This littered tomb! Already cold and silent with death. We stumbled over a fallen figure. A member of the crew.
Grantline straightened from examining him.
"Dead."
Earth-light fell on the horrible face. Puffed flesh, bloated red from the blood which had oozed from its pores in the thinning air. I looked away.
We prowled further. Hahn lay dead in the pump-room.
The body of Coniston should have been near here. We did not see it.
We climbed up to the slanting littered deck. The dome had not exploded, but the air up here had almost all hissed away.
Again Grantline touched me. "That the turret?"
"Yes."
No wonder he asked! The wreckage was all so formless.
We climbed after Snap into the broken turret room. We pa.s.sed the body of that steward who just at the end had appealed to me and I had left dying. The legs of the forward look-out still poked grotesquely up from the wreckage of the observatory tower where it lay smashed down against the roof of the chart-room.
We shoved ourselves into the turret. What was this? No bodies here! The giant Miko was gone! The pool of his blood lay congealed into a frozen dark splotch on the metal grid.
And Moa was gone! They had not been dead. Had dragged themselves out of here, fighting desperately for life. We would find them somewhere around here.
But we did not. Nor Coniston. I recalled what Anita had said: other suits and helmets had been here in the nearby chart-room. The brigands had taken them, and food and water doubtless, and escaped from the ship, following us through the lower admission ports only a few minutes after we had gone out.
We made careful search of the entire ship. Eight of the bodies which should have been here were missing: Miko, Moa, Coniston, and five of the steward-crew.
We did not find them outside. They were hiding near here, no doubt, more willing to take their chances than to yield now to us. But how, in all this Lunar desolation, could we hope to locate them?
"No use," said Grantline. "Let them go. If they want death--well, they deserve it."
But we were saved. Then, as I stood there, realization leaped at me.
Saved? Were we not indeed fatuous fools?
In all these emotion-swept moments since we had encountered Grantline, memory of that brigand ship coming from Mars had never once occurred to Snap or me!
I told Grantline now. His eyes through the visor stared at me blankly.
"What!"
I told him again. It would be here in eight days. Fully manned and armed.
"But Haljan, we have almost no weapons! All my _Comet"s_ s.p.a.ce was taken with mining equipment and the mechanisms for my camp. I can"t signal Earth! I was depending on the _Planetara_!"
It surged upon us. The brigand menace past? We were blindly congratulating ourselves on our safety! But it would be eight days or more before in distant Ferrok-Shahn the non-arrival of the _Planetara_ would cause any real comment. No one was searching for us--no one was worried over us.
No wonder the crafty Miko was willing to take his chances out here in the Lunar wilds! His ship, his reinforcements, his weapons were coming rapidly!
And we were helpless. Almost unarmed. Marooned here on the Moon with our treasure!
(_To be continued._)
+-------------------------------------+ | ASTOUNDING STORIES | | _Appears on Newsstands_ | | THE FIRST THURSDAY IN EACH MONTH. | +-------------------------------------+
The Soul-s.n.a.t.c.her
_By Tom Curry_
[Ill.u.s.tration: _He began to twist and turn, as though torn by some invisible force._]
From twenty miles away stabbed the "atom-filtering" rays to Allen Baker in his cell in the death house.
The shrill voice of a woman stabbed the steady hum of the many machines in the great, semi-darkened laboratory. It was the onslaught of weak femininity against the ebony shadow of Jared, the silent negro servant of Professor Ramsey Burr. Not many people were able to get to the famous man against his wishes; Jared obeyed orders implicitly and was generally an efficient barrier.
"I will see him, I will," screamed the middle-aged woman. "I"m Mrs. Mary Baker, and he--he--it"s his fault my son is going to die. His fault.
_Professor! Professor Burr!_"
Jared was unable to keep her quiet.
Coming in from the sunlight, her eyes were not yet accustomed to the strange, subdued haze of the laboratory, an immense chamber crammed full of equipment, the vista of which seemed like an apartment in h.e.l.l.
Bizarre shapes stood out from the ma.s.s of impedimenta, great stills which rose full two stories in height, dynamos, immense tubes of colored liquids, a hundred puzzles to the inexpert eye.
The small, plump figure of Mrs. Baker was very out of place in this setting. Her voice was poignant, reedy. A look at her made it evident that she was a conventional, good woman. She had soft, cloudy golden eyes and a pathetic mouth, and she seemed on the point of tears.
"Madam, madam, de doctor is busy," whispered Jared, endeavoring to shoo her out of the laboratory with his polite hands. He was respectful, but firm.
She refused to obey. She stopped when she was within a few feet of the activity in the laboratory, and stared with fear and horror at the center of the room, and at its occupant, Professor Burr, whom she had addressed during her flurried entrance.
The professor"s face, as he peered at her, seemed like a disembodied stare, for she could see only eyes behind a mask of lavender gray gla.s.s eyeholes, with its flapping ends of dirty, gray-white cloth.
She drew in a deep breath--and gasped, for the pungent fumes, acrid and penetrating, of sulphuric and nitric acids, stabbed her lungs. It was like the breath of h.e.l.l, to fit the simile, and aptly Professor Burr seemed the devil himself, manipulating the infernal machines.
Acting swiftly, the tall figure stepped over and threw two switches in a single, sweeping movement. The vermillion light which had lived in a long row of tubes on a nearby bench abruptly ceased to writhe like so many tongues of flame, and the embers of h.e.l.l died out.
Then the professor flooded the room in harsh gray-green light, and stopped the high-pitched, humming whine of his dynamos. A shadow picture writhing on the wall, projected from a lead-gla.s.s barrel, disappeared suddenly, the great color filters and other machines lost their semblance of horrible life, and a regretful sigh seemed to come from the metal creatures as they gave up the ghost.