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Brood of the Dark Moon

Charles Willard Diffin

CHAPTER I

_The Message_

[Sidenote: Once more Chet, Walt and Diane are united in a wild ride to the Dark Moon--but this time they go as prisoners of their deadly enemy Schwartzmann.]

In a hospital in Vienna, in a room where sunlight flooded through ultraviolet permeable crystal, the warm rays struck upon smooth walls the color of which changed from hot reds to cool yellow or gray or to soothing green, as the Directing Surgeon might order. An elusive blending of tones now seemed pulsing with life; surely even a flickering flame of vitality would be blown into warm livingness in such a place.

Even the chart case in the wall glittered with the same clean, brilliant hues from its glass and metal door. The usual revolving paper disks showed white beyond the glass. They were moving; and the ink lines grew to tell a story of temperature and respiration and of every heart-beat.

On the identification-plate a name appeared and a date: "Chet Bullard--23 years. Admitted: August 10, 1973." And below that the ever-changing present ticked into the past in silent minutes: "August 15, 1973; World Standard Time: 10:38--10:39--10:40--"

For five days the minutes had trickled into a rivulet of time that flowed past a bandaged figure in the bed below--a silent figure and unmoving, as one for whom time has ceased. But the surgeons of the Allied Hospital at Vienna are clever.

10:41--10:42--The bandaged figure stirred uneasily on a snow-white bed....

* * * * *

A nurse was beside him in an instant. Was her patient about to recover consciousness? She examined the bandages that covered a ragged wound in his side, where all seemed satisfactory. To all appearances the man who had moved was unconscious still; the nurse could not know of the thought impressions, blurred at first, then gradually clearing, that were flashing through his mind.

Flashing; yet, to the man who struggled to comprehend them, they passed laggingly in review: one picture followed another with exasperating slowness....

Where was he? What had happened? He was hardly conscious of his own identity....

There was a ship ... he held the controls ... they were flying low.... One hand reached fumblingly beneath the soft coverlet to search for a triple star that should be upon his jacket. A triple star: the insignia of a Master Pilot of the World!--and with the movement there came clearly a realization of himself.

Chet Bullard, Master Pilot; he was Chet Bullard ... and a wall of water was sweeping under him from the ocean to wipe out the great Harkness Terminal buildings.... It was Harkness--Walt Harkness--from whom he had snatched the controls.... To fly to the Dark Moon, of course--

What nonsense was that?... No, it was true: the Dark Moon had raised the devil with things on Earth.... How slowly the thoughts came! Why couldn't he remember?...

Dark Moon!--and they were flying through space.... They had conquered space; they were landing on the Dark Moon that was brilliantly alight. Walt Harkness had set the ship down beautifully--

* * * * *

Then, crowding upon one another in breath-taking haste, came clear recollection of past adventures:

They were upon the Dark Moon--and there was the girl, Diane. They must save Diane. Harkness had gone for the ship. A savage, half-human shape was raising a hairy arm to drive a spear toward Diane, and he, Chet, was leaping before her. He felt again the lancet-pain of that blade....

And now he was dying--yes, he remembered it now--dying in the night on a great, sweeping surface of frozen lava.... It was only a moment before that he had opened his eyes to see Harkness' strained face and the agonized look of Diane as the two leaned above him.... But now he felt stronger. He must see them again....

He opened his eyes for another look at his companions--and, instead of black, star-pricked night on a distant globe, there was dazzling sunlight. No desolate lava-flow, this; no thousand fires that flared and smoked from their fumeroles in the dark. And, instead of Harkness and the girl, Diane, leaning over him there was a nurse who laid one cool hand upon his blond head and who spoke soothingly to him of keeping quiet. He was to take it easy--he would understand later--and everything was all right.... And with this assurance Chet Bullard drifted again into sleep....

* * * * *

The blurring memories had lost their distortions a week later, as he sat before a broad window in his room and looked out over the housetops of Vienna. Again he was himself, Chet Bullard, with a Master Pilot's rating; and he let his eyes follow understandingly the moving picture of the world outside. It was good to be part of a world whose every movement he understood.

Those cylinders with stubby wings that crossed and recrossed the sky; their sterns showed a jet of thin vapor where a continuous explosion of detonite threw them through the air. He knew them all: the pleasure craft, the big, red-bellied freighters, the sleek liners, whose multiple helicopters spun dazzlingly above as they sank down through the shaft of pale-green light that marked a descending area.

That one would be the China Mail. Her under-ports were open before the hold-down clamps had gripped her; the mail would pour out in an avalanche of pouches where smaller mailships waited to distribute the cargo across the land.

And the big fellow taking off, her hull banded with blue, was one of Schwartzmann's liners. He wondered what had become of Schwartzmann, the man who had tried to rob Harkness of his ship; who had brought the patrol ships upon them in an effort to prevent their take-off on that wild trip.

For that matter, what had become of Harkness? Chet Bullard was seriously disturbed at the absence of any word beyond the one message that had been waiting for him when he regained consciousness. He drew that message from a pocket of his dressing gown and read it again:

"Chet, old fellow, lie low. S has vanished. Means mischief. Think best not to see you or reveal your whereabouts until our position firmly established. Have concealed ship. Remember, S will stop at nothing. Trying to discredit us, but the gas I brought will fix all that. Get yourself well. We are planning to go back, of course. Walt."

Chet returned the folded message to his pocket. He arose and walked about the room to test his returning strength: to remain idle was becoming increasingly difficult. He wanted to see Walter Harkness, talk with him, plan for their return to the wonder-world they had found.

* * * * *

Instead he dropped again into his chair and touched a knob on the newscaster beside him. A voice, hushed to the requirements of these hospital precincts spoke softly of market quotations in the far corners of the earth. He turned the dial irritably and set it on "World News--General." The name of Harkness came from the instrument to focus Chet's attention.

"Harkness makes broad claims," the voice was saying. "Vienna physicists ridicule his pretensions.

"Walter Harkness, formerly of New York, proprietor of Harkness Terminals, whose great buildings near New York were destroyed in the Dark Moon wave, claims to have reached and returned from the Dark Moon.

"Nearly two months have passed since the new satellite crashed into the gravitational field of Earth, its coming manifested by earth shocks and a great tidal wave. The globe, as we know, was invisible. Although still unseen, and only a black circle that blocks out distant stars, it is visible in the telescopes of the astronomers; its distance and its orbital motion have been determined.

"And now this New Yorker claims to have penetrated space; to have landed on the Dark Moon; and to have returned to Earth. Broad claims, indeed, especially so in view of the fact that Harkness refuses to submit his ship for examination by the Stratosphere Control Board. He has filed notice of ownership, thus introducing some novel legal technicalities, but, since space-travel is still a dream of the future, there will be none to dispute his claims.

"Of immediate interest is Harkness' claim to have discovered a gas that is fatal to the serpents of space. The monsters that appeared when the Dark Moon came and that attacked ships above the Repelling Area are still there. All flying is confined to the lower levels; fast world-routes are disorganized.

"Whether or not this gas, of which Harkness has a sample, came from the Dark Moon or from some laboratory on Earth is of no particular importance. Will it destroy the space-serpents? If it does this, our hats are off to Mr. Walter Harkness; almost will we be inclined to believe the rest of his story--or to laugh with him over one of the greatest hoaxes ever attempted."

Chet had been too intent upon the newscast to heed an opening door at his back....

* * * * *

"How about it, Chet?" a voice was asking. "Would you call it a hoax or the real thing?" And a girl's voice chimed in with exclamations of delight at sight of the patient, so evidently recovering.

"Diane!" Chet exulted, "--and Walt!--you old son-of-a-gun!" He found himself clinging to a girl's soft hand with one of his, while with the other he reached for that of her companion. But Walt Harkness' arm went about his shoulders instead.

"I'd like to hammer you plenty," Harkness was saying, "and I don't even dare give you a friendly slam on the back. How's the side where they got you with the spear?--and how are you? How soon will you be ready to start back? What about--"

Diane Delacouer raised her one free hand to stop the flood of questions. "My dear," she protested, "give Chet a chance. He must be dying for information."

"I was dying for another reason the last time I saw you," Chet reminded her, "--up on the Dark Moon. But it seems that you got me back here in time for repairs. And now what?" His nurse came into the room with extra chairs; Chet waited till she was gone before he repeated: "Now what? When do we go back?"

Harkness did not answer at once. Instead he crossed to the newscaster in its compact, metal case. The voice was still speaking softly; at a touch of a switch it ceased, and in the silence came the soft rush of sound that meant the telautotype had taken up its work. Beneath a glass a paper moved, and words came upon it from a hurricane of type-bars underneath. The instrument was printing the news story as rapidly as any voice could speak it.

Harkness read the words for an instant, then let the paper pass on to wind itself upon a spool. It had still been telling of the gigantic hoax that this eccentric American had attempted and Harkness repeated the words.

"A hoax!" he exclaimed, and his eyes, for a moment, flashed angrily beneath the dark hair that one hand had disarranged. "I would like to take that facetious bird out about a thousand miles and let him play around with the serpents we met. But, why get excited? This is all Schwartzmann's doing. The tentacles of that man's influence reach out like those of an octopus."

* * * * *

Chet ranged himself alongside. Tall and slim and blond, he contrasted strongly with this other man, particularly in his own quiet self-control as against Harkness' quick-flaring anger.

"Take it easy, Walt," he advised. "We'll show them. But I judge that you have been razzed a bit. It's a pretty big story for them to swallow without proof. Why didn't you show them the ship? Or why didn't you let Diane and me back up your yarn? And you haven't answered my other questions: when do we go back?"

Harkness took the queries in turn.

"I didn't show the old boat," he explained, "because I'm not ready for that yet. I want it kept dark--dark as the Dark Moon. I want to do my preliminary work there before Schwartzmann and his experts see our ship. He would duplicate it in a hurry and be on our trail.

"And now for our plans. Well, our there in space the Dark Moon is waiting. Have you realized, Chet, that we own that world--you and Diane and I? Small--only half the size of our old moon--but what a place! And it's ours!

"Back in history--you remember?--an ambitious lad named Alexander sighed for more worlds to conquer. Well, we're going Alexander one better--we've found the world. We're the first ever to go out into space and return again.

"We'll go back there, the three of us. We will take no others along--not yet. We will explore and make our plans for development; and we will keep it to ourselves until we are ready to hold it against any opposition.

"And now, how soon can you go? Your injury--how soon will you be well enough?"

"Right now," Chet told him laconically; "today, if you say the word. They've got me welded together so I'll hold, I reckon. But where's the ship? What have you done--" He broke off abruptly to listen--

* * * * *

To all three came a muffled, booming roar. The windows beside them shivered with the thud of the distant explosion; they had not ceased their trembling before Harkness had switched on the news broadcast. And it was a minute only until the news-gathering system was on the air.

"Explosion at the Institute of Physical Science!" it stated. "This is Vienna broadcasting. An explosion has just occurred. We are giving a preliminary announcement only. The laboratories of the Scientific Institute of this city are destroyed. A number of lives have been lost. The cause has not been determined. It is reported that the laboratories were beginning analytical work, on the so-called Harkness Dark Moon gas--

"Confirmation has just been radioed to this station. Dark Moon gas exploded on contact with air. The American, Harkness, is either a criminal or a madman; he will be apprehended at once. This confirmation comes from Herr Schwartzmann of Vienna who left the Institute only a few minutes before the explosion occurred--"

And, in the quiet of a hospital room, Walter Harkness drew a long breath and whispered; "Schwartzmann! His hand is everywhere.... And that sample was all I had.... I must leave at once--go back to America."

He was halfway to the door--he was almost carrying Diane Delacouer with him--when Chet's quiet tones brought him up short.

"I've never seen you afraid," said Chet; and his eyes were regarding the other man curiously; "but you seem to have the wind up, as the old flyers used to say, when it comes to Schwartzmann."

* * * * *

Harkness looked at the girl he held so tightly, then grinned boyishly at Chet. "I've someone else to be afraid for now," he said.

