Brood of the Dark Moon
experiences that had seemed but a weird dream were real again. The Dark
Moon was real! And they would be going back to it!
* * * * *
The muffled beating of great helicopters was sounding in his ears;
outside, a ship was landing. This would be Harkness coming to join him;
yet, even as the thought flashed through his mind, it was countered by a
quick denial. To the experienced hearing of the Master Pilot this sound
of many fans meant no little craft. It was a big ship that was landing,
and it was coming down fast. The blue-striped monster looming large in
the glow of the midnight sun was not entirely a surprise to Chet's
staring eyes.
But--blue-striped! The markings of the Schwartzmann line!--He had hardly
sensed the danger when it was upon him.
A man, heavy and broad of frame, was giving orders. Only once had Chet
seen this Herr Schwartzmann, but there was no mistaking him now. And he
was sending a squad of rushing figures toward the man who struggled to
close a great door.
Chet crouched to meet the attack. He was outnumbered; he could never win
out. But the knowledge of his own helplessness was nothing beside that
other conviction that flooded him with sickening certainty--
A hoax!--that was what they had called Walt's story; Schwartzmann had so
named it, and now Schwartzmann had been the one to fool them; the
message was a fake--a bait to draw him out; and he, Chet, had taken the
bait. He had led Schwartzmann here; had delivered their ship into his
hands--
He landed one blow on the nearest face; he had one glimpse of a clubbed
weapon swinging above him--and the world went dark.
CHAPTER II
_Into Space_
A pulsing pain that stabbed through his head was Chet's first conscious
impression. Then, as objects came slowly into focus before his eyes, he
knew that above him a ray of light was striking slantingly through the
thick glass of a control-room lookout.
Other lookouts were black, the dead black of empty space. Through them,
sparkling points of fire showed here and there--suns, sending their
light across millions of years to strike at last on a speeding ship.
But, from the one port that caught the brighter light, came that
straight ray to illumine the room.
"Space," thought Chet vaguely. "That is the sunlight of space!"
He was trying to arrange his thoughts in some sensible sequence. His
head!--what had happened to his head?... And then he remembered. Again
he saw a clubbed weapon descending, while the face of Schwartzmann
stared at him through bulbous eyes....
And this control-room where he lay--he knew in an instant where he was.
It was his own ship that was roaring and trembling beneath him--his and
Walt Harkness'--it was flying through space! And, with the sudden
realization of what this meant, he struggled to arise. Only then did he
see the figure at the controls.
The man was leaning above an instrument board; he straightened to stare
from a rear port while he spoke to someone Chet could not see.
"There's more of 'em coming!" he said in a choked voice. "_Mein Gott!_
Neffer can we get away!"
* * * * *
He fumbled with shaking hands at instruments and controls; and now Chet
saw his chalk-white face and read plainly the terror that was written
there. But the cords that cut into his own wrists and ankles reminded
him that he was bound; he settled back upon the floor. Why struggle? If
this other pilot was having trouble let him get out of it by
himself--let him kill his own snakes!
That the man was having trouble there was no doubt. He looked once more
behind him as if at something that pursued; then swung the ball-control
to throw the ship off her course.
The craft answered sluggishly, and Chet Bullard grinned where he lay
helpless upon the floor; for he knew that his ship should have been
thrown crashingly aside with such a motion as that. The answer was
plain: the flask of super-detonite was exhausted; here was the last
feeble explosion of the final atoms of the terrible explosive that was
being admitted to the generator. And to cut in another flask meant the
opening of a hidden valve.
Chet forgot the pain of his swelling hands to shake with suppressed
mirth. This was going to be good! He forgot it until, through a lookout,
he saw a writhing, circling fire that wrapped itself about the ship and
jarred them to a halt.
The serpents!--those horrors from space that had come with the coming of
the Dark Moon! They had disrupted the high-level traffic of the world;
had seized great, liners; torn their way in; stripped them of every
living thing, and let the empty shells crash back to earth. Chet had
forgotten or he had failed to realize the height at which this new pilot
was flying. Only speed could save them; the monsters, with their snouts
that were great suction-cups, could wrench off a metal door--tear out
the glass from a port!
* * * * *
He saw the luminous mass crush itself against a forward lookout and felt
the jar of its body against their ship. Soft and vaporous, these
cloud-like serpents seemed as they drifted through space; yet the
impact, when they struck, proved that this new matter had mass.
Chet saw the figure at the controls stagger back and cower in fear; the
man's bullet-shaped head was covered by his upraised arms: there was
some horror outside those windows that his eyes had no wish to see.
Beside him the towering figure of Schwartzmann appeared; he had sprung
into Chet's view, and he screamed orders at the fear-stricken pilot.
"Fool! Swine!" Schwartzmann was shouting. "Do something! You said you
could fly this ship!" In desperation he leaped forward and reached for
the controls himself.
