“Make for that fissure!” Captain Future yelled. “It’s our only chance. Once in it, we can hold them off!”
They plunged forward, sprinting through the shadows and boulders toward the western end of the gorge. The Brain, of course, could have glided up out of danger in a moment. But it was not Simon’s way to desert. Curt had spotted the fissure ahead, a narrow black crevasse in the northern rock wall of the gorge. But whether or not they could reach it seemed doubtful, for the Moon Dogs were rapidly overtaking them.
“Why don’t you stay and show how you can handle ‘em, Grag?” Otho could not resist yelling as they ran. “Tame ‘em, like you tamed Eek!”
Grag, lumbering forward like a ponderous metal engine, made no reply to the taunt. The Moon Dogs were closing on them by leaps and bound. The fissure was still a hundred yards ahead. Curt felt desperately that they could never reach it in time. Then Simon made a diversion.
The Brain flew back right into the face of the charging Moon Dogs, jetting his shining tractor beams into their faces. The creatures recoiled in momentary terror. It gave Curt and the other two Futuremen time to reach the fissure. They tumbled into it, Simon flashing after them.
The Moon Dogs reached the mouth of the narrow fissure an instant later. The ravenous beasts jammed in the entrance, in their avid eagerness to get at the Futuremen. But Grag now stood in their way, and with his heavy metal bar the great robot belabored the gray brutes.
The Moon Dogs retreated hastily from the robot’s blows. Again they charged, but again they could not enter the narrow crevasse past him. Balked, the creatures crouched down outside the fissure to wait.
“Now what do we do?” Otho asked anxiously. “If we start down the fissure, they’ll be right after us.”
Curt gestured to the loose masses of shattered rock that almost choked the passage.
“We can build up a wall that will hold them out.”
They labored at that for almost an hour, carrying heavy masses of rock and placing them until they had a wall of eight feet high across the crevasse. The Moon Dogs could never pass it.
The Futuremen stopped then for breath. Wonderingly, Otho looked down the fissure. It was a narrow split in the rock, angling steeply downward into impenetrable darkness.
“I hate the idea of worming down through a maze of fissures and caves,” the android muttered. “I’d rather take my chance in free space.”
“It’s our only possible way to the radium deposit,” Curt answered determinedly. “I brought along a radioscope, and with it for guidance we should be able to find a way down through the labyrinth.”
He took the compact radioscope from the mass of equipment that Grag carried on his back. The transformers, condensers and other apparatus appeared to have suffered no harm during the adventurous flight.
Captain Future took his little hand krypton lamp from his belt and turned on its blue beam. He flashed it into the dark fissure. “We’d better start,” he warned. “We’ve a long way to go, down to that radium deposit.”
The labyrinth they followed now was a mere split in the rock, so narrow they must move in single file. Ponderous masses of half-dislodged Moon-rock hung over them, ready to crush them. Curt moved with extreme care as he led the way. He knew well how fatally easy it was to start one of the terrible lunar-rock slides.
The darkness became Stygian. Yet the intrepid quartet of man, robot, android and Brain continued to penetrate deeper. The crevasse debouched presently into a gloomy underground gallery with walls of black lunar basalt. A half dozen new fissures branched from this gallery.
“Which one of ‘em should we take?” Otho wondered.
“There’s no way of telling which is the best to follow.”
“Then let’s guess,” said Grag.
He pointed his metal arm at the fissures in turn and recited an ancient phrase. “My mother told me to take this one.”
“Your mother?” Otho laughed at the robot. “Why, your mother was a machine shop, and if you had a father he was an old riveting machine.”
“That’s better than having a rack of chemical bottles for ancestors, like you!” Grag snapped.
“Shut up, you two,” Captain Future ordered impatiently.
“We don’t have to guess — the radioscope will show us which way to follow.”
He consulted the little instrument. Its needle, swinging on its queer quadrant to point toward the radium ores deep below, swung downward now in a northeastern direction.
“The radium deposit is in that general direction,” Curt declared. “That second fissure leads most nearly that way. Come on.”
They entered the crevasse after him and again began squeezing through narrow places and clambering over fallen masses of rock. This new fissure slanted downward very steeply.
In the next few hours, the Futuremen moved ever deeper into the maze of branching fissures and galleries that rifted the Moon’s upper crust. Curt tried to steer a course by means of the radioscope. But many times they had toilsome work retracing their steps, when they found themselves in a crevasse with a blind ending.
The cold, darkness and utter absence of life were oppressive. The oxygen in the space-suit tanks of Curt and Otho ran low. They had to stop to replenish it. Their little oxide converters extracted the life-sustaining element from oxides in the rock.
The realization that they must find a way down to the radium ahead of Larsen King’s planetary miners was the spur that drove the Futuremen forward. Curt felt something like despair, when after following a long fissure for a half hour, they found that it ended in a blind wall.
Grag struck the rock wall angrily with his metal fist.
“We would have to waste all that time getting to this!”
“Listen!” exclaimed Curt Newton sharply. “That wall reverberated when you struck it. There’s a hollow space beyond it — another fissure or gallery. I believe we could dig our way through to it.”