His smile faded and was replaced by a look of deep concern. "I haven't told you about Schwartzmann," he said; "haven't had time. But he's poison, Chet. And he's after our ship."

"Where is the ship; where have you hidden it? Tell me--where?"

Harkness looked about him before he whispered sharply: "Our old shop--up north!"

He seemed to feel that some explanation was due Chet. "In this day it seems absurd to say such things," he added; "but this Schwartzmann is a throw-back--a conscienceless scoundrel. He would put all three of us out of the way in a minute if he could get the ship. _He_ knows we have been to the Dark Moon--no question about that--and he wants the wealth he can imagine is there.

"We'll all plan to leave; I'll radio you later. We'll go back to the Dark Moon--" He broke off abruptly as the door opened to admit the nurse. "You'll hear from me later," he repeated; and hurried Diane Delacouer from the room.

But he returned in a moment to stand again at the door--the nurse was still in the room. "In case you feel like going for a hop," he told Chet casually, "Diane's leaving her ship here for you. You'll find it up above--private landing stage on the roof."

Chet answered promptly, "Fine; that will go good one of these days." All this for the benefit of listening ears. Yet even Chet would have been astonished to know that he would be using that ship within an hour....

* * * * *

He was standing at the window, and his mind was filled, not with thoughts of any complications that had developed for his friend Harkness, but only of the adventures that lay ahead of them both. The Dark Moon!--they had reached it, indeed; but they had barely scratched the surface of that world of mystery and adventure. He was wild with eagerness to return--to see again that new world, blazing brightly beneath the sun; to see the valley of fires--and he had a score to settle with the tribe of ape-men, unless Harkness had finished them off while he, himself, lay unconscious.... Yes, there seemed little doubt of that; Walt would have paid the score for all of them.... He seemed actually back in that world to which his thoughts went winging across the depths of space. The buzz of a telephone recalled him.

It was the hospital office, he found, when he answered. There was a message--would Mr. Bullard kindly receive it on the telautotype--lever number four, and dial fifteen-point-two--thanks.... And Chet depressed a key and adjusted the instrument that had been printing the newscast.

The paper moved on beneath the glass, and the type-bars clicked more slowly now. From some distant station that might be anywhere on or above the earth, there was coming a message.

The frequency of that sending current was changed at some central office; it was stepped down to suit the instrument beside him. And the type was spelling out words that made the watching man breathless and intent--until he tore off the paper and leaped for the call signal that would summon the nurse. Through her he would get his own clothes, his uniform, the triple star that showed his rating and his authority in every air-level of the world.

That badge would have got him immediate attention on any landing field. Now, on the flat roof, with steady, gray eyes and a voice whose very quietness accentuated its imperative commands, Chet had the staff of the hospital hangars as alert as if their alarm had sounded a general ambulance call.

* * * * *

Straight into the sky a red beacon made a rigid column of light; a radio sender was crackling a warning and a demand for "clear air." From the forty level, a patrol ship that had caught the signal came corkscrewing down the red shaft to stand by for emergency work.... Chet called her commander from the cabin of Diane's ship. A word of thanks--Chet's number--and a dismissal of the craft. Then the white lights signaled "all clear" and the hold-down levers let go with a soft hiss--

The feel of the controls was good to his hands; the ship roared into life. A beautiful little cruiser, this ship of Diane's; her twin helicopters lifted her gracefully into the air. The column of red light had changed to blue, the mark of an ascending area; Chet touched a switch. A muffled roar came from the stern and the blast drove him straight out for a mile; then he swung and returned. He was nosing up as he touched the blue--straight up--and he held the vertical climb till the altimeter before him registered sixty thousand.

Traffic is north-bound only on the sixty-level, and Chet set his ship on a course for the frozen wastes of the Arctic; then he gave her the gun and nodded in tight-lipped satisfaction at the mounting thunder that answered from the stern.

Only then did he read again the message on a torn fragment of telautotype paper. "Harkness," was the signature; and above, a brief warning and a call--"Danger--must leave at once. You get ship and stand by. I will meet you there." And, for the first time, Chet found time to wonder at this danger that had set the hard-headed, hard-hitting Walt Harkness into a flutter of nerves.

* * * * *

What danger could there be in this well-guarded world? A patrol-ship passed below him as he asked himself the question. It was symbolic of a world at peace; a world too busy with its own tremendous development to find time for wars or makers of war. What trouble could this man Schwartzmann threaten that a word to the Peace Enforcement Commission would not quell? Where could he go to elude the inescapable patrols?

And suddenly Chet saw the answer to that question--saw plainly where Schwartzmann could go. Those vast reaches of black space! If Schwartzmann had their ship he could go where they had gone--go out to the Dark Moon.... And Harkness had warned Chet to get their ship and stand by.

Had Walt learned of some plan of Schwartzmann's? Chet could not answer the question, but he moved the control rheostat over to the last notch.

From the body of the craft came an unending roar of a generator where nothing moved; where only the terrific, explosive impact of bursting detonite drove out from the stern to throw them forward. "A good little ship," Chet had said of this cruiser of Diane's; and he nodded approval now of a ground-speed detector whose quivering needle had left the 500 mark. It touched 600, crept on, and trembled at 700 miles an hour with the top speed of the ship.

There was a position-finder in the little control-room, and Chet's gaze returned to it often to see the pinpoint of light that crept slowly across the surface of a globe. It marked their ever-changing location, and it moved unerringly toward a predetermined goal.

* * * * *

It was a place of ice and snow and bleak outcropping of half-covered rocks where he descended. Lost from the world, a place where even the high levels seldom echoed to the roar of passing ships, it had been a perfect location for their "shop." Here he and Walt had assembled their mystery ship.

He had to search intently over the icy waste to find the exact location; a dim red glow from a hidden sun shone like pale fire across distant black hills. But the hills gave him a bearing, and he landed at last beside a vaguely outlined structure, half hidden in drifting snow.

The dual fans dropped him softly upon the snow ground and Chet, as he walked toward the great locked doors, was trembling from other causes than the cold. Would the ship be there? He was suddenly a-quiver with excitement at the thought of what this ship meant--the adventure, the exploration that lay ahead.

The doors swung back. In the warm and lighted room was a cylinder of silvery white. Its bow ended in a gaping port where a mighty exhaust could roar forth to check the ship's forward speed; there were other ports ranged about the gleaming body. Above the hull a control-room projected flatly; its lookouts shone in the brilliance of the nitron illuminator that flooded the room with light....

Chet Bullard was breathless as he moved on and into the room. His wild experiences that had seemed but a weird dream were real again. The Dark Moon was real! And they would be going back to it!

* * * * *

The muffled beating of great helicopters was sounding in his ears; outside, a ship was landing. This would be Harkness coming to join him; yet, even as the thought flashed through his mind, it was countered by a quick denial. To the experienced hearing of the Master Pilot this sound of many fans meant no little craft. It was a big ship that was landing, and it was coming down fast. The blue-striped monster looming large in the glow of the midnight sun was not entirely a surprise to Chet's staring eyes.

But--blue-striped! The markings of the Schwartzmann line!--He had hardly sensed the danger when it was upon him.

A man, heavy and broad of frame, was giving orders. Only once had Chet seen this Herr Schwartzmann, but there was no mistaking him now. And he was sending a squad of rushing figures toward the man who struggled to close a great door.

Chet crouched to meet the attack. He was outnumbered; he could never win out. But the knowledge of his own helplessness was nothing beside that other conviction that flooded him with sickening certainty--

A hoax!--that was what they had called Walt's story; Schwartzmann had so named it, and now Schwartzmann had been the one to fool them; the message was a fake--a bait to draw him out; and he, Chet, had taken the bait. He had led Schwartzmann here; had delivered their ship into his hands--

He landed one blow on the nearest face; he had one glimpse of a clubbed weapon swinging above him--and the world went dark.

CHAPTER II

_Into Space_

A pulsing pain that stabbed through his head was Chet's first conscious impression. Then, as objects came slowly into focus before his eyes, he knew that above him a ray of light was striking slantingly through the thick glass of a control-room lookout.

Other lookouts were black, the dead black of empty space. Through them, sparkling points of fire showed here and there--suns, sending their light across millions of years to strike at last on a speeding ship. But, from the one port that caught the brighter light, came that straight ray to illumine the room.

"Space," thought Chet vaguely. "That is the sunlight of space!"

He was trying to arrange his thoughts in some sensible sequence. His head!--what had happened to his head?... And then he remembered. Again he saw a clubbed weapon descending, while the face of Schwartzmann stared at him through bulbous eyes....

And this control-room where he lay--he knew in an instant where he was. It was his own ship that was roaring and trembling beneath him--his and Walt Harkness'--it was flying through space! And, with the sudden realization of what this meant, he struggled to arise. Only then did he see the figure at the controls.

The man was leaning above an instrument board; he straightened to stare from a rear port while he spoke to someone Chet could not see.

"There's more of 'em coming!" he said in a choked voice. "_Mein Gott!_ Neffer can we get away!"

* * * * *

He fumbled with shaking hands at instruments and controls; and now Chet saw his chalk-white face and read plainly the terror that was written there. But the cords that cut into his own wrists and ankles reminded him that he was bound; he settled back upon the floor. Why struggle? If this other pilot was having trouble let him get out of it by himself--let him kill his own snakes!

That the man was having trouble there was no doubt. He looked once more behind him as if at something that pursued; then swung the ball-control to throw the ship off her course.

The craft answered sluggishly, and Chet Bullard grinned where he lay helpless upon the floor; for he knew that his ship should have been thrown crashingly aside with such a motion as that. The answer was plain: the flask of super-detonite was exhausted; here was the last feeble explosion of the final atoms of the terrible explosive that was being admitted to the generator. And to cut in another flask meant the opening of a hidden valve.

Chet forgot the pain of his swelling hands to shake with suppressed mirth. This was going to be good! He forgot it until, through a lookout, he saw a writhing, circling fire that wrapped itself about the ship and jarred them to a halt.

The serpents!--those horrors from space that had come with the coming of the Dark Moon! They had disrupted the high-level traffic of the world; had seized great, liners; torn their way in; stripped them of every living thing, and let the empty shells crash back to earth. Chet had forgotten or he had failed to realize the height at which this new pilot was flying. Only speed could save them; the monsters, with their snouts that were great suction-cups, could wrench off a metal door--tear out the glass from a port!

* * * * *

He saw the luminous mass crush itself against a forward lookout and felt the jar of its body against their ship. Soft and vaporous, these cloud-like serpents seemed as they drifted through space; yet the impact, when they struck, proved that this new matter had mass.

Chet saw the figure at the controls stagger back and cower in fear; the man's bullet-shaped head was covered by his upraised arms: there was some horror outside those windows that his eyes had no wish to see. Beside him the towering figure of Schwartzmann appeared; he had sprung into Chet's view, and he screamed orders at the fear-stricken pilot.

"Fool! Swine!" Schwartzmann was shouting. "Do something! You said you could fly this ship!" In desperation he leaped forward and reached for the controls himself.

Chet's blurred faculties snapped sharply to attention. That yellow glow against the port--the jarring of their ship--it meant instant destruction once that searching snout found some place where it could secure a hold. If the air-pressure within the ship were released; if even a crack were opened!--

"Here, you!" he shouted to the frantic Schwartzmann who was jerking frenziedly at the controls that no longer gave response. "Cut these ropes!--leave those instruments alone, you fool!" He was suddenly vibrant with hate as he realized what this man had done: he had struck him, Chet, down as he would have felled an animal for butchery; he had stolen their ship; and now he was losing it. Chet hardly thought of his own desperate plight in his rage at this threat to their ship, and at Schwartzmann's inability to help himself.

"Cut these ropes!" he repeated. "Damn it all, turn me loose; I can fly us out!" He added his frank opinion of Schwartzmann and all his men. And Schwartzmann, though his dark face flushed angrily red for one instant, leaped to Chet's side and slashed at the cords with a knife.

The room swam before Chet's dizzy eyes as he came to his feet. He half fell, half drew himself full length toward the valve that he alone knew. Then again he was on his feet, and he gripped at the ball-control with one hand while he opened a master throttle that cut in this new supply of explosive.

