Brigands of the Moon by Ray Cummings (early readers TXT) 📖

I'd ask the Commander to let some of us take her back."

"Shut up, Billy. She is smashed."

"You all agreed to things as they are," Johnny said shortly. "We all took the same chances—voluntarily."

A dynamic little fellow, this Johnny Grantline. Short of temper sometimes, but always just, and a perfect leader of men. In stature he was almost as small as Snap. But he was thick-set, with a smooth-shaven, keen-eyed, square-jawed face; and a shock of brown tousled hair. A man of thirty-five, though the decision of his manner, the quiet dominance of his voice made him seem older. He stood up now, surveying the blue lit glassite room with its low ceiling close overhead. He was bow-legged; in movement he seemed to roll with a stiff-legged gait like some sea captains of former days on the deck of his swaying ship. Odd looking figure! Heavy flannel shirt and trousers, boots heavily weighted, and bulky metal-loaded belt strapped about his waist.

He grinned at Swenson. "When the time comes to divide this treasure, everyone will be happy, Ole."

The treasure was estimated to be the equivalent of ninety millions in gold leaf. A hundred and ten millions in the gross as it now stood, with twenty millions to be deducted by the Federated Refiners for reducing it to the standard purity for commercial use. Ninety millions, with only a million and a half to come off for expedition expenses, and the Planetara's share another million. A nice little stake.[123]

Grantline strode across the room with his rolling gait.

"Cheer up, boys. Who's winning there? I say, you fellows—"

An audiphone buzzer interrupted him, a call from the duty man in the instrument room of the nearby building.

Grantline clicked the receiver. The room fell into silence. Any call was unusual—nothing ever happened here in the camp.

The duty man's voice sounded over the room.

"Signals coming! Not clear. Will you come over, Commander?"

Signals!

It was never Grantline's way to enforce needless discipline. He offered no objection when every man in the camp rushed through the connecting passages. They crowded the instrument room where the tense duty man sat bending over his radio receivers. The mirrors were swaying.

The duty man looked up and met Grantline's gaze.

"I ran it up to the highest intensity, Commander. We ought to get it—"

"Low scale, Peter?"

"Yes. Weakest infra-red. I'm bringing it up, even though it uses too much of our power."

"Get it," said Grantline shortly.

"I got one slight television swing a minute ago—then it faded. I think it's the Planetara."

"Planetara!" The crowding group of men chorused. How could it be the Planetara?

But it was. The call came in presently. Unmistakably the Planetara, turned back now from her course to Ferrok-Shahn.

"How far away, Peter?"

The duty man consulted the needles of his dial scale. "Close! Very weak infra-red. But close. Around thirty thousand miles, maybe. It's Snap Dean calling."

The Planetara here within thirty thousand miles! Excitement and pleasure swept the room. The Planetara had for so long been awaited eagerly![124]

The excitement communicated to Grantline. It was unlike him to be incautious; yet now with no thought save that some unforeseen and pleasing circumstance had brought the Planetara ahead of time; incautious, Grantline certainly was!

"Raise the barrage."

"I'll go. My suit is here."

A willing volunteer rushed out to the shed.

"Can you send, Peter?" Grantline demanded.

"Yes. With more power."

"Use it."

Johnny dictated the message of his location which we received. In his incautious excitement he ignored the secret code.

An interval passed. No message had come from us—just Snap's routine signal in the weak infra-red, which we hoped Grantline would not get.

The men crowding Grantline's instrument room waited in tense silence. Then Grantline tried the television again. Its current weakened the lights with the drain upon the distributors, and cooled the room with a sudden deadly chill as the Erentz insulating system slowed down.

The duty man looked frightened. "You'll bulge out our walls, Commander. The internal pressure—"

"We'll chance it."

They picked up the image of the Planetara. It shone clear on the grid—the segment of star-field with a tiny cigar-shaped blob. Clear enough to be unmistakable. The Planetara! Here now, over the Moon, almost directly overhead, poised at what the altimeter scale showed to be a fraction under thirty thousand miles.

