Brood of the Dark Moon
sprang for a ball-control and a firing key that released a hail of
little .50 caliber shells whose touch could plough the earth with the
ripping sword of an avenging god.
And later--a pulverous mass where a huge pyramid had been; smoking rock
in a great oval of shattered crumbling blocks; and, under all the cold
light of the stars, no sign of life but for a screaming, frantic mob of
ape-men, freed and fleeing from the broken bondage of masters now
crushed and dead!
All this Chet's straining, blood-shot eyes saw clearly before his hand
on the firing key relaxed, before he covered his eyes with trembling
hands as realization of their own release rushed overwhelmingly upon
him.
* * * * *
There were supplies of clothing in the ship--jackets, knee-length
trousers, silken blouses, boots, and even snug-fitting, fashionable
caps. Very unlike the ragged wanderers of the mountainous wastes were
the three who stood safely to windward of a spouting fumerole.
Mud, coughed hoarsely from a hot throat, and green, billowing
gas!--there was nothing now to show that here was the scene of a
companion's last moments. With heads bared to the steady breeze that had
been their undoing, they stood silent for long minutes.
Behind them, at a still safer distance, where no chance flicker of a
fire-god's finger might strike him down as it had the white man, a black
figure danced absurdly from foot to foot and indulged in unexpected
gyrations of joy.
For did not Towahg hold in one hand a most marvelous weapon of shining,
keen-edged metal, with a blade that was longer than his two hands? What
member of the tribe had ever seen such an indescribably glorious thing?
And, lacking the words even to propound that question, Towahg spun
himself in still tighter spirals of ecstasy.
Then there was the ax! Not made of stone but fashioned from the same
metal! And besides this a magic thing for which as yet there was not
even a name! It made flashing reflections in the sun; and if one held it
just so, and moved one's head before it, it showed a quite remarkably
attractive face of a man who was more than half ape--though Towahg had
never yet been able to catch that man beyond the magic that the white
men called "mirror."
He was still enthralled in his grotesque posturing when Diane looked
down from the floating ship.
"He'll be the Lord Chief Voodoo Man for the whole tribe," she said, and,
for the first time since they had stood at the fumerole, she managed to
smile. "And now," she asked, "are we off? What comes next?"
* * * * *
Chet's hand was on a metal ball in a crudely constructed cage of metal
bars. He looked at Harkness, and, at the other's almost imperceptible
nod, he moved the ball forward and up.
"We're off!" Harkness agreed. "Off for Earth--home! And it will look
good to us all. We will take up things where we left them when we were
interrupted: there's no Schwartzmann to fear now. We can show our ship
to the world--revolutionize all lines of transportation; and we can
plan--"
He failed to finish the sentence. To his reaching vision there were,
perhaps, more potentialities than he could compass in words.
And Chet Bullard, fingering the triple star on his blouse--the insignia
that had gone with him through all his hopes and despairs--looked out
into space and smiled.
Behind him a brilliant world went slowly dark; it became, after long
watching, a violet ring--then that was gone; the Dark Moon was lost in
the folds of enshrouding night. Ahead was an infinity of black space
where only the distant stars struck sparks of fire in the dark. And
still he smiled, as if, looking into the unplumbed depths, he, too, made
plans. But he moved the little ball within his hand and swung the bow
sights to bear upon a glorious globe--a brilliant, welcome beacon.
"Home it is!" he stated. "We're on our way!"
But there was needed the rising roar from astern that his words might
have meaning; it thundered sonorously its resounding hum in a crescendo
of power that brooked no denial, that threw them out and onward through
the velvet dark.
The End.