Brood of the Dark Moon
for what inconvenience we have caused. The ship, you will return it
safely to the place where it was?"
And Chet, after making and discarding a score of plans, knew there was
nothing else he could do. He swung the little metal ball into a
sharply-banked turn. The straight ray of light from an impossibly
brilliant sun struck now on a forward lookout; it shone across the
shoulder of a great globe to make a white, shining crescent as of a
giant moon. It was Earth; and Chet brought the bow-sights to bear on
that far-off target, while again the thunderous blast was built up to
drive them back along the trackless path on which they had come. But he
wondered, as he pressed forward on the control, what the real plan of
this man, Schwartzmann, might be....
* * * * *
Less than half an hour brought them to the Repelling Area, and Chet felt
the upward surge as he approached it. Here, above this magnetic field
where gravitation's pull was nullified, had been the air-lanes for fast
liners. Empty lanes they were now; for the R. A., as the flying
fraternity knew it--the Heaviside Layer of an earlier day--marked the
danger line above which the mysterious serpents lay in wait. Only the
speed of Chet's ship saved them; more than one of the luminous monsters
was in sight as he plunged through the invisible R. A. and threw on
their bow-blast strongly to check their fall.
Then, as he set a course that would take them to that section of the
Arctic waste where the ship had been, he pondered once more upon the
subject of this Schwartzmann of the shifty eyes and the glib tongue and
of his men who had "got out of hand" and had captured this ship.
"Why in thunder are we back here?" Chet asked himself in perplexity.
"This big boy means to keep the ship; and, whatever his plans may have
been before, he will never stop short of the Dark Moon now that he has
seen the old boat perform. Then why didn't he keep on when he was
started? Had the serpents frightened him back?"
He was still mentally proposing questions to which there seemed no
answer when he felt the pressure of a metal tube against his back. The
voice of Schwartzmann was in his ears.
"This is a detonite pistol"--that voice was no longer unctuous and
self-deprecating--"one move and I'll plant a charge inside you that will
smash you to a jelly!"
* * * * *
There were hands that gripped Chet before he could turn; his arms were
wrenched backward; he was helpless in the grip of Schwartzmann's men.
The former pilot sprang forward.
"Take control, Max!" Schwartzmann snapped; but he followed it with a
question while the pilot was reaching for the ball. "You can fly it for
sure, Max?"
The man called Max answered confidently.
"_Ja wohl!_" he said with eager assurance. "Up top there would have been
no trouble yet for that _verdammt, verloren_ valve. That one
experimental trip is enough--I fly it!"
Those who held Chet were binding his wrists. He was thrown to the floor
while his feet were tied, and, as a last precaution, a gag was forced
into his mouth. Schwartzmann left this work to his men. He paid no
attention to Chet; he was busy at the radio.
He placed the sending-levers in strange positions that would effect a
blending of wave lengths which only one receiving instrument could pick
up. He spoke cryptic words into the microphone, then dropped into a
language that was unfamiliar to Chet. Yet, even then, it was plain that
he was giving instructions, and he repeated familiar words.
"Harkness," Chet heard him say, and, "--Delacouer--_ja!_--Mam'selle
Delacouer!"
Then, leaving the radio, he said, "Put my ship inside the hangar;" and
the pilot, Max, grounded their own ship to allow the men to leap out and
float into the big building the big aircraft in which Schwartzmann had
come.
"Now close the doors!" their leader ordered. "Leave everything as it
was!" And to the pilot he gave added instructions: "There iss no air
traffic here. You will to forty thousand ascend, und you will wait over
this spot." Contemptuously he kicked aside the legs of the bound man
that he might walk back into the cabin.
* * * * *
The take-off was not as smooth as it would have been had Chet's slim
hands been on the controls; this burly one who handled them now was not
accustomed to such sensitivity. But Chet felt the ship lift and lurch,
then settle down to a swift, spiralling ascent. Now he lay still as he
tried to ponder the situation.
"Now what dirty work are they up to?" he asked himself. He had seen a
sullen fury on the dark face of Herr Schwartzmann as he spoke the names
of Walt and Diane into the radio. Chet remembered the look now, and he
struggled vainly with the cords about his wrists. Even a detonite pistol
with its tiny grain of explosive in the end of each bullet would not
check him--not when Walt and Diane were endangered. And the expression
on that heavy, scowling face had told him all too clearly that some real
danger threatened.
But the cords held fast on his swollen wrists. His head was still
throbbing; and even his side, not entirely healed, was adding to the
torment that beat upon him--beat and beat with his pulsing blood--until
the beating faded out into unconsciousness....
Dimly he knew they were soaring still higher as their radio picked up
the warning of an approaching patrol ship; vaguely, he realized that
they descended again to a level of observation. Chet knew in some corner
of his brain that Schwartzmann was watching from an under lookout with a
powerful glass, and he heard his excited command:
"Down--go slowly, down!... They are landing.... They have entered the
hangar. Now, down with it. Max! Down! down!"