* * * * *

The room had been silent with the silence of empty space, save only for the scraping of a horrid body across the ship's outer shell. The silence was shattered now as if by the thunder of many guns. There was no time for easing themselves into gradual flight. Chet thrust forward on the ball-control, and the blast from their stern threw the ship as if it had been fired from a giant cannon.

The self-compensating floor swung back and up; Chet's weight was almost unbearable as the ship beneath him leaped out and on, and the terrific blast that screamed and thundered urged this speeding shell to greater and still greater speed. And then, with the facility that that speed gave, Chet's careful hands moved a tiny metal ball within its magnetic cage, and the great ship bellowed from many ports as it followed the motion of that ball.

Could an eye have seen the wild, twisting flight, it must have seemed as if pilot and ship had gone suddenly mad. The craft corkscrewed and whirled; it leaped upward and aside; and, as the glowing mass was thrown clear of the lookout, Chet's hand moved again to that maximum forward position, and again the titanic blast from astern drove them on and out.

There were other shapes ahead, glowing lines of fire, luminous masses like streamers of cloud that looped themselves into contorted forms and writhed vividly until they straightened into sharp lines of speed that bore down upon the fleeing craft and the human food that was escaping these hungry snouts.

Chet saw them dead ahead; he saw the outthrust heads, each ending in a great suction-cup, the row of disks that were eyes blazing above, and the gaping maw below. He altered their course not a hair's breadth as he bore down upon them, while the monsters swelled prodigiously before his eyes. And the thunderous roar from astern came with never a break, while the ship itself ceased its trembling protest against the sudden blast and drove smoothly on and into the waiting beasts.

There was a hardly perceptible thudding jar. They were free! And the forward lookouts showed only the brilliant fires of distant suns and one more glorious than the rest that meant a planet.

* * * * *

Chet turned at last to face Schwartzmann and his pilot where they had clung helplessly to a metal stanchion. Four or five others crept in from the cabin aft; their blanched faces told of the fear that had gripped them--fear of the serpents; fear, too, of the terrific plunges into which the ship had been thrown. Chet Bullard drew the metal control-ball back into neutral and permitted himself the luxury of a laugh.

"You're a fine bunch of highwaymen," he told Schwartzmann; "you'll steal a ship you can't fly; then come up here above the R. A. level and get mixed up with those brutes. What's the idea? Did you think you would just hop over to the Dark Moon? Some little plan like that in your mind?"

Again the dark, heavy face of Schwartzmann flushed deeply; but it was his own men upon whom he turned.

"You," he told the pilot--"you were so clever; you would knock this man senseless! You would insist that you could fly the ship!"

The pilot's eyes still bulged with the fear he had just experienced. "But, Herr Schwartzmann, it was you who told me--"

A barrage of unintelligible words cut his protest short. Schwartzmann poured forth imprecations in an unknown tongue, then turned to the others.

"Back!" he ordered. "Bah!--such men! The danger it iss over--yess! This pilot, he will take us back safely."

He turned his attention now to the waiting Chet. "Herr Bullard, iss it not--yess?"

He launched into extended apologies--he had wanted a look at this so marvelous ship--he had spied upon it; he admitted it. But this murderous attack was none of his doing; his men had got out of hand; and then he had thought it best to take Chet, unconscious as he was and return with him where he could have care.

* * * * *

And Chet Bullard kept his eyes steadily upon the protesting man and said nothing, but he was thinking of a number of things. There was Walt's warning, "this Schwartzmann means mischief," and the faked message that had brought him from the hospital to get the ship from its hiding place; no, it was too much to believe. But Chet's eyes were unchanging, and he nodded shortly in agreement as the other concluded.

"You will take us back?" Schwartzmann was asking. "I will repay you well 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, five-hundred-maximum freighter, but not on this boat. I don't like his landings."

* * * * *

Diane Delacouer raised her eyes to smile approvingly upon him. "You're good, Chet," she said; "you are a darn good sport. They knock you down out of control, and you nose right back up for a forty-thousand foot zoom. And you try to carry us with you. Well, I guess it's time we got over our gloom. Now what is going to happen?"

"I'll tell you," said Walter Harkness, looking at his watch: "if that fool pilot of Schwartzmann's doesn't cut his stern thrust and build up a bow resistance, we'll overshoot our mark and go tearing on a few hundred thousand miles in space."

Diane was playing up to Chet's lead.

"_Bien!_" she exclaimed. "A few million, perhaps! Then we may see some of those Martians we've been speculating about. I hear they are handsome, my Walter--much better looking than you. Maybe this is all for the best after all!"

"Say," Harkness protested, "if you two idiots don't know enough to worry as you ought, I don't see any reason why I should do all the heavy worrying for the whole crowd. I guess you've got the right idea at that: take what comes when it gets here--or when we get there."

Small wonder, thought Chet, that Herr Schwartzmann stared at them in puzzled bewilderment when he flung open the door, and took one long stride into the room. Stocky, heavy-muscled, he stood regarding them, a frown of suspicion drawing his face into ugly lines. Plainly he was disturbed by this laughing good-humor where he had expected misery and hopelessness and tears. He moved the muzzle of a detonite pistol back and forth.

* * * * *

"You haff been drinking!" he stated at last. "You are intoxicated--all of you!" His eyes darted searching glances about the little room that was too bare to hide any cause for inebriation.

It was Mam'selle Diane who answered him with an emphatic shake of her dark head; an engaging smile tugged at the corners of her lips. "_Mais non!_ my dear Herr Schwartzmann," she assured him; "it is joy--just happiness at again approaching our Moon--and in such good company, too."

"Fortunes of war, Schwartzmann," declared Harkness; "we know how to accept them, and we don't hold it against you. We are down now, but your turn will come."

The man's reply was a sputtering of rage in words that neither Chet nor Harkness could understand. The latter turned to the girl with a question.

"Did you get it, Diane? What did he say?"

"I think I would not care to translate it literally," said Diane Delacouer, twisting her soft mouth into an expression of distaste; "but, speaking generally, he disagrees with you."

Herr Schwartzmann was facing Harkness belligerently. "You think you know something! What is it?" he demanded. "You are under my feet; I kick you as I would _meinen Hund_ and you can do nothing." He aimed a savage kick into the air to illustrate his meaning, and Harkness' face flushed suddenly scarlet.

* * * * *

Whatever retort was on Harkness' tongue was left unspoken; a sharp look from Chet, who brought his fingers swiftly to his lips in a gesture of silence, checked the reply. The action was almost unconscious on Chet's part; it was as unpremeditated as the sudden thought that flashed abruptly into his mind--

They were helpless; they were in this brute's power beyond the slightest doubt. Schwartzmann's words, "You know something. What is it?" had fired a swift train of thought.

The idea was nebulous as yet ... but if they could throw a scare into this man--make him think there was danger ahead.... Yes, that was it: make Schwartzmann think they knew of dangers that he could not avoid. They had been there before: make this man afraid to kill them. The dreadful alternative that Chet had feared to think of might be averted....

All this came in an instantaneous, flashing correlation of his conscious thoughts.

"I'll tell you what we mean," he told Schwartzmann. He even leaned forward to shake an impressive finger before the other's startled face. "I'll tell you first of all that it doesn't make a damn bit of difference who is on top--or it won't in a few hours more. We'll all be washed out together.

"I've landed once on the Dark Moon; I know what will happen. And do you know how fast we are going? Do you know the Moon's speed as it approaches? Had you thought what you will look like when that fool pilot rams into it head on?

"And that isn't all!" He grinned derisively into Schwartzmann's flushed face, disregarding the half-raised pistol; it was as if some secret thought had filled him with overpowering amusement. His broad grin grew into a laugh. "That isn't all, big boy. What will you do if you do land? What will you do when you open the ports and the--" He cut his words short, and the smile, with all other expression, was carefully erased from his young face.

"No, I reckon I won't spoil the surprise. We got through it all right; maybe you will, too--maybe!"

* * * * *

And again it was Diane who played up to Chet's lead without a moment's hesitation.

"Chet," she demanded, "aren't you going to warn him? You would not allow him and his men to be--"

She stopped in apparent horror of the unsaid words; Chet gave her an approving glance.

"We'll see about that when we get there, Diane."

He turned abruptly back to Schwartzmann, "I'll forget what a rotten winner you have been; I'll help you out: I'll take the controls if you like. Of course, your man, Max, may set us down without damage; then again--"

"Take them!" Schwartzmann ungraciously made an order of his acceptance. "Take the controls, Herr Bullard! But if you make a single false move!" The menacing pistol completed the threat.

But "Herr Bullard" merely turned to his companion with a level, understanding look. "Come on," he said; "you can both help in working out our location."

He stepped before the burly man that Diane might precede them through the door. And he felt the hand of Walt Harkness on his arm in a pressure that told what could not be said aloud.

* * * * *

There were pallid-faced men in the cabin through which they passed; men who stared and stared from the window-ports into the black immensity of space. Chet, too, stopped to look; there had been no port-holes in that inner room where they had been confined.

He knew what to expect; he knew how awe-inspiring would be the sight of strange, luminous bodies--great islands of light--masses of animalculae--that glowed suddenly, then melted again into velvet black. A whirl of violet grew almost golden in sudden motion; Chet knew it for an invisible monster of space. Glowingly luminous as it threw itself upon a subtle mass of shimmering light, it faded like a flickering flame and went dark as its motion ceased.

Life!--life, everywhere in this ocean of space! And on every hand was death. "Not surprising," Chet realized, "that these other Earthmen are awed and trembling!"

The sun was above them; its light struck squarely down through the upper ports. This was polarized light--there was nothing outside to reflect or refract it--and, coming as a straight beam from above, it made a brilliant circle upon the floor from which it was diffused throughout the room. It was as if the floor itself was the illuminating agent.

No eye could bear to look into the glare from above; nor was there need, for the other ports drew the eyes with their black depths of unplumbed space.

Black!--so velvet as to seem almost tangible! Could one have reached out a hand, that blackness, it seemed, must be a curtain that the hand could draw aside, where unflickering points of light pricked through the dark to give promise of some radiant glory beyond.

* * * * *

They had seen it before, these three, yet Chet caught the eyes of Harkness and Diane and knew that his own eyes must share something of the look he saw in theirs--something of reverent wonder and a strange humility before this evidence of transcendent greatness.

Their own immediate problem seemed gone. The tyranny of this glowering human and his men--the efforts of the whole world and its struggling millions--how absurdly unimportant it all was! How it faded to insignificance! And yet....

Chet came from the reverie that held him. There was one man by whom this beauty was unseen. Herr Schwartzmann was angrily ordering them on, and, surprisingly, Chet laughed aloud.

This problem, he realized, was _his_ problem--his to solve with the help of the other two. And it was not insignificant; he knew with some sudden wordless knowledge that there was nothing in all the great scheme but that it had its importance. This vastness that was beyond the power of human mind to grasp ceased to be formidable--he was part of it. He felt buoyed up; and he led the way confidently toward the control-room door where Schwartzmann stood.

The scientist, whom Schwartzmann had called Herr Doktor Kreiss, was beside the pilot. He was leaning forward to search the stars in the blackness ahead, but the pilot turned often to stare through the rear lookouts as if drawn in fearful fascination by what was there. Chet took the controls at Schwartzmann's order; the pilot saluted with a trembling hand and vanished into the cabin at the rear.

"Ready for flying orders, Doctor," the new pilot told Herr Kreiss. "I'll put her where you say--within reason."

Behind him he heard the choked voice of Mademoiselle Diane: "_Regardez! Ah, mon Dieu_, the beauty of it! This loveliness--it hurts!"

* * * * *

One hand was pressed to her throat; her face was turned as the pilot's had been that she might stare and stare at a quite impossible moon--a great half-disk of light in the velvet dark.

"This loveliness--it hurts!" Chet looked, too, and knew what Diane was feeling. There was a catch of emotion in his own throat--a feeling that was almost fear.

