"Yes."
"Where?"
"Not far."
"The h.e.l.l with that!" Snap burst out. "Get it meshed in your mind, Molo, that we"re in no mood for talk like that. How far is it?"
"On Earth you would call it ten miles."
"In these mountains?"
"He told us it was," said Anita. "Underground."
"Do you know where your ship is?" I persisted.
He told us that it was some thirty miles in another direction, not in the mountains, but in the outskirts of a city like Wor. It was equipped and ready for flight, all but the a.s.sembling of its crew.
And now we had weapons! Molo was carrying several of the gravity projectors; two small searchlight beams, little hand torches; and three electronic ray-guns of short-range size.
Hope filled us. The storm was abating. We could creep upon the single small control room of the gravity station, where usually but two operators were stationed. The delicate mechanisms there could be wrecked.
And then we would seize the _Star-Streak_. No one would be on the lookout for us. The fact that Molo"s prisoners had escaped was as yet unknown; he and Wyk had not dared tell it. Meka was back there waiting. Our absence from the globe dwelling might have been discovered; but Meka would say that we were with Molo. She was waiting there, hoping that her brother and Wyk would recapture us. All this we dragged piecemeal from Molo.
Snap and I shared the gravity projectors and the small electronic guns. "Let"s get started, Gregg. The storm seems over."
It was. We found the purple-red starry night again outside. The river was lashed white with waves, but they were spent. There was only a mild warm breeze remaining.
Molo"s legs were free, but his wrists were lashed behind him. I hooked an arm under his, holding him like a huge, but light, oblong bundle.
Snap called, "Ready, Gregg?"
"Yes."
Snap flashed on his gravity ray and mounted, with the girls clinging to his ankles. Then I followed with Molo. By great arching swoops, we swung up into the frowning, tumbled mountains.
15
"This will be the place to land, Gregg Haljan."
We were drifting down upon a barren region of naked crags, dark, frowning rock-ma.s.ses, broken and tumbled, as though by some great cataclysm of nature. Mountains upon the Moon could not be more desolate of aspect.
We landed on the rocks. The heights here had a purple-red sheen from the starlight. We had seen frequent evidence of the storm; and it showed here. Rocks were abnormally piled in drifts; smooth areas showed, where the pebbles, stones and boulders had been swept away by the wind.
Snap and the girls landed beside us. We spoke softly. None of us, not even Molo, knew how far sound would carry in this air.
"Where is the place from here?" Snap demanded.
"Off there."
Molo spoke with docile, guarded softness. He gestured with his head and shoulder. A quarter of a mile away, over these uplands, the broken land went down in a sharp depression.
"It is there. I think from here we should go on the ground. There is no guard, and I think seldom is anyone on top."
"If I help you now, if we should wreck the gravity controls, then Wandl will be helpless to navigate s.p.a.ce, or to interfere with the rotation of Earth, Mars and Venus. The allied worlds might then defeat the Wandl ships in battle. If that happened, perhaps your governments, because of my help here, would forgive what my _Star-Streak_ has done."
"Your piracy?" I said.
"Yes. I am outlawed. I might be reinstated if you would speak the good words for me."
"Maybe."
"Maybe even they would reward me. You think so, Gregg Haljan?"
He wanted to be on the winning side; this suited us. "Let"s try it and see, Molo. I"ll speak plenty of good words for you."
Now, as we landed on the uplands, he said, "You will do best to free my hands."
"Oh, no!" Snap declared.
"But I am a good fighter. Something unexpected might come."
"Too good a fighter," I said. "We trust you because we have to, Molo, but no more than is necessary."
A small recess in the rocks was near us. We put Molo there, with his hands bound, and with Anita and Venza to guard him. Venza held the electronic gun; she knew how to fire it. The girls crouched in a depression about twenty feet away. They could see Molo plainly; if he moved, a flash of the gun would kill him. He knew that.
The girls gazed at us as we were ready to start. "Good-by, Gregg.
Good-by, Snap. Good luck!"
"We won"t be long. Sit where you are." Snap touched Venza"s shoulder for his good-by. "Listen, Venza: Molo has already told us enough to enable us to find the ship. If he tries anything, kill him."
"Right," she said.
We left them. A minute or two, cautiously shoving ourselves along the rocks, and we were crouching there. The cauldron was about two hundred feet broad and fifty feet deep; an irregular circular bowl. The starlight gleamed on it, and there were dots of small artificial light. We saw a group of small metal buildings, very low and squat, like b.a.l.l.s mashed down, flattened in a bulging disc-shape; between them were tiny skeleton towers.
The towers, twice the height of a man, were spread at irregular intervals in a hundred-foot circle, with a group of three or four in the center. There seemed some twenty of them. Taut wires connected their tops, each tower with every other, so that the wires were a lacework above the small disc buildings. The bottoms of the towers were grounded with electrical contacts, and every tower had a ground connection with each other by means of cables.
Far to one side, across the bowl from us, was a single globe-dwelling with lighted windows. From its ground doorway, a narrow metal catwalk extended like a sidewalk on the ground, winding and branching among the towers and discs.
This was the exterior of the Wandl gravity station. It lay silent and dark, save for the starlight and the little lights on the towers. No sign of humans. Then we saw movement in the globe-dwelling. A man came to the doorway, gazed at the sky and went back.
I whispered, "Which is the best entrance to the underground rooms?"
We saw where, at several points, the winding catwalk terminated in low, dome-like kiosks, giving ingress downward. One was on our slope of the cauldron. "That"s the one we"ll try," Snap murmured.
He stopped suddenly. The top of the distant globe-dwelling was glowing. A little round patch there was radiant, like a lighted window. A transparent ray was coming from inside. The operators within this globe were observing the sky, training instruments upon it, no doubt.