Man From The Moon

by Otis Aldebert Kline

  For a million historical years, men of my race inhabited Magong when she was yet a planet among planets, a free, rotating sphere with her own undisturbed orbit, midway between the orbits of this planet and that of the terrible, devastating war--world, Mars. For a half of those million historical years, an ancestor of mine--a P'an-ku--sat on the imperial throne of Magong and held dominion over all her lands and seas.

  When I was born, Crown Prince of Magong, my people had reached an advanced state of civilization, for much can be accomplished in a million historical years. For more than ten thousand years, Magong had been in communication with Mars, the only other planet inhabited by intelligent beings. For over five thousand years, our interplanetary ships had visited their planet, and their ships had made friendly calls on Magong, carrying passengers, manufactured merchandise, and raw materials. A colony of their pale, white people, whose faces I wish we had never seen, was founded on one of our continents and treated with every friendly consideration by our rulers: that is, my ancestors. A colony of our stalwart yellow people had also settled on Mars, and had been received with every appearance of good will.

  Before I was sixteen years of age I had learned to navigate an ether ship, and when I had demonstrated to my father's satisfaction that I was a thorough master of interplanetary navigation, he permitted me a leave of absence of two years for the purpose of visiting the inner planets--Earth, Venus and Mercury. This trip was mostly for my own education, as all three of the planets had been explored thousands of years before, and had subsequently been visited at regular intervals by our scientific expeditions for the purpose of tabulating the evolutionary changes taking place on them, Mercury had developed nothing but the most lowly vegetable organisms. Venus teemed with life, ranging from the microscopic, unicellular animalcules to gigantic, four-footed reptiles, which roamed through her great forests of fern and fungi, some of them feeding on these and other primordial thallophytic growths, some preying on these herbivora or on the lesser creatures coexistent with them on that planet. Some of them had evolved membranous wings with which they flapped clumsily from place to place, but there were no birds or mammals. Among the plants, none flowered or bore fruit or seeds. All reproduced by spores or spawn or by simple fission.

  On the Earth, a higher order of evolution was in progress. Many of the plants, having developed specialized sexual organs, flowered and bore fruit. Birds forsook the ways and forms of their reptilian ancestors--evolved a thousand shapes and hues--cultivated glorious plumage and melodious voices. Mammals suckled and reared their young, and man, the greatest mammal of them all, was slowly battling his way to world supremacy with crude weapons and implements of wood and stone. On my return to Magong, after visiting the inner planets, I importuned my father to permit me to visit Jupiter. This he flatly refused to do. The trip, he said, was too long and dangerous for one of my years. Furthermore, only one, out of a thousand of our most skillful and experienced navigators, who had attempted the trip, had returned to tell of it. I had to be content, therefore, with several trips to Mars, where I, as Crown Prince of Magong, was always received with such pomp and splendor that I wished I might be permitted to go incognito and mingle with the common people--but even this small pleasure was denied me. At twenty-five, I was made commander-inchief of Magong's interplanetary navies. Shortly thereafter, trouble developed between my father and Lido Kan, Supreme Ruler of Mars. It seems that a number of Martians, jealous of the economic progress made by our colonists on that planet, had gone to Lido Kan with tales of woe, insisting that they be deported. So strong was the pressure they brought to bear on him, that he finally took the matter up with my father. The reply of my father was courteous, but firm. He insisted that if his people were to be deported from Mars, the Martian colony must also leave Magong. Lido Kan argued that his people had created no disturbance on Magong, and no dissension among the subjects of my father, which was true enough, and my father naturally retorted that his subjects were too courteous to even think of bringing up such a matter.

  One word led to another, and things went from bad to worse, until a group of Martians attacked and massacred the inhabitants of one of our settlements. My father instantly demanded an imperial apology from Lido Kan, complete punishment of the perpetrators of the crime, and indemnity for relatives of all the massacred people. Lido Kan delayed his reply for several days, but was eventually swayed by the jingoists of his realm, and replied that he would neither apologize, pay indemnity, nor punish any of his subjects, as my father had received fair and timely warning. While my father debated what to do in this crisis--for he had always been a man of peace--word came that an army of Martians had completely wiped out our colonies on that planet.

  A short time thereafter, the commander of one of our large interplanetary passenger ships ether--waved me that the Martians would not permit him to leave port, and that several hundred of our ships were being held in a similar fashion. I immediately left Magong with a fleet of battleships, intending to demand their release or fight, but was met half way by a fleet of Martian warships.

  THE contest that ensued was short and disastrous. My fleet used the cold, energy-decreasing green ray of condensation, which we had developed--the enemy fleet, the hot, energy-increasing red ray of dispersion. We had developed our inter-rotating green rays to such a degree that any substance touched by them would contract to less than one-hundredth of its normal size with a corresponding increase in density. The toughest metals, under this ray, would become as brittle as egg shells and more dense than pure lead. The effect of the red rays of the Martians was the opposite, but fully as devastating, as these rays, rotating in receding spirals, tore the atoms apart on contact, making the heaviest metals less dense than the atmosphere in an instant. When a green ray met a red ray of equal intensity, they neutralized each other.

