Collected Short Fiction, page 53
He came to meet us—with the same quick step he had always had—and crushed my hand in his. I introduced Leroda, and the warm, genial sincerity of his welcome made the motherless girl feel at home at once.
Then we went to find mother, in the living-rooms in the glass-armored tower above, overlooking the mines in the crater and all the country about—the same old rooms I knew so well.
My mother was sitting in the mellow flood of sunlight that streamed through the great windows, sewing, I think. A white-haired lady in lavender, slight and frail as always, but bright of eye and strong of spirit. She sprang up and embraced me with a glad little cry.
Then I presented Leroda. Mother looked at her keenly for the merest instant, then smiled and took her in her arms. As Leroda afterward told me, she found my parents “most delightful people.”
Presently Valence came running in, a pretty young matron, with little Tommy with her. She gave me a warm and sincere embrace, and received Leroda with sisterly cordiality.
We had dinner in the same long, bright dining room—it was painful to me to see the walls had been newly decorated. Dinner from the same familiar beautiful dishes, with blue-birds on the rims—they had been used on festive occasion ever since I first remember.
Then I left Leroda with Valence and my mother, and went down to see about my duties. Jenkins had been waiting, with the usual “dispatches from Warrington, sir.” I learned that Firecrest was the new capitol of the moon, since the destruction of Kurrukwarruk. At considerable cost in labor, a small tunnel had been sunk from the city to the end of the great cavern, to provide an avenue of underground escape, in case the city above the surface were to be beleaguered again. The Assembly had moved to Firecrest, and most of the executive officers of the new government were there. After our arrival, a series of conferences were held, to further acquaint Lafollette and his officers with conditions on the moon, and to make definite plans for the coming campaigns.
AFTER the troops had rested two days at Firecrest, they embarked again, upon nineteen of the vessels, which were divided into two fleets. Nine ships carried Langley and his men to Colon, the great city by the Appenines, where they could drill with Hall’s forces. The ten other ships carried the remainder of the men and supplies to Warrington, at Theophilus.
Our flagship, the Comet, remained at Firecrest, in case of a surprise attack from space. The conference was still in session, and Lafollette, Doane, Greenville, and my father were deep in the new plans. Gardiner, who was still with Warrington at the crater city, was to return with Bris, who commanded the ships sent to Theophilus, to lend his support to the conference.
Plans were under way for “forging an iron ring about New Boston”—as one eloquent young speaker put it. Lafollette’s and Warrington’s forces were to close in upon Humbolt, while Doane met Van Thoren’s fleet in a decisive engagement.
Leroda had a genius for getting into the thick of things. She attended the assembly meetings, and soon knew most of the delegates. She set out to devise a “seal” or flag for the moon. She made a model—the design was a white crescent, with “the old moon in its arms”—and had me present the idea to all the delegates I met.
Naturally, with so many young officers from earth about, the social life of the little town was rather feverishly gay. Leroda and I were together at a good many affairs, and had more pleasure in staying away from others.
It was about that time that the “Eldorado Massacre” took place. It was not an important incident in itself, perhaps. But it had vast consequences in increasing the ardor of Lafollette’s men, and in steeling the determination of all of us upon the moon. The nearcatastrophe to so many important men, that came as a result of it, only impressed it more strongly upon the minds of the people.
The two fleets had been gone for some time, the Comet being the only war-flier left at Firecrest. The appeal came from Eldorado, a small mining settlement nearly two hundred miles east of the capitol. The call came by radio; and the interference of the sun’s direct rays, which make radio communication impossible during the middle of the lunar days, made it almost incoherent, though the sun had now slanted far toward the west.
Since the moon has no “Heaviside layer” to keep the waves reflected back to the surface, the extreme range of a radio set on the moon is little over two-hundred miles, under the best conditions.
“Ka’Larbah are . . .” it ran. “Ka’Larbah . . . million moon-calves . . . marching. West. D-rays . . . men with them . . . space suits . . . war-fliers above. Aid. For the sake of . . .”
