Collected Short Fiction, page 52
I enjoyed my association with Paul Doane during the voyage. The mind behind his piercing blue eyes was as active as his tall and athletic body. As we sat at table I reveled in his cutting wit, and often he found time to join me for a game of chess, for an animated discussion of the latest drama from earth, or of some principle of philosophy or even in a scientific speculation as to the future of the race—he was almost catholic in his breadth of understanding.
But he was not idle during the voyage. Besides the regular duties of Admiral, he took it upon himself to see that the D-ray crews had regular training; he spent a good deal of time writing a monograph on the complicated three-dimensional tactics of space warfare, and he spent long hours with me in working out the scheme for getting Lafollette and his supplies and men aboard the fleet.
At last we agreed that the main fleet should approach the earth over the North Pole and land in north Greenland. The Comet would leave the fleet and descend just after dusk on the middle of Lake Michigan. Bris and I would be dropped, in a swift hydroplane, and the Comet would rejoin the fleet. Bris and I were to attempt to reach Chicago and get in touch with Lafollette. When we had made the arrangements with him, we were to communicate with Doane by radio, telling him when to return.
We entered the conic shadow of the earth fifteen thousand miles above it, thereby escaping the danger that the glancing reflection of the sun upon our silvered vessels would be noticed by terrestrial observatories. At an altitude of five hundred miles we separated; the rest of the fleet vanished in the northward sky, and the Comet sank into the planet’s murky atmosphere.
Bris and I were landed in our little speed-boat without accident, though we were at first almost helpless under the powerful gravitational pull of earth. We started the atomic engine, and soon were darting away from the colossal silver hull that rode so lightly upon the waves. In a moment it had risen behind us, vanishing in a pall of unfamiliar gray clouds that shut out the moonlight.
IN half an hour the bright misty glow of a million lights was bursting through the haze before us. As we neared the shore a floating craft passed us. Her wide decks were ablaze with light, and we heard swift throbbing music from her. Other bright lights darted through the clouds above, but we were not molested.
Without accident, we reached the shore. We first approached a brilliantly lit garden, with gay festal crowds moving through it, thronging amusement machines in a blinding glare of light, while harsh music glared and stentorian loudspeakers thundered out advertising slogans. We ran up the beach for half a dozen miles, to a quieter place, where there were dark, silent warehouses, and landed.
Bris opened the sea-cock in the little boat, and headed it out again into the lake, under power. We would not need it again.
In an hour we were lost in the gay, restless crowds of the amusement beach. We entered a colossal, glass armored building, slender and tall as a lunar peak, that towered up in a blaze of electric fire. We mounted an elevator to the flying stages above the roof, and there took a private plane to the Chicago offices of Tranco.
Lafollette, we soon learned, was in the great building—he had a suite of rooms there. At first the secretaries refused to call him up. By means of a generous bribe, I got in telephone communication with him. A word was enough. In a few minutes we were received as honored guests in his private rooms.
It was the first time I had met that great friend of the moon-people. He was only of medium height, but there was something of impressive dignity about him. Immaculately dressed, he looked the cultured aristocrat that he was. The quiet richness of his rooms revealed unostentatious good-breeding.
He welcomed us most cordially, with a quiet sincerity. He inquired eagerly after Warrington and Gardiner, who were old friends of his. His eyes snapped with indignation when he heard of the destruction of Kurrukwarruk, gleamed with satisfaction when we told of the crushing of Masonby’s fleet.
“And now the moon has a fleet, and she is ready to accept the aid I promised Gardiner?” he asked us frankly when our messages were delivered.
“She is,” I said. “I am commissioned to be your secretary.”
“Good,” he smiled. “We can begin gathering my forte in the morning. I’m sure your services will prove valuable, for I’ve never been to the moon; and I trust you’ll find me an easy master.”
It was late when we retired to the excellent rooms he provided, and by that time I felt much better acquainted with the polished gentleman who bore so sincere a friendship for the moon and for liberty.
The next day I arranged for the use of a long-range radio set that Lafollette had privately installed in the building—I could not use the public ethero-phone, of course. I sent two short messages, which were to mean nothing except to their proper recipients, and to which no answers were expected.
The one to Doane ran simply:
“On the lake. May 26.”
And on 5.678 meters I sent this call:
“Tranco Building. Chicago. John Adams.”
During that day, I fear, I was of little assistance to Lafollette in his secret collection of armed troops and supplies of war. I spent most of the time on the stage at the top of the building, scanning eagerly the faces of the endless lines of passengers that disembarked from the incoming aero-liners.
The sun went down, tawny and red in the saffron west, and dusk settled upon the stark buildings, lighted by the pale flood of silver moonlight, and by the dazzling gleam of man-made day upon the busy ways and amusement places. A few stars shone feebly through the hazy gray sky that is so strange to the visitors from the moon.
Until late in the night I waited on the platform, feeling new hope when each bright light glided down from the sky, and falling anew into the pit of despair, when each great liner rushed up and away without having landed the dear girl I awaited.
And she did not come.
