“Too late for that,” said the professor. “We must have been seen.”
As the two men watched the one sided aerial parley below, they saw two more Patrol Planes emerge from the upper cloud stratum and take places behind the first.
“That makes the numbers even, at least,” said Roger.
The two squadrons drew together without sign or signal from the strange craft, until the two leaders were within two thousand feet of each other. Then a narrow green ray suddenly shot out from the foremost globe, striking the first patrol plane. For a moment the plane seemed to shrink—to draw together as if crushed in from all sides. Then it crumbled asunder, and the pieces fell into the swirling clouds beneath.
The forward turret guns of the two remaining planes immediately went into action, concentrating their fire on the foremost globe, but with no apparent effect. Green rays shot out from the two other globes simultaneously, and the planes shared the fate of their leader.
Then a green ray from the first globe sailed upward.
“Jump!” shouted Roger. “It’s our only chance. They’ll find us in a minute.”
The professor tore the door open and jumped first. His parachute opened just as Roger leaped after him followed by Bevans.
Roger could not see upward because of the parachute spread above him, but fragments of the shattered Blettendorf began falling around him before he had dropped far, and he was thankful that they had leaped in time.
Looking downward to see how it fared with the professor, he saw to his horror that the linguist was falling directly onto one of the globes.
Then he shot past the same globe himself, heard the hum of its rapidly whirling discs, and dropped into the enveloping grayness of the raging storm clouds beneath.
On leaving the metal shed which had housed his one-man vehicle, Ted Dustin hovered for a moment to get his bearings—then shot away from the earth at such speed that his exterior thermometer registered a terrific heat from the shell of his craft before five seconds had elapsed. Forced to slacken his speed because of the danger of crippling his machine, he proceeded at a more leisurely pace until his instruments told him he was entirely out of the earth’s atmosphere.
Once assured of this, he set his meteoroid detector—an extremely sensitive magnetic instrument which registered the approach of all meteoric masses, automatically repelling the smaller ones by blasts from the exhaust of the atomotor, and driving the craft away from those of greater mass. He next set his automatic course corrector, which was designed to throw the machine back on its course after each forced deviation. Then he set the motor for full speed ahead.
To his surprise and satisfaction he found, on glancing at the magnetic speedometer, that the little untested motor was driving the craft almost twice as fast as he had anticipated. He would thus, barring accidents, be able to reach the moon in a day and a half instead of the three days he had previously allowed himself for the undertaking. This necessitated the setting of a new course, as he would otherwise have arrived at the moon’s path just a day and a half ahead of that satellite.
Having made his calculations and adjusted his instruments accordingly, he opened his visor, swallowed a concentrated food pellet, drank a cup of hot coffee from the thermos tank, and lighted his black briar. Finding the cabin uncomfortably cold with his visor open, he drew up an extra set of glass panels all around and turned on his atomic heater. Then he studied the translations of the professor, hoping that he might thus learn enough of the Lunite writing to form a basis for intelligent communication.
When the first hour had elapsed he looked back at the earth, which appeared as an enormous, semi-luminous globe set in a black sky, its seas and continents faintly defined by the light of the full moon. The disc of the sun remained hidden behind the earth, but other heavenly bodies were far brighter in appearance, shining from this black sky, than he had ever seen them appear from on earth.
As the hours passed and the apparent size of the earth grew less while that of the moon grew correspondingly greater, he was surprised at not having encountered a single meteor. Presently, after about twelve hours of travel, one caused the craft to swerve, and he noticed with satisfaction that the automatic course corrector functioned perfectly.
He swallowed another food pellet, sipped his coffee, and tried to sleep, but despite the fact that he had trained himself to take rest or go without it as the occasion required, he found sleep out of the question. The excitement of his thrilling race with the earth’s satellite was too much for that. He could scarcely bear to close his eyes for a moment, for looking and wondering.
Before he realized it, twenty-four hours had slipped by. The shrinking shape of the earth was now on his left—the silver disc of the moon, with craters, hills and valleys, was now plainly visible to the naked eye, on his right. He was traveling with his keel in the plane of the ecliptic. As he progressed, the prow leaned more and more toward the moon’s north pole.
