Brood of the Dark Moon
The scientist interrupted; he spoke in English that was carefully
precise.
"It should lie directly ahead--the Dark Moon. I have calculated with
exactness."
Walter Harkness had snatched up a pair of binoculars. He swung sharply
from lookout to lookout while he searched the heavens.
"It's damned lucky for us that you made a slight error," Chet was
telling the other.
"Error?" Kreiss challenged. "Impossible!"
"Then you and I are dead right this minute," Chet told him. "We are
crossing the orbit of the Dark Moon--crossing at twenty thousand miles
per hour relative to Earth, slightly in excess of that figure relative
to the Dark Moon. If it had been here--!" He had been watching Harkness
anxiously; he bit off his words as the binoculars were thrust into his
hand.
"There she comes," Harkness told him quietly; "it's up to you!"
But Chet did not need the glasses. With his unaided eyes he could see a
faint circle of violet light. It lay ahead and slightly above, and it
grew visibly larger as he watched. A ring of nothingness, whose outline
was the faintest shimmering halo; more of the distant stars winked out
swiftly behind that ghostly circle; it was the Dark Moon!--and it was
rushing upon them!
* * * * *
Chet swung an instrument upon it. He picked out a jet of violet light
that could be distinguished, and he followed it with the cross-hairs
while he twirled a micrometer screw; then he swiftly copied the reading
that the instrument had inscribed. The invisible disk with its ghostly
edges of violet was perceptibly larger as he slammed over the
control-ball to up-end them in air.
Under the control-room's nitron illuminator the cheeks of Herr Doktor
Kreiss were pale and bloodless as if his heart had ceased to function.
Harkness had moved quietly back to the side of Diane Delacouer and was
holding her two hands firmly in his.
The very air seemed charged with the quick tenseness of emotions.
Schwartzmann must have sensed it even before he saw the onrushing death.
Then he leaped to a lookout, and, an instant later, sprang at Chet
calmly fingering the control.
"Fool!" he screamed, "you would kill us all? Turn away from it! Away
from it!"
He threw himself in a frenzy upon the pilot. The detonite pistol was
still in his hand. "Quick!" he shouted. "Turn us!"
Harkness moved swiftly, but the scientist, Kreiss, was nearer; it was he
who smashed the gun-hand down with a quick blow and snatched at the
weapon.
Schwartzmann was beside himself with rage. "You, too?" he demanded.
"Giff it me--traitor!"
* * * * *
But the tall man stood uncompromisingly erect. "Never," he said, "have I
seen a ship large enough to hold two commanding pilots. I take your
orders in all things, Herr Schwartzmann--all but this. If we die--we
die."
Schwartzmann sputtered: "We should haff turned away. Even yet we might.
It will--it will--"
"Perhaps," agreed Kreiss, still in that precise, class-room voice,
"perhaps it will. But this I know: with an acceleration of one thousand
m.p.h. per hour as this young man with the badge of a Master Pilot says,
we cannot hope, in the time remaining, to overcome our present velocity;
we can never check our speed and build up a relatively opposite motion
before that globe would overwhelm us. If he has figured correctly, this
young man--if he has found the true resultant of our two motions of
approach--and if he has swung us that we may drive out on a line
perpendicular to the resultant--"
"I think I have," said Chet quietly. "If I haven't, in just a few
minutes it won't matter to any of us; it won't matter at all." He met
the gaze of Herr Doktor Kreiss who regarded him curiously.
"If we escape," the scientist told him, "you will understand that I am
under Herr Schwartzmann's command; I will be compelled to shoot you if
he so orders. But, Herr Bullard, at this moment I would be very proud to
shake your hand."
And Chet, as he extended his hand, managed a grin that was meant also
for the tense, white-faced Harkness and Diane. "I like to see 'em dealt
that way," he said, "--right off the top of the deck."
But the smile was erased as he turned back to the lookout. He had to
lean close to see all of the disk, so swiftly was the approaching globe
bearing down.
* * * * *
It came now from the side; it swelled larger and larger before his eyes.
Their own ship seemed unmoving; only the unending thunder of the
generator told of the frantic efforts to escape. They seemed hung in
space; their own terrific speed seemed gone--added to and fused with the
orbital motion of the Dark Moon to bring swiftly closer that messenger
of death. The circle expanded silently; became menacingly huge.
Chet was whispering softly to himself: "If I'd got hold of her an hour
sooner--thirty minutes--or even ten.... We're doing over twenty thousand
an hour combined speed, and we'll never really hit it.... We'll never
reach the ground."
He turned this over in his mind, and he nodded gravely in confirmation
of his own conclusions. It seemed somehow of tremendous importance that
he get this clearly thought out--this experience that was close ahead.
"Skin friction!" he added. "It will burn us up!"
He has a sudden vision of a flaming star blazing a hot trail through the
atmosphere of this globe; there would be only savage eyes to follow
it--to see the line of fire curving swiftly across the heavens.... He,
himself, was seeing that blazing meteor so plainly....
His eyes found the lookout; the globe was gone. They were close--close!
Only for the enveloping gas that made of this a dark moon, they would be
seeing the surface, the outlines of continents.