The next day I was busy, and could not meet the liners. I spent the time in conferences with Lafollette’s lieutenants, discussing conditions on the moon, the present state of political affairs, the military tactics which Warrington and Humbolt had found most effective, the supplies and equipment that an army would need for effective operations.
Lafollette was proving no mean ally. He was undertaking to collect and arm a force of forty thousand men, which was about as many as our fleet could carry. In addition to the equipment and supplies that his own troops would require, he was gathering immense amounts of certain chemical and raw materials badly needed on the moon, which could be obtained only by importations from the earth—petroleum, rubber, etc. He had ready a hundred new D-ray tubes, of the latest design, which would prove a great asset for field operations, since they were mounted on light atomotored tanks.
That evening, Leroda had still not come. I broadcast both my brief messages again, on the chance that they had not been picked up. We had been on earth two days, and it lacked but three of the time set to embark for the moon again.
Next day we were very busy. Supplies were coming in, being stored in warehouses along the lake-shore, many miles above the busy pleasure and commercial sections of the city. There it seemed that we had a fair chance to embark at night, without discovery. And if we were discovered, as Lafollette said, we could fight on earth as well as on the moon.
The troops had been mostly collected, and were quartered in immense apartment buildings a few miles down the water-front. We secured a number of motor boats for ferrying men and freight out to the fleet.
After our work was done on the third day, I went back to the landing stage on the roof, and met each liner that came in until long past midnight. A great dread was beginning to seize me. If Leroda had heard my first call, she had had time to come half way around the world to meet me. That night, after I had gone down to my room in Lafollette’s palatial suite, I tossed sleepless with the fear that something had happened. She might have fallen victim to the implacable spies of Metals in the year since I had left the earth. Or she might have met some accident—I was the victim of a thousand gloomy speculations.
On the next day I sent the call again over the private radio. At the risk of inviting the attention of Metals agents, I made it a little more definite.
“Leroda, I am waiting. Tranco Building, Chicago. John Adams.”
ON the fourth day I was busy with Lafollette and Bris, going over the lists of cargo, and planning the loading of it. That day, and the night, and the next day passed like an age to me—part of our preparations had to be made under cover of darkness, and we worked all night. But paradoxically, on the end of the last day, the yellow sun seemed to plunge with fatal speed toward the rim of the pale sky. It set. Dusk fell.
Lafollette, Bris and I, and some of the officers, ate a last hasty meal in the great dining hall in Tranco Building. Lafollette gave last instructions to the secretaries and vice-presidents who were to care for his interests while he was away. We took the elevator and were shot up to the roof stage, where the private flier waited to take us down to the old docks, where our force was gathered.
While the others were getting aboard, I ran to make a last inquiry, found that the through liner from San Francisco was due in five minutes. It was a last chance. With good-natured witticisms, Bris and Lafollette granted my eager request to wait for it. My heart drummed loud in my ears when at last I saw the bright lights of the ship cutting through the yellow haze of the westward evening sky. I think a guard held me by the arm to keep me off the platform until the long silver liner had come to rest.
Then my heart gave a glad leap, and I trembled with incredulous joy. For Leroda was the first to step out of the slender steel hull. Eagerly, she came running across to meet me. I leapt toward her, seized her arms and scanned her dear familiar face. The lines on it showed fatigue and worry. But her dark eyes were alight with a great gladness.
Ignoring the noisy crowd and the busy attendants, I took her in my arms. Time passed in oblivion until Bris was by my side, suggesting that we come aboard the flier, so that we could be off.
“Sorry it took me so long,” Leroda said. “I was in Hong Kong. I took the first aero-liner after I heard you. We ran into a frightful storm, a typhoon, out in mid-ocean. A freak wind, that had not been recorded by the Meteorological Service. Motors were overstrained in pulling out of it. They burned out, and we came down at sea. Had to wait hours for a slow surface boat to find us and tow us to Hawaii.”
By that time we were seated side by side in the flier. I glided swiftly forward across the bright stage, and shot into the dusk. Northward we sped through the gathering darkness, with the splendid towers of fire that were gigantic buildings drifting past beneath us. As we went, the lights grew dim, scattered, gave way to a sheet of darkness.
Then we had landed by a dark lake-shore. Scores of men in uniform were bustling nervously about, and great piles of crates and boxes were stacked up above the water. By the old piers, which probably had not been used for a century, were long rows of boats, loaded and covered with white tarpaulins, with alert men waiting at wheels.
An hour went by, with men hurrying about, loading boxes and heavy sacks on trucks, and unloading them again. It all was confusion to me, and it was all in the vague twilight—a half-light that seems very strange to one from the moon, where it is always either blazing day or Stygian night. There was an undercurrent of strained suspense in the air.
What if Doane did not come?
He had not answered the message giving him the date, had not been expected to do so, for that might have betrayed his position. Nothing had been heard from him since he dropped Bris and me on the lake.
But that hour passed pleasantly enough for me. I sat with Leroda in the flier, listened to her vivacious account of how she had spent the last year, told her something of my recent adventures on the moon.
I was overjoyed to find her ready enough to go with me to the moon, in the face of all the perils of the journey, and in spite of the fact that life on the moon was a very uncertain proposition, until the war had ended favorably.