It seemed incredible to Lafollette and his officers that Metals would descend to alliance with the wild mooncalves; but there had been stories since the beginning of the war of a pillaging, massacring band of the Ka’Larbach, officered by men in space suits, and aided by a few ships from Van Thoren’s fleet. But until this time no important places had been attacked, and many even on the moon thought the force largely myth. But the disjointed call made it plain enough that such a dreadful army had fallen upon Eldorado.
Though there was but one ship available, and that had been left to defend the capitol, Lafollette demanded that we go to the rescue at once. Doane was not unwilling to set out. After Lafollette’s fiery appeal, the Assembly voted permission for the Comet to go. In an hour after the call had come, we were aboard and rising.
Doane was in command, of course, and Lafollette and two or three of his officers, insisting that they were on the moon to learn the art of war as soon as possible, were aboard as passengers. I came as secretary to Lafollette.
Another half hour found us in sight of the ill-fated little city. It lay beyond the mountains, on a dark desert plain, like a bright square of silver foil. And all the plain about it was encrimsoned with the glittering red forms of gigantic Selenites. Colossal red-scaled monsters leapt about like giant fleas, obviously obeying the silver-armored men mounted upon a few of their leaders. Many of the creatures carried long, slender D-ray tubes.
As we came in view a little group of men was making a desperate attempt to reach the city walls. Watching through a pair of binoculars, I saw the pitiful struggle of the poor fellows. There were only a dozen or so of them, in ragged working clothing; they must have been miners from some outlying prospect.
By way of arms they carried only a few hand D-ray drilling machines. They put up a brave defense against the milling horde of scarlet monsters that closed about them; a heroic battle, soon over.
I threw down the glasses in horror when I saw the colossal, crimson, green-eyed things snatching them up, rending them into quivering, bloody morsels, avidly crushed in terrible jaws. The savage beings fought even among themselves for the pitiful fragments of red flesh and bloody rag.
Lafollette and his fellow officers were amazed and horrified at the sight—after this “Remember Eldorado!” was a war-cry among the men from earth.
THE Selenites had surrounded the bright-walled city, were taking it by storm even as we came in sight. And high above the scintillant roof hung three titanic silver globes, upheld upon the billowing, many-colored flame-mist of the atomic blast. Thin piercing rays of red and green and orange stabbed from them at the broken walls; and the vast flaming spheres of the disintegrating atomic vortexes, fire-balls of white and purple and blue, rained down upon shattered roof and towers.
Eldorado had been pitifully unprepared. There had been one generator of the yellow fan-ray, and a single projector of the atomic vortexes. And the desperate inhabitants had hauled a dozen D-ray mining machines from their places, to serve as weapons. That was all the armament they had against the multiplied thousands of hellish, gigantic beings, and the three war-fliers.
One of the fliers darted toward us at once, while the other two kept up the bombardment of the little town. Our improved ray-projectors, with the precise skill with which our crew handled them, assured us a prompt victory. In five minutes the other ship fell in flames, a vast, luridly glaring meteor. It struck near the city; it must have crushed hundreds of the savage monsters to a hot death beneath it, but the frenzied attack went on regardless of the incident.
Both of the remaining ships came to take the place of the fallen one. Doane faced the situation with his usual coolness and skill. The Tellurian war-fliers were our equals in size and armament, though perhaps our crews were a little better trained. And certainly the increased power of the gold atomic blast was an advantage.
For some minutes we exchanged glancing rays and flaming vortexes, without visible result. The enemy fliers managed their fan-rays so cleverly that each screened the other, and no opening was left for us. Doane fought a furious battle, to win in time to save the city. The other ships were almost hidden in a terrific storm of flickering polychromatic flame.
Abruptly there was a shattering explosion below our flier, and it was plunging down in sickening flight. It seems that an exploding vortex had injured the atomic blast projectors which supplied our power. A few moments later it seemed that the trouble was repaired, for our fall was checked, and we were quickly back at our former level.
