by Unknown
* * * * *
There were pallid-faced men in the cabin through which they passed; men who stared and stared from the window-ports into the black immensity of space. Chet, too, stopped to look; there had been no port-holes in that inner room where they had been confined.
He knew what to expect; he knew how awe-inspiring would be the sight of strange, luminous bodies--great islands of light--masses of animaculae--that glowed suddenly, then melted again into velvet black. A whirl of violet grew almost golden in sudden motion; Chet knew it for an invisible monster of space. Glowingly luminous as it threw itself upon a subtle mass of shimmering light, it faded like a flickering flame, and went dark as its motion ceased.
Life!--life everywhere in this ocean of space! And on every hand was death. "Not surprising," Chet realized, "that these other Earthmen are awed and trembling!"
The sun was above them; its light struck squarely down through the upper ports. This was polarized light--there was nothing outside to reflect or refract it--and, coming as a straight beam from above, it made a brilliant circle upon the floor from which it was diffused throughout the room. It was as if the floor itself was the illuminating agent.
No eye could bear to look into the glare from above; nor was there need, for the other ports drew the eyes with their black depths of unplumbed space.
Black!--so velvet as to seem almost tangible! Could one have reached out a hand, that blackness, it seemed, must be a curtain that the hand could draw aside, where unflickering points of light pricked through the dark to give promise of some radiant glory beyond.
* * * * *
They had seen it before, these three, yet Chet caught the eyes of Harkness and Diane and knew that his own eyes must share something of the look he saw in theirs--something of reverent wonder and a strange humility before this evidence of transcendent greatness.
Their own immediate problem seemed gone. The tyranny of this glowering human and his men--the efforts of the whole world and its struggling millions--how absurdly unimportant it all was! How it faded to insignificance! And yet....
Chet came from the reverie that held him. There was one man by whom this beauty was unseen. Herr Schwartzmann was angrily ordering them on, and, surprisingly, Chet laughed aloud.
This problem, he realized, was his problem--his to solve with the help of the other two. And it was not insignificant; he knew with some sudden wordless knowledge that there was nothing in all the great scheme but that it had its importance. This vastness that was beyond the power of human mind to grasp ceased to be formidable--he was part of it. He felt buoyed up; and he led the way confidently toward the control-room door where Schwartzmann stood.
The scientist, whom Schwartzmann had called Herr Doktor Kreiss, was beside the pilot. He was leaning forward to search the stars in the blackness ahead, but the pilot turned often to stare through the rear lookouts as if drawn in fearful fascination by what was there. Chet took the controls at Schwartzmann's order; the pilot saluted with a trembling hand and vanished into the cabin at the rear.
"Ready for flying orders, Doctor," the new pilot told Herr Kreiss. "I'll put her where you say--within reason."
Behind him he heard the choked voice of Mademoiselle Diane: "Regardez! Ah, mon Dieu, the beauty of it! This loveliness--it hurts!"
* * * * *
One hand was pressed to her throat; her face was turned as the pilot's had been that she might stare and stare at a quite impossible moon--a great half-disk of light in the velvet dark.
"This loveliness--it hurts!" Chet looked, too, and knew what Diane was feeling. There was a catch of emotion in his own throat--a feeling that was almost fear.
A giant half-moon!--and he knew it was the Earth. Golden Earth-light came to them in a flooding glory; the blazing sun struck on it from above to bring out half the globe in brilliant gold that melted to softest, iridescent, rainbow tints about its edge. Below, hung motionless in the night, was another sphere. Like a reflection of Earth in the depths of some Stygian lake, the old moon shone, too, in a half-circle of light.
Small wonder that these celestial glories brought a gasp of delight from Diane, or drew into lines of fear the face of that other pilot who saw only his own world slipping away. But Chet Bullard, Master Pilot of the World, swung back to scan a star-chart that the scientist was holding, then to search out a similar grouping in the black depths into which they were plunging, and to bring the cross-hairs of a rigidly mounted telescope upon that distant target.
"How far?" he asked himself in a half-spoken thought, "--how far have we come?"