The last twelve hours were packed with wonders, thrills, and dangers. Previously he had encountered only a relatively few meteoroids. Now, he found they traveled in swarms in and near the neutral gravity point between moon and earth. His craft swerved this way and that—dropped—or shot suddenly upward, as huge masses of meteoric matter hurtled dangerously near it. He caught fleeting glimpses of these desultory travelers, some of them almost perfectly spherical, others jagged lumps of rock and metal—grim remnants of some planetary or planetoidal tragedy of the past.
With the neutral gravity point well past and the moon directly beneath his keel, the danger from meteoroids was considerably lessened. The delays were more than compensated for by the increasing pull of the moon itself.
His goal almost realized, Ted’s next problem was to decide where to land. Copernicus, plainly visible to the north east with its brilliant yellow ray system, and Tycho, to the south, with its still more dazzling white rays branching out in all directions, were the two most conspicuous objects on the lunar landscape.
Although his purpose was to find the belligerent ruler, P’an-ku, his only hint as to his whereabouts was the probability that the crater, Hipparchus, was somewhere within the limits of that worth’s empire, which might be as extensive as the moon itself, or confined to a relatively small area. The thing to do, he decided, was to land at Hipparchus and investigate.
As he approached the great ring-mountain, Ted saw no signs of life. The damage wrought by his projectile, however, was evident—for in the center of the huge, enclosed plain, gaped a jagged black hole fully five miles in diameter, while the interior of the crater was strewn with jagged rock debris, some of the larger fragments the size of a terrestrial city block. Of the city of Ur, mentioned in the radio message, he saw no sign whatever. Greatly puzzled, he slowly circled the crater, then crossed the rim and set out in a widening spiral, flying only a few thousand feet above the ground, looking for some sign of a human being or habitation.
Although there had been no sign of vegetation in the enormous crater which had been laid waste by his projectile, Ted now began to notice signs of lunar forests and meadows. Flying slowly at an altitude of two hundred feet, he passed over level areas covered with velvety stretches of gray vegetation that resembled mosses and lichens, and over hills and valleys clothed with forests of weird, grotesque growths.
There were fungi shaped like saucers, umbrellas, cones, spearheads, and even upraised hands, all rusty black in color. There were black stalks, fully fifty feet in height, topped by five-pointed purple stars, huge gray pear-shaped growths from which there curled sinuous branches that resembled the tentacles of cuttle fish, and black trees, some of which were a hundred feet in height, with branches that unrolled like the leaves of sword-ferns.
Disposed to view some of these wonders at closer range, Ted lowered his craft to the ground. A glance at his exterior thermometer showed the outside temperature to be 210° above zero, Fahrenheit, almost the boiling point of water at sea level on earth! He accordingly closed his visor and turned on the valve of his insulated compressed air tank before opening the door of his turret. Slamming this quickly behind him, he stepped down from his craft, sinking ankle deep in the soft, gray moss that coated the forest floor.
As the suit he wore protected him from either extreme heat or cold he was able to maintain a normal body temperature, but the comparatively slight gravitational pull of the earth’s satellite gave him an uncanny freedom of motion. His first incautious step shot him ten feet in the air and landed him, with startling suddenness, face downward in a tangle of black creepers fully twenty feet from where he had started. Instinctively he scrambled erect and was as suddenly precipitated on his back at a distance of fifteen feet in the opposite direction. This time he arose slowly, stepped forward with great care, and found himself able to progress after a somewhat jerky fashion.
Having thus, to a degree, mastered the art of walking on the moon, he took the opportunity to observe the queer vegetation around him. To his intense surprise, he saw that it was growing visibly! Although the rates of growth varied in different plants, he could see that all were swelling and elongating with amazing rapidity. Watching an umbrella shaped fungus which was on a level with his eyes, he calculated that it was growing taller at the rate of a foot an hour! The black, fern-like branches of a great tree unrolled and enlarged before his eyes. Spore pods beneath the leaves, swelled and burst, scattering tiny dust-like particles which floated about, or settled on the surrounding vegetation, rocks and soil. A tall, black and gray fungus opened its gills, releasing a cloud of silver spores that glittered in the sunlight like mica dust.
