The moon era
I increased the force of my own leaps.
We rounded an arm of the tangle of scrub, came in sight of the rock. A
jutting mass of black granite. Its sides leaped up steep and bare from
a mass of green creepers. Green moss crowned it. Thirty feet high it
was. Perhaps a hundred in length.
Our pursuers were no longer merely marbles when we saw the rock. They
had grown to the size of baseballs. Rolling swiftly after us.
The Mother glided on, a tireless strength in her graceful tawny body.
And I leaped desperately, straining to drive myself as fast as possible.
We turned. Broke through the thick masses of verdure to the rock. Stood
beneath its sheer wall, grim and black.
The red spheres were no more than a hundred yards behind. A sudden
rumble of drums came from them, when we halted by the rock. I could see
the dark ovals on their glistening red armor, that marked their eyes
and the ends of their concealed tentacles.
"I can never climb that," the Mother was piping.
"I can leap up!" I cried. "Earth muscles. I'll carry you up."
"Better that one should live than both of us die," she said. "I can
delay them, until you reach the top."
She started gliding back, toward the swiftly rolling spheres.
I bent, snatched her up.
It was the first time that I had felt her body. The golden fur was
short, and very soft. The rounded body beneath it was firm, muscular,
warm and vibrant. It throbbed with life. I felt that a strange sudden
surge of energy was coming into me from contact with it.
I threw her quickly over my shoulder, ran forward a few steps, leaped
desperately up at that sheer wall of black granite.
My own weight, on the moon, was only thirty pounds. The Mother,
compact and strong though she was, weighed no more than a third as
much. Combined, our weight was then some forty pounds. But, as she had
realized, it was an apparently hopeless undertaking to attempt to hurl
that mass to the top of the cliff before us.
At first I thought I should make it, as we soared swiftly up and up,
toward the crown of red moss. Then I realized that we should strike the
face of the cliff before we reached the top.
The face of the black rock was sheer. But my searching eyes caught a
little projecting ledge. As we fell against the vertical cliff, my
fingers caught that ledge. A moment of dreadful uncertainty, for the
ledge was mossy, slippery.
CHAPTER VII
The Eternal Ones Follow!
My left hand slipped suddenly off. But the right held. I drew myself
upward. The Mother slipped from my shoulder to the top of the rock.
Grasped my left hand with one of the white mantles, drew me to safety.
Trembling from the strain of it, I got to my feet upon the soft
scarlet moss, and surveyed our fortress. The moss-covered surface was
almost level, a score of feet wide at the middle, where we stood, and
a hundred in length. On all sides the walls were steep, though not
everywhere so steep as where I had leaped up.
"Thank you, Adventurer," the Mother whistled musically. "You have saved
my life, and the lives of all my people to come."
"I was merely repaying a debt," I told her.
We watched the red globes. Very soon they reached the foot of the
cliff. The rumble of drums floated up from the group of them. And they
scattered, surrounding the butte.
Presently we discovered that they were attempting to climb up. They
were not strong enough to make the leap as I had done. But they were
finding fissures and ledges upon which their long tentacles could find
a grasp, drawing themselves up.
We patrolled the sides of the rock regularly, and I shot those which
seemed to be making the best progress. I was able to aim carefully at
an eye or the base of a tentacle. And usually a single shot was enough
to send the climber rolling back down to the green jungle.
The view from our stronghold was magnificent. On one side was an
endless wall of yellow scrub, with crimson mountains towering above
it in the distance. On the other, the green tangle of the luxuriant
creepers swept down to the wide silver river. Yellow and green mottled
the slope that stretched up to scarlet hills beyond.
We held out for an entire day.
The sun sank beyond the red mountains when we had been upon the butte
only an hour or two. A dark night would have terminated our adventures
on the spot. But fortunately the huge white disk of the earth rose
almost immediately after sunset, and gave sufficient light throughout
the night to enable us to see the spheres that persisted in attempting
to climb the walls of our fort.
It was late on the following afternoon that I used my last shot. I
turned to the Mother with the news that I could no longer keep the red
spheres from the walls, that they would soon be overwhelming us.
"It does not matter," she piped. "The Eternal Ones have found us again."
Looking nervously about, I saw the bars of ghostly light once more.
Seven thin upright pillars of silvery radiance, standing in a ring
about us. They had exactly the same appearance as those from which we
had fled at the pool.
"I have felt them watching for some time," she said. "Before, we
escaped by running away. Now that is impossible."
Calmly she coiled her tawny length. The white mantles were folded
against her golden fur. Her small head sank upon her coils, blue crest
erect above it. Her violet eyes were grave, calm, alert. They reflected
neither fear nor despair.
The seven pillars of light about us became continually brighter.
One of the red spheres, with black tentacles extended, dragged itself
upon the top of the butte, with us. The Mother saw it, but paid it no
heed. It was outside the ring formed by the seven pillars. I stood
still, within that ring, beside the Mother, watching--waiting.
The seven columns of light grew brighter.
