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. 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, would join it!
"Remember, Gregg, I remain 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 as his sister, will help to 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 would 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.
XXVIII
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 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 skillful 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 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, perforce, we went downwards, and then up again. Or sometimes we stood, hot and breathless, upon ledges, recovering our strength, selecting the best route upward.
In tumbled ma.s.s of rock, honeycombed everywhere with caves and pa.s.sages leading into impenetrable darkness, 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 the 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 height. And yet still above us the brooding circular wall went up into the sky. Ten thousand feet above us.
"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."
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--Miko"s encampment lay concealed. We searched for lights of it, but could see none.
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 little crater which concealed the Grantline camp was off in the crater-scarred region beyond which the distant Apennines raised their terraced walls. There was nothing to mark it from here.
"Gregg, do you see anything up there?" She added, "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 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 was 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 sheer wall dropped.
We had extinguished our lights. We crouched, silently gazing up into the stars.
The ship, when we first distinguished it, was centered 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, "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. The brigands 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 from Grantline"s camp. They might also be picking a landing place.
We saw it soon as a cylindrical, cigarlike shape, rather smaller than the _Planetara_, but similar of design. It bore lights now. The ports of its hull were tiny rows of illumination, and the glow of light under its rounding upper dome was faintly visible.
A bandit ship, no doubt of that. Its identification keel plate was empty of official pa.s.s code lights. These brigands had not attempted to secure official sailing lights when leaving Ferrok-Shahn. It was unmistakably an outlaw ship. And here upon the deserted Moon there was no need for secrecy. Its lights were openly displayed, that Miko might see it and join it.
It went slowly past us, only a few thousand feet higher than our level. We could see the whole outline of its pointed cylinder hull, with the rounded dome on top. And under the dome was its open deck with a little cabin superstructure in the center.
I thought for a moment that by some unfortunate chance it might land quite near us. But it went past. And then I saw that it was heading for a level, plateaulike surface a few miles further on. It dropped, cautiously floating down.
There was still no sign of Miko. But I realized that haste was necessary. We must be the first to join the brigand ship.
I lifted Anita to her feet. "I don"t think we should signal from here."
"No. Miko might see it."
We could not tell where he was. Down on the plains, perhaps? Or up here, somewhere in these miles of towering rocks?
"Are you ready, Anita?"
"Yes, Gregg."
I stared through the visors at her white solemn face.
"Yes, I"m ready," she repeated.
Her hand pressure seemed to me suddenly like a farewell. We were plunging rashly into what was destined to mean our death? Was this a farewell?
An instinct told me not to do this thing. Why, in a few hours I could have Anita back to the comparative safety of the Grantline camp. The exit ports would doubtless be repaired by now. I could get her inside.
She had bounded away from me, leaped down some thirty feet into the broken gully, to cross it and then up on the other side. I stood for an instant watching her fantastic shape, with the great rounded, goggled, trunked helmet and the lump on her shoulders which held the little Erentz motors. Then I hurried after her.
It did not take us long--two or three miles of circling along the giant wall. The ship lay only a few hundred feet above our level.
We stood at last on a b.u.t.telike pinnacle. The lights of the ship were close over us. And there were moving lights up there, tiny moving spots on the adjacent rocks. The brigands had come out, prowling about to investigate their location.
No signal yet from Miko. But it might come at any moment.
"I"ll flash now," I whispered.