My helmet shut out all sounds save my own breathing, my pounding heart, and the murmur of the mechanism. The blessed warmth and pure air were good.
We reached the hull port-locks. They operated! We went through in the light of the head-lamps over our foreheads.
I closed the locks after us. An instinct to keep the air in the ship for the other trapped humans lying there.
We slid down the sloping side of the _Planetara_. We were unweighted, irrationally agile with the slight gravity. I fell a dozen feet and landed with barely a jar.
We were out on the Lunar surface. A great sloping ramp of crags stretched down before us. Gray-black rock tinged with Earth-light. The Earth hung amid the stars in the blackness overhead like a huge section of glowing yellow ball.
This grim, desolate, silent landscape! Beyond the ramp, fifty feet below us, a tumbled naked plain stretched away into blurred distance. But I could see mountains off there. Behind us the towering, frowning rampart-wall of Archimedes loomed against the sky.
I had turned to look back at the _Planetara_. She lay broken, wedged between spires of upstanding rock. A few of her lights still gleamed.
The end of the _Planetara_!
The three grotesque figures of Anita, Venza and Snap had started off.
Hunchback figures with the tanks mounted on their shoulders. I bounded and caught them. I touched Snap. We made audiphone contact.
"Which way do you think?" I demanded.
"I think this way, down the ramp. Away from Archimedes, toward the mountains. It shouldn"t be too far."
"You run with Venza. I"ll hold Anita."
He nodded. "But we must keep together, Gregg."
We could soon run freely. Down the ramp, out over the tumbled plain.
Bounding, grotesque leaping strides. The girls were more agile, more skilful. They were soon leading us. The Earth-shadows of their figures leaped beside them. The _Planetara_ faded into the distance behind us.
Archimedes stood back there. Ahead, the mountains came closer.
An hour perhaps. I lost count of time. Occasionally we stopped to rest.
Were we going toward the Grantline camp? Would they see our tiny waving headlights?
Another interval. Then far ahead of us on the ragged plain, lights showed! Moving tiny spots of light! Headlights on helmeted figures!
We ran, monstrously leaping. A group of figures were off there.
Grantline"s party? Snap gripped me.
"Grantline! We"re safe, Gregg! Safe!"
He took his bulb-light from his helmet: we stood in a group while he waved it. A semaph.o.r.e signal.
"_Grantline?_"
And the answer came. "_Yes. You, Dean?_"
Their personal code. No doubt of this--it was Grantline, who had seen the _Planetara_ fall and had come to help us.
I stood then with my hand holding Anita. And I whispered, "It"s Grantline! We"re safe, Anita, my darling!"
Death had been so close! Those horrible last minutes on the _Planetara_ had shocked us, marked us.
We stood trembling. And Grantline and his men came bounding up.
A helmeted figure touched me. I saw through the helmet-pane the visage of a stern-faced, square-jawed, youngish man.
"Grantline? Johnny Grantline?"
"Yes," said his voice at my ear-grid. "I"m Grantline. You"re Haljan?
Gregg Haljan?"
They crowded around us. Gripped us to hear our explanations.
Brigands! It was amazing to Johnny Grantline. But the menace was over now, over as soon as Grantline had realized its existence. As though the wreck of the _Planetara_ were foreordained by an all-wise Providence, the brigands" adventure had come to tragedy.
We stood for a time discussing it. Then I drew apart, leaving Snap with Grantline. And Anita joined me. I held her arm so that we had audiphone contact.
"Anita, mine."
"Gregg, dear one."
Murmured nothings which mean so much to lovers!
As we stood in the fantastic gloom of the Lunar desolation, with the blessed Earth-light on us, I sent up a prayer of thankfulness. Not that a hundred millions of treasure were saved. Not that the attack upon Grantline had been averted. But only that Anita was given back to me. In moments of greatest emotion the human mind individualizes. To me, there was only Anita.
Life is very strange! The gate to the shining garden of our love seemed swinging wide to let us in. Yet I recall that a vague fear still lay on me. A premonition?
I felt a touch on my arm. A bloated helmet visor was thrust near my own.
I saw Snap"s face peering at me.
"Grantline thinks we should return to the _Planetara_. Might find some of them alive."
Grantline touched me. "It"s only humanity."
"Yes," I said.
We went back. Some ten of us--a line of grotesque figures bounding with slow, easy strides over the jagged, rock-strewn plain. Our lights danced before us.
The _Planetara_ came at last into view. My ship. Again that pang swept me as I saw her. This, her last resting place. She lay here in her open tomb, shattered, broken, unbreathing. The lights on her were extinguished. The Erentz system had ceased to pulse--the heart of the dying ship, for a while beating faintly, but now at rest.
We left the two girls with some of Grantline"s men at the admission port. Snap, Grantline and I, with three others, went inside. There still seemed to be air, but not enough so that we dared remove our helmets.
It was dark inside the wrecked ship. The corridors were black; the hull control-rooms were dimly illumined with Earth-light straggling through the windows.