Then it seemed that they were no longer merely light, but solid metal.
At the same instant, I was blinded with a flash of light, intolerably
bright. A splintering crash of sound smote my ears, sharp as the crack
of a rifle, infinitely louder. A wave of pain flashed over my body,
as if I had received a severe electric shock. I had a sense of abrupt
movement, as if the rock beneath my feet had been jarred by a moonquake.
Then we were no longer upon the rock.
I was standing upon a broad, smooth metal plate. About its edge
rose seven metal rods, shining with a white light, their positions
corresponding exactly to the seven ghostly pillars. The Mother was
coiled on the metal plate beside me, her violet eyes still cool and
quiet, revealing no surprise.
But I was dazed with astonishment.
For we were no longer in the jungle. The metal plate upon which I stood
was part of a complex mechanism, of bars and coils of shining wire, and
huge tubes of transparent crystal, which stood in the center of a broad
open court, paved with bright, worn metal.
About the court towered buildings. Lofty, rectangular edifices of metal
and transparent crystal. They were not beautiful structures. Nor were
they in good repair. The metal was covered with ugly red oxide. Many of
the crystal panels were shattered.
Along the metal-paved streets, and on the wide courtyard about us,
things were moving. Not human beings. Not evidently, living things
at all. But grotesque things of metal. Machines. They had no common
standard of form; few seemed to resemble any others. They had
apparently been designed with a variety of shapes, to fill a variety of
purposes. But many had a semblance to living things that was horrible
mockery.
"This is the land of the Eternal Ones," the Mother piped to me softly.
"These are the beings that destroyed my people, seeking new brains for
their worn-out machines."
"But how did we get here?" I demanded.
* * * * *
"Evidently they have developed means of transmitting matter through
space. A mere technical question. Resolving matter into energy,
transmitting the energy without loss on a light beam, condensing it
again into the original atoms.
"It is not remarkable that the Eternal Ones can do such things. When
they gave up all that is life, for such power. When they sacrificed
their bodies for machines. Should they not have some reward?"
"It seems impossible--"
"It must, to you. The science of your world is young. If you have
television after a few hundred years, what will you not have developed
after a hundred thousand?
"Even to the Eternal Ones, it is new. It is only in the time of my own
life that they have been able to transmit objects between two stations,
without destroying their identity. And they have never before used this
apparatus, with carrier rays that could reach out to disintegrate our
bodies upon the rock, and create a reflecting zone of interference that
would focus the beam here--"
Her piping notes broke off sharply. Three grotesque machines were
advancing upon us, about the platform. Queer bright cases, with levels
and wheels projecting from them. Jointed metal limbs. Upon the top of
each was a transparent crystal dome, containing a strange, shapeless
gray mass. A soft helpless gray thing, with huge black staring eyes.
The brain in the machine! The Eternal One.
Horrible travesties of life, were those metal things. At first they
appeared almost alive, with their quick, sure movements. But mechanical
sounds came from them, little clatterings and hummings. They were stark
and ugly.
And their eyes roughened my skin with dread. Huge, black, and cold.
There was nothing warm in them, nothing human, nothing kind. They were
as emotionless as polished lenses. And filled with menace.
"They shall not take me alive!" the Mother piped, lifting herself
beside me on tawny coils.
Then, as if something had snapped like a taut wire in my mind, I ran at
the nearest of the Eternal Ones, my eyes searching swiftly for a weapon.
It was one of the upright metal rods that I seized. Its lower end was
set in an oddly shaped mass of white crystal, which I took to be an
insulator of some kind. It shattered when I threw my weight on the rod.
And the rod came free in my hands, the white glow vanishing from it, so
I saw it was copper.
Thus I was provided with a massive metal club, as heavy as I could
readily swing. On earth, it would have weighed far more than I could
lift.
Raising it over my head, I sprang in front of the foremost of the
advancing machines--a case of bright metal, moving stiffly upon metal
limbs, with a dome-shaped shell of crystal upon it, which housed the
helpless gray brain, with its black, unpleasant eyes. I saw little
tentacles--feeble translucent fingers--reaching from the brain to touch
controlling levers.
The machine paused before me. An angry, insistent buzzing came from it.
A great, hooked, many-jointed metal lever reached out from it suddenly,
as if to seize me.
And I struck, bringing the copper bar down upon the transparent dome
with all my strength. The crystal was tough. But the inertia of the
copper bar was as great as it would have been upon the earth; its
hundreds of pounds came down with a force indeed terrific.
The dome was shattered. And the gray brain smashed into red pulp.
The Eternal Ones would certainly have been able to seize the Mother,
without suffering any harm. And probably any other creature of the
moon, that might have been brought with her on the matter-transmitting
beam. But they were not equipped for dealing with a being whose muscles
were the stronger ones of earth.
The two fellows of the Eternal One I had destroyed fell upon me. Though
the copper bar was not very heavy, it was oddly hard to swing, because
of its great inertia. The metal limbs of the third machine closed
about my body, even as I crushed the brain in the second with another
smashing blow.