Meanwhile the innumerable leaping red hordes were closing in upon the city, in defiance of the desperate defense. Ray tubes grasped in the ungainly tentacles of the Selenites swept the glass walls and towers, despite a fierce fire from window and turret.
The moon-calves must have found entrance through the holes torn by the explosive vortexes. Great leaps carried them like titanic leaping insects forward to the roof. For a time the darting, snake-like rays from the converted mining apparatus swept low upon them. One by one, those rays went out.
Eldorado was at the mercy of the Ka’Larbah, most terrible of the wild moon-calves.
At the same time we were desperately engaged with the two war-fliers. With a daring maneuver, Doane flashed in between them, caught one for a moment unguarded, as the fan-ray was shifted. He fired with a dazzling sheet of vari-colored rays that sent the Tellurian reeling moonward.
Below us, the Selenites were pouring steadily into the conquered city. Most of what happened we did not see; it is good for our peace of mind that we did not. Few sights that I have seen are more terrible than that. Glistening, scaly, crimson things, green eyes expressionless and unblinking, searched through the ruins for the bodies of dead and dying. Long, writhing, red tentacles dragged poor, shrieking wretches from their hiding. With avid greed the monsters devoured living and dead, bodies crunching like red wax in their powerful teeth.
Suddenly the moonscape below us rocked with the force of a terrific detonation, and the bright glass city rose in a great mushroom of shattered debris of dust and flame. It spouted up, hung for a long moment in the air, and fell in a rain of ruin. Only a vast, burned crater was left.
Of the tens of thousands of attacking Ka’Larbah, only a few score escaped the desperate revenge of the conquered city. All the rest went up with the force of that mine. Perhaps it was set off by the last survivor—the world will never know.
The engineers were still having trouble with our injured generators. Once the Comet started falling crazily again. The lone remaining enemy flier hung over us, her flashing rays like the wings of an eagle of flame. Our desperate mechanics got the projectors to working again; we shot up and caught the other ship with the battery of a whole ray-deck as we passed inside her screening fan-ray. She was fairly fused as she hung there; glowing with vivid incandescence, she fell, slowly at first, but with gathering momentum, until she crashed like a plummet into the gaping chasm where Eldorado had been.
We set out for Firecrest at once, with the generators working most uncertainly. Despite the frenzied efforts of the engineers, the blast projectors failed to operate smoothly; and sometimes we fell alarmingly. At last, when not more than half the distance had been covered, we were forced to land.
The sun was not over twelve hours high, and we had made the alarming discovery that not a single space suit was aboard—we had embarked in the greatest haste. It was found, too, that the hull of the flier had been injured by the explosion, so that it would not hold air to last through the long lunar night.
After several hours of toil—Doane and I labored with the struggling engineers—we had the projectors functioning again. We rose easily, and covered seventy miles of the distance to Firecrest in as many minutes. Then the delicate tubes failed again, and we crushed down on the desert. This time the complicated mechanism was crushed beyond hope of repair.
NOTHING remained except for someone to attempt to reach Firecrest on foot, to send back a relief party with space suits and with special welding equipment for repairing the leaking hull.
After some hesitation, I responded to Doane’s call for volunteers. I thought that, of all the crew, I had had more experience in travel on foot over the lunar desert than any other. I selected two men to go with me—both young fellows, but of considerable experience as scouts in the lunar wilderness. One of them, named Payne, I think, had lived from about the age of three years in an outlying mining settlement; the other was a rugged young Australian, who had come to the moon as a stowaway when he was fourteen.
The two of them accepted my choice calmly, though it amounted almost to a sentence of death. A very few minutes saw us ready—every moment was precious. I shook hands with Lafollette, and with Doane, who whispered a brief word of encouragement. Then I was outside the air-lock with tanned young Payne, and the red-faced, raw-boned Australian, Lieutenant Gerald.