A giant half-moon!--and he knew it was the Earth. Golden Earth-light came to them in a flooding glory; the blazing sun struck on it from above to bring out half the globe in brilliant gold that melted to softest, iridescent, rainbow tints about its edge. Below, hung motionless in the night, was another sphere. Like a reflection of Earth in the depths of some Stygian lake, the old moon shone, too, in a half-circle of light.

Small wonder that these celestial glories brought a gasp of delight from Diane, or drew into lines of fear the face of that other pilot who saw only his own world slipping away. But Chet Bullard, Master Pilot of the World, swung back to scan a star-chart that the scientist was holding, then to search out a similar grouping in the black depths into which they were plunging, and to bring the cross-hairs of a rigidly mounted telescope upon that distant target.

"How far?" he asked himself in a half-spoken thought, "--how far have we come?"

* * * * *

There was an instrument that ticked off the seconds in this seemingly timeless void. He pressed a small lever beside it, and, beneath a glass that magnified the readings, there passed the time-tape. Each hour and minute was there; each movement of the controls was indicated; each trifling variation in the power of the generator's blast. Chet made some careful computations and passed the paper to Harkness, who tilted the time-tape recorder that he might see the record.

"Check this, will you, Walt?" Chet was asking. "It is based on the time of our other trip, acceleration assumed as one thousand miles per hour per hour out of air--"

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 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 be swung. Chet felt him close behind as he followed the others out into the gathering dark.

* * * * *

The air was heavy with the fragrance of night-blooming trees. They were close to the edge of the lava flow. The rock was black in the light of a starry sky; it dropped away abruptly to a lower glade. A stream made silvery sparklings in the night, while beyond it were waving shadows of strange trees whose trunks were ghostly white.

It was all so familiar.... Chet smiled understandingly as he saw Walt Harkness' arm go about the trim figure of Diane Delacouer. No mannish attire could disguise Diane's charms; nor could nerve and cold courage that any man might envy detract from her femininity. Her dark, curling hair was blowing back from her upraised face as the scented breezes played about her; and the soft beauty of that face was enhanced by the very starlight that revealed it.

It was here that Walt and Diane had learned to love; what wonder that the fragrant night brought only remembrance, and forgetfulness of their present plight. But Chet Bullard, while he saw them and smiled in sympathy, knew suddenly that other eyes were watching, too; he felt the bulky figure of Herr Schwartzmann beside him grow tense and rigid.

But Schwartzmann's voice, when he spoke, was controlled. "All right," he called toward the ship; "all iss safe."

Yet Chet wondered at that sudden tensing, and an uneasy presentiment found entrance to his thoughts. He must keep an eye on Schwartzmann, even more than he had supposed.

Their captor had threatened to maroon them on the Dark Moon. Chet did not question his intent. Schwartzmann would have nothing to gain by killing them now. It would be better to leave them here, for he might find them useful later on. But did he plan to leave them all or only two? Behind the steady, expressionless eyes of the Master Pilot, strange thoughts were passing....

* * * * *

There were orders, at length, to return to the ship. "It is dark already," Schwartzmann concluded; "nothing can be accomplished at night.

"How long are the days and nights?" he asked Harkness.

"Six hours." Harkness told him; "our little world spins fast."

"Then for six hours we sleep," was the order. And again Herr Schwartzmann conducted Mademoiselle Delacouer to her cabin, while Chet Bullard watched until he saw the man depart and heard the click of the lock on the door of Diane's room.

Then for six hours he listened to the sounds of sleeping men who were sprawled about him on the floor; for six hours he saw the one man who sat on guard beside a light that made any thought of attack absurd. And he cursed himself for a fool, as he lay wakeful and vainly planning--a poor, futile fool who was unable to cope with this man who had bested him.

Nineteen seventy-three!--and here were Harkness and Diane and himself, captured by a man who was mentally and morally a misfit in a modern world. A throw-back--that was Schwartzmann: Harkness had said it. He belonged back in nineteen fourteen.

Harkness was beyond the watching guard; from where he lay came sounds of restless movement. Chet knew that he was not alone in this mood of hopeless dejection. There was no opportunity for talk; only with the coming of day did the two find a chance to exchange a few quick words.

* * * * *

The guard roused the others at the first sight of sunlight beyond the ports. Harkness sauntered slowly to where Chet was staring from a lookout. He, too, leaned to see the world outside, and he spoke cautiously in a half-whisper:

"Not a chance, Chet. No use trying to bluff this big crook any more. He's here, and he's safe; and he knows it as well as we do. We'll let him ditch us--you and Diane and me. Then, when we're on our own, we'll watch our chance. He will go crazy with what he finds--may get careless--then we'll seize the ship--" His words ended abruptly. As Schwartzmann came behind them, he was casually calling Chet's attention to a fumerole from which a jet of vapor had appeared. Yellowish, it was; and the wind was blowing it.

Chet turned away; he hardly saw Schwartzmann or heard Harkness' words. He was thinking of what Walt had said. Yes, it was all they could do; there was no chance of a fight with them now. But later!

Diane Delacouer came into the control-room at the instant; her dark eyes were still lovely with sleep, but they brightened to flash an encouraging smile toward the two men. There were five of Schwartzmann's men in the ship besides the pilot and the scientist, Kreiss. They all crowded in after Diane.

They must have had their orders in advance; Schwartzmann merely nodded, and they sprang upon Harkness and Chet. The two were caught off their guard; their arms were twisted behind them before resistance could be thought of. Diane gave a cry, started forward, and was brushed back by a sweep of Schwartzmann's arm. The man himself stood staring at them, unmoving, wordless. Only the flesh about his eyes gathered into creases to squeeze the eyes to malignant slits. There was no mistaking the menace in that look.

* * * * *

"I think we do not need you any more," he said at last. "I think, Herr Harkness, this is the end of our little argument--and, Herr Harkness, you lose. Now, I will tell you how it iss that you pay.

"You haff thought, perhaps, I would kill you. But you were wrong, as you many times have been. You haff not appreciated my kindness; you haff not understood that mine iss a heart of gold.

"Even I was not sure before we came what it iss best to do. But now I know. I saw oceans and many lands on this world. I saw islands in those oceans.

"You so clever are--such a great thinker iss Herr Harkness--and on one of those islands you will haff plenty of time to think--yess! You can think of your goot friend, Schwartzmann, and of his kindness to you."

"You are going to maroon us on an island?" asked Walt Harkness hoarsely. Plainly his plans for seizing the ship were going awry. "You are going to put the three of us off in some lost corner of this world?"

Chet Bullard was silent until he saw the figure of Harkness struggling to throw off his two guards. "Walt," he called loudly, "take it easy! For God's sake, Walt, keep your head!"

This, Chet sensed, was no time for resistance. Let Schwartzmann go ahead with his plans; let him think them complacent and unresisting; let Max pilot the ship; then watch for an opening when they could land a blow that would count! He heard Schwartzmann laughing now, laughing as if he were enjoying something more pleasing than the struggles of Walt.

* * * * *

Chet was standing by the controls. The metal instrument-table was beside him; above it was the control itself, a metal ball that hung suspended in air within a cage of curved bars.

It was pure magic, this ball-control, where magnetic fields crossed and recrossed; it was as if the one who held it were a genie who could throw the ship itself where he willed. Glass almost enclosed the cage of bars, and the whole instrument swung with the self-compensating platform that adjusted itself to the "gravitation" of accelerated speed. The pilot, Max, had moved across to the instrument-table, ready for the take-off.

Schwartzmann's laughter died to a gurgling chuckle. He wiped his eyes before he replied to Harkness' question.

"Leave you," he said, "in one place? _Nein!_ One here, the other there. A thousand miles apart, it might be. And not all three of you. That would be so unkind--"

He interrupted himself to call to Kreiss who was opening the port.

"No," he ordered: "keep it closed. We are not going outside; we are going up."

But Kreiss had the port open. "I want a man to get some fresh water," he said; "he will only be a minute."

He shoved at a waiting man to hurry him through the doorway. It was only a gentle push: Chet wondered as he saw the man stagger and grasp at his throat. He was coughing--choking horribly for an instant outside the open port--then fell to the ground, while his legs jerked awkwardly, spasmodically.

Chet saw Kreiss follow. The scientist would have leaped to the side of the stricken man, whose body was so still now on the sunlit rock; but he, too, crumpled, then staggered back into the room. He pushed feebly at the port and swung it shut. His face, as he turned, was drawn into fearful lines.

"Acid!" He choked out the words between strangled breaths. "Acid--sulfuric--fumes!"

* * * * *

Chet turned quickly to the spectro-analyzer: the lines of oxygen and nitrogen were merged with others, and that meant an atmosphere unfit for human lungs! There had been a fumerole where yellowish vapor was spouting: he remembered it now.

"So!" boomed Schwartzmann, and now his squinting eyes were full on Chet. "You--you _schwein_! You said when we opened the ports there would be a surprise! Und this iss it! You thought to see us kill ourselves!

"Open that port!" he shouted. The men who held Chet released him and sprang forward to obey. The pilot, Max, took their place. He put one hand on Chet's shoulder, while his other hand brought up a threatening metal bar.

Schwartzmann's heavy face had lost its stolid look; it was alive with rage. He thrust his head forward to glare at the men, while he stood firmly, his feet far apart, two heavy fists on his hips. He whirled abruptly and caught Diane by one arm. He pulled her roughly to him and encircled the girl's trim figure with one huge arm.

"Put you _all_ on one island?" he shouted. "Did you think I would put you _all_ out of the ship? You"--he pointed at Harkness--"and you"--this time it was Chet--"go out now. You can die in your damned gas that you expected would kill me! But, you fools, you imbeciles--Mam'selle, she stays with me!" The struggling girl was helpless in the great arm that drew her close.

Harkness' mad rage gave place to a dead stillness. From bloodless lips in a chalk-white face he spat out one sentence:

"Take your filthy hands off her--now--or I'll--"

Schwartzmann's one free hand still held the pistol. He raised it with deadly deliberation; it came level with Harkness' unflinching eyes.

"Yes?" said Schwartzmann, "You will do--what?"

* * * * *

Chet saw the deadly tableau. He knew with a conviction that gripped his heart that here was the end. Walt would die and he would be next. Diane would be left defenseless.... The flashing thought that followed came to him as sharply as the crack of any pistol. It seemed to burst inside his brain, to lift him with some dynamic power of its own and project him into action.

He threw himself sideways from under the pilot's hand, out from beneath the heavy metal bar--and he whirled, as he leaped, to face the man. One lean, brown hand clenched to a fist that started a long swing from somewhere near his knees; it shot upward to crash beneath the pilot's outthrust jaw and lift him from the floor. Max had aimed the bar in a downward sweep where Chet's head had been the moment before; and now man and bar went down together. In the same instant Chet threw himself upon the weapon and leaped backward to his feet.

One frozen second, while, to Chet, the figures seemed as motionless as if carved from stone--two men beside the half-opened port--Harkness in convulsive writhing between two others--the figure of Diane, strained, tense and helpless in Schwartzmann's grasp--and Schwartzmann, whose aim had been disturbed, steadying the pistol deliberately upon Harkness--

"Wait!" Chet's voice tore through the confusion. He knew he must grip Schwartzmann's attention--hold that trigger finger that was tensed to send a detonite bullet on its way. "Wait, damn you! I'll answer your question. I'll tell you what we'll do!"

In that second he had swung the metal bar high; now he brought it crashing down in front of him. Schwartzmann flinched, half turned as if to fire at Chet, and saw the blow was not for him.

* * * * *

With a splintering crash, the bar went through an obstruction. There was sound of glass that slivered to a million mangled bits--the sharp tang of metal broken off--a crash and clatter--then silence, save for one bit of glass that fell belatedly to the floor, its tiny jingling crash ringing loud in the deathly stillness of the room....

It had been the control-room, this place of metal walls and of shining, polished instruments, and it could be called that no longer. For, battered to useless wreckage, there lay on a metal table a cage that had once been formed of curving bars. Among the fragments a metal ball that had guided the great ship still rocked idly from its fall, until it, too, was still.

It was a room where nothing moved--where no person so much as breathed....

