At ten o’clock on the night of June 11th, the Rocket had left the earth; at ten forty-five the moon had begun its strange lurching; at eleven thirty the most startling intelligence of that momentous night was given to the world by means of radio dispatches sent out almost simultaneously by the largest of the observatories in the northern hemisphere.
The moon had left its orbit and was speeding away from the earth!
Almost immediately a second report corrected the first: the moon had suddenly stopped short in space and was hanging motionless—and earth was speeding away from her satellite! The world gasped incredulously.
On the following morning, the morning of the 12th of June, the front page of every newspaper was given over completely to news of the moon’s madness and of the light in space. The more conservative publications dealt with the facts as given forth by the observatories; the sensational papers, the so-called “yellow sheets,” on the contrary, were filled with fantastic theories and wild conjectures. Invaders from a dark star; beings from the heart of the moon, tearing their world from the earth to wander through space, preying upon other heavenly bodies; earth’s nights grown black and cold through the loss of her nocturnal luminary—these and other fantastic theories, equally inaccurate and impossible, were featured. Yet beneath it all, fact and theory, there was an undercurrent of vague dread and foreboding—as though men sensed in some way the horror that was to follow.
Days passed by, merging into weeks—and the moon grew constantly smaller, the light she shed on earth decreasing proportionately. At the same time there was a noticeable diminishing in the distance that the tides rose and fell. Likewise, astronomers announced, the orbit of the earth had changed slightly, due of course, to the altered position of the moon. Aside from that, the crimson beam that had stolen Luna, had no effect upon the earth.
As day followed day, with nothing of a sensational nature occurring, mankind began to lose interest. A series of daring robberies in Denver; a devastating fire in Miami—and news of the moon was relegated to the background. Occasionally, some newly published theory aroused a flurry of interest; occasionally, a question was raised as to the probable fate of the men in the Rocket—but on the whole, the moon became a subject of minor interest. Humanity had returned to its ways of humdrum normalcy.
SUCH were conditions when, almost a month after the appearance of the Light in the sky, a reign of terror began on earth. It was instantaneous, without warning, without sound—the coming of the crimson annihilation from the moon!
Two o’clock in the morning of July the 4th. A grim jest of Nature—Independence Day become the day of earth’s enslavement! A sudden suggestion of red light near the lower edge of the dark portion of the quarter moon—the light spreading in a flash—and leaping toward earth, striking her surface instantaneously.
Astronomically it was recorded as the appearance of a bright light in the center of the Lunar crater, Tycho, a light that rapidly filled the entire pit—and flashed through space with the speed of light.
An attempt to describe the results of the crimson beam’s collision with the earth reveals the utter futility of words. A series of titanic earthquakes, shudders of a wounded world; the drunken swaying of captured earth, a swaying that rocked great cities to their foundations, striving to complete the destruction that the quakes had begun; and worst of all—the crushing!
The power of the Light seemed directed along two contradictory channels. It held the earth, suggesting a gigantic magnet; but at the same time it crushed everything that lay within its confines, pressing them into the ground. Inconceivable was the power of the beam—a tremendous force of unlimited potentialities.
The Light struck the earth in the heart of Germany, obliterating instantaneously the cities of Hanover, Linden, Hildesheim, and Brunswick, as well as several smaller towns and villages. And as the earth turned on its axis (although the earth’s motion along its orbit ceased with the striking of the Light, it continued its axial rotation) the stream of force blazed a fifty-four mile wide, twisting trail across the globe. It was as though some giant finger of death and destruction were dragging itself over the face of the earth.
That was a time of tragedy, of stark terror and bedlam. Disaster! Science groping in impotence! The reason of mankind tottering on its throne.
The erratic swaying of the earth as it dangled from its brilliant, crimson thread, made impossible any calculation as to the course the beam would follow. A slight swaying of the globe—and Chicago and its environs were crushed flat. Another shift, and a queerly blank, dead-flat surface of empty earth led into northern Canada, crushing as it went.
Flight, the universal impulse—yet men feared to flee lest they unwittingly enter the path of the dreaded Light.
And then, with terror at its height—it was the evening of July 5th—came the second menace. A report from the Flagstaff Observatory, immediately corroborated by the Licks, Yerkes, and Mount Wilson Observatories, gave the astounding news that earth was returning over its orbit, hurtling toward the moon with incredible speed—that the pillar of light between the two spheres was growing shorter, pulling the earth toward the lesser globe—that, unless some cosmic miracle intervened, the two bodies would collide, and life would be extinguished in the blaze of a newly born sun.
Universal lamentation, horror and panic spread like a plague. Humanity fleeing in blind confusion. The thin veneer of civilization stripped from man, baring all that was bestial and craven, and conversely, all that was pure and fine. Iniquity and crime rampant; yet churches filled to overflowing.
But evil, the offspring of death and fear, dominated. A wild frenzy had fallen over the world; men fought in the streets—and died in madness. Orgies unmentionable, insane riotings, pillage, rape, murder—it was the day of civilization’s downfall.
And science could do nothing to remove the menace. Mankind was helpless.