The sun seemed hardly more than the breadth of its own disk above the black western crags. Like a sphere of white flame, it shone with a steady, dazzling brilliance; but all warmth seemed gone from its rays. I drew my light tunic close about my shoulders, and looked at my companions.
“Thirty miles.” My lips moved to form the words, but little more than a rusty grating came.
“No backing out now,” Gerald whispered grimly.
“Perhaps,” Payne began. But we had leapt, and his other words were lost.
Leap . . . leap . . . leap. Each leap was a terrible age. Blocks of lava rattled beneath our feet. I heard the swift breath of my companions.
Hours passed, frantic, desperate hours. The immense silver ball of the flier soon dropped under the near horizon. The sun crept down, with relentless deliberation. We had covered the better part of the journey. I recognized the country southeast of Firecrest. Then, like the finger of doom, the slender spire of a western peak was drawn across the bright face of the sun.
Night fell swiftly. The sun darkened from a cold white sphere to a ball of writhing red, shrouded in a freezing mist of snow. White flakes danced about us in the frigid air, covered rocks and craters with a crystal layer that hid obstructions so that we often slipped and fell.
A high, bitter wind sprang up, piercing our scanty garments with a painful sword of cold. A thin, steel-blue mist of ice flew upon it, biting our blue and trembling limbs. When we breathed, it seared our lungs with cold.
It was the utter cold of space, descending upon the moon. Cold that grasped and pierced and congealed. Cold that stopped all life. Cold that froze even the air to silver powder. Cold that was merciless, unthinkably intense.
Cold grasped at our limbs, hung about our waists, weighed on our shoulders, dragged us down. It cut into our bodies, gnawed at our hands, bit our faces like sharp edges of ice.
A frigid, leaden mist, of fine snow and frozen air, thickened gelidly all about. It hid the deep and bloody glare of the heatless, dying sun. It wrapped us close, leaving a silver crust of frost upon our bodies, hardening our garments to stiff, crackling, frozen armor.
Our breath froze before us, in clouds of tiny, glittering crystals.
Above, through the mist, the earth was vaguely visible, a huge luminous ball, warm and green—but far, far away! I thought confusedly of my days upon it, of warm winds, warm blue seas rolling beneath soft azure skies in a flood of sun, of warm green gardens, where trilling bird-songs sounded through sweet-scented flowering shrubs; dreamed fleetingly of rooms lit with the ruddy glow of heaters, of tables loaded with steaming meals.
A thicker wisp of freezing mist hid the earth, and we leapt on in growing darkness, and in utter silence—in the darkness and the silence of death. White rocks, hoary plains, fantastic frosted crags. A strange world of death—silent, ghostly white, unthinkably cold.
On we leapt, and ages fled. The flurries of falling snow grew thicker. Payne and Gerald became white ghosts, red-faced, puffing white steam. The air grew thin about us, exhausted by the freezing. I fought to breathe, while a cold flame seared my lungs.
The freezing mist grew thinner, as the nothingness of space crept down. Cold stars bit through it, danced mockingly before us. On we struggled. Every move was agony, every second an age of hell.
Through the darkness I saw the familiar rocks about the tavern entrance. They were near—yet I felt that I could not go on. To sleep, to relax, to die, seemed paradise. Every leap was a heart-breaking effort against that fatal lure.
As I leapt a little refrain beat through my numbed brain. “Not for me. . . . For Leroda. . . . For father and mother. . . . For the men on the Comet. . . . For the moon.”
I saw the metal rim of the great valve, gleaming in a frozen crust. And the pale lights of the city beyond danced upon the snow.
Gerald fell to the ground, sprawled in a little huddle in the snow.
“Come on,” I tried to say. But a sudden fierce pain throbbed in my throat. Blood gushed out of my mouth, froze on my face. Payne bent futilly over the fallen man, feebly tried to lift him. Then he, too, fell in an attitude of weary abandon.
I left them, struggled on. On—through clinging curtains of cold. On—fighting intangible rivers of cold. On—while my body screamed with pain. On—for Leroda—for . . .