* * * * *
There was an instrument that ticked off the seconds in this seemingly timeless void. He pressed a small lever beside it, and, beneath a glass that magnified the readings, there passed the time-tape. Each hour and minute was there; each movement of the controls was indicated; each trifling variation in the power of the generator's blast. Chet made some careful computations and passed the paper to Harkness, who tilted the time-tape recorder that he might see the record.
"Check this, will you, Walt?" Chet was asking. "It is based on the time of our other trip, acceleration assumed as one thousand miles per hour per hour out of air--"
The scientist interrupted; he spoke in English that was carefully precise.
"It should lie directly ahead--the Dark Moon. I have calculated with exactness."
Walter Harkness had snatched up a pair of binoculars. He swung sharply from lookout to lookout while he searched the heavens.
"It's damned lucky for us that you made a slight error," Chet was telling the other.
"Error?" Kreiss challenged. "Impossible!"
"Then you and I are dead right this minute," Chet told him. "We are crossing the orbit of the Dark Moon--crossing at twenty thousand miles per hour relative to Earth, slightly in excess of that figure relative to the Dark Moon. If it had been here--!" He had been watching Harkness anxiously; he bit off his words as the binoculars were thrust into his hand.
"There she comes," Harkness told him quietly; "it's up to you!"
But Chet did not need the glasses. With his unaided eyes he could see a faint circle of violet light. It lay ahead and slightly above, and it grew visibly larger as he watched. A ring of nothingness, whose outline was the faintest shimmering halo; more of the distant stars winked out swiftly behind that ghostly circle; it was the Dark Moon!--and it was rushing upon them!
* * * * *
Chet swung an instrument upon it. He picked out a jet of violet light that could be distinguished, and he followed it with the cross-hairs while he twirled a micrometer screw; then he swiftly copied the reading that the instrument had inscribed. The invisible disk with its ghostly edge of violet was perceptibly larger as he slammed over the control-ball to up-end them in air.
Under the control-room's nitron illuminator the cheeks of Herr Doktor Kreiss were pale and bloodless as if his heart had ceased to function. Harkness had moved quietly back to the side of Diane Delacouer and was holding her two hands firmly in his.
The very air seemed charged with the quick tenseness of emotions. Schwartzmann must have sensed it even before he saw the onrushing death. Then he leaped to a lookout, and, an instant later, sprang at Chet calmly fingering the control.
"Fool!" he screamed, "you would kill us all? Turn away from it! Away from it!"
He threw himself in a frenzy upon the pilot. The detonite pistol was still in his hand. "Quick!" he shouted. "Turn us!"
Harkness moved swiftly, but the scientist, Kreiss, was nearer; it was he who smashed the gun-hand down with a quick blow and snatched at the weapon.
Schwartzmann was beside himself with rage. "You, too?" he demanded. "Giff it me--traitor!"
* * * * *
But the tall man stood uncompromisingly erect. "Never," he said, "have I seen a ship large enough to hold two commanding pilots. I take your orders in all things, Herr Schwartzmann--all but this. If we die--we die."
Schwartzmann sputtered: "We should haff
turned away. Even yet we might. It will--it will--"
"Perhaps," agreed Kreiss, still in that precise, class-room voice, "perhaps it will. But this I know: with an acceleration of one thousand m.p.h. as this young man with the badge of a Master Pilot says, we cannot hope, in the time remaining, to overcome our present velocity; we can never check our speed and build up a relatively opposite motion before that globe would overwhelm us. If he has figured correctly, this young man--if he has found the true resultant of our two motions of approach--and if he has swung us that we may drive out on a line perpendicular to the resultant--"
"I think I have," said Chet quietly. "If I haven't, in just a few minutes it won't matter to any of us; it won't matter at all." He met the gaze of Herr Doktor Kreiss who regarded him curiously.
"If we escape," the scientist told him, "you will understand that I am under Herr Schwartzmann's command; I will be compelled to shoot you if he so orders. But, Herr Bullard, at this moment I would be very proud to shake your hand."