Chet strained his eyes--to see nothing! It was horrible. It had been
fearful enough to watch that expanding globe.... He was abruptly aware
that the outer rim of the lookout was red!
For Chet Bullard, time ceased to have meaning; what were seconds--or
centuries--as he stared at that glowing rim? He could not have told. The
outer shell of their ship--it was radiant--shining red-hot in the night.
And above the roar of the generator came a nerve-ripping shriek. A wind
like a blast from hell was battering and tearing at their ship.
"Good-by!" He has tried to call; the demoniac shrieking from without
smothered his voice. One arm was across his eyes in an unconscious
motion. The air of the little room was stifling. He forced his arm down;
he would meet death face to face.
* * * * *
The lookout was ringed with fire; it was white with the terrible white
of burning steel!--it was golden!--then cherry red! It was dying, as the
fire dies from glowing metal plunged in its tempering bath--or thrown
into the cold reaches of space!
In Chet's ears was the roar of a detonite motor. He tried to realize
that the lookouts were rimmed with black--cold, fireless black! An
incredible black! There were stars there like pinpoints of flame! But
conviction came only when he saw from a lookout in another wall a circle
of violet that shrank and dwindled as he watched....
A hand was gripping his shoulder; he heard the voice of Walter Harkness
speaking, while Walt's hand crept to raise the triple star that was
pinned to his blouse.
"Master Pilot of the World!" Harkness was saying. "That doesn't cover
enough territory, old man. It's another rating that you're entitled to,
but I'm damned if I know what it is."
And, for once, Chet's ready smile refused to form. He stared dumbly at
his friend; his eyes passed to the white face of Mademoiselle Diane;
then back to the controls, where his hand, without conscious volition,
was reaching to move a metal ball.
"Missed it!" he assured himself. "Hit the fringe of the air--just the
very outside. If we'd been twenty thousand feet nearer!... He was moving
the ball: their bow was swinging. He steadied it and set the ship on an
approximate course.
"A stern chase!" he said aloud. "All our momentum to be overcome--but
it's easy sailing now!"
He pushed the ball forward to the limit, and the explosion-motor gave
thunderous response.
CHAPTER IV
_The Return to the Dark Moon_
No man faces death in so shocking a form without feeling the effects.
Death had flicked them with a finger of flame and had passed them by.
Chet Bullard found his hands trembling uncontrollably as he fumbled for
a book and opened it. The tables of figures printed there were blurred
at first to his eyes, but he forced himself to forget the threat that
was past, for there was another menace to consider now.
And uppermost in his mind, when his thoughts came back into some
approximate order, was condemnation of himself for an opportunity that
was gone.
"I could have jumped him," he told himself with bitter self-reproach; "I
could have grabbed the pistol from Kreiss--the man was petrified." And
then Chet had to admit a fact there was no use of denying: "I was as
paralyzed as he was," he said, and only knew he had spoken aloud when he
saw the puzzled look that crossed Harkness' face.
Harkness and Diane had drawn near. In a far corner of the little room
Schwartzmann had motioned to Kreiss to join him; they were as far away
from the others as could be managed. Schwartzmann, Chet judged, needed
some scientific explanation of these disturbing events; also he needed
to take the detonite pistol from Kreiss' hand and jam it into his own
hand. His eyes, at Chet's unconscious exclamation, had come with instant
suspicion toward the two men.
"Forty-seven hours, Walt," the pilot said, and repeated it loudly for
Schwartzmann's benefit; "--forty-seven hours before we return to this
spot. We are driving out into space; we've crossed the orbit of the Dark
Moon, and we're doing twenty thousand miles an hour.
"Now we must decelerate. It will take twenty hours to check us to zero
speed; then twenty-seven more to shoot us back to this same point in
space, allowing, of course, for a second deceleration. The same figuring
with only slight variation will cover a return to the Dark Moon. As we
sweep out I can allow for the moon-motion, and we'll hit it at a safe
landing speed on the return trip this time."
* * * * *
Chet was paying little attention to his companion as he spoke. His eyes,
instead, were covertly watching the bulky figure of Schwartzmann. As he
finished, their captor shot a volley of questions at the scientist
beside him; he was checking up on the pilot's remarks.
Chet was leaning forward to stare intently from a lookout, his head was
close to that of Harkness.
"Listen, Walt," he whispered; "the Moon's out of sight; it's easy to
lose. Maybe I can't find it again, anyway--it's going to take some nice
navigating--but I'll miss it by ten thousand miles if you say so, and
even the Herr Doktor can't check me on it."
Chet saw the eyes of Schwartzmann grow intent. He reached ostentatiously
for another book of tables, and he seated himself that he might figure
in comfort.
"Just check me on this," he told Harkness.
He put down meaningless figures, while the man beside him remained
silent. Over and over he wrote them--would Harkness never reach a
decision?--over and over, until--
"I don't agree with that," Harkness told him and reached for the stylus
in Chet's hand. And, while he appeared to make his own swift
computations, there were words instead of figures that flowed from his
pen.
"Only alternative: return to Earth," he wrote. "Then S will hold off;
wait in upper levels. Kreiss will give him new bearings. We'll shoot out
again and do it better next time. Kreiss is nobody's fool. S means to
maroon us on Moon--kill us perhaps. He'll get us there, sure. We might