THEIR only tool for heavy digging was Grag’s big metal bar. The robot applied it to the black basalt with its limitless strength, boring its pointed end gradually in and then prying loose great masses of the dark rock. The others cleared the debris.
It was slow, laborious work. And it was perilous, for ominous crackings warned that they might start a rock slide. Then an opening appeared in the rock. Grag quickly enlarged it, and they squeezed through into a vast, dark space.
“Why, there’s air in here!” Grag exclaimed. “Look at the way that rock dust is floating.”
“You’re crazy!” jeered Otho.”You ought to know by now that there’s no air on the Moon —”
He stopped, his jaw sagging in amazement. Curt had flashed his krypton beam in. And they were able to see that the finer rock dust was actually floating, sure evidence that there was at last some air here.
Captain Future ventured to unscrew his helmet for a moment to test the air. It was thin and cold. This was so tenuous an atmosphere that he could not long breathe it, but undoubtedly it contained oxygen.
“If there’s thin air in these upper caves, there must be even denser air down in the deeper spaces of the Moon!” Curt exclaimed. “It would drain downward.”
“I can’t understand it,” said Otho bewilderedly. “I’d have thought that any air down here would all have escaped long ago.”
“How could it, escape?” the Brain countered. “Air can only escape a planet by molecular dispersion. But this air, after it drained into the cavernous interior, couldn’t escape that way. For it was trapped down here when ancient internal shocks closed the fissures leading from the surface.”
They were all overwhelmed by the astounding discovery. They had lived upon the Moon for years, and like everyone else had thought it a completely dead and airless world. Now they had found the remnants of its ancient atmosphere still existed down in its honeycombed interior.
Their amazement increased when Captain Future explored the space they had entered with the blue beam of his krypton lamp. This was not merely
another fissure or gallery they had entered. It was a giant cavern, fully a mile in length, whose interior was wrapped in unrelieved darkness. Black masses of rock much like huge stalactites hung from its jagged roof.
They moved forward uncertainly, flashing the beam about the awesome place. Then Grag cried out and pointed ahead. They broke into a run toward the abject he had descried.
When they reached it, they stood peering up at it in awed silence.
The thing was a statue. It was a pale stone image such as they had seen before this in the dead city of the Lunarians, at the bottom of Great North Chasm. It represented a manlike creature, with thick, neckless body, shutter-lidded round eyes, and gaping nostril orifices in its face. And it had the same flat, webbed paws instead of hands or feet.
The alien stone figure stood in erect position. It was pointing with one webbed hand toward the farther end of the dark cavern. There was something so strikingly meaningful about the pointing arm and the intent stare of the round eyes, that the statue seemed almost living.
“The Lunarians came down this far, then, long ago!” muttered the Brain. “They must have followed the air down into these caves.”
Curt nodded thoughtfully.
“It explains why we never found any Lunarian remains in the dead city above. They all died down here.”
He followed the direction of the statue’s solemnly pointing arm. It led them to a crevasse that opened from the farther end of the cavern. A worn path was still traceable, leading across the cavern and into that downward fissure. Otho suddenly pointed.
“Chief, are we sure all the Lunarians died?” he cried.
There was fine rock dust lying on the path here. And in it, fresh as though just made, was the clear print of a webbed foot!
Chapter 9: Shapes in the Dark
IN THE glow of a krypton lamp that furnished the only illumination for this deep-buried Cavern of the Moon, man and robot, android and Brain looked at each other in startled wonder.
It was quite clearly the imprint of a webbed, paw-like foot. Captain Future looked back at the solemn, looming statue. The paw of that statue would have perfectly fitted the print before him.
“If a Lunarian just made this footprint —” Otho began excitedly.
“Don’t be foolish!” Curt admonished. “This print must have been here for ages.”
“But it’s so fresh and new looking!” protested the android.
“Of course — what would disturb it?” retorted Captain Future. “It’s merely more evidence that the Lunarians passed down this way thousands of years ago.”
He glanced thoughtfully around the vast gloomy cavern whose jagged rock walls rose dimly into an obscurity beyond the reach of their lamp.
“When the dwindling atmosphere of the Moon drained into these interior caverns long ago,” Curt reconstructed, “the Lunarians were forced to follow the air downward. There must have been a great migration down through these chasms and caves. I imagine they set up this statue so that all their race would know the way that must follow.”
His grey eyes glowed amusingly.
“What a spectacle it must have been, that migration of a race down into this gloomy underworld! But it would soon end in death for them all. They couldn’t exist long in these dark, sunless caves.”
“I don’t know,” murmured Otho. “I’d swear that footprint was made only recently.”
The android suddenly raised his head in a listening attitude.
“I thought I heard something — a kind of throbbing sound,” he declared.
“Otho’s getting nervous,” grunted Grag scornfully. “He’ll be seeing the Moon-men behind every rock.”
Captain Future paid little attention. He was following the broad, worn path in the rock that led along the cavern to the fissure at its farther end, the path led directly into the labyrinth. He flashed his blue beam into the crevasse. It illuminated a very narrow, winding chasm that angled steeply on down into the bowels of the Moon.