Then came the Master Pilot's voice, and it was speaking with quiet finality.

"And that," he said, "is your answer. Our ship has made its last flight."

His eyes held steadily upon the blanched face of Herr Schwartzmann, whose limp arms released the body of Diane; the pistol hung weakly at the man's side. And the pilot's voice went on, so quiet, so hushed--so curiously toneless in that silent room.

"What was it that you said?--that Harkness and I would be staying here? Well, you were right when you said that, Schwartzmann: but it's a hard sentence, that--imprisonment for life."

Chet paused now, to smile deliberately, grimly at the dark face so bleached and bloodless, before he repeated:

"Imprisonment for life!--and you didn't know that you were sentencing yourself. For you're staying too, Schwartzmann, you contemptible, thieving dog! You're staying with us--here--on the Dark Moon!"

CHAPTER VI

"_Six to Four_"

Perhaps to every person in that control room there came, as Chet's quiet, emotionless tones died away, the same mental picture; for there was the same dazed look on the countenances of all.

They were seeing an ocean of space, an endless void of empty black. And across that etheric sea was a whirling globe. They had seen it from afar; they had seen its diminutive continents and its snow-clad poles.... They would never see it again....

Earth!--their own world!--home! And now for them it was only a moon, a tremendous, glorious moon, whose apparent nearness would be taunting and calling them each day and night of their lives....

It was Diane Delacouer who dared to break the hard silence that bound them all. From wide eyes she stared at Walt Harkness; then her lips formed a trembling smile in which Chet, too, was included.

"You saved us," she whispered; "you saved us, Chet ... but now it looks as if we all were exiles."

She crossed slowly, walking like one in a dream, to stand close to Walt Harkness. And Chet Bullard also roused himself; but it was toward the stupefied, hulking figure of Schwartzmann that he moved.

He reached for the detonite pistol, and this man who had been their captor was too stunned to make any resistance. Chet jammed the weapon under his belt.

"Close that port!" he ordered the two men who had half-opened it at Schwartzmann's command. "Keep that poison gas out."

* * * * *

There was a flash of color that swept by the open port--some flying creature of vivid crimson: Chet had no time to see what manner of bird or beast it was. But it was alive! He crossed to examine the spectro-analyzer, and the two men disregarded his order and slipped into the rear cabin.

"Seems all clear to me, Walt," he said; and Harkness confirmed his findings with a quick glance.

"O.K.!" he assured Chet; "that air is all right to breathe."

He glanced from a lookout port. "The air's moving now," he said. "That gas--whatever it was--is gone; it must have settled down here in the night. Some new vent that has opened since we were here before.

"But suppose we forget that and settle matters in here," he suggested; and Chet nodded assent.

"Call your men!" Harkness ordered Schwartzmann.

The man had recovered his composure; again his heavy face was flushed beneath a stubble of beard. He made no move to comply with Harkness' demand.

But there was no need: from the cabin at the rear came the scientist, Kreiss. His face was pale and drawn, and he stared long and searchingly at Chet Bullard. His breath still whistled in his throat; the poison gas had nearly done for him.

At his heels were the two who had been working at the port. Two others, who had held Harkness, were drawn off at one side, where they mumbled one to another and shot ugly glances toward Chet.

This, Chet knew, accounted for all. Even the pilot, Max, had roused from the sleep that a blow on the chin had induced and was again on his feet. For him no explanation was needed; the shattered cage of the ball-control told its own story.

Harkness seated Mademoiselle Delacouer on a bench at the pilot's post. "You will want to be in on this," he told her, "but I'll put you here in case they get rough. But don't worry," he added; "we'll be ready for them now."

* * * * *

Then he turned to Schwartzmann: "Now, you! Oh, there are plenty of things I could call you! And you would understand them perfectly, though they are all words that no gentleman would use."

At Schwartzmann's outburst of profane rejoinder, Harkness broke in with no uncertain tones.

"Shut up, Schwartzmann, and stay that way; I'm giving the orders now. And we'll just cut out all the pleasantries; they won't get us anywhere. We must face the situation, all of us; see what we're up against and make some plans."

But Herr Schwartzmann was not to be put down so easily. He crossed over to where Chet stood. Chet's hand dropped to the pistol that was hooked in his own belt, but Schwartzmann made no move toward it. Instead he planted himself before the pilot and jammed his fists into his hips while he tried to draw his stocky form to equal Chet's slim height.

"Fool!" he said. "Dolt! For a minute I believed you; I thought you had cut us off from the Earth. Now I know better. Max, he understands ships; and the Herr Doktor Kreiss iss a man of science: together they the repairs will make."

The Master Pilot smiled grimly. "Try to do it," he said, and turned toward the two whom Schwartzmann had named. "You, Max, and you, too, Doctor Kreiss--do you want to take on the job? If you do, I will help you."

But the two looked at the shattered controls and shook their heads at their employer.

"Impossible!" the pilot exclaimed. "Without new parts it can never be done."

Schwartzmann seemed about to vent his fury upon the man who dared give such a report, but Doctor Kreiss raised a restraining hand.

"Check!" he said. "I check that report. Repairs are out of the question."

* * * * *

Chet caught Harkness' eye upon him. "I'll be back," Harkness told him and went quickly toward the rear of the ship. Their stores were back there; would Walt think to get a detonite pistol? He came back into the room while the thought was still in Chet's mind. A gun was in each hand; he passed one of the weapons to Diane.

Unconsciously, Schwartzmann felt for his own gun that was in Chet's belt. He laughed mirthlessly. "Two men," he said scornfully; "two men and a girl!"

Harkness paid no attention. "Now we will get right down to cases," he remarked. "Two men and a girl is right--plus what is left of one ship. And please don't forget that the ship is ours and all the supplies that are in it. Now, you listen to me; I've a few things to tell you."

He faced squarely toward Schwartzmann, and Chet had to repress a grin at the steely glint in his companion's eyes. Nice chap, Harkness--nice, easy-going sort--up to a certain point. Chet had seen him in action before.

"First of all," Harkness was saying, "don't think that we have any illusions about you. You're a killer, and, like all such, you're a coward. If you had the upper hand, you would never give us a chance for our lives. In fact you were ready to throw us out to be gassed when Chet raised your little bet.

"But it looks as if Chet and Mademoiselle Delacouer and I will have to be living on this world for some time. We don't want to start that life by killing off even such as you--not in cold blood. We will give you a chance; we will split our provisions with you--give you half of what we have; you will have to shift for yourselves when that is gone. We will all have to learn to do that."

* * * * *

Again the heavy, glowering face of Schwartzmann broke into a laugh that was half sneer.

"You're damned kind," he told Harkness, "and, as usual, a fool. Two men and a girl!" He half turned to count his own forces.

"There are seven of us," he challenged; "seven! And all of them armed--all but me!"

He spoke a curt order in his own tongue, and each man whipped a pistol from his clothes.

"Seven to two," he said, and laughed again; "maybe it iss that Herr Harkness would like to count them.

"_Your_ ship and _your_ supplies!" he exclaimed scornfully. "And you would be so kind as to giff us food.

"_Gott im Himmel!_" he shouted; "I show you! I am talking now! We stay here--_ja_--because this _Dummkopf_ has the controls _gebrochen_! But it iss we who stay; und you? You go, because I say so. It iss I who rule, und I prove it--seven to two!"

"Three!" a firm voice spoke from between Chet and Harkness; "seven to three! Our odds are improving, Herr Schwartzmann."

And Chet saw from the corner of his eye that the gun in the small hand of Mademoiselle Diane was entirely unwavering. But he spoke to her sharply, and his voice merged with that of Harkness who was saying somewhat the same words:

"Back--go back, Diane! We can handle this. For God's sake, keep out; we don't want any shooting."

Neither of the men had drawn his gun. Their hands were ready, but each had hoped to end this weird conference without firing a shot. Here was no place for gun-play and for wounded men.

* * * * *

Their attention was on Diane for the moment. A growled word from their enemy brought their minds back to him; they turned to find black pistol muzzles staring each of them in the eyes. Herr Schwartzmann, in the language of an earlier day, had got the drop.

"Seven to three," Schwartzmann said; "let it go that way; no difference does it make. If I say one word, you die."

Chet's arm ached to snap his hand toward his gun. It would be his last move, he well knew. He was sick with chagrin to see how easily they had been trapped; Walt had tried to play fair with a man who had not an atom of fairness in his character. And now--

"Seven to three!" Schwartzmann was gloating--till another voice broke in.

"I don't check your figures." The whistling tones were coming from a tortured throat, but the words were clear and distinct. "I don't check you; I make it six to four--and if one of your men makes a move, Herr Schwartzmann, I shall blow you to a pulp!"

And Herr Doktor Kreiss held a gun in a steady hand as he moved a pace nearer to Chet--a gun whose slender barrel made a glinting line of light toward Schwartzmann's eyes.

"If the gentlemen and Mademoiselle will permit," he offered almost diffidently, "I would prefer to be aligned with them. We are citizens of another world now; my former allegiance to Herr Schwartzmann is ended. This is--what is it you say?--a new deal. I would like to see it; and I use another of your American aphorisms: I would like to see it a square deal."

* * * * *

The voice of a scholar, thought Chet; one more used to the precision of laboratory phrases than to wild talk like this; but no man to be trifled with, nevertheless. Chet did not hesitate to turn despite the pistols that were still aimed at him.

But Herr Kreiss was not looking in his direction; his eyes were trained steadily in the same line as his gun. This little experiment he was conducting seemed to require his undivided attention until the end. To Schwartzmann he said sharply:

"Your men--order them to drop their weapons. Quick!"

As they clattered upon the floor the scientist turned and extended his hand to Chet.

"And still speaking not too technically," he continued, "this is one hell of a fix that you have got us into. Even in desperate straits it took nerve to do that." He pointed to the shattered remains of the multiple bars that had been the control mechanism, and added:

"I admire that kind of nerve. And, if you don't mind, since we are exiles together--" His throat seemed choking him again.

There were weapons in the hands of Chet and Harkness; they were not making the same mistake twice. Chet shifted his gun to his left hand that he might reach toward the scientist with his right.

"I knew you were white all the time," Chet told him; "I'll say you belong!"

CHAPTER VII

_The Red Swarm_

It was a matter of a half hour later when Harkness ordered them all outside. He had accepted Kreiss as an addition to their ranks and had made himself plain to Schwartzmann.

To the scientist he said. "You remarked that no ship could hold two commanding pilots: that goes for an expedition like this, too. I am in command. If you will take orders we will be mighty glad to have you with us."

And to Schwartzmann, in a different tone: "I am sparing you and your men. I ought to shoot you down, but I won't. And I don't expect you to understand why; any decency such as that would beyond you.

"But I am letting you live. This world is big enough to hold us both, and pretty soon I will tell you what part of it you can live in. And then remember this one thing, Schwartzmann--get this straight!--you keep out of my way. I will show you a valley where you and your men can stay. And if ever you leave that valley I will hunt you down as I would one of the beasts that you will see in this world."

Chet had to repress a little smile that was twitching at his lips; it always amused him hugely to see Harkness when roused.

"Turn us out to starve?" Schwartzmann was demanding. "You would do that?"

"There will be food there," said Harkness curtly: "suit yourself about starving. Only stay where I put you!"

Back of the others of Schwartzmann's men, the pilot, Max, was stooping. Half-hidden he moved toward the doorway to the rear cabin and to the storage-room and gun-rooms beyond. Chet glimpsed him in his silent retreat.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Max," he advised quietly. "Personally, I think you're all getting off too well; as for myself, I'm sort of itching for an excuse to let off this gun."

It was here that Harkness turned to the open port.

"Put them out!" he snapped. "You, Chet, go out first and line them up as they come--but, no, wait: there may be gas out there."

* * * * *

Chet was beside the port; a breath from outside came to him sweetly fragrant. A shadow was moving across the smooth lava rock. "A bird!" he thought. Then a flash of red in startling vividness swept past the open door: it was like a quick flicker of living flame. He could not see what it was, but it was alive--and this answered his question.