Ted was attracted by the movements of the tentacles of an octopus-like plant a short distance ahead of him, and walked toward it. They writhed and twisted like the snakey locks of a Medusa, yet the roots which held the pear-shaped trunk showed the vegetable nature of the monstrosity. Prompted by a rash curiosity, he had no sooner arrived beside the grotesque anomaly than he grasped one of the slithering branches, expecting, from its slimy appearance, to find it soft and yielding. To his surprise and dismay it suddenly coiled around his forearm with a grip as firm and unyielding as the loops of a steel cable. He was jerked off his feet, straight toward a black, horny lipped opening of triangular shape, which yawned at the top of the pear-shaped body.
Instinctively, he reached with his free hand for his pistol degravitor, but too late. A score or more of tough, unyielding tentacles bound his arms to his sides and circled his body with such force that his bones would have been instantly crushed and his flesh reduced to pulp had it not been for the metal plates of his protective armor. Even these creaked, and seemed about to give way, as he was drawn, head downward, into the yawning, spike-toothed opening.
As he plunged into the awful death trap, Ted noticed that, for a moment, the sun was darkened above him and there was a sound which resembled the whistling of giant pinions. Then came the click of enormous teeth against the armor which covered his thighs, and blackness.
The powerful tentacles had released their hold on his arms and the upper part of his body, but their place was instantly supplanted by the walls of the huge, vegetable craw which exerted even greater pressure. He wondered if the digestive juices of the plant would be corrosive enough to quickly penetrate his protective suit, or if a long, lingering death awaited him—a death which, even though the suit held, was bound to come as soon as his supply of air gave out.
Hanging there in stygian solitude, unable to move a finger, Ted was suddenly startled at sight of a brilliant ray of red light which cut the darkness near his face. It blinded him temporarily, but when he could use his eyes once more he was astonished to see that the lower wall of his vegetable tomb had practically disappeared, while the bright, red ray, flashing intermittently, consumed the blackened edges still further with puffs of smoke and flame.
Here, he judged, was some human agency. Here was hope of rescue, for the red ray, thus far, had not touched him. He could now move his head and shoulders, but dared not do so for fear of intercepting the red ray with disastrous results.
The ray ate its way slowly upward beside one of his arms. It was free. A moment, and the other was loosed. Then the jaws relaxed their hold on his thighs and he slid down into the charred, jelly-like remains of the oval body, of which now only half the wall was standing. Two arms were slipped beneath his own, helping him to rise. Then he turned and faced his rescuer.
Prepared as he was for almost any sight, Ted gasped in amazement when he beheld the person who had saved his life, for standing before him in a suit of soft, clinging white fur resembling astrachan, her head encased in a helmet of bell-shaped glass, was the gloriously beautiful girl he had seen in the disc of the radiovisiphone—the girl who had called herself “Maza an Ma Gong.” In her right hand was a short, tubular instrument which greatly resembled a flash-light, and which he judged was the weapon that had compassed his freedom.
As he could not speak to her he was trying to think of a way to express his gratitude for his unexpected rescue while she smiled encouragingly, when he suddenly noticed a most fearful creature behind her. It resembled nothing living that he had ever seen or heard of, but was strikingly like pictures he had seen of winged dragons—pictures he had always previously imagined were due solely to the imagination of medieval artists.
Believing the girl in dire peril, he whipped out both pistol degravitors and was about to destroy the beast when she struck down his weapons with a look of alarm. Then, beckoning the thing with her hand she stood, unafraid, while the hideous creature stretched forth its scrawny, scaly neck and laid its ugly, armor-plated muzzle on her shoulder. She fondled it for a moment, scratching its horny nose while it closed its eyes and laid back its short ears as if greatly pleased by these attentions. Then she pushed the head away and turned once more to the amazed young scientist.
As she stood there beside him he noticed for the first time that what he had taken for a plume, resembling an aigrette and protruding through the top of her glass helmet was, in reality, a group of fine, metallic radio antennae. The small set which they operated was evidently attached just beneath them—shaped like and no larger than his own wrist radiophone.
He wished that he had had the foresight to attach a similar contrivance to his own outfit, but since he had not, he found it necessary to resort to more primitive means for making himself heard.
Taking the girl lightly by the shoulders, and thereby eliciting a look of startled surprise from her, he bent over and placed the glass of his helmet against hers, an expedient which had been much in use among deep sea divers for making themselves intelligible to each other before the advent of under water radio sets.