  By superior maneuvering, I managed to wipe out the last Martian battleship when I had lost all but the flagship of my fleet. This had been badly crippled by a red ray, and after making temporary repairs, I limped sadly back to port.

  On the face of my father, when I reported to him in the throne room that day, was a look, sterner than any I had ever seen him wear.

  "My son," he said. "War is a terrible thing--the worst affliction that can come to humanity--but it is at hand and we must meet it like men. The Martians have made a start by wiping out our colonies and attacking our fleet. Now they are determined to eliminate us entirely from the solar system. At this very hour they are preparing to use their most terrific weapon of all against us.

  "What weapon is that, O my father?" I asked.

  "Come with me, my son, and I will show you."

  He led me up to the great observatory on top of his palace. We passed through the general observation room, where a hundred enormous telescopes were in constant use--a thousand trained men observing, recording, and manipulating the instruments. Going into his private observation room, my father himself trained his huge telescope on a distant object. Then he called me to look. I saw what appeared to be a huge spiral of nebulous matter forming near Mars, "They are clearing the interplanetary lanes for the passage of a huge fleet," I said. "See, they are collecting all the meteoric bodies for millions of miles in all directions."

  "They are doing more than that, my son," my father replied. "That matter-condensing and projecting apparatus which they formerly used to clear the way for peaceful ships is going to be used for a horribly deadly purpose. Have you noticed where they are condensing the meteoric mass?"

  "It seems to be on a line between Magong and Mars," I replied.

  "It is. Have they ever condensed material in that position before? You know full well they have not. They have always concentrated it in a position where it could be projected out into space without harm to anyone."

  "Why, Father, what do you mean?"

  "I mean that as soon as that synthetic nebula reaches a sufficient degree of cohesion and solidity it will be projected at us!"

  "What will
it do? Will it burst our planet asunder? Will everyone be killed?"

  "No. It is not large enough for that, but it can do incalculable damage, and if their aim is good and they are not stopped in some way, they can collect enough of such matter from the meteoric belts of the solar system to depopulate this planet."

  "Can't we dodge them? What about the new gravity control plant?"

  "The thing is still in the experimental stage. Besides, it is a terrible and a dangerous thing to disturb or attempt to change the orbit of Magong. Every body in the solar system is in perfect balance with every other body, and too great a change, even in the orbit of our own relatively small planet, may cause untold damage--some upset of the scheme of things, which we cannot possibly foresee. True, we have slightly perturbed the motion of Magong, just as an experiment, but it has been done cautiously, and always with a counter-perturbance sufficient to bring it back to the proper place in its orbit."

  Once more my father looked through the giant telescope.

  "The projectile is formed and on the way," he said gravely. "Where it will strike, no one can tell--not even those who are sending it. It may crush this palace, destroy this city. It may kill nobody or wipe out a million people. It may miss Magong entirely, but this is not probable. We are too large a target. Let us go below. There is nothing more we can learn here at present. I will show you the only efficient aggressive weapon to which I can turn at present. By this, and by the remaining interplanetary fleets under your command, the question of our very existence will be determined."

  We descended to the main floor and entered a compression tube car, in which we were shot to one of the numerous physics laboratory stations of Magong. My father presented Wang Ho, the venerable chief scientist of the institution.

  "Wang Ho," he said. "Is the atmosphere disintegration ray ready?

  "It is ready, your majesty," was the reply.

  "Then train it on Mars. They insist on war, so we will give it to them in earnest. They are determined to destroy the face of our planet, therefore let us remove the atmosphere from theirs."

  "Your majesty is aware, I hope, that a continuous use of this ray will be suicidal. For every ten cubic parsads of their atmosphere we send out into space, we also send out one cubic parsad of our own. If your majesty would wait, and have a number of these ray projectors made in portable size, they could be fastened to ether ships and used without destroying our own atmosphere."

  "Unfortunately," replied my father, "we cannot wait. The war is on. It may be decided in a few days. Several weeks would be required to fit out ether ships with these ray projectors. No, we must fight now, or be forever beaten. Turn the ray on them, and keep it going as long as they are in range. Our other projecting stations will take up the duty, one by one, as the planet revolves on its axis."

  He turned to me.

  "My son," he said. "The entire war fleet of Magong is in your keeping. Save the fleet if you can, yourself with it, but remember--it is only a barrier. It is one of the protections of Magong. If the barrier must be destroyed in the line of duty--then do not attempt to save it at the cost of that which it was set up to protect. Do you understand?"

  "Fully, father. I will be wary and circumspect, but I will not fail in the line of duty."

  Once more we entered the compression tube and were shot back to the imperial palace. After bidding farewell to my mother, I said a last goodbye to my father, and went out to my flagship. There were tears in the eyes of my mother as she called her last farewell to me. My father was too much of a man of iron, however, to betray his emotion at such a time.

  MY fleet of ten thousand ether ships was ready for action, awaiting only my word of command. I had formed a daring plan which, if successful, might mean the destruction of the fleet and my own death, but would make it possible for Magong to win the war.