The men gazed in awed silence. The Planetara coming....

But the altimeter needle was motionless. The Planetara was hanging poised.

A sudden gasp went about the room. The men stood with whitening faces, gazing at the Planetara's image. And at the[125] altimeter's needle. It was moving now. The Planetara was descending. But not with an orderly swoop.

The grid showed the ship clearly. The bow tilted up, then dipped down. But then in a moment it swung up again. The ship turned partly over. Righted itself. Then swayed again, drunkenly.

The watching men were stricken in horrified silence. The Planetara's image momentarily, horribly, grew larger. Swaying. Then turning completely over, rotating slowly end over end.

The Planetara, out of control, was falling!

XXI

On the Planetara, in the radio room, Snap and I stood with Moa's weapon upon us. Miko held Anita. Triumphant, possessive. Then as she struggled, a gentleness came to this strange Martian giant. Perhaps he really loved her. Looking back on it, I sometimes think so.

"Anita, do not fear me." He held her away from him. "I would not harm you. I want your love." Irony came to him. "And I thought I had killed you. But it was only your brother."

He partly turned. I was aware of how alert was his attention. He grinned. "Hold them, Moa. Don't let them do anything foolish.... So, little Anita, you were masquerading to spy on me? That was wrong of you."

Anita had not spoken. She held herself tensely away from Miko. She had flashed me a look, just one. What horrible mischance to have brought on this catastrophe!

The completion of Grantline's message had come unnoticed by us all. We remained tense.

"Look! Grantline again!" Snap said abruptly.

But the mirrors were steadying. We had no recording mechanism; the rest of the message was lost.

No further message came. There was an interval while[126] Miko waited. He held Anita in the hollow of his great arm.

"Quiet, little bird. Do not fear me. I have work to do, Anita, this is our great adventure. We will be rich, you and I. All the luxuries these worlds can offer—all for us when this is over. Careful, Moa! This Haljan has no wit."

Well could he say it. I, who had been so witless as to let this come upon us! Moa's weapon prodded me. Her voice hissed at me with all the venom of a reptile enraged. "So that was your game, Gregg Haljan! And I was so graceless as to admit love for you!"

Snap murmured in my ear, "Don't move, Gregg! She's reckless."

She heard it. She whirled on him. "We have lost George Prince, it seems. Well, we will survive without his scientific knowledge. And you, Dean—and this Haljan, mark me—I will kill you both if you cause trouble!"

Miko was gloating. "Don't kill them yet, Moa. What was it Grantline said? Near the crater of Archimedes. Ring us down, Haljan. We'll land."

He signaled the turret, gave Coniston the Grantline message, and audiphoned it below to Hahn. The news spread about the ship. The bandits were jubilant.

"We'll land now, Haljan. Come, Anita and I will go with you to the turret."

I found my voice. "To what destination?"

"Near Archimedes. The Apennine side. Keep well away from the Grantline camp. We will probably sight it as we descend."

There was no trajectory needed. We were almost over Archimedes now. I could drop us with a visible, instrumental course. My mind was whirling with a confusion of thoughts. What could we do? I met Snap's gaze.

"Ring us down, Gregg," he said quietly.

I nodded. I pushed Moa's weapon away. "You don't need that—"

We went to the turret. Moa watched me and Snap, a grim, cold Amazon. She avoided looking at Anita, whom[127] Miko helped down the ladders with a strange mixture of courtierlike grace and amused irony. Coniston stared at Anita.

"I say, not George Prince? The girl—"

"No time for explanations," Miko commanded. "It's the girl, masquerading as her brother. Get below, Coniston. Haljan takes us down."

The astounded Englishman continued to gaze at Anita. But he said, "I mean to say, where to on the Moon? Not to encounter Grantline at once, Miko? Our equipment is not ready."