“Thank you, Maza an Ma Gong, for saving my life,” he said.
She smiled and replied:
“Di tcha-tsi, Ted Dustin.”
Recalling that “tcha-tsi” had something to do with a challenge to war, he was somewhat puzzled, yet her attitude was quite peaceful. She continued to smile, and pointed toward the great hulking beast behind her.
“Nak-kar,” she said, then pointed to herself and continued: “Uma nak-kar.”
The beast, at this moment, lowered its head to crop some moss, and let its wings, which had been folded across its back, droop slightly, displaying a most comfortable looking, highbacked seat strapped to its back. He judged, therefore, that the lady was telling him this was her palfrey—truly a most hideous one.
He led her to the spot where he had cached his interplanetary vehicle, while the great beast lumbered meekly after her, pointed to the craft and, with his helmet against hers, said:
“Ship.” Then, pointing to himself: “My ship.”
When she seemed not to understand, he said: “Uma nak-kar.”
She nodded understandingly, and both laughed.
He opened the door and helped her into the small cab. Then stepping in himself and sharing the revolving seat with her, he closed it and took her for a short ride above the trees—or the growths which answered for trees on that weird landscape. She was as excited as a child, and clapped her hands with glee as they soared, and did several stunts, finally landing as lightly as a feather.
As he helped her from the cab she stood on tiptoes so her helmet touched his, and said: “Um nak-kari na Ultu.” As she spoke she pointed first to her mount, then toward the east. Then: “Ted Dustin nak-kari na Ultu.”
Although he did not know the meaning of all her words, he felt that he understood what she wanted. She seemed to take it for granted that he did, for springing lightly into her saddle she struck the shoulder of the great winged monster with her gloved palm, whereupon it ran, sprawling clumsily for fifty feet or so with wings outspread, then took to the air in which it seemed quite at home and flapped lazily eastward.
He hurried to his vehicle as he did not want to lose sight of her, entered, closed the door, and pressed the starter lever. To his surprise and alarm it did not respond. He pressed it again with the same negative result. Then he remembered that he had carelessly left the door open for several minutes. The interior of the cab had thus been exposed to the terrific heat of the lunar surface. Unscrewing the top of the starter he instantly saw the cause of his trouble. A connection, on which he had hastily used wax instead of solder and tape, had melted, breaking the circuit. Several minutes elapsed before he could make the temporary repair, using his temperature equalizer, meanwhile, to cool the cab.
Once more he pressed the starter, the atomotor responded, and he rose high in the air in order that he might quickly locate the girl and her strange steed. He saw her instantly, about a mile east of his position. Her mount, he noticed, was flapping forward with greater speed than before, and high above it was a globe circled by two transverse belts, and to which were fastened two whirling discs, oppositely placed. Suddenly the globe swooped downward like a falcon on its prey.
As he darted forward he saw a tiny red ray shoot upward from the hand of the girl. It struck one of the belts of the descending craft, and sparks and smoke flew out from the spot. Then a green ray shot out from the globe, crossing the red ray. At the point where they crossed both rays disappeared and the sparks and smoke from the craft ceased. Then another green ray flashed out from the globe, striking one of the wings of the monster. The wing seemed to shrivel—then broke in pieces, and the beast fell, fluttering wildly with its remaining wing until it crashed with its rider into a tall forest of black-stemmed purple star plants.
While he watched this unequal battle, which lasted only a few seconds, Ted had been hurtling forward at terrific speed. Just as the girl fell, he shot between her and the attacking globe, narrowly missing one of the green rays which still extended downward. Bringing his vehicle about, he trained his forward degravitor on the descending globe and pressed the button.
Although no visible ray leaped out, the effect on the globe was readily apparent, for it flashed where it had struck, then gaped wide as the degravitor rays cut a tunnel through it.
A green ray instantly flashed back in retaliation, striking Ted’s prow and breaking it into fragments. His craft then did a nose dive which he was powerless to prevent, the forward exhaust pipes of the atomotor having been cut away. It buried itself in a cluster of the huge purple star plants, so thick that they shut out the light of day.
As he had not strapped himself to his seat, Ted landed on his instrument board when the craft struck, and laid there for several moments in a semi-stupor, the breath knocked from his body. Presently, his breath returning in short gasps, he found himself able to rise and force the door part way open. A black stem of one of the star-like plants blocked it, but he cut this away at the base with his pistol degravitor, waited until it crashed among its fellows, and then stepped out to freedom, this time remembering to close the door after him.