And Chet, as he extended his hand, managed a grin that was meant also for the tense, white-faced Harkness and Diane. "I like to see 'em dealt that way," he said, "--right off the top of the deck."
But the smile was erased as he turned back to the lookout. He had to lean close to see all of the disk, so swiftly was the approaching globe bearing down.
* * * * *
It came now from the side; it swelled larger and larger before his eyes. Their own ship seemed unmoving; only the unending thunder of the generator told of the frantic efforts to escape. They seemed hung in space; their own terrific speed seemed gone--added to and fused with the orbital motion of the Dark Moon to bring swiftly closer that messenger of death. The circle expanded silently; became menacingly huge.
Chet was whispering softly to himself: "If I'd got hold of her an hour sooner--thirty minutes--or even ten.... We're doing over twenty thousand an hour combined speed, and we'll never really hit it.... We'll never reach the ground."
He turned this over in his mind, and he nodded gravely in confirmation of his own conclusions. It seemed somehow of tremendous importance that he get this clearly thought out--this experience that was close ahead.
"Skin friction!" he added. "It will burn us up!"
He had a sudden vision of a flaming star blazing a hot trail through the atmosphere of this globe; there would be only savage eyes to follow it--to see the line of fire curving swiftly across the heavens.... He, himself, was seeing that blazing meteor so plainly....
His eyes found the lookout: the globe was gone. They were close--close! Only for the enveloping gas that made of this a dark moon, they would be seeing the surface, the outlines of continents.
Chet strained his eyes--to see nothing! It was horrible. It had been fearful enough to watch that expanding globe.... He was abruptly aware that the outer rim of the lookout was red!
For Chet Bullard, time ceased to have meaning; what were seconds--or centuries--as he stared at that glowing rim? He could not have told. The outer shell of their ship--it was radiant--shining red-hot in the night. And above the roar of the generator came a nerve-ripping shriek. A wind like a blast from hell was battering and tearing at their ship.
"Good-by!" He had tried to call; the demoniac shrieking from without smothered his voice. One arm was across his eyes in an unconscious motion. The air of the little room was stifling. He forced his arm down: he would meet death face to face.
* * * * *
The lookout was ringed with fire; it was white with the terrible white of burning steel!--it was golden!--then cherry red! It was dying, as the fire dies from glowing metal plunged in its tempering bath--or thrown into the cold reaches of space!
In Chet's ears was the roar of a detonite motor. He tried to realize that the lookouts were rimmed with black--cold, fireless black! An incredible black! There were stars there like pinpoints of flame! But conviction came only when he saw from a lookout in another wall a circle of violet that shrank and dwindled as he watched....
A hand was gripping his shoulder; he heard the voice of Walter Harkness speaking, while Walt's hand crept over to raise the triple star that was pinned to his blouse.
"Master Pilot of the World!" Harkness was saying. "That doesn't cover enough territory, old man. It's another rating that you're entitled to, but I'm damned if I know what it is."
And, for once, Chet's ready smile refused to form. He stared dumbly at his friend; his eyes passed to the white face of Mademoiselle Diane; then back to the controls, where his hand, without conscious volition, was reaching to move a metal ball.
"Missed it!" he assured himself. "Hit the fringe of the air--just the very outside. If we'd been twenty thousand feet nearer!..." He was moving the ball; their bow was swinging. He steadied it and set the ship on an approximate course.
"A stern chase!" he said aloud. "All our momentum to be overcome--but it's easy sailing now!"
He pushed the ball forward to the limit, and the explosion-motor gave thunderous response.
CHAPTER IV - The Return to the Dark Moon
No man faces death in so shocking a form without feeling the effects. Death had flicked them with a finger of flame and had passed them by. Chet Bullard found his hands trembling uncontrollably as he fumbled for a book and opened it. The tables of figures printed there were blurred at first to his eyes, but he forced himself to forget the threat that was past, for there was another menace to consider now.
And uppermost in his mind, when his thoughts came back into some approximate order, was condemnation of himself for an opportunity that was gone.