"Send 'em along," he said; "it seems all right now." He stepped through the opening in the heavily insulated walls.

It was early morning, yet the sun was already hot upon the smooth expanse of the lava flow. Some ancient eruption from the distant peaks that hemmed in the valley had sent out this flood of molten rock; it was hard and black now. But, to the right, where the valley went on and up, and rose gently and widened as it rose, a myriad of red flames and jets of steam told of the inner fires that still raged.

These were the fumeroles where only a month before he and Harkness and Diane had found clustering savages who were more apes than men; they had been roasting meat at these flames. And below, where the lava stopped, was the open glade where the little stream splashed and sparkled: in the high rock walls that hemmed the glade the caves showed black. And, beyond the open ground, was the weird forest, where tree-trunks of ghostly white were laced with a network of red veining. They grew close, those spectral columns, in a shadow-world beneath the high roof of greenery they supported.

Here was the scene of an earlier adventure. Chet was swept up in the flood of recollections born of familiar sights and scents. Herr Schwartzmann, cursing steadily in a guttural tongue, came from the ship to bring Chet's thoughts back to the more immediate problem.

* * * * *

There were five others who followed--the pilot and Schwartzmann's four men. There had been another, but his body lay huddled upon the bare lava. He had followed his master far--and here, for him, was the end.

Kreiss' pistol was still in his hand as he came after. Harkness and Diane were last.

Harkness pointed with his gun. "Over there!" he ordered. "Get them away from the ship, Chet. Line them up down below there; all the ape-men have cleared out since we had our last fight. Get them down by the stream. Diane and I will bring them some supplies, and then we can send them off for good."

Chet sent Kreiss down first, where an easy slope made the descent a simple matter; it had been the bow-wave of the molten lava--here was the end of that inundation of another age--and the slope was wrinkled and creased. Schwartzmann followed; then the others. The last man was ready to descend when Diane and Walt came back.

They had packages of compressed foods. This was all right with Chet, but he raised his eyebrows inquiringly at sight of several boxes of ammunition and an extra gun. Harkness smiled good-naturedly.

"I will give them one pistol," Walt told him, "and a good supply of shells. We don't need to be afraid of them with only one gun, and we can't leave the poor devils at the mercy of every wild beast."

"You're the boss," said Chet briefly; "but, for me, I'd sooner give this Schwartzmann just one bullet--right where it would do the most good.

"Let's make him work for it," he suggested, and called to the men below:

"Come back up here, Schwartzmann! A little present for you--and I'm saying you don't deserve it."

He watched the return trip as Schwartzmann dragged his heavy bulk up the slope; he was enjoying the man's explosive, panted curses. Beside him were Diane and Walt. With them, it was as it had been with him at first. They had eyes only for the familiar ground below: the stream, the open ground, the trees....

* * * * *

Each of them was looking down at that lower ground.

It was Kreiss standing down there who first caught Chet's attention. Kreiss was trying to shout. Chet saw his waving arms; he stared, puzzled, at the facial contortions--the working lips from which no sound came. He knew that something was wrong. It was a moment or two before he realized that Kreiss could not speak, that the throat, injured by the choking fumes, had failed him. Then he heard the strangled croak that Kreiss forced from his lips: "_Behind you!--look behind you!_"

Schwartzmann was scrambling to the top where they stood; every man was accounted for. What had they to fear? And suddenly it was borne in upon Chet's consciousness that he had been hearing a sound--a sound that was louder now--a rustling!--a clashing of dry, rasping things! The very air seemed to hold something ominous.

He knew this in the instant while he whirled about; while he heard the dry rustling change to a humming roar; while he saw, like a cloud of flame, a great swarm of red, flying things like the one that had flown past the port--and one, swifter than the rest, that darted from the swarm and flashed upon him.

It was red--vividly, dazzlingly red! The body of a reptile--a wild phantasm of distorted dreams--was supported by short, quivering wings. The body was some five feet in length, and it was translucent.

A shell, like the dried husk of some creature long dead!--yet here was something alive, as its quick attack proved. It had a head of dry scales which ended in a projecting black-tipped beak that came like a sword, straight and true for Chet's heart. It seemed an age before he could bring his pistol up and fire.

* * * * *

Detonite, as everyone knows, does not explode on impact; the cap of fulminate in the end of each bullet sets it off. But even this requires some resistance--something more than a dry, red husk to check the bullet's flight. There was no explosion from the tiny shell that Chet's pistol fired, but the bullet did its work. The creature fell plunging to the rocky ground, and its transparent wings sent flurries of dust where they beat upon the ground. There were others that went down, for the bullet had gone on and through the great swarm.

And then they attacked.

The very fury of the assault saved the huddle of humans. So close were the red things pressed together that their vibrating wings beat and locked the swarm into a mass. They were almost above their prey. Chet knew that he was firing upward into the swarm, but the sound of his pistol was lost. The red cloud hung poised in a whirling maelstrom; and the pandemonium of clashing wings whipped down to them not only the sound of their dry scraping but a stench from those reptile bodies that was overpowering.

Sickly sweet, the taste of it was in Chet's mouth; the sound of the furious swarm was battering at his ears as he knew that his pistol was empty.

There were red bodies on the bare rock before him. A scaly, scabrous thing was pressing against his upflung hands that he raised above his head--a loathsome touch! A beak that was a needle-pointed tube stabbed his shoulder before he could flinch aside: the quick pain of it was piercingly sharp....

* * * * *

Other red horrors dropped from the main mass overhead; he saw Harkness beating at them wildly while he made a shelter of his body above the crouched figure of Diane. Two of them--two incredible, beastly, flying things! He saw them so plainly where they hovered, and Harkness striking at them with a useless, empty gun, while they waited to drive home their lance-like beaks.

The picture was so plain! His brain was a photographic plate, super-sensitized by the utter horror of the moment. While the red monster stabbed its beak into his shoulder, while he drove home one blow against its parchment body with his empty pistol, while the wild, beating wings lifted the creature again into the air--he saw it all.

Here were Diane and Harkness! Nearby Schwartzmann was on the ground! His man--the one who had not yet descended with the others--was running stumblingly forward. He was wounded, and the blood was streaming from his back. Chet saw the two monsters hovering above Harkness' head; he saw their thick-lidded eyes--and he saw those eyes as they detected an easier prey.

The fleeing man was half-stooped in a shambling run. The winged reptile Chet had beaten off joined the other two and they were upon the wounded man in a flurry of red.

Chet saw him go down and took one involuntary step forward to give him aid--then stopped, transfixed by what he beheld.

The man was down crouching in terror. Above him the three monstrous things beat each other with their wings; then their long beaks stabbed downward. The man's body was hidden, but through those transparent beaks there mounted swiftly a red stream. Plainly visible, Chet saw that vital current--the living life-blood of a living man--drawn into those beastly bodies; he saw it spread through a network of canals! And he was held rigid with horror until a harsh scream from Harkness reached his brain.

"The trees!" Harkness was shouting. "The trees! Down, Chet, for God's sake! You can't save him!"

* * * * *

Walt was half carrying Diane. Even then Chet was vaguely thankful that their bodies were between the girl and this gruesome sight. And Walt was leaping madly down the lava slope.

Beyond him, already on the lower level, was the racing figure of Schwartzmann. A whirring flash of red pursued him. Another made a crimson streak through the air toward Walt's back. Chet came with startling abruptness from the frozen rigidity that held him, and he crashed his empty pistol in well-directed aim through the body of the beast. Then he, too, threw himself in great leaps down the slope.

Kreiss was firing from below; Chet knew dimly that this was checking the attack of the swarm. He saw Walt stagger; saw blood flowing from a slash on the back of his head, and knew that Kreiss had got the monster just in time. He sprang toward the stumbling man and got his arms under the unconscious figure of the girl to help carry the load.

And now it was Kreiss who was shouting. "The trees! We'll be safe in the trees!" He saw Kreiss drop his pistol and dash headlong for the white trunks of ghostly trees.

His arm was pierced by a stinging pain; cold eyes, with thick, leathery lids, were staring into Chet's as he cast one horrified glance over his shoulder. Then he crashed against the white trunk of a tree and helped Harkness drag the body of the girl between two twin trunks. He pulled himself to safety in the shelter of the protecting trees, and held weakly to one of them.... And the crimson lace-work of the sap-wood that showed through the white bark was no brighter red than the mark of his blood-stained hands where they clung for support.

CHAPTER VIII

_Doomed_

The sun was high when they ventured forth. Diane would have come, but the two men would have none of it. They remembered the sight they had seen; they knew what was left of a man's body lying on the rocks above; and they ordered the girl to stay hidden while Kreiss remained with her as a guard.

There were only the four who lay hidden in the woods; Schwartzmann and Max, with the remaining three men, were gone. Harkness' calls were unanswered, and he ceased the halloo.

"Better keep quiet," he advised himself and the others. "We are out of ammunition, though they don't know it. And they have got away. They will keep on going, too, and I am not any too well pleased with that. I wanted to put Schwartzmann where I could keep an eye on him.... Oh, well, he isn't very dangerous."

But Chet Bullard made a few mental and unspoken reservations to that remark. "That boy is always dangerous," he told himself, "and he won't be happy unless he is making trouble. Thank the Lord he hasn't got that gun!"

He came out cautiously from among the trees, but the red horde was gone. The reptiles' wings had rasped and clashed furiously for a time; they had darted in fiery flashes before the protecting trees: and the fitful breeze had brought gusts of nauseous odors--until a thin haze formed in the higher air and the red things were gone.

"There will not be any more for a while," said Harkness.

He pointed toward the fumerole they had seen from the lookout earlier in the day: again it was emitting jets of thin, steamy vapor that did not disappear like steam but floated up above their heads. "The gas has driven them off," he added.

* * * * *

The two men climbed slowly up the slope that had been the wave front of molten rock. Chet found his pistol by the path and picked it up.

"We'll get more ammunition up top," he told Harkness, "and we will toss some down to Kreiss. He can have the extra gun you brought for Schwartzmann, too."

He stopped suddenly. He had reached the level top of the lava flow. Here was where they had stood when the beasts attacked; where Harkness had dropped the boxes of ammunition and the pistol--and except for a few scattered bodies of unbelievable reptiles and for a stain of blood where his own wound had bled, there was nothing to show where they had been.

"He got 'em!" Chet exclaimed. "That son-of-a-gun Schwartzmann got the gun and shells. I saw him scrambling around on the rock. I thought he was just scared to death; but no, he wasn't too frightened to grab the gun and the ammunition while one of his own men was being killed. And that's not so good, either!"

A dozen paces beyond was a huddle of clothing that stirred idly in the breeze. "The poor devil!" exclaimed Chet, and moved over beside the body of the man who had gone down under the red swarm's attack.

It lay face down. Chet stooped to turn the body over, though he knew there was no hope of life. He stopped with a gasp of dismay.

Two eyes still stared in horror from a face that was colorless--a drained, ghastly white face! No tint remained to show that this ever had been a living man. More dreadful than the waxen pallor of death, here was a bleached, bloodless flesh that told of the nameless horror that had overwhelmed this man, beaten him down and drained him of every drop of blood.

"Vampires!" Chet heard Harkness saying in a horrified whisper. "Those beaks that were like tubes! And they--they--" He stopped as if in fear of the words that would tell what they themselves had escaped.

Chet turned the body to its former position; that dreadful face beneath a pitiless sun was a sight no other eyes should see. "Let's go on to the ship," he said. "We'll get some ammunition, go back and get Diane--"

* * * * *

He did not finish the thought. Before him he saw the lifeless body moving; it rolled and shuddered as if life had returned to this thing where no life should be. Chet raised one hand in an unconscious gesture as if to ward off some new horror that the body might disclose. It was a moment before he realized that the rock was shaking beneath his feet, that he was dizzy and that from no great distance a rumbling growl was sounding in his ears.

The moving body had shaken Chet's mental poise as had the earthquake his physical equilibrium. Harkness had not seen it; he was looking off across the level plateau.

"Look!" he exclaimed; "another vent has opened! See it spout?"

