Brood of the Dark Moon
as well go now."
* * * * *
Chet had seen a movement across the room. "Let's start all over again,"
he broke in abruptly. He covered the writing with a clean sheet of paper
where he set down more figures. He was well under way when
Schwartzmann's quick strides brought him towering above them. Again the
detonite pistol was in evidence; its small black muzzle moved steadily
from Harkness to Chet.
"For your life--such as is left of it--you may thank Herr Doktor
Kreiss," he told Chet. "I thought at first you would have attempted to
kill us." His smile, as he regarded them, seemed to Chet to be entirely
evil. "You were near death twice, my dear Herr Bullard; and the danger
is not entirely removed.
"'Forty-seven hours' you have said; in forty-seven hours you will land
us on the Dark Moon. If you do not,"--he raised the pistol
suggestively--"remember that the pilot, Max, can always take us back to
Earth. You are not indispensable."
Chet looked at the dark face and its determined and ominous scowl.
"You're a cheerful sort of soul, aren't you?" he demanded. "Do you have
any faint idea of what a job this is? Do you know we will shoot another
two hundred thousand miles straight out before I can check this ship?
Then we come back; and meanwhile the Dark Moon has gone on its way. Had
you thought that there's a lot of room to get lost in out here?"
"Forty-seven hours!" said Schwartzmann. "I would advise that you do not
lose your way."
Chet shot one quizzical glance at Harkness.
"That," he said, "makes it practically unanimous."
Schwartzmann, with an elaborate show of courtesy, escorted Diane
Delacouer to a cabin where she might rest. At a questioning look between
Diane and Harkness, their captor reassured them.
"Mam'selle shall be entirely safe," he said. "She may join you here
whenever she wishes. As for you,"--he was speaking to Harkness--"I will
permit you to stay here. I could tie you up but this iss not necessary."
And Harkness must have agreed that it was indeed unnecessary, for either
Kreiss or Max, or some other of Schwartzmann's men, was at his side
continuously from that moment on.
* * * * *
Chet would have liked a chance for a quiet talk and an exchange of
ideas. It seemed that somewhere, somehow, he should be able to find an
answer to their problem. He stared moodily out into the blackness ahead,
where a distant star was seemingly their goal. Harkness stood at his
side or paced back and forth in the little room, until he threw himself,
at last, upon a cot.
And always the great stern-blast roared; muffled by the insulated walls,
its unceasing thunder came at last to be unheard. To the pilot there was
neither sound nor motion. His directional sights were unswervingly upon
that distant star ahead. Seemingly they were suspended, helpless and
inert, in a black void. But for the occasional glowing masses of strange
living substance that flashed past in this ocean of space, he must
almost have believed they were motionless--a dead ship in a dead, black
night.
But the luminous things flashed and were gone--and their coming,
strangely, was from astern; they flicked past and vanished up ahead.
And, by this, Chet knew that their tremendous momentum was unchecked.
Though he was using the great stern blast to slow the ship, it was
driving stern-first into outer space. Nor, for twenty hours, was there a
change, more than a slackening of the breathless speed with which the
lights went past.
Twenty hours--and then Chet knew that they were in all truth hung
motionless, and he prayed that his figures that told him this were
correct.... More timeless minutes, an agony of waiting--and a
dimly-glowing mass that was ahead approached their bow, swung off and
vanished far astern. And, with its going, Chet knew that the return trip
was begun.
He gave Harkness the celestial bearing marks and relinquished the helm.
"Full speed ahead as you are," he ordered; "then at nineteen-forty on
W.S. time, we'll cut it and ease on bow repulsion to the limit."
And, despite the strangeness of their surroundings, the ceaseless,
murmuring roar of the exhaust, the weird world outside, where endless
space was waiting for man's exploration--despite the deadly menace that
threatened, Chet dropped his head upon his outflung arms and slept.
* * * * *
To his sleep-drugged brain it was scarcely a moment until a hand was
dragging at his shoulder.
"Forty-seven hours!" the voice of Schwartzmann was saying.
And: "Some navigating!" Harkness was exclaiming in flattering amazement.
"Wake up, Chet! Wake up! The Dark Moon's in sight. You've hit it on the
nose, old man: she isn't three points off the sights!"
The bow-blast was roaring full on. Ahead of them Chet's sleepy eyes
found a circle of violet; and he rubbed his eyes savagely that he might
take his bearings on Sun and Earth.
As it had been before, the Earth was a giant half-moon; like a
mirror-sphere it shot to them across the vast distance the reflected
glory of the sun. But the globe ahead was a ghostly world. Its black
disk was lost in the utter blackness of space. It was a circle, marked
only by the absence of star-points and by the halo of violet glow that
edged it about.
Chet cut down the repelling blast. He let the circle enlarge, then swung
the ship end for end in mid-space that the more powerful stern exhaust
might be ready to counteract the gravitational pull of the new world.
Again those impalpable clouds surrounded them. Here was the enveloping
gas that made this a dark moon--the gas, if Harkness' theory was
correct, that let the sun's rays pass unaltered; that took the light
through freely to illumine this globe, but that barred its return
passage as reflected light.
