Brood of the Dark Moon
* * * * *
Chet ranged himself alongside. Tall and slim and blond, he contrasted
strongly with this other man, particularly in his own quiet self-control
as against Harkness' quick-flaring anger.
"Take it easy, Walt," he advised. "We'll show them. But I judge that you
have been razzed a bit. It's a pretty big story for them to swallow
without proof. Why didn't you show them the ship? Or why didn't you let
Diane and me back up your yarn? And you haven't answered my other
questions: when do we go back?"
Harkness took the queries in turn.
"I didn't show the old boat," he explained, "because I'm not ready for
that yet. I want it kept dark--dark as the Dark Moon. I want to do my
preliminary work there before Schwartzmann and his experts see our ship.
He would duplicate it in a hurry and be on our trail.
"And now for our plans. Well, our there in space the Dark Moon is
waiting. Have you realized, Chet, that we own that world--you and Diane
and I? Small--only half the size of our old moon--but what a place! And
it's ours!
"Back in history--you remember?--an ambitious lad named Alexander sighed
for more worlds to conquer. Well, we're going Alexander one
better--we've found the world. We're the first ever to go out into space
and return again.
"We'll go back there, the three of us. We will take no others along--not
yet. We will explore and make our plans for development; and we will
keep it to ourselves until we are ready to hold it against any
opposition.
"And now, how soon can you go? Your injury--how soon will you be well
enough?"
"Right now," Chet told him laconically; "today, if you say the word.
They've got me welded together so I'll hold, I reckon. But where's the
ship? What have you done--" He broke off abruptly to listen--
* * * * *
To all three came a muffled, booming roar. The windows beside them
shivered with the thud of the distant explosion; they had not ceased
their trembling before Harkness had switched on the news broadcast. And
it was a minute only until the news-gathering system was on the air.
"Explosion at the Institute of Physical Science!" it stated. "This is
Vienna broadcasting. An explosion has just occurred. We are giving a
preliminary announcement only. The laboratories of the Scientific
Institute of this city are destroyed. A number of lives have been lost.
The cause has not been determined. It is reported that the laboratories
were beginning analytical work, on the so-called Harkness Dark Moon
gas--
"Confirmation has just been radioed to this station. Dark Moon gas
exploded on contact with air. The American, Harkness, is either a
criminal or a madman; he will be apprehended at once. This confirmation
comes from Herr Schwartzmann of Vienna who left the Institute only a few
minutes before the explosion occurred--"
And, in the quiet of a hospital room, Walter Harkness drew a long breath
and whispered; "Schwartzmann! His hand is everywhere.... And that sample
was all I had.... I must leave at once--go back to America."
He was halfway to the door--he was almost carrying Diane Delacouer with
him--when Chet's quiet tones brought him up short.
"I've never seen you afraid," said Chet; and his eyes were regarding the
other man curiously; "but you seem to have the wind up, as the old
flyers used to say, when it comes to Schwartzmann."
* * * * *
Harkness looked at the girl he held so tightly, then grinned boyishly at
Chet. "I've someone else to be afraid for now," he said.
His smile faded and was replaced by a look of deep concern. "I haven't
told you about Schwartzmann," he said; "haven't had time. But he's
poison, Chet. And he's after our ship."
"Where is the ship; where have you hidden it? Tell me--where?"
Harkness looked about him before he whispered sharply: "Our old shop--up
north!"
He seemed to feel that some explanation was due Chet. "In this day it
seems absurd to say such things," he added; "but this Schwartzmann is a
throw-back--a conscienceless scoundrel. He would put all three of us out
of the way in a minute if he could get the ship. _He_ knows we have been
to the Dark Moon--no question about that--and he wants the wealth he can
imagine is there.
"We'll all plan to leave; I'll radio you later. We'll go back to the
Dark Moon--" He broke off abruptly as the door opened to admit the
nurse. "You'll hear from me later," he repeated; and hurried Diane
Delacouer from the room.
But he returned in a moment to stand again at the door--the nurse was
still in the room. "In case you feel like going for a hop," he told Chet
casually, "Diane's leaving her ship here for you. You'll find it up
above--private landing stage on the roof."
Chet answered promptly, "Fine; that will go good one of these days." All
this for the benefit of listening ears. Yet even Chet would have been
astonished to know that he would be using that ship within an hour....
* * * * *
He was standing at the window, and his mind was filled, not with
thoughts of any complications that had developed for his friend
Harkness, but only of the adventures that lay ahead of them both. The
Dark Moon!--they had reached it, indeed; but they had barely scratched
the surface of that world of mystery and adventure. He was wild with
eagerness to return--to see again that new world, blazing brightly
beneath the sun; to see the valley of fires--and he had a score to
settle with the tribe of ape-men, unless Harkness had finished them off
while he, himself, lay unconscious.... Yes, there seemed little doubt of
that; Walt would have paid the score for all of them.... He seemed
actually back in that world to which his thoughts went winging across
the depths of space. The buzz of a telephone recalled him.
