We plunged down the broken outer slope, reached the level. Soon, as we ran, the little Grantline crater faded behind us.
Anita ran more skillfully than I. Ten minutes or so pa.s.sed. We had seen Miko, and the direction he was taking, but down here on the plain we could no longer see him. It struck me that this was purposeless--and dangerous. Suppose Miko were to see us following? Suppose he stopped and lay in ambush to fire at us as we came leaping heedlessly by?
"Anita, wait," I said, checking her.
I drew her down amid a group of tumbled boulders. And then abruptly she clung to me.
"Gregg, I know what we can do! Gregg, don"t tell me you won"t let me try it!"
I listened to her plan. Incredible! Incredibly dangerous! Yet, as I pondered it, the very daring of the thing seemed the measure of its possible success. The brigands would never imagine we could be so rash!
"But Anita--"
"Gregg, you"re stupid!" It was her turn to be exasperated. In truth, I was indeed in no mood for daring, for my mind was obsessed with Anita"s safety. I had been planning that we might see the glow of Miko"s encampment, and then return to Grantline and hope that he would have the portes repaired.
"But Gregg--the safety of the treasure--of all the Grantline men...."
"To the infernal with that! It"s you--your safety."
"My safety, then! If you put me in the camp and the brigands attack it and I am killed--what then? But this plan of mine, if we can do it, Gregg ... safety, in the end, for all of us."
And it seemed possible. We crouched, discussing it. So daring a thing!
The brigand ship would come down near Archimedes. That was fifty miles from Grantline. The brigands from Mars would not have seen the dark Grantline buildings hidden in the little crater-pit. They would wait for Miko and his men to make their whereabouts known.
Miko"s encampment was ahead of us now, undoubtedly. We had been following him toward the Mare Imbrium; we were at its borders now.
Archimedes from here was also about fifty miles.
And Anita proposed that we go to Archimedes, climb in slope and await the coming of the brigand ship. Miko would be off in the Mare Imbrium.
Or at least, we hoped so. He would signal his ship. But Anita and I, closer to it, would also signal it--and, posing as brigands, could join it!
"Remember, Gregg, I am Anita Prince, George"s sister." Her voice trembled as, she mentioned her dead brother. "They know that George was in Miko"s pay, and I am his sister.... It will help convince them."
This daring scheme! If we could join the ship, we might be able to persuade its leader that Miko"s distant signals were merely a ruse of Grantline to lure the brigands in that direction. A long-range projector from the ship would kill Miko and his men as they came forward to join it! And then we could falsely direct the brigands, lead them away from Grantline and the treasure.
"Gregg, we must try it."
Heaven help me, I yielded to her persuasion!
We turned at right angles and ran toward where the distant frowning walls of Archimedes loomed against the starlit sky.
CHAPTER XXVIII
_The Ascent of Archimedes_
The broken s.h.a.ggy ramparts of the giant crater rose above us. We toiled upward, out of the foothills, clinging now to the crags and pitted terraces of the main ascent. An hour had pa.s.sed since we turned from the borders of the Mare Imbrium. Or was it two hours? I could not tell. I only know that we ran with desperate frantic haste.
Anita would not admit that she was tired. She was more skilful than I in this leaping over the broken rock ma.s.ses. Yet I felt that her slight strength must give out. It seemed miles up the undulating slopes of the foothills with the black and white ramparts of the ma.s.sive crater close before us.
And then the main ascent. There were places where, like smooth black frozen ice, the walls rose sheer. We avoided them, toiling aside, plunging into gullies, crossing pits where sometimes we perforce went downwards, and then up again; or sometimes we stood, hot and breathless, upon ledges, recovering our strength, selecting the best route upward.
This tumbled ma.s.s of rock! Honeycombed everywhere with caves and pa.s.sages leading into darkness impenetrable. There were pits into which we might so easily have fallen; ravines to span, sometimes with a leap, sometimes by a long and arduous detour.
Endless climb! We came to a ledge, with the plains of the Mare Imbrium stretching out beneath us. We might have been upon this main ascent for an hour; the plains were far down, the broken surface down there smoothed now by the perspective of our height. And yet still above us the brooding circular wall went up into the sky. Ten thousand feet still above us--I think it was at least that, or more.
"You"re tired, Anita. We"d better stay here."
"No! If we could only get to the top--the ship may land on the other side--they would see us if we were at the top."
There was as yet no sign of the brigand ship. With every stop for rest we searched the starry vault. The Earth hung over us, flattened beyond the full. The stars blazed to mingle with the Earthlight and illumine these ma.s.sive crags of the Archimedes walls. But no speck appeared to tell us that the ship was up there.
We were on the curving side of the Archimedes wall which fronted the Mare Imbrium to the North. The plains lay like a great frozen sea, congealed ripples shining in the light of the Earth, with dark patches to mark the hollows. Somewhere down there--six or eight thousand feet below us now, or even more than that, for all I could tell--Miko"s encampment lay concealed. We searched for lights of it, but could see none.
Or had Miko rejoined his party, left his camp and come here like ourselves to climb Archimedes? Or was our a.s.sumption wholly wrong--perhaps the brigand ship would not land near here at all?
Sweeping around from the Mare Imbrium, the plains were less smooth--the shattered, crag-littered, crater-scarred region beyond which the distant Apennines raised their terraced walls. The little crater which concealed the Grantline camp was off that way. There was nothing to mark it from here.
"Gregg, do you see anything up there? There seems to be a blur."
Her sight, sharper than mine, had picked it out. The descending brigand ship! A faintest tiny blur against the stars, a few of them occulted as though strangely an invisible shadow were upon them. A growing shadow, materializing into a blur--a blob, a shape faintly defined. Then sharper until we were sure of what we saw. It was the brigand ship. It came dropping slowly, silently down.
We crouched on the little ledge. A cave-mouth was behind us. A gully was beside us, a break in the ledge; and at our feet the wall dropped sheer.
We had extinguished our little lights. We crouched, silently gazing up into the stars.
The ship, when first we distinguished it was central over Archimedes.
We thought for a while that it might descend into the crater. But it did not; it came sailing forward.
I whispered into the audiphone--whispering by instinct, as though out here in all this airless desolation someone might overhear us!
"It"s coming over the crater."
Her hand pressed my arm in answer.
I recalled that when, from the _Planetara_, Miko had forced Snap to signal this brigand band on Mars, Miko"s only information as to the whereabouts of the Grantline camp was that it lay between Archimedes and the Apennines. That was Grantline"s first message to us, and Miko had relayed it to his men. The brigands from Mars now were following that information.
A tense interval pa.s.sed. We could see the ship plainly above us now, a gray-black shape among the stars up beyond the s.h.a.ggy, towering crater-rim. The vessel came upon a level keel, hull-down, slowly circling, looking for Miko"s signal, no doubt, or for possible lights of Grantline. They were also picking a landing place.