  Leaving half of my ships to guard the planet against enemy craft, I took the other half and made straight for Mars. Shortly after we started, the first huge missile of the Martians passed us, and a few minutes thereafter it struck Magong with a brilliant flare of light, leaving a great dark pit in the ground where it had fallen. Referring to my charts I found that it had alighted on a small village of about two hundred souls. What a sudden and terrible end for them!

  As we pressed onward, I saw another large nebula spiraling into shape, and knew that it would not be long until a second projectile was on the way to Magong.

  Presently I saw a huge enemy fleet put out from Mars, evidently with the intention of meeting and giving battle to my fleet. This did not fit in with my plans at all, so I immediately gave secret orders to all of my commanders, then bade them disperse.

  There were nearly a thousand magnetic wave stations on Mars, most of which were in continuous use because of the terrific efforts the Martians were putting forth to crush Magong. These stations were sending out powerful, man--directed magnetic lines of force, which drew all relatively small particles of matter, with which they came in contact, toward the stations from which they were projected. This procedure would have been dangerous to the Martians themselves had they not been clever enough to cross the lines of force and form contracting vortices, hundreds of thousands of miles from their planet. Under the direction of the central station, these vortices were combined and recombined at regular intervals, until visible nebulae resulted. The nebulae were condensed by extra and special lines of force from the central station, then projected at Magong, close-knit, spherical clusters of stone and metal. When the central station was turned away from the target by the axial rotation of the planet, a duplicate-control station on the other side carried on the work under the control of the same operators.

  During the progress of my ship toward Mars, six of these huge clusters were projected at my world. Five of them struck the target and one missed, to shoot out into space and become an asteroid with an orbit of its own around the sun.

  My plan was simple and direct. Each of my ships carried a chart, showing the location of the thousand enemy wave stations. Each station was numbered, and five ships were assigned to the attack of each.

  My ship, together with four others of the most powerful of my navy, each carrying a battery of twenty huge ray projectors, were to attack the central magnetic station.

  While we neared Mars I watched the movements of the enemy fleet, and saw that it was heading straight for Magong, evidently pleased at the fact that my first fleet had dispersed. This exactly suited my plans, as I knew that Hia Ku, my able lieutenant, would give them a warm reception with the five thousand ships I had left under his command, and I would be free to carry out my attack.

  When I drew near the central wave station of the Martians I saw that my other four ships had arrived on schedule, and ordered the attack. We were discovered almost instantly, and a thousand red rays were flashed at us, but we were able to neutralize these by laying down a barrage of green rays. Then a number of Martian ether ships, reserved to guard, the central station, arose and attacked us from above. One of their rays pierced our upper barrage and one of our ships, with her controls destroyed, plunged dizzily groundward, but was disintegrated by the red rays before she had fallen half way.

  With this ship gone my barrage was weakened, and I knew that it would only be a matter of minutes until we should all meet a like fate. As certain death faced us, I thought quickly, and as quickly gave orders, resolving that in our passing we should at least cripple the central wave station of the enemy. My ships instantly responded to my command, and in a moment all were plunging directly downward, temporarily protected above and below by our green ray barrage--our objective the glass dome of the central wave station. It was my hope that when we crashed through this dome to our death we might destroy, or at least cripple this station, and thus hamper the Martians and give my father the time he needed to fit out other ships with atmosphere destroyers, thus assuring the victory of Magong.

  But the Martians were too wise for me. They must have suddenly focused their lines
of magnetic force on our ships, forming a contracting vortex a short distance above the dome, for we lost control of all of them simultaneously. They revolved about each other for a moment, and then crashed together. With that crash I lost consciousness....

  When I recovered my senses once more I was lying on a metal bench to which my hands and feet had been bound. Standing over me with a sneering smile on his pale face was Lido Kan, Supreme Ruler of Mars. "What happened?" I asked, bewildered. "Where are my men?" "All died but you," he replied, "when we brought your ships to the ground. I had thought to bring them down gently, but the rage of my operator got the better of him, and he wrecked all four. I cannot understand how it happened that you lived through that crash. It was a miraculous escape."

  "Perhaps I have been saved for a purpose," I replied, "The Supreme Ruler of the Universe is all-knowing."

  "I, at least, have kept you for a purpose," replied Lido Kan, savagely, "Lying here on your back, you shall witness the destruction of your world." He pressed a lever and a curved metal plate slid back from the ceiling, disclosing a great, dome-like lens which looked out into space. "The empire of P'an-ku is doomed," he continued. "While this side of our planet is turned toward Magong, you shall witness its destruction through this lens. As soon as we turn away the lens will become a mirror which will give you the battle scenes as witnessed from our station on the other side. I pride myself that this is a rather clever invention of mine."

  I made no reply, but looked eagerly out toward Magong. Already the once fair face of my planet was growing pock-marked and ugly from the cruel disease called war.

  "You are a clever whelp," continued my captor, watching my features closely, "but not clever enough for Lido Kan. Your ships destroyed two hundred of my magnetic wave stations, but it will not take long to rebuild them, and in the meantime the others are functioning quite successfully, as you will observe. At least half of the population of Magong has already been destroyed by my projectiles."