"No!"
"Going--back to Mars--to rest with the fire-makers--where I came from. I was thinking--maybe you would kiss me, Gregg?"
Anita gently pushed me down. I pressed the white, faintly smiling lips with mine. She sighed, and it ended with a rattle in her throat.
"Thank you--Gregg--closer--I can"t talk so loudly--"
One of her gloved hands struggled to touch me, but she had no strength and it fell back. Her words were the faintest of whispers:
"There was no use living--without your love. But I want you to see--now--that a Martian girl can die with a smile--"
Her eyelids fluttered down; it seemed that she sighed and then was not breathing. But on her livid face the faint smile still lingered, to show me how a Martian girl could die.
We had forgotten for the moment where we were. As I glanced up I saw through the inner panel, past the secondary lock, that the hull"s corridor was visible. And along its length a group of Martians was advancing! They saw us, and came running.
"Anita! Look! We"ve got to get out of here!"
The secondary lock was open to the corridor. We jammed on our helmets.
The unhelmeted brigands by then were fumbling at the inner panel. I pulled at the lever of the outer panel. The brigands were hurrying, thinking that they could be in time to stop me. One of the more cautious fumbled with a helmet.
"Anita, run! Try and keep your feet."
I slid the outer panel and pushed at Anita. Simultaneously the brigands opened the inner port.
The air came with a tempestuous rush. A blast through the inner port--through the small pressure lock--a wild rush, out to the airless Moon. All the air in the ship madly rushing to escape....
Like feathers, we were blown with it. I recall an impression of the hurtling brigand figures and swift flying rocks under me. A silent crash as I struck.
Then soundless, empty blackness.
x.x.xVIII
"Is he conscious? We"d better take him back: get his helmet off."
"It"s over. We can get back to the camp now. Venza dear, we"ve won--it"s over."
"He hears us!"
"Gregg!"
"He hears us. He"ll be all right!"
I opened my eyes, I lay on the rocks. Over my helmet, other helmets were peering, and faint, familiar voices mingled with the roaring in my ears.
"--back to the camp and get his helmet off."
"Are his motors smooth? Keep them right, Snap--he must have good air."
I seemed unhurt. But Anita....
She was here. "Gregg, dear one!"
Anita safe! All four of us here on the Earthlit rocks, close outside the brigand ship.
"Anita!"
She held me, lifted me. I was uninjured. I could stand: I staggered up and stood swaying. The brigand ship, a hundred feet away, loomed dark and silent, a lifeless hulk, already empty of air, drained in the mad blast outward. Like the wreck of the _Planetara_--a dead, useless, pulseless hulk already.
We four stood together, triumphant. The battle was over. The brigands were worsted, almost the last man of them dead or dying. No more than ten or fifteen had been available for that final a.s.sault upon the camp buildings. Miko"s last strategy. I think perhaps he had intended, with his few remaining men, to take the ship and make away, deserting his fellows.
All on the ship, caught unhelmeted by the explosion, were dead long since.
I stood listening to Snap"s triumphant account. It had not been difficult for the flying platforms to hunt down the attacking brigands on the open rocks. We had only lost one more platform.
Human hearts beat sometimes with very selfish emotions. It was a triumphant ending for us, and we hardly gave a thought that half of Grantline"s men had perished.
We huddled on Snap"s platform. It rose, lurching drunkenly barely carrying us.
As we headed for the Grantline buildings, where still the rift in the wall had not quite broken, there came the final triumph. Miko had been aware of it, and knew he had lost. Grantline"s searchlight leaped upward, swept the sky, caught its sought-for object--a huge silver cylinder, bathed brightly in the white searchbeam glare.
The police ship from Earth.
TWO PLANETS CLASH FOR LUNAR TREASURE
Gregg Haljan was aware that there was a certain danger in having the giant s.p.a.ceship _Planetara_ stop off at the moon to pick up Grantline"s special cargo of moon ore. For that rare metal--invaluable in keeping Earth"s technology running--was the target of many greedy eyes.
But nevertheless he hadn"t figured on the special twist the clever Martian brigands would use. So when he found both the ship and himself suddenly in their hands, he knew that there was only one way in which he could hope to save that cargo and his own secret--that would be by turning s.p.a.ce-pirate himself and paying the BRIGANDS OF THE MOON back in their own interplanetary coin.
Here is a science-fiction cla.s.sic, as exciting and ingenious as only a master of super-science could write.
When RAY c.u.mMINGS took leave of this planet early in 1957, the world of modern science-fiction lost one of its genuine founding fathers.
For the imagination of this talented writer supplied a great many of the most basic themes upon which the present superstructure of science-fiction is based. Following the lead of Jules Verne and H. G.
Wells, c.u.mmings successfully bridged the gap between the early dawning of science-fiction in the last decades of the Nineteenth Century and the full flowering of the field in these middle decades of the Twentieth.