As day followed day, each growing longer as the earth’s rotation was slowed up by the action of the moon, with no sign of relief in sight, the populace of the world for the greater part reverted to the brute. Fortunately, however, there were some with stronger minds who saved civilization from complete obliteration at its own hands.
Among these were the scientists, trained thinkers who, though at their wits’ end, sought frantically for a means of escape for man. But even they despaired when at last the moon had come so close as to blot out half the sky, and the problem was still unsolved.
For then, a third source of danger was added. First, the crimson beam; then the moon menace; and finally—the tides! With the moon at such close proximity to the earth, the tides were drawn to mountainous heights. Cities on every coast completely covered by water; islands submerged; coastlines changing as strips, miles wide, were washed away. Slowly the seas crept toward the hearts of the continents.
But little attention was given to this last form of destruction. Too much had been happening in too short a time; the mind of man was stunned, blinded with terror.
And finally—the climax! On July 10th, just six days after the coming of the light from Tycho, came the end. Brilliantly gleaming Luna, a vast disc of white that covered the sky, held by a pillar of crimson—Luna, the destroyer—seemed close enough to touch. Earth had almost stopped rotating on her axis; her waters were piled mountain high, covering the greater part of Eurasia and Africa. The Atlantic and Pacific drawn away from the Americas. The red beam motionless, fixed. And then the climax.
It began with the sudden vanishing of the light that held the moon; abruptly it was gone—without warning. A momentary hope for salvation in the hearts of man. A short pause, as though something were biding its time.
Then a sudden, colossal blow wracked earth from pole to pole; continents split; sea-bottoms raised; volcanoes were born—such was the final cataclysm that rocked the tortured earth. Cities falling—mountains rising—and mankind swept into unconsciousness.
There were a few of those who had fled to the highest pinnacles who reta
ined their senses; to them was given the privilege of seeing the salvation of the earth. For salvation it was, in spite of its attendant destruction—a miracle.
Suddenly the beam of crimson light from Tycho had lengthened—and the world had been cast instantaneously back to its former position in space. A moment’s pause—then abruptly it had begun to spin; it had returned to normalcy. Another moment, and the light that had wrought such havoc—vanished.
The menace was gone—and earth was saved!
Hours later, when the survivors regained their senses, a universal cry of praise arose to the sky. Men sobbed in incoherent joy at their miraculous rescue. The madness of fear was gone; and man was his sane self again.
And then, after the water receded from the land, and tranquillity returned to the face of the earth, the remnant of earth’s millions crept wearily down from their mountain sanctuaries and began the work of wresting their former civilization from the chaos of destruction.
Rough, unfamiliar continents; oceans where no oceans had been; gigantic, smooth-crushed roads, cinctures fifty-four miles wide, bleakly desolate, encircling the earth; shattered cities—all these greeted their eyes. A colossal task—but man attacked it with a purposeful vigor, seeking in physical and mental action for surcease of sorrow and of regret for lost loved ones, and for the civilization that had passed.
As they labored, men’s thoughts turned continually toward the sky. Questions were in every mind. From whence had the first Light come? What was its purpose? What had taken it away? And finally—what had happened to the men who had gone to the moon? Scientists and the world could only conjecture; they did not know.
Then, two days after the vanishing of the pillar of light, all these questions were answered. A gleaming, metal projectile, the Rocket, dropped from the sky, and two men stepped forth. Three had gone, but only two returned.
And these two, to answer the many inquiries, told in its entirety the story of the Light from Infinity.
CHAPTER II
The Men in the Moon
AS the Rocket left her moornings and flashed into space with accelerating speed, her three human occupants felt themselves pressed into their air-cushioned hammocks with crushing force. For a moment a stifling wave of heat passed over them—gone almost instantly as they left the atmosphere and its friction behind. But the pressure of acceleration continued, increasing in intensity until the pioneers into space knew that they were rapidly reaching the limit of their endurance. Then abruptly the crushing weight lifted—the Rocket had reached its maximum velocity.
Slowly, painfully, John Kennard, the designer and builder of the Rocket, unbuckled the straps that held him to his hammock. His body felt as though he had just undergone a severe pommeling. A moment later, a sudden movement sent his six foot, one hundred eighty pound frame drifting through the air.
“What on earth is the idea, John?” Nevil Craig, the short, heavy-set mechanic of the crew, exclaimed as he released himself. “You—” he broke off abruptly as he, too, floated toward the Rocket’s walls.
“Not ‘on earth,’ Nev,” Kennard corrected. “You should have said ‘What in space!’ You know very well that our peculiar antics are the result of the lack of gravity. It was in anticipation of this that we had all the machinery and furnishings fastened to the floor, and had these railings placed along the walls.”
Then he added in jocular tones, “Come on, Norcott, time to get up.”
A few seconds later the third member of the trio, quiet, slow-moving David Norcott, astronomer, joined them.