Some hundred yards distant were clouds of green vapor that rolled into the air. At their base a fountain of mud sputtered and spouted and fell back to build up a cone. The green cloud whirled sluggishly, then was caught by the breeze and began its slow, rolling progress across the flat rock. It was coming their way, rolling down toward the ship, and Chet gripped suddenly at his companion's arm.

"Come on!" he said! "I'm going away from here, and I'm going now. We'll get Diane and Kreiss: remember what a whiff of gas did to him this morning."

He was drawing Harkness toward the face of the rock; he wondered at his slowness. Walt seemed fascinated by the oncoming cloud.

"Wait!" Harkness paused at the top of the descending slope. Chet turned, to look where Harkness was watching.

The green cloud moved slowly. As he turned to stare it touched the bow of their ship; it flowed slowly, sluggishly, along the sides, and then swept up and over the top. The lookouts of the control room were obscured, and the port from which they had come!

"Cut off!" breathed Harkness, his voice heavy with hopeless conviction. "We can't get back! And now we're on our own past any doubt!"

* * * * *

"It may not last," Chet was urging an hour later, when, with Kreiss and Diane, they stood on high ground to look down on the ship.

The sparkling sheen of the metal cylinder had changed from silver to pale green. The cloud that enveloped it was not heavy, but it was always the same. Yet still Chet insisted: "It may not last."

"Sorry to disappoint you," replied Kreiss, "but there is little ground for such a belief." Again he was the professor instructing a class. "These fumeroles, in my opinion, are venting a region far below the surface. It is possible that further seismic disturbances may alter conditions; a rearrangement of the lower rock strata may close existing crevices and open others like this you have seen; but, barring that, I see no reason for thinking that this emission of what appears to be chlorine with other gases may not continue indefinitely."

Chet looked at Diane. Was it a twinkle that appeared and vanished in her eyes as Herr Professor Kreiss concluded his remarks. She would laugh in the very face of death, Chet realized, but her tone was entirely serious as she offered another suggestion.

"If this wind should change," she said, "and if it blew the gas in another direction, the ship could be cleared. One of us could go in long enough to switch on the air generators full."

But now it was Chet who shook his head in a negative. "Remember," he told her, "when we were here before? All of the time while Walt was gone for the ship--how did the wind blow then?"

"The same as now," she admitted.

"And it never changed."

"No,"--slowly--"it never changed."

* * * * *

Chet turned to Walt and Kreiss. "That's that," he said shortly. "Any other good ideas in the crowd? Can anyone go through that gas and get to the ship? I'll make a try."

"Suicide!" was Kreiss' verdict, and Harkness confirmed his words.

"I saw things that moved up in the trees," he said. "Lord knows what they were; Birds--beasts of some sort! But they were alive till the gas touched them. I saw it drift among the trees when we left, and those things up there came plopping down like ripe apples."

Diane Delacouer looked up at Harkness with wide, serious eyes. "Then," she shrugged, "we are really--"

"Castaways," Harkness told her. "We're on our own--off on a desert island--shipwrecked--all that sort of thing! And you might as well know the worst of it; you, too, Kreiss.

"Our good friend, Schwartzmann, is at large, and he has the pistol and ammunition we brought out from the ship. He is armed, and we are not; he has food, and we have none. And I'll have to admit that I didn't have any breakfast and could use a little right now."

"There are seven shells left in my pistol," said Diane. She held the weapon out to Harkness; he took it carefully.

"Seven," he said; "it is all we have. We must kill some animals for food, my dear, but not with these; we must save these for bigger game."

"But we cannot!" expostulated Kreiss. "To kill game with our bare hands--impossible! We are doomed!"

And now Chet caught Diane's glance brimming with mirth that was undisguised. Truly, Diane Delacouer would have her laugh in the face of death.

"Doomed?" she exclaimed. "Not while Chet and I know how to make bows and arrows!... Do you suppose we can find any of their old spears, Chet? They made gorgeous bows, you remember."

And Chet bowed low in an exaggeration of admiration that was not entirely assumed. "Lead on!" he said. "You are in command. The army is ready to follow."

CHAPTER IX

_A Premonition_

Fire Valley had been the home of the ape-men. On that earlier journey Walt and Chet had seen them, had fought with the tribe, and had lived for a time in their caves that made dark shadows high on the rock wall. And they knew that the wood the ape-men used for their spears was well suited for bows.

Back in the caves they found discarded spears and some wood that had been gathered for shafts. Tough, springy, flexible, it was a simple matter for the men to convert these into serviceable weapons. Sinews that the ape-men had torn from great beasts made the bowstrings, and there were other slim shafts that they notched, then sharpened in the fire.

Yet, to Chet as he worked, came an overwhelming feeling of despondency. To be fashioning crude weapons like these--preparing to defend themselves as best they could from the dangers of this new, raw world! No, it could not be true.... And he knew while he protested that it was all in vain.

He asked himself a score of times if his impulsive, desperate act had not been a horrible mistake. And he found the same answer always: it was all he could have done. Had he attacked Schwartzmann he would have been killed--and Walt, too! Schwartzmann would have had Diane. Only some such stupefying shock as the effect of the shattered control could have checked Schwartzmann. No, there had been no alternative. And the thing was done. Finally, irrevocably done!

* * * * *

Chet walked to the cave-mouth to stare down at the ship below him in the valley. From the fumerole's throat came a steady, rolling cloud of shimmering green; the ship was immersed in it. The voice of Herr Kreiss spoke to him; the scientist, too, had come forward for another look.

"If it were at the bottom of the sea," he said, "it would be no more inaccessible. It is, in very fact, at the bottom of a sea--a sea of gas. We could penetrate an aqueous medium more easily."

"And," Chet pondered slowly, "if only I could have returned.... With time--and metal bars--and tools that I could improvise--I might...."

His voice trailed off. What use now to speculate on what he might have done. The scientist concluded his thought:

"You might have reconstructed the control--yes, I, too, had thought of that. But now, the gas! No--we must put that out of our minds, unless we would become insane."

Chet turned back into the black and odorous cave. He saw Harkness who was flexing a bow he was making for Diane; he was showing her how to grip it and let the arrow run free.

"Towahg was the last one I instructed," Walt was saying; and Chet knew from the deep lines in his face that his attempt at casual talk was for Diane's benefit; "I wonder how long Towahg remembered. He was a grateful little animal."

"Towahg?" queried Kreiss. "Who is Towahg?"

"Ape-man," Harkness told him. "Friendly little rascal; he helped us out when we were here before. He saved Diane's life, no question about that. I showed him the use of the bow; jumped him ahead a hundred generations in the art of self-defense."

"And offense!" was Kreiss' comment. "There are certain drawbacks to arming a potential enemy."

"Oh, Towahg is all right," Harkness reassured the scientist, "although he may have taught the trick to others of the tribe who are not so friendly."

"Where are they? In what direction do they live?" Kreiss continued.

"Want to make a social call?" Chet inquired. "You needn't mind those little formalities up here, Doctor."

* * * * *

But in the mental makeup of Herr Doktor Kreiss had been included no trace of humor; he took Chet's remark at face value. And he answered in words that echoed Chet's real thoughts and that took the smile from his lips.

"But, no," said Herr Kreiss; "it is the contrary that I desire. Here we are; here we stay for the rest of our lives. I would wish those years to be undisturbed. I have no wish to quarrel with what primitive inhabitants this globe may hold. There is much to study, to learn. I shall pass the years so.

"And now," he questioned, "where is it that we go? Where shall be our home?"

Chet, too, looked inquiringly at Harkness. "You saw more of this country than I did," he reminded him; "what would you suggest?"

And, at sight of the serious, troubled eyes of Diane Delacouer, he added:

"We want a site for a high-grade subdivision, you understand. Something good, something exclusive, where we can keep out the less desirable element. Dianeville must appeal to the people who rate socially."

At the puzzled look on the scientist's face, Chet caught Diane's glance of unspoken amusement, and knew that his ruse had succeeded: he must not let Diane get too serious. Harkness answered slowly:

"I saw a valley; I think I can find it again. When Towahg guided me back to the ship, when we were here before, I saw the valley beyond the third range of hills. We go up Fire Valley; follow the stream that comes in from the side--"

"Water?" Chet questioned.

"Yes; I saw a lake."

"Cover? Trees? Not the man-eating ones?"

"Everything: open ground, hills, woods. It looked good to me then; it will look a lot better now," said Walt enthusiastically.

"Walk faster," said Chet; "I'm stepping on your heels."

* * * * *

They reached the valley floor some distance above the fumerole and the clouds of poison gas; and the march began. The attack of the flying reptiles had taught them the danger of exposure in the open, and they kept close to the trees that fringed the valley.

Once Chet left them and vanished among the trees, to return with the body of an animal slung over one shoulder.

"Moon-pig!" he told the others. "Ask Doctor Kreiss if you want to know its species and ancestry and such things. All I know is that it has got hams, and I am going to roast a slice or so before we start."

"Bow and arrow?" asked Harkness.

Chet nodded. "I'm a dead shot," he admitted, "up to a range of ten feet. This thing with the funny face stood still for me, so it looks as if we won't starve."

The sun had swung rapidly into the sky; it was now overhead. One half of their first short day was gone. And Chet's suggestions of food met with approval.

"I can't quite get used to it," Diane admitted to the rest; "to think that for us time has turned back. We have been dropped into a new and savage world, and we must do as the savages of our world did thousands of years ago. Now!--in nineteen seventy-three!"

Chet removed a slab of meat from the hot throat of a tiny fumerole. "Nineteen seventy-three on Earth," he agreed, "but not here. This is about nineteen thousand B.C."

* * * * *

He called to Kreiss who was digging into a thin stratum of rock. The scientist had a splinter of flint in his hand, and he was gouging at a red outcropping layer.

"Old John Q. Neanderthal, himself!" said Chet. "What have you found, silver or gold? Whatever it is, you're forgetting to eat; better come along." But Doctor Kreiss had turned geologist, it was plain.

"Cinnabar," he said; "an ore of hydrargyrum!" His tone was excited, but Chet refused to have his mind turned from practical things.

"Is it good to eat?" he demanded.

"_Nein, nein!_" Kreiss protested. "It is what you call mercury--quicksilver!"

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Chet dryly, "I see where this man Kreiss is to be a big help. He has discovered the site for the thermometer factory. He will be organizing a Chamber of Commerce next."

He left out a portion of the cooked meat for Kreiss' later attention, and he and Harkness rolled a supply into leaf-wrapped packages and stowed them in the pockets of their coats before they started on. Again the little procession took up the march with Harkness leading.

"Leave as little trail as possible," Harkness ordered. "We don't want to shout to Schwartzmann where we have gone."

They left the Valley of the Fires to follow the stream-bed in another hollow between great hills. Chet found himself looking back at the familiar flares with regret. Here was the only place on this new world which was not utterly strange to his eyes. He continued to glance behind him, long after the smoky fires were lost to sight; but he would not admit even to himself that it was for another reason.

Nineteen seventy-three!--and he was a man of the modern civilization. Yet deep within him there stirred ancient instincts--racial memories, perhaps. And, as he splashed through the little stream and bent to make his way through strange-leafed vines and leprous-spotted trees, a warning voice spoke inaudibly within his own mind--spoke as it might have whispered to some ancestor scores of centuries dead.

"You are followed!" it told him. "Listen!--there is one who follows on the trail!"

CHAPTER X

_A Mysterious Rescuer_

Their way led through tangled growths of trees and vines that were like unreal things of a dream. Unreal they were, too, in their strange degree of livingness, for there were snaky tendrils that drew back as if in fear at their approach and stalks that folded great, thorny leaves protectingly about pulpy centers at the first touch of a hand. The world of vegetation seemed strangely sentient and aware of their approach. Only the leprous-white trees remained motionless; their red-veined trunks towered high in air, and the sun of late afternoon shot slantingly through a leafy roof overhead.

Twice Chet let the others go on ahead while he slipped silently into some rocky concealment and watched with staring, anxious eyes back along their trail. But the little stream's gurgling whisper was the only voice, and in all the weird jungle there was no movement but for the unfolding of the vegetation where they had passed.