Chet's blurred faculties snapped sharply to attention. That yellow glow
against the port--the jarring of their ship--it meant instant
destruction once that searching snout found some place where it could
secure a hold. If the air-pressure within the ship were released; if
even a crack were opened!--
"Here, you!" he shouted to the frantic Schwartzmann who was jerking
frenziedly at the controls that no longer gave response. "Cut these
ropes!--leave those instruments alone, you fool!" He was suddenly
vibrant with hate as he realized what this man had done: he had struck
him, Chet, down as he would have felled an animal for butchery; he had
stolen their ship; and now he was losing it. Chet hardly thought of his
own desperate plight in his rage at this threat to their ship, and at
Schwartzmann's inability to help himself.
"Cut these ropes!" he repeated. "Damn it all, turn me loose; I can fly
us out!" He added his frank opinion of Schwartzmann and all his men. And
Schwartzmann, though his dark face flushed angrily red for one instant,
leaped to Chet's side and slashed at the cords with a knife.
The room swam before Chet's dizzy eyes as he came to his feet. He half
fell, half drew himself full length toward the valve that he alone knew.
Then again he was on his feet, and he gripped at the ball-control with
one hand while he opened a master throttle that cut in this new supply
of explosive.
* * * * *
The room had been silent with the silence of empty space, save only for
the scraping of a horrid body across the ship's outer shell. The silence
was shattered now as if by the thunder of many guns. There was no time
for easing themselves into gradual flight. Chet thrust forward on the
ball-control, and the blast from their stern threw the ship as if it had
been fired from a giant cannon.
The self-compensating floor swung back and up; Chet's weight was almost
unbearable as the ship beneath him leaped out and on, and the terrific
blast that screamed and thundered urged this speeding shell to greater
and still greater speed. And then, with the facility that that speed
gave, Chet's careful hands moved a tiny metal ball within its magnetic
cage, and the great ship bellowed from many ports as it followed the
motion of that ball.
Could an eye have seen the wild, twisting flight, it must have seemed as
if pilot and ship had gone suddenly mad. The craft corkscrewed and
whirled; it leaped upward and aside; and, as the glowing mass was thrown
clear of the lookout, Chet's hand moved again to that maximum forward
position, and again the titanic blast from astern drove them on and out.
There were other shapes ahead, glowing lines of fire, luminous masses
like streamers of cloud that looped themselves into contorted forms and
writhed vividly until they straightened into sharp lines of speed that
bore down upon the fleeing craft and the human food that was escaping
these hungry snouts.
Chet saw them dead ahead; he saw the outthrust heads, each ending in a
great suction-cup, the row of disks that were eyes blazing above, and
the gaping maw below. He altered their course not a hair's breadth as he
bore down upon them, while the monsters swelled prodigiously before his
eyes. And the thunderous roar from astern came with never a break, while
the ship itself ceased its trembling protest against the sudden blast
and drove smoothly on and into the waiting beasts.
There was a hardly perceptible thudding jar. They were free! And the
forward lookouts showed only the brilliant fires of distant suns and one
more glorious than the rest that meant a planet.
* * * * *
Chet turned at last to face Schwartzmann and his pilot where they had
clung helplessly to a metal stanchion. Four or five others crept in from
the cabin aft; their blanched faces told of the fear that had gripped
them--fear of the serpents; fear, too, of the terrific plunges into
which the ship had been thrown. Chet Bullard drew the metal control-ball
back into neutral and permitted himself the luxury of a laugh.
"You're a fine bunch of highwaymen," he told Schwartzmann; "you'll steal
a ship you can't fly; then come up here above the R. A. level and get
mixed up with those brutes. What's the idea? Did you think you would
just hop over to the Dark Moon? Some little plan like that in your
mind?"
Again the dark, heavy face of Schwartzmann flushed deeply; but it was
his own men upon whom he turned.
"You," he told the pilot--"you were so clever; you would knock this man
senseless! You would insist that you could fly the ship!"
The pilot's eyes still bulged with the fear he had just experienced.
"But, Herr Schwartzmann, it was you who told me--"
A barrage of unintelligible words cut his protest short. Schwartzmann
poured forth imprecations in an unknown tongue, then turned to the
others.
"Back!" he ordered. "Bah!--such men! The danger it iss over--yess! This
pilot, he will take us back safely."
He turned his attention now to the waiting Chet. "Herr Bullard, iss it
not--yess?"
He launched into extended apologies--he had wanted a look at this so
marvelous ship--he had spied upon it; he admitted it. But this murderous
attack was none of his doing; his men had got out of hand; and then he
had thought it best to take Chet, unconscious as he was and return with
him where he could have care.
* * * * *
And Chet Bullard kept his eyes steadily upon the protesting man and said
nothing, but he was thinking of a number of things. There was Walt's
warning, "this Schwartzmann means mischief," and the faked message that
had brought him from the hospital to get the ship from its hiding place;
no, it was too much to believe. But Chet's eyes were unchanging, and he
nodded shortly in agreement as the other concluded.
"You will take us back?" Schwartzmann was asking. "I will repay you well