"I could have jumped him," he told himself with bitter self-reproach; "I could have grabbed the pistol from Kreiss--the man was petrified." And then Chet had to admit a fact there was no use of denying: "I was as paralyzed as he was," he said, and only knew he had spoken aloud when he saw the puzzled look that crossed Harkness' face.
Harkness and Diane had drawn near. In a far corner of the little room Schwartzmann had motioned to Kreiss to join him; they were as far away from the others as could be managed. Schwartzmann, Chet judged, needed some scientific explanation of these disturbing events; also he needed to take the detonite pistol from Kreiss' hand and jam it into his own hand. His eyes, at Chet's unconscious exclamation, had come with instant suspicion toward the two men.
"Forty-seven hours, Walt," the pilot said, and repeated it loudly for Schwartzmann's benefit; "--forty-seven hours before we return to this spot. We are driving out into space; we've crossed the orbit of the Dark Moon, and we're doing twenty thousand miles an hour.
"Now we must decelerate. It will take twenty hours to check us to zero speed; then twenty-seven more to shoot us back to this same point in space, allowing, of course, for a second deceleration. The same figuring with only slight variation will cover a return to the Dark Moon. As we sweep out I can allow for the moon-motion, and we'll hit it at a safe landing speed on the return trip this time."
* * * * *
Chet was paying little attention to his companion as he spoke. His eyes, instead, were covertly watching the bulky figure of Schwartzmann. As he finished, their captor shot a volley of questions at the scientist beside him; he was checking up on the pilot's remarks.
Chet was leaning forward to stare intently from a lookout, his head was close to that of Harkness.
"Listen, Walt," he whispered; "the Moon's out of sight; it's easy to lose. Maybe I can't find it again, anyway--it's going to take some nice navigating--but I'll miss it by ten thousand miles if you say so, and even the Herr Doktor can't check me on it."
Chet saw the eyes of Schwartzmann grow intent. He reached ostentatiously for another book of tables, and he seated himself that he might figure in comfort.
"Just check me on this," he told Harkness.
He put down meaningless figures, while the man beside him remained silent. Over and over he wrote them--would Harkness never reach a decision?--over and over, until--
"I don't agree with that," Har
kness told him and reached for the stylus in Chet's hand. And, while he appeared to make his own swift computations, there were words instead of figures that flowed from his pen.
"Only alternative: return to Earth," he wrote. "Then S will hold off; wait in upper levels. Kreiss will give him new bearings. We'll shoot out again and do it better next time. Kreiss is nobody's fool. S means to maroon us on Moon--kill us perhaps. He'll get us there, sure. We might as well go now."
* * * * *
Chet had seen a movement across the room. "Let's start all over again," he broke in abruptly. He covered the writing with a clean sheet of paper where he set down more figures. He was well under way when Schwartzmann's quick strides brought him towering above them. Again the detonite pistol was in evidence; its small black muzzle moved steadily from Harkness to Chet.
"For your life--such as is left of it--you may thank Herr Doktor Kreiss," he told Chet. "I thought at first you would have attempted to kill us." His smile, as he regarded them, seemed to Chet to be entirely evil. "You were near death twice, my dear Herr Bullard; and the danger is not entirely removed.
"'Forty-seven hours' you have said; in forty-seven hours you will land us on the Dark Moon. If you do not,"--he raised the pistol suggestively--"remember that the pilot, Max, can always take us back to Earth. You are not indispensable."
Chet looked at the dark face and its determined and ominous scowl. "You're a cheerful sort of soul, aren't you?" he demanded. "Do you have any faint idea of what a job this is? Do you know we will shoot another two hundred thousand miles straight out before I can check this ship? Then we come back; and meanwhile the Dark Moon has gone on its way. Had you thought that there's a lot of room to get lost in out here?"
"Forty-seven hours!" said Schwartzmann. "I would advise that you do not lose your way."
Chet shot one quizzical glance at Harkness.
"That," he said, "makes it practically unanimous."
Schwartzmann, with an elaborate show of courtesy, escorted Diane Delacouer to a cabin where she might rest. At a questioning look between Diane and Harkness, their captor reassured them.