It had been dark an hour when one of the boats that had been out scouting on the lake returned with the welcome news that twenty vast globular ships were floating up toward the shore, upon the still water.
Then it fell to my lot to go out with a signal light, and establish communication with Doane. Leroda valiantly insisted upon going along in the motor boat instead of waiting on the shore, and I yielded. We were five or six miles out when my cautious signals were answered.
Five minutes later the massive bulk of the Comet was shutting off the pale stars before us. Guided by my flickering electric torch, the gigantic ship glided up before us, and I ran our little boat under the airlock. The elevator cage was let down in the gloom. I assisted Leroda to it, and scrambled on.
A few words to Doane, when we had been shot to the bridge, outlined the situation. He gave orders that sent the fleet drifting to within a thousand yards of the shore, to lie there with muffled riding lights until Lafollette’s men and supplies could be carried aboard.
He received Leroda most chivalrously—then offered, with a grin, in his capacity as captain to marry us for nothing. But we had decided to let that wait until the end of the war.
Soon the long line of ships was in position, and the regular stream of men and supplies was coming across the black water from the old docks. Another three hours, and the work was done. Lafollette had come aboard, to be received as an honored guest; and the fleet was floating out, low over the dark lake.
Doane gave an order; signals flashed from flier to flier. The pale fire of the atomic blast jetted fiercely from the repulsion tubes, driving us out into space and toward the moon again.
CHAPTER XXII
When the Comet Fell
THE voyage back to the moon was a wonderful time to me. Never before, except for that too-brief period at New York, had I been much in the company of Leroda. Sometimes a space flier is a dull prison, of frightful monotony. But that wonderful girl transformed the Comet for me, into a paradise, a radiant garden of wonder.
We strolled the ray-tube decks together, hand in hand, and found secluded corners in the vessel where we could sit together for hours, unmolested. We spent endless periods in the bridge-room, watching the ancient but never-aging wonders of the silver star-clouds, suspended in infinite space. We talked; we saw “stereo” pictures; we read poetry and romance. But the most precious moments were those rare ones, when we stood drinking in each other with the senses, almost one instead of two.
Leroda told me the story of her life. It was far from a happy one. Her father had been killed when she was a baby. Her mother had been hounded about the earth for the secret that had led to her father’s death. She had been spirited away when Leroda was twelve years old—to die in a secret prison. The girl had lived her life in terror.
But sorrow and fear had not spoiled a sunny, cheerful nature. Now we looked forward to a life that would bring her all the happiness she had missed. We dreamed together of the home we should have. Sometimes she sang to me, her marvelous low rich voice vibrating with measureless yearning, borne out of sorrow on golden wings of hope.
We were by no means to ourselves all the time. With Lafollette and his group of brilliant young officers from earth aboard, things could hardly be dull—though some of them were not such experienced voyagers of space as Leroda and myself, and suffered considerably from space-sickness. There were banquets and balls and amateur theatricals.
Of course the serious plans for the conduct of the war were going forward steadily. Every day I met with Lafollette and Doane and a few of the other officers for a conference that took several hours. Lafollette was full of suggestions, and by the time we reached the moon, a tentative plan of action was quite worked out.
We planned to divide Lafollette’s men for the time being, sending about half of them to Colon and half to Theophilus, one contingent being placed under command of his associate, Langley.
We reached the moon without accident, after a passage of only fifteen days.
It was about noon of the lunar day when we landed. The sun fell in a white flood upon the jagged lunar wilderness. We came down at Firecrest. I had been a little afraid the city would be attacked in our absence; but the silver disk of it lay by the dark crater-rim, bright as a new coin.
Doane brought the fleet down on the level plain just before the main airlocks. The men, who had been crowded in the transports for two long weeks, under rather unpleasant conditions, were now fitted out with sun-helmets and white uniforms, and marched out of the ships for a bit of exercise and to become accustomed to lunar conditions of gravitation and barometric pressure. They were deployed about the burning desert for a bit, and then permitted to visit the city, where the inhabitants gave them an enthusiastic ovation. There had been, of course, many cases of space-sickness; but the medical corps had cared for them efficiently, and the morale of the troops had been kept surprisingly fine.
With Leroda at my side, I got off the Comet as soon as possible, and hurried through the airlock and up to father’s office. Since she had lived on the moon before, the bright girl manifested no inconvenience from lunar conditions. And attired in neat white garments, with her dark locks drawn up under a snowy topi, she looked the very picture of exultant health and spirits.
We found father in the same spacious, bright room where I had spent years at work, with the familiar broad rich desks, and fine familiar rugs, the same curios on the walls—strange things from the far places of the moon—and the same atomic heater, contrived to imitate an old-fashioned fireplace of earth, irradiating the great room with a ruddy glow.
Father stood by a broad window, looking out upon the vast bowl of the crater, with its scattered shaft-houses—now as neat and gleaming as ever, for hardly a trace of the bombardment was left about the whole city. A little stooped, my father was, with a wealth of silver hair. His face was a little more care-drawn than when I had last seen him; but his smile of joy, when his keen eyes perceived me, transfixed it with a luminosity of love.