It was the hospital office, he found, when he answered. There was a
message--would Mr. Bullard kindly receive it on the telautotype--lever
number four, and dial fifteen-point-two--thanks.... And Chet depressed a
key and adjusted the instrument that had been printing the newscast.
The paper moved on beneath the glass, and the type-bars clicked more
slowly now. From some distant station that might be anywhere on or above
the earth, there was coming a message.
The frequency of that sending current was changed at some central
office; it was stepped down to suit the instrument beside him. And the
type was spelling out words that made the watching man breathless and
intent--until he tore off the paper and leaped for the call signal that
would summon the nurse. Through her he would get his own clothes, his
uniform, the triple star that showed his rating and his authority in
every air-level of the world.
That badge would have got him immediate attention on any landing field.
Now, on the flat roof, with steady, gray eyes and a voice whose very
quietness accentuated its imperative commands, Chet had the staff of the
hospital hangars as alert as if their alarm had sounded a general
ambulance call.
* * * * *
Straight into the sky a red beacon made a rigid column of light; a radio
sender was crackling a warning and a demand for "clear air." From the
forty level, a patrol ship that had caught the signal came corkscrewing
down the red shaft to stand by for emergency work.... Chet called her
commander from the cabin of Diane's ship. A word of thanks--Chet's
number--and a dismissal of the craft. Then the white lights signaled
"all clear" and the hold-down levers let go with a soft hiss--
The feel of the controls was good to his hands; the ship roared into
life. A beautiful little cruiser, this ship of Diane's; her twin
helicopters lifted her gracefully into the air. The column of red light
had changed to blue, the mark of an ascending area; Chet touched a
switch. A muffled roar came from the stern and the blast drove him
straight out for a mile; then he swung and returned. He was nosing up as
he touched the blue--straight up--and he held the vertical climb till
the altimeter before him registered sixty thousand.
Traffic is north-bound only on the sixty-level, and Chet set his ship on
a course for the frozen wastes of the Arctic; then he gave her the gun
and nodded in tight-lipped satisfaction at the mounting thunder that
answered from the stern.
Only then did he read again the message on a torn fragment of
telautotype paper. "Harkness," was the signature; and above, a brief
warning and a call--"Danger--must leave at once. You get ship and stand
by. I will meet you there." And, for the first time, Chet found time to
wonder at this danger that had set the hard-headed, hard-hitting Walt
Harkness into a flutter of nerves.
* * * * *
What danger could there be in this well-guarded world? A patrol-ship
passed below him as he asked himself the question. It was symbolic of a
world at peace; a world too busy with its own tremendous development to
find time for wars or makers of war. What trouble could this man
Schwartzmann threaten that a word to the Peace Enforcement Commission
would not quell? Where could he go to elude the inescapable patrols?
And suddenly Chet saw the answer to that question--saw plainly where
Schwartzmann could go. Those vast reaches of black space! If
Schwartzmann had their ship he could go where they had gone--go out to
the Dark Moon.... And Harkness had warned Chet to get their ship and
stand by.
Had Walt learned of some plan of Schwartzmann's? Chet could not answer
the question, but he moved the control rheostat over to the last notch.
From the body of the craft came an unending roar of a generator where
nothing moved; where only the terrific, explosive impact of bursting
detonite drove out from the stern to throw them forward. "A good little
ship," Chet had said of this cruiser of Diane's; and he nodded approval
now of a ground-speed detector whose quivering needle had left the 500
mark. It touched 600, crept on, and trembled at 700 miles an hour with
the top speed of the ship.
There was a position-finder in the little control-room, and Chet's gaze
returned to it often to see the pinpoint of light that crept slowly
across the surface of a globe. It marked their ever-changing location,
and it moved unerringly toward a predetermined goal.
* * * * *
It was a place of ice and snow and bleak outcropping of half-covered
rocks where he descended. Lost from the world, a place where even the
high levels seldom echoed to the roar of passing ships, it had been a
perfect location for their "shop." Here he and Walt had assembled their
mystery ship.
He had to search intently over the icy waste to find the exact location;
a dim red glow from a hidden sun shone like pale fire across distant
black hills. But the hills gave him a bearing, and he landed at last
beside a vaguely outlined structure, half hidden in drifting snow.
The dual fans dropped him softly upon the snow ground and Chet, as he
walked toward the great locked doors, was trembling from other causes
than the cold. Would the ship be there? He was suddenly a-quiver with
excitement at the thought of what this ship meant--the adventure, the
exploration that lay ahead.
The doors swung back. In the warm and lighted room was a cylinder of
silvery white. Its bow ended in a gaping port where a mighty exhaust
could roar forth to check the ship's forward speed; there were other
ports ranged about the gleaming body. Above the hull a control-room
projected flatly; its lookouts shone in the brilliance of the nitron
illuminator that flooded the room with light....
Chet Bullard was breathless as he moved on and into the room. His wild