"Of course not. We will land well away—"

The reluctant Coniston left us. I took the controls. Miko, still holding Anita as though she were a child, sat beside me. "We will watch him, Anita. A skilled fellow at this sort of work."

I rang my signals for the shifting of the gravity plates. The answer should have come from below within a second or two. But it did not. Miko regarded me with his great bushy eyebrows upraised.

"Ring again, Haljan."

I duplicated. No answer. The silence was ominous.

Miko muttered, "That accursed Hahn. Ring again!"

I sent the imperative emergency demand.

No answer. A second or two. Then all of us in the turret were startled. Transfixed. From below came a sudden hiss. It sounded in the turret; it came from the shifting room call grid. The hissing of the pneumatic valves of the plate shifters in the lower control room. The valves were opening; the plates automatically shifting into neutral, and disconnecting!

An instant of startled silence. Miko may have realized the significance of what had happened. Certainly Snap and I did. The hissing ceased. I gripped the emergency plate shifter switch which hung over my head. Its disc was dead! The plates were dead in neutral: in the position they[128] were placed only in port! And their shifting mechanisms were imperative!

I was on my feet. "We're in neutral!"

The Moon disc moved visibly as the Planetara lurched. The vault of the heavens was slowly swinging.

Miko ripped out a heavy oath. "Haljan! What is this?"

The heavens turned with a giant swoop. The Moon was over us. It swung in a dizzying arc. Overhead, then back past our stern; under us, then appearing over our bow.

The Planetara had turned over. Upending. Rotating, end over end.

For a moment I think all of us in the turret stood and clung. The Moon disc, the Earth, Sun and all the stars were swinging past our windows. So horribly dizzying. The Planetara seemed lurching and tumbling. But it was an optical effect only. I stared with grim determination at my feet. The turret seemed to steady.

Then I looked again. That horrible swoop of all the heavens! And the Moon, as it went past seemed expanded. We were falling! Out of control, with the Moon gravity pulling us down!

"That accursed Hahn—"

A moment only had passed. My fancy that the Moon disc was enlarged was merely the horror of my imagination. We had not fallen far enough for that.

But we were falling. Unless I could do something, we would crash upon the Lunar surface.

Anita, killed in this turret: the end of everything—every hope.

Action came to me. I gasped, "Miko, you stay here! The controls are dead! You stay here and hold Anita—"

I ignored Moa's weapon. Snap thrust her away.

"We're falling, you fool—let us alone!"

Miko gasped, "Can you—check us? What happened?"

"I don't know—"

I stood clinging. This dizzying whirl. From the audiphone grid Coniston's voice sounded.[129]

"I say, Haljan, something's wrong. Hahn doesn't signal."

The lookout in the forward tower was clinging to our window. On the deck below our turret a member of the crew appeared, stood lurching for a moment, then shouted and ran, swaying, aimless. From the lower hull corridors our grids sounded with the tramping of running steps. Panic among the crew was spreading over the ship. A chaos below deck.

I pulled at the emergency switch again. Dead....

"Snap, we must get down. The signals."

Coniston's voice came like a scream from the grid. "Hahn is dead. The controls are broken!"

I shouted, "Miko, hold Anita! Come on, Snap!"

We clung to the ladders. Snap was behind me. "Careful, Gregg! Good God!"

This dizzying whirl. I tried not to look. The deck under me was now a blurred kaleidoscope of swinging patches of moonlight and shadow.

We reached the deck. It seemed that from the turret Anita's voice followed us. "Be careful!"

Once inside the ship, our senses steadied. With the rotating, reeling heavens shut out, there were only the shouts and tramping steps of the panic-stricken crew to mark that there was anything amiss. That, and a pseudo sensation of lurching caused by the pulsing of gravity—a pull when the Moon was beneath our hull to combine its forces with our magnetizers; a lightening, when it was overhead. A throbbing, pendulum lurch!

We ran down to the corridor incline. A white-faced member of the crew came running up.

"What's happened, Haljan? What's happened?"

"We're falling!" I gripped him. "Get below. Come