious air, escaping away into the vacant desolation of the Lunar emptiness. Through one of the twisted, slanting dome-windows a rocky spire was visible. The Planetara lay bow-down, wedged in a jagged cradle of Lunar rock. A miracle that the hull and dome had held together.