After leaping to the ground, he looked about him, trying to orient himself in the darkness. Here and there faint glimmers of light showed between black trunks, but there was nothing to give him even a hint of directions. He started for the light spot directly ahead of him as it looked the brightest and probably issued from the largest open space.
Treading noiselessly over the soft gray moss which grew between the closely packed black trunks, he presently reached the clearing from which the light had issued. It was but a small opening in the forest, and it seemed to him that something more than chance had directed his footsteps as he saw the girl standing at bay with her red ray projector in her hand before a short, round-bodied individual clad in yellow fur and wearing a glass and copper helmet shaped, at the top, like a pagoda.
The two were fencing, but not with blades of steel. They fenced with something infinitely more destructive, for as the girl sought to reach her antagonist with the red ray he warded it off with a green ray from a small projector which he held in his hand, and in turn, menaced her with his weapon while she parried with the red ray.
Near her lay the remains of her huge mount, now a mere hulk of flesh, with head, neck and one wing gone.
Drawing a pistol degravitor, Ted leveled it at the wielder of the green ray and pulled the trigger. It was aimed at his head, which instantly disappeared, the torso slipping to the ground with the green ray projector still clasped in the lifeless hand. The ray struck the base of a giant star-tree, which shriveled at the bottom, then crashed to the ground. Another and another instantly shared its fate, falling only a second or two apart, but in these Ted was not interested.
He was about to disclose himself to the astonished girl when two long, lean arms clad in yellow fur suddenly reached out from the clump of fern like growths behind her and jerked her backward. Her red ray winked once, then went out, and Ted leaped forward to her assistance. He managed to follow by means of the trail of trampled and broken vegetation left by her abductors. Presently he reached another clearing just in time to see her hustled aboard the globe which had attacked her some time before, by two yellow-clad Lunites.
The globe, he now saw, was of yellow metal. The two transverse belts he had seen from a distance proved to be combination ladders and bridges. A man could walk around the one which happened to be horizontal, or climb the one which happened to be vertical, using the supporting bars of the railing for ladder rounds.
Projecting from the two points where these belts crossed were shaft housings, on the end of each of which were the discs he had previously noticed. The faces of both discs resembled brightly polished mirrors, one convex, the other concave.
Just above and below the lines traced by the bridges were rows of diamond-shaped, glassed openings which he judged answered as port holes. There was a diamond-shaped door on the side of the craft nearest him, and it was into this that the girl was thrust by her two captors, while Ted stood helpless, unable to use his weapons for fear of harming her.
One of the men closed the door after them. Then both discs started whirling. The craft began to rise, and Ted bounded forward, just in time to grasp a round of one of the ladders as it cleared the ground. Climbing quickly up beneath the whirling concave disc, he stepped onto the bridge and crouched there, to be out of sight from the port holes and to plan his next move.
There were only two ways for him to enter the craft. He must either cut a hole with his pistol degravitor or go in through the hole which he had cut with his large degravitor before his craft fell. This hole was high up in the shell of the globe and could only be reached by climbing the belt ladder, then sliding down the smooth shell until the hole was reached. It was a hazardous undertaking in more ways than one, with scant hope of success. First, he stood little chance of being able to climb the ladder without being seen from one of the ports. That he had reached his present position undetected was little short of a miracle.
Then, should he be able to reach the proper position unseen, sliding down the shell was a most uncertain and perilous thing to do. There was nothing to cling to, and the chances were ten to one that he would miss the hole he was striving to reach.
But assuming that he should reach the hole, there was every probability still against him. Undoubtedly, a dozen green ray projectors would instantly be turned on him, ending his career without accomplishing his purpose.
True, he might cut his way into the craft with his pistol degravitor, but this would endanger the girl. For all he knew, she might, at that very moment, be separated from him only by the shell of the craft which he had thought of cutting, and an inch or two of air. She might be at any point in the craft through which he should elect to cut his way.