"Nerves!" he reproached himself. "You're getting jumpy, and that won't do." But once more he let the others climb on while he stepped quickly behind a projecting rock over which he could look.

Again there was silence; again the leaves unfolded their thorny wrappings while vermiform tendrils crept across the ground or reached tentatively into the air. And then, while the silence was unbroken, while no evidence came through his feeble, human senses, something approached.

Neither sight nor sound betrayed it--this something, that came noiselessly after--but a tell-tale plant whipped its leaves into their former wrapping; a vine drew its hanging clusters of flowers sharply into the air. The unseeing watchers of the forest had sensed what was unheard and unseen, and Chet knew that his own inner warning had been true.

He waited to see this mysterious pursuer come into view; and after waiting in vain he realized the folly of thinking himself concealed. He glanced about him; every plant was drawn tightly upon itself. With silent voices they were proclaiming his hiding place, warning this other to wait, telling him that someone was hidden here.

Chet's face, despite his apprehension, drew into a whimsical, silent grin. "No chance to ambush him, whoever he is or whatever it is," he told himself. "But that works two ways: he can't jump us when we're prepared; not in daylight, anyway."

And he asked himself a question he could not answer: "I wonder," he whispered softly, "--I wonder what these plants will do at night!"

* * * * *

Almost they could see the swift descent of the sun. Each flashing glint of light through the dense growth came from lower down toward the invisible horizon. It shone at last where Chet cast anxious glances about upon a mound of rocks.

Rough blocks of tremendous size had been left here from some seismic disturbance. Like the ruins of a castle they were heaped high in air. Even the tree growths stopped at their base, and above them was an opening in the roof of tangled branches and leaves--a rough circle of clear, blue sky.

"How about making camp?" Chet asked. "This place looks good to me. I would just as soon be up off the ground a bit."

Harkness looked at the pile of rocks; glanced once toward the sun. "Right!" he agreed. "This will do for our first camp."

"You've named it," Chet told him as he scrambled to the top of a great block. He extended a hand to Diane, standing tired and breathless at its side.

"Welcome to First Camp!" he told her. "Take this elevator for the first ten floors."

He drew her up to the top of the block. Harkness joined them, and Diane, though she tried to smile in response to Chet, did not refuse their help in making the ascent; the day's experiences had told on all of them.

Thirty or forty feet above the ground was Chet's estimate. From the top of their little fort they watched the shadows of night sweep swiftly down. Scrub tree growths whose roots had anchored among the rocks gave them shelter, while vines and mosses softened the hard outlines of the labyrinth of stones.

* * * * *

Chet undid the package of meat and passed it out freely. There had been scurryings and rustlings in the jungle growth that had reassured him in the matter of food. Darkness fell as they ate; then it gave way to a new flood of light.

Golden light from a monstrous moon! It sent searching fingers through rifts in the leafy roof, then poured itself over the edge of the opening above in a cascade of glory. And, though each one of the four raised his eyes toward that distant globe and knew it for the Earth, no word was said; they ate their food in silence while the silent night wrapped them about.

Still in silence they prepared for the night. Chet and Harkness improvised a bed for Diane in the shelter of a sheer-rising rock. They tore off pieces of moss and stripped leaves from the climbing vines to make a mattress for her; then withdrew with Kreiss to a short distance while Chet told them of his suspicions.

"Six hours of night," he said at last; "that means two hours for each of us. We'll take turns standing guard."

Harkness insisted upon being first. Chet flipped a coin with Kreiss and drew the last turn of guard duty. He stretched himself out on a bit of ground where vegetation had gained a foothold among the rocks.

"It's going to take me a while to get used to these short days," he said. "Six hours of daylight; six hours of night. This is a funny, little world--but it's the only one we've got."

The night air was softly warm; the day had been hard on muscles and nerves. Chet stared toward the glorious ball of light that was their moon. There were men and women there who were going about their normal affairs. Ships were roaring through the air at their appointed levels; their pilots were checking their courses, laughing, joking.

* * * * *

Chet resolutely withdrew his eyes. Think? Hell, no! That was one thing that he must not do. He threw one arm across his eyes to shut out the light that brought visions of a world he would never see again--that emphasized the utter hopelessness of their position.... His next conscious sensation was of his shoulder being shaken, while the hushed voice of Doctor Kreiss said:

"Your turn now, Herr Bullard; four hours have you slept."

From Kreiss, Chet took the pistol with its seven precious shells. "All quiet," Kreiss told him as he prepared to take Chet's place on the soft leaves; "strange, flying things have I seen, but they do not come near. And of your mysterious pursuer we have seen nothing. You imagined it, perhaps."

"I might have imagined it," Chet answered, "but don't try to tell me that the plants did. I'll give this vegetation credit for some damned uncanny powers but not for imagination--I draw the line there."

He looked toward the highest point of rock and shook his head. "Too plain a target if I'm up there," he argued, and took up his position in the shadows instead.

Once he moved cautiously toward the place they had prepared for Diane. She was breathing softly and regularly. And on the rock at her side, with only his jacket for a bed, lay Harkness. Their hands were clasped, and Chet knew that the girl slept peacefully in the assurance of that touch.

"They don't make 'em any finer!" he was telling himself, and at the same moment he stiffened abruptly to attention.

Something was moving! Through and above the hushed noises of the night had come a gliding sound. It was an indescribable sound, too elusive for identification; and Chet, in the next instant, could not be sure of its reality. He did not call, but swung alertly back on guard and slipped from shadow to shadow as he made his way across the welter of rocks.

* * * * *

He stopped at last in strained listening to the silent night. One hand upon a great stone block at his side steadied his body in tense, poised concentration.

From afar came a whistling note whose thin keenness was mingled with a squeal of fright: some marauder of the night had found its prey. From the leafy canopy above him voices whispered as the night wind set a myriad leaves in motion. The thousand tiny sounds that blend to make the silence of the dark! These he heard, and nothing more, while he forced himself to listen beyond them. He followed with his eyes the creeping flood of Earth-light that came slantingly now through the opening above to half-illumine this rocky world; and then, in the far margin of that light he found something on which his eyes focused sharply--something that moved!

Walt!--Kreiss--he must arouse them! A shout of alarm was in his throat--a shout that was never uttered. For, from the darkness at his back--not where this moving thing had been disclosed by the friendly Earth-light, but from the place he had just left--came a scream of pure terror. It was the shocking scream of a person roused from sleep in utter fright, and the voice was that of Diane.

"Walter!" she cried! "Walt!" There were other words that ended in a strangling, choking sound, while a hoarse shout from Harkness merged into a discord that rang horribly through the still night.

* * * * *

Chet was racing across the rocks; the pistol was in his hand. What fearful thing would he face? What was it that had attacked? He forced his leaden feet to carry him on in a succession of wild leaps. Forgotten was the menace behind him, although he half saw, half sensed, a shadow that moved faster than he along the upper rocks. He thought only of the unknown horror that was ahead, that had drawn that despairing shriek from the brave lips of Diane. The few seconds of his crossing were an age in length.

One last spring, one vivid instant while the Earth-light marked in sharp distinctness the figure of a leaping man! It was Harkness, throwing himself into the air, trying vainly to reach the struggling form of Diane Delacouer. She was held high above his head, and she was wrapped in the coils of a monster serpent--coils that finished in a smoothly-rounded end. And Chet knew in that instant of horror that the thing was headless!

He was raising his pistol to fire; the long moments that seemed never to end were in actuality an instant. Where should he aim? He must not injure Diane.

From the high rocks beside him came a glint of light, a straight line of reflected brilliance as from a poised and slender shaft. It moved, it flashed downward, it hissed angrily as it passed close to Chet's head. It went on, a spear like a flash of light--on and down, to drive sharply into the body of that serpent shape! And the coils, at that blow, relaxed, while the figure of Diane Delacouer fell limply to the outstretched, cushioning arms of the man below....

* * * * *

Had the weapon been thrown with uncanny accuracy, or had it been meant for him? Chet could not be sure. But he knew that before him Walt Harkness was bending protectingly above the unconscious figure of a girl, while above and about the two there flailed a terrible, headless thing that beat the rocks with sledge-hammer blows. It struck Harkness once and sent him staggering, and once it came close to Chet so that his hands closed upon it for an instant. And with the touch he knew that this serpent was no animal shape, but worse--a creeping tendril from some flesh-eating horror of the vegetable world.

He dashed in beside Walt; he saw Kreiss hurrying across the rocks. They had Diane safely out of reach of the threshing, striking thing before the scientist arrived.

The spear that had passed close to Chet had pinned this deadly thing to earth; it tore loose as they watched, and the wounded tendril, with the spear still hanging from its side, slid swiftly down the slope and into the darkness at the foot of the rocks.

Even the calm preciseness of Herr Kreiss was shattered by the attack. In a confusion of words he stammered questions that went unanswered. Chet thrust his pistol into Harkness' hands and was off down the rocky slope toward the springs where they had got water for their evening meal. A rolled leaf made a cup that he held carefully while he climbed back. A few minutes later the pallid face of Diane showed a faint flush, while she drew a choking breath.

* * * * *

Harkness held the girl's head in his arms; he was uttering words of endearment that were mingled with vicious curses for the thing that had escaped.

"Never mind that," argued Chet; "that one won't bother us again, and after this we will be on guard. But here is something to wonder about. What about this spear? Where did it come from?"

Harkness had eyes only for Diane's tremulous smile. "I am all right, truly," she assured him. Only then did he turn in bewilderment to Chet.

"I thought you threw it! But of course not; you couldn't; we didn't have any spears."

"No," said Chet; "I didn't throw it. I saw something moving over across there"--he pointed toward the farther rocks where he had been--"I was going to call when Diane's scream beat me to it. But what I saw wasn't the thing that attacked her. And if it was the same one who threw that spear he must have come across here in a hurry. And that spear, by the way, came uncomfortably close to my head. I'm not at all sure but it was meant for me."

Harkness released his arms from Diane, for she was now able to sit erect. He picked up the crude bow that had been beside him and fitted an arrow to the string.

"I'll go and have a look," he promised grimly. But Chet held him back.

"You're not thinking straight; this shock has knocked you out of control. If that little stranger with the spear meant to help us there's no need of hunting him out; he doesn't seem anxious to show himself. And if he meant it for me, he's still too good a shot to fool with in the dark. You stick here until daylight."

"That is good advice," Herr Kreiss agreed. "The night, it will soon be gone." He was looking at the leafy opening overhead where the golden light of a distant Earth was fading before the glow of approaching day.

CHAPTER XI

_The Sacrificial Altar_

"I am off the trail," Harkness admitted. "Towahg guided me before; I wish he were here to do it now."

They had pushed on for another short day, Harkness leading, and Chet bringing up the rear and casting frequent backward glances in a vain effort to catch a glimpse of some other moving figure.

Smothered at times in a dense tangle of vegetation, where they sweated and worked with aching muscles to tear a path; watching always for the flaming, crimson buds on grotesque trees, whose limbs were waving, undulating arms and from which came tendrils like the one that had nearly ended Diane's life, they fought their way on.

They had seen the buds on that earlier trip; had seen the revolting beauty of them--the fleshy lips that opened above a pool of death into which those reaching arms would drop any living thing they touched. They kept well out of reach when a splash of crimson against the white trees flashed in warning.

Again they would traverse an open space, where outcropping rocks would send Kreiss into transports of delight over their rich mineral contents. But always their leader's eyes were turned toward a range of hills.

"It is beyond there," he assured them, "if only we can reach it." Harkness pointed to a scar on a mountainside where a crystal outcrop in a sheer face of rock sparkled brilliantly in the sunlight. "I remember that--it isn't so very far--and we can look back down the valley from there and see our ship."

"But we'll never make it to-night," said Chet; "it's a case of making camp again."

They had gained an altitude of perhaps a thousand feet. No longer did the jungle press so hard upon them. Even the single file that had been their manner of marching could be abandoned, and Harkness drew Diane to his side that he might lend her some of his own strength.