* * * * *
The plunging fall of the ship roused Chet from his stupor. He felt the
jolt of the clumsy landing despite the snow-cushioned ground; he heard
plainly the exclamations from beyond an open port--the startled oath in
Walter Harkness' voice, and the stinging scorn in the words of Diane
Delacouer.
Herr Schwartzmann had been in the employ of Mademoiselle Delacouer, but
he was taking orders no longer. There was a sound of scuffling feet, and
once the thud of a blow.... Then Chet watched with heavy, hopeless eyes
as the familiar faces of Diane and Walt appeared in the doorway. Their
hands were bound; they, too, were threatened with a slim-barreled pistol
in the hands of the smirking, exultant Schwartzmann.
A tall, thin-faced man whom Chet had not seen before followed them into
the room. The newcomer was motioned forward now, as Schwartzmann called
an order to the pilot:
"All right; now we go. Max! Herr Doktor Kreiss will give you the
bearings; he knows his way among the stars."
Herr Schwartzmann doubled over in laughing appreciation of his own
success before he straightened up and regarded his captives with cold
eyes.
"Such a pleasure!" he mocked; "such charming passengers to take with me
on my first trip into space; this ship, it iss not so goot. I will build
better ships later on; I will let you see them when I shall come to
visit you."
He laughed again at sight of the wondering looks in the eyes of the
three; stooping, he jerked the gag from Chet's mouth.
"You do not understand," he exclaimed. "I should haff explained. You
see, _meine guten Freunde_, we go--ach!--you have guessed it already! We
go to the Dark Moon. I am pleased to take you with me on the trip out;
but coming back, I will have so much to bring--there will be no room for
passengers.
"I could have killed you here," he said; and his mockery gave place for
a moment to a savage tone, "but the patrol ships, they are everywhere.
But I have influence here und there--I arranged that your flask of gas
should be charged with explosive, I discredited you, and yet I could not
so great a risk take as to kill you all.
"So came inspiration! I called your foolish young friend here from the
hospital. I ordered him to go at once to the ship hidden where I could
not find, and I signed the name of Herr Harkness."
* * * * *
Chet caught the silent glances of his friends who could yet smile
hopefully through the other emotions that possessed them. He ground his
teeth as the smooth voice of Herr Schwartzmann went on:
"He led me here: the young fool! Then I sent for you--und this time I
signed his name--und you came. So simple!
"Und now we go in _my_ ship to _my_ new world. And," he added savagely,
"if one of you makes the least trouble, he will land on the Dark
Moon--yess!--but he will land hard, from ten thousand feet up!"
The great generator was roaring. To Chet came the familiar lift of the
R. A. effect. They were beyond the R. A.; they were heading out and away
from Earth; and his friends were captives through his own unconscious
treachery, carried out into space in their own ship, with the hands of
an enemy gripping the controls....
Chet's groan, as he turned his face away from the others who had tried
to smile cheerfully, had nothing to do with the pain of his body. It was
his mind that was torturing him.
But he muttered broken words as he lay there, words that had reference
to one Schwartzmann. "I'll get him, damn him! I'll get him!" he was
promising himself.
And Herr Schwartzmann, who was clever, would have proved his cleverness
still more by listening. For a Mister Pilot of the World does not get
his rating on vain boasts. He must know first his flying, his ships and
his air--but he is apt to make good in other ways as well.
CHAPTER III
_Out of Control_
Walter Harkness had built this ship with Chet's help. They had designed
it for space-travel. It was the first ship to leave the Earth under its
own power, reach another heavenly body, and come back for a safe
landing. But they had not installed any luxuries for the passengers.
In the room where the three were confined, there were no
self-compensating chairs such as the high-liners used. But the
acceleration of the speeding ship was constant, and the rear wall became
their floor where they sat or paced back and forth. Their bonds had been
removed, and one of Harkness' hands was gripping Diane's where they sat
side by side. Chet was briskly limbering his cramped muscles.
He glanced at the two who sat silent nearby, and he knew what was in
their minds--knew that each was thinking of the other, forgetting their
own danger; and it was these two who had saved his life on their first
adventure out in space.
Walt--one man who was never spoiled by his millions; and Diane--straight
and true as they make 'em! Some way, somehow, they must be saved--thus
ran his thoughts--but it looked bad for them all. Schwartzmann?--no use
kidding themselves about that lad; he was one bad hombre. The best they
could hope for was to be marooned on the Dark Moon--left there to live
or to die amid those savage surroundings; and the worst that might
happen--! But Chet refused to think of what alternatives might occur to
the ugly, distorted mind of the man who had them at his mercy.
There was no echo of these thoughts when he spoke; the smile that
flashed across his lean face brought a brief response from the
despondent countenances of his companions.
"Well," Chet observed, and ran his hand through a tangle of blond hair,
"I have heard that the Schwartzmann lines give service, and I reckon
I heard right. Here we were wanting to go back to the Dark Moon,
and,"--he paused to point toward a black portlight where occasional
lights flashed past--"I'll say we're going; going somewhere at least.
All I hope is that that Maxie boy doesn't find the Dark Moon at about
ten thousand per. He may be a great little skipper on a nice, slow,