Looking through the bars of the railing, he saw that they were sailing swiftly over the very spot where he had come near to losing his life to the flesh-eating plant only a short time before, and were headed eastward. A moment more and they passed over the rugged rim of the great ring-mountain, Hipparchus. The craft dipped as they passed over the barren, debris-strewn inner plain. Were they headed for the destroyed city of Ur? And would others of their kind be there to meet them? If so, he must act quickly.
Abandoning all caution, he sprang up the ladder. He expected, at every step, that a green ray would shoot out from one of the port holes and destroy him, and was surprised when he found himself sitting on top of the craft, alive and unharmed. On his right, about ten feet below him, was the hole through which his degravitor ray had come out. On his left, approximately eighteen feet below him, was the hole where it had entered, cutting a slanting tunnel through the globe. Just above this hole was a jagged streak of partly cut metal caused by his quick, unconscious elevation of the degravitor gun just before his craft fell. This streak reached almost to where he clung to the ladder, and looked as if it might afford a means of descent. It was, at least, less slippery than the smooth, coppery sides of the globe, the metal having been honeycombed in the path of the ray as if eaten by acid.
Stretching himself prone, Ted sought and found holds for his gloved fingers in the pitted metal and began the descent, head first. He had covered a third of the distance when he suddenly noticed a dark wall looming beside him. Looking around, he saw that the craft had plunged into the great black hole which had been torn in the crater floor of Hipparchus by his interplanetary projectile.
As the wall hurtled past him he caught glimpses here and there of tunnel-like openings, some quite large, all partly choked with debris. There came the realization that he must act quickly, as a landing would probably be made here, so he turned resolutely to his task of reaching the hole.
His fingers had barely gripped the edge of the opening by which he expected to enter, when the globe slowed down and came to an abrupt stop. He slipped from his position, but caught one arm over the edge of the opening and managed to keep from falling. Quickly drawing himself up, he crawled inside the craft. He was in a small upper chamber lighted by the diamond-shaped port holes above. It had been abandoned.
On the floor lay the partly destroyed bodies which had been struck by his degravitor ray. He found a trap door and opening it, discovered a ladder which led to a room below. He judged, from the array of levers and buttons, that it was the pilot’s room, but found it also untenanted. Opening a diamond-shaped door in the rear of this room, he suddenly came upon a score of Lunites who were passing, single file, out of a side door. All were armed with their deadly ray projectors, but they were as much taken by surprise as he. Drawing both pistol degravitors with lightning quickness, he raked the line from both ends toward the middle before a single green ray projector could be brought to bear on him.
One Lunite only, quicker than the others, escaped by leaping through the door. The others fell, a huddled heap of human remains.
Quickly bounding to the door, Ted stepped out on the bridge, then ducked just in time to avoid a green flash. Aiming through the bars of the railing he destroyed the man who had projected it.
The craft had landed before the explosion-scarred remains of an immense edifice, the portico of which was supported by gigantic human figures cut from brown stone. In lieu of steps leading into the building there was an inclined ramp, the beautiful tile pattern of which showed here and there between heaps and fragments of debris.
Hurrying up this ramp were three figures, and he saw that the one in the center who was being dragged forward by the others, was Maza an Ma Gong. Not daring to use his weapons for fear of striking the girl, he leaped from the bridge to the ground, then started out in pursuit just as the three disappeared inside the building.
It only took Ted a moment to reach the huge diamond-shaped door through which the girl and her two abductors had disappeared, but when he entered it there was no one in sight.
He found himself in an immense room, the ceiling of which was supported by carved figures scarcely less colossal than the ones which held up the portico. They represented huge, bandy-legged, round-bodied Lunites, with enormous heads and scrawny arms. The walls were shelved clear to the top, and the shelves were piled high with thousands of metal cylinders, varying in their diameters from two to about eight inches, but uniformly about fifteen inches in length. A few ornate ladders, the gilded sides of which represented lean-bodied dragons, stood against the walls, but many had fallen to the floor as had a number of the cylinders.
Great cracks and breaches here and there in the walls showed the devastating effects of the explosion of his projectile, as did a considerable quantity of fallen plaster and stone.
The place was lighted by an indirect yellow radiance which came from the tops of the heads of the colossi, and was reflected by the glossy ceiling.