And the path disappeared into that chasm. The worn trail was clearly discernible. That trail had been made unguessable centuries ago. It pointed the way that long before the dawn of history had been followed by a doom-driven alien race.
Curt felt a surge of hope.
“I believe that the path followed by the ancient Lunarians may lead down into the deeper caverns where the radium deposit lies!” he declared.
“Good! Then we won’t have to do any more wandering around in blind passages,” rumbled Grag.
The Brain, who had remained a little behind them in the big cavern, now called to Captain Future.
“Lad, look at this.”
Curt found Simon hovering over the floor of the cavern, intently examining it. There was a thin, almost unnoticeable growth of pale white lichens here and there on the rock.
“Rudimentary plant life,” murmured Curt Newton, with deep interest. “It’s not surprising, since there’s some air here.”
“Yes, but look at that trail in the lichens,” said the Brain.
THE patches of thin white lichen had been crushed by something broad and heavy that traveled along a definite trail.
“It’s obvious that was made recently,” commented the Brain.
Curt knit his brows.
“That’s puzzling. Still, I suppose if there’s plant life here, there might also be primitive animal life.”
“Maybe some Moon Dogs got down here and made that trail,” Grag suggested.
Captain Future shook his head. “They’re non-breathing beasts, which wouldn’t venture into this air-filled cave, even if there was a way.”
During this colloquy, Otho had been standing a little apart from the others. The android had been staring intently back into the dark cavern, his slant green eyes troubled, his whole attitude one of concentrated attention.
Now he broke into the discussion.
“Chief, I do hear a throbbing sound somewhere here!” he exclaimed.
“Now Otho’s got jumpy again,” rumbled Grag disgustedly.
“Ever since he saw that footprint, he’s been hearing things.”
“You dumb hunk of iron, will you keep quiet and listen?” stormed Otho.
They were all silent. And their ears now detected a dim, almost inaudible reverberation.
“Why, he really did hear something,” said Grag in surprise.
“Of course I did,” snapped the android. “Chief, it sounds like it’s coming from the upper end of the cavern.”
Captain Future was astounded. He led the way hastily back along the gloomy cavern. They soon determined that the throbbing was most loud near the upper or northern end of the cavern. Curt pressed his ear against the black rock wall, heard the reverberation much more clearly. The regularity of its rhythm gave him instantly the key to its nature.
“That’s a machine we hear!” he exclaimed sharply. “An atomic boring mechanism, that’s tunneling a way down toward this cavern!”
“Larsen King’s miners!” ejaculated the Brain. “It can only be they!”
Captain Future nodded rapidly.
“I’m afraid so. I should have known it. We’ve been moving north and west all the time. This cavern can be only a mile or so under Great North Chasm. Albert Wissler would surely locate this space by sonic probing, and would drive his tunnel down toward it.”
“Holy sun-imps, that’s had!” exclaimed Otho in dismay.
“They’ll be holing through to this cave before long. Hang it, I wish we could keep them from following us the way we did the Moon Dogs.”
Captain Future’s eyes kindled. He swung around to survey the narrow fissure of the ancient path, and then uttered a hopeful exclamation.
“Otho, I believe we can do that! Look how narrow that fissure is. If we could set off a blast in one of its walls and start a rock slide, it would completely block the passage. King’s miners would need days to clear the way. That would give us a big advantage of time over them.”
They stared, trying to get the
full picture.
“There’s only one, thing wrong with your idea, Chief and that’s that we can’t do it,” Otho declared. “We’ve got no atomic explosives to blast with.”
“Sure we have — in our proton-pistols!” Captain Future retorted.
They began to understand the expedient he proposed. The proton-pistols of the Futuremen had each in its hilt a magazine of “unstable” copper atoms. A grain of this unstable, highly explosive matter was detonated atomically each time the weapon was fired, to produce an intense stream of protons.
THE potential power of the combined atomic explosive in their pistol magazines was considerable. Its effect would be enhanced, by the lower gravitation of the Moon. But the expedient was a gamble, and it had one serious drawback to which the Brain drew attention.
“If we did that, the pistols would be henceforth useless. We’d be entirely weaponless.”
“What if we are?” Curt countered. “There’s nothing down in the Moon to worry about. Come on — let’s see if we can really do it.”
He led the way running back along the cavern to the narrow fissure of the ancient Lunarian path. The steady throb-throb-throb of the atomic borers, in the north wall, was growing louder by the minute.
The dark, descending passage was only a dozen feet wide at its base. Curt flashed his blue beam upward. The walls of black lunar basalt bulged toward each other, overhanging the chasm floor.
“We can start a slide that will block it tight!” Captain Future exclaimed, encouraged.
He examined the west wall of the narrow crack.
“A blast right here ought to bring it all down. The deeper we sink the charge, the more effect it will have. Grag, drill out a hole for the charge with your bar.”
Grag nodded understandingly. The big robot set down on the fissure floor the burden of transformers, condensers and other apparatus he had carried on his back. Then, unencumbered, he attacked the jagged black rock, using his pointed metal bar as a drill.
Captain Future 10 - Outlaws of the Moon (Spring 1942) Page 7