Black--dead black was the void into which they were plunging, until the
darkness gave way before a gentle glow that enfolded their ship. The
golden light enveloped them in growing splendor. Through every lookout
it was flooding the cabin with brilliant rays, until, from below them,
directly astern of the ship, where the thundering blast checked their
speed of descent, emerged a world.
* * * * *
And, to Chet Bullard, softly fingering the controls of the first ship of
space--to Chet Bullard, whose uncanny skill had brought the tiny speck
that was their ship safely back from the dark recesses of the
unknown--there came a thrill that transcended any joy of the first
exploration.
Here was water in great seas of unreal hue--and those seas were his!
Vast continents, ripe for adventure and heavy with treasure--and they,
too, were his! His own world--his and Diane's and Walt's! Who was this
man, Schwartzmann, that dared dream of violating their possessions?
A slender tube pressed firmly, uncompromisingly, into his back to give
the answer to his question. "Almost I wish you had missed it!" Herr
Schwartzmann was saying. "But now you will land; you will set us down in
some place that you know. No tricks, Herr Bullard! You are clever, but
not clever enough for that. We will land, yess, where you know it is
safe."
From the lookout, the man stared for a moment with greedy eyes; then
brought his gaze back to the three. His men, beside Harkness and Diane,
were alert; the scientist, Kreiss, stood close to Chet.
"A nice little world," Schwartzmann told them. "Herr Harkness, you have
filed claims on it; who am I to dispute with the great Herr Harkness?
Without question it iss yours!"
He laughed loudly, while his eyes narrowed between creasing wrinkles of
flesh. "You shall enjoy it," he told them; "--all your life."
And Chet, as he caught the gaze of Harkness and Diane, wondered how long
this enjoyment would last. "All your life!" But this was rather
indefinite as a measure of time.
CHAPTER V
_A Desperate Act_
The ship that Chet Bullard and Harkness had designed had none of the
instruments for space navigation that the ensuing years were to bring.
Chet's accuracy was more the result of that flyer's sixth sense--that
same uncanny power that had served aviators so well in an earlier day.
But Chet was glad to see his instruments registering once more as he
approached a new world.
Even the sonoflector was recording; its invisible rays were darting
downward to be reflected back again from the surface below. That
absolute altitude recording was a joy to read; it meant a definite
relationship with the world.
"I'll hold her at fifty thousand," he told Harkness. "Watch for some
outline that you can remember from last time."
There was an irregular area of continental size; only when they had
crossed it did Harkness point toward an outflung projection of land.
"That peninsula," he exclaimed; "we saw that before! Swing south and
inland.... Now down forty, and east of south.... This ought to be the
spot."
Perhaps Harkness, too, had the flyer's indefinable power of orientation.
He guided Chet in the downward flight, and his pointing finger aimed at
last at a cluster of shadows where a setting sun brought mountain ranges
into strong relief. Chet held the ship steady, hung high in the air,
while the quick-spreading mantle of night swept across the world below.
And, at last, when the little world was deep-buried in shadow, they saw
the red glow of fires from a hidden valley in the south.
"Fire Valley!" said Chet, "Don't say anything about me being a
navigator. Wait, you've brought us home, sure enough."
"Home!" He could not overcome this strange excitement of a homecoming to
their own world. Even the man who stood, pistol in hand, behind him was,
for the moment, forgotten.
Valley of a thousand fires!--scene of his former adventures! Each
fumerole was adding its smoky red to the fiery glow that illumined the
place. There were ragged mountains hemming it in; Chet's gaze passed on
to the valley's end.
Down there, where the fires ceased, there would be water; he would land
there! And the ship from Earth slipped down in a long slanting line to
cushion against its under exhausts, whose soft thunder echoed back from
a bare expanse of frozen lava. Then its roaring faded. The silvery shape
sank softly to its rocky bed as Chet cut the motor that had sung its
song of power since the moment when Schwartzmann had carried him
off--taken him from that frozen, forgotten corner of an incredibly
distant Earth.
* * * * *
"Iss there air?" Schwartzmann demanded. Chet came to himself again with
a start: he saw the man peering from the lookout to right and to left as
if he would see all that there was in the last light of day.
"Strange!" he was grumbling to himself. "A strange place! But those
hills--I saw their markings--there will be metals there. I will explore;
later I return: I will mine them. Many ships I must build to establish a
line. The first transportation line of space. Me, Jacob Schwartzmann--I
will do it. I will haff more than anyone else on Earth; I will make them
all come to me crawling on their bellies!"
Chet saw the hard shine of the narrowed eyes. For an instant only, he
dared to consider the chance of leaping upon the big, gloating figure.
One blow and a quick snatch for the pistol!... Then he knew the folly of
such a plan: Schwartzmann's men were armed; he would be downed in
another second, his body a shattered, jellied mass.
Schwartzmann's thoughts had come back to the matter of air; he motioned
Chet and Harkness toward the port.
Diane Delacouer had joined them and she thrust herself quickly between
the two men. And, though Schwartzmann made a movement as if he would
snatch her back, he thought better of it and motioned for the portal to