Quickly they made their way to their pre-arranged posts, drawing themselves along the railing. Craig hung suspended beneath the thick, isol-glass window in the nose of the Rocket, peering up at the white disc of the moon, brighter now than it had ever been when viewed through the earth’s atmosphere. Norcott’s post was at the other end of the vehicle in one of the tubes that protruded from its sides, parallel with its walls. Thus he was placed beyond the stream of yellow sparks that the vehicle emitted; his view took in the dwindling sphere that was the earth. Kennard stood at the controls, anxiously watching the dials that registered their speed and course. He was prepared to change their direction at a moment’s notice with a carefully directed rocket-charge. For Kennard was anxious in spite of his jocularity—the fate of the voyage depended upon him.
Suddenly an exclamation of amazed incredulity burst from the lips of Nevil Craig.
“Good gad, John, Dave, look at that!”
Together the two floated to the window in the prow, and stared at the astounding spectacle that had startled Craig. A great, red beam, all of two hundred miles in diameter, seemed to have leaped out into space from the upper portion of the moon. A solid pillar of crimson light, it lost itself in the blackness of space.
“What on earth,” began Craig; then he paused abruptly as the incongruity of his habitual expression flashed upon him. “Ah—what can it be?”
Kennard and Norcott shook their heads. “Ask something easy,” the former exclaimed.
Then they fell to discussing the amazing phenomenon, thoughts of their precarious position banished for the moment by the strangeness of what they saw. Many and fantastic were the theories with which they tried to explain it. In the midst of their discussion—which lasted only a few minutes—they were brought back to consciousness of their surroundings with an unpleasant abruptness.
A sudden, rending, thundering crash shook the Rocket with such violence that the three men were whirled through the air like so many leaves. There followed a series of grinding bumps against the side of the craft. The Rocket lurched viciously in the opposite direction; then slowly it staggered back to normalcy.
Kennard, who had grasped the railing at the Rocket’s nose, saw a black, jagged mass of rock, fully as large as the sky-car, drawing rapidly away, heading in the same direction. He paled.
“We grazed a big meteorite!” he exclaimed. “Fortunate for us that it didn’t strike us squarely. It was a narrow escape—we had better attend to the business of running this boat, instead of speculating on something that we can’t possibly explain. Not that we can do a great deal to ward off danger, at that,” he added.
A few moments later, after they had determined that no real damage had been done to the Rocket, their thoughts turned with one accord to the pillar of crimson light. Finally they decided to direct the Rocket toward the source of the beam to learn what they could about it.
The next three hours dragged by uneventfully, as Luna drew steadily closer. It presented an awe-inspiring spectacle at the end of that time, filling a large portion of the sky. The red beam, too, was assuming greater proportions, for they had gone fully half the distance.
The entire trip, at their approximate speed of ten miles per second, required less than seven hours.
Conversation lagged while the men contemplated the majesty of the Lunar disc and the enigma of the pillar of light, their minds busy with conjectures as to what wonders would be revealed to them on earth’s satellite. Finally Kennard broke the silence.
“I think we had better put on the brakes,” he said thoughtfully, “for when we start falling, we’re going to travel! A discharge or two from the Rocket’s nose will be our safest bet—for as I said, when we start falling, we’ll fall fast.”
At that moment, as though in direct corroboration, the Rocket leaped ahead like a frightened hare and flashed toward the moon with incredible speed.
A frown wrinkled Kennard’s brow as he hastily released a rocket charge from the vehicle’s prow. “I can’t understand this,” he muttered. “The moon shouldn’t have started pulling yet, for we haven’t reached the dividing line between the gravity of the two spheres.”
Craig and Norcott left their posts and drew about the instruments. Anxiously the three watched the dial that registered their velocity. Their anxiety grew when they saw that instead of slowing up, they were accelerating! A second and third discharge were as fruitless as the first; their velocity continued t
o increase.
Twelve, fifteen, twenty miles per second, they hurtled through the void, falling headlong toward the rugged, Lunar surface. And as the glowing disc of desolation leaped up toward them, the beam of crimson drew proportionately closer. Something—the thought suggested itself to them—had the Rocket in its grip and was pulling it through space as a magnet draws iron filings.
With faces blanched and bodies tensed, they waited, staring fixedly down toward what seemed inevitable doom. They were helpless, impotent—they could only wait.
After watching for a few minutes, each century-long, Kennard drew himself by means of the rail over to the instrument board. A sudden excited exclamation escaped him.
“We’re slowing down! Now’s our chance!”
Quick as thought he released a serious of charges—but it availed him nothing! The Rocket sped on through space, apparently unaffected, slowing down at the same gradual rate it had had before Kennard’s attempt to retard its progress.
“Since we can’t do anything to stop the Rocket,” Norcott suggested, “perhaps it would be a good idea to put on our air-tight space suits. If we crash as we are now, it’ll mean almost certain death, for there’s little chance of the Rocket’s escaping injury. But if we’re protected by our suits, we’ll have something of a chance at least, for we won’t be affected by the exhaustion of the air. It might be a precaution well taken.”
Kennard and Craig were quick to see the value of Norcott’s suggestion. In a few moments they had secured the suits from their place of storage, and began donning the clumsy, uncomfortable apparel which was to protect them from the cold or heat of interstellar space, and the possible loss of air. Electrically heated—or cooled, if occasion demanded—air-tight, equipped with a device for changing the carbon dioxide in the air to oxygen, the suits reduced their danger to a minimum.
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