Sprawled and huddled here and there on the floor were a great number of bodies of fallen Lunites. They were surrounded by great swarms of insects, and he judged from the appearance of those nearest him that they were in an advanced state of putrefaction. As he glanced around, he saw a huge gray creature, rat-like in appearance, but as large as a full grown Shetland pony, dart through one of the breaches in the wall, seize a body, and quickly carry it back whence it had come.
The bodies, he noticed, were clothed in loose-fitting garments which slightly resembled pajamas, and the massive heads were not covered with glass helmets as had been those of the Lunites in the spherical craft he had just quitted. Evidently these were the bodies of a few of the people of Ur who had been slain by the explosion of his projectile.
Ted gave slight heed to all these sights as he looked this way and that in the hope of seeing Maza an Ma Gong and her abductors. That they could not have traversed the length of the great hall in so short a time was obvious. They might, however, have been able to slip through the nearest breach in the wall before he reached the doorway.
As he bounded forward to investigate this possibility, his path led him past one of the colossi. Without warning, a deadly green ray suddenly flashed from behind one of the gigantic limbs. As it struck the helmet of the young scientist he instinctively pointed and fired a pistol degravitor in the direction whence it had come. There was a flash of brilliant green light, a terrific pain in his head, and he crashed to the floor, the glass of his helmet tinkling on the hard tiles. Then came oblivion.
How long he lay unconscious on the floor of the huge, subterranean building, Ted had no means of estimating. He awoke with a dull headache and the feeling that something was crushing him—bearing down on his body and limbs with terrific force.
Raising his head to investigate, he cut his chin on the jagged remnant of his shattered glass visor before he was able to see what was lying across him—a number of pieces of what appeared to be broken plaster. After considerable effort he managed to work his arms free and unscrew the now useless collar of his helmet, with its menacing glass fragments.
The air of the place, he noticed, was fairly cool and practically as dense as the atmosphere of the earth—a condition far different from that on the surface of the moon, where the atmosphere was extremely tenuous and the heat of the lunar mid-day far too great for the existence of unprotected men. It was good, he thought, to be able to breathe outside a glass helmet once more, even though the air was laden with unpleasant charnel odors.
Five minutes of exhausting labor freed his body and lower limbs from the heavy fragments which pinned them to the floor. When he rose to survey the scene the cause of the fall of plaster was immediately apparent. His degravitator ray, fired in the direction from which the green ray, which had destroyed the top of his helmet, had come, had cut away the base of the supporting colossus behind which his assailant had been concealed, and this had crashed to the floor, carrying with it a considerable portion of the plastered ceiling which it had supported.
Beside a leg of the image he saw the remains of a Lunite, partly destroyed by his degravitor ray—probably his attacker. Beneath the leg was the crushed, dead body of another Lunite, but of Maza an Ma Gong he saw no sign. Had she escaped, leaving him for dead beneath the heap of plaster? Or did her slender body lie crushed and bleeding under the fallen statue?
Filled with apprehension, he walked clear around the prostrate image without seeing a sign of her whom he sought. Then he was startled to hear his name called: “Ted Dustin. Ted Dustin.” It was the voice of Maza, and seemed to issue from the colossus. He leaped astride the giant body, seeking some hollow which might explain the enigma, but it was not until he had stepped out on one of the huge thighs that he saw the girl. She was imprisoned on the floor in the hollow between the two enormous knees.
Drawing a pistol degravitor, he found it but the work of a moment to cut away enough of one of the huge legs to free the girl.
The fact that she was unhurt, he judged little short of miraculous, but whether it was due to chance or to her own dexterity he had no means of finding out. She had the front of her helmet open, and he noticed that the antennae of her miniature radiophone were smashed.
As soon as she was free she picked up a green ray projector which one of the Lunites had dropped, and started for the door, beckoning him to follow. They had barely reached the ramp when Ted heard a great clatter behind them and the sound of running feet. Turning, he saw a horde of armed men rushing through an archway in the rear of the building. Instead of glass helmets and furry clothing, these men wore metal helmets and plate armor, and carried, in addition to their ray projectors, long swords, and spears with heads like long-toothed buzz saws.
With his degravitors leveled in two lethal arcs, Ted cut down the foremost ranks of the attackers and gave the others pause. Evidently they were dumfounded at the sight of weapons that fired invisible rays. While they hesitated he caught up his companion, and turning, bounded down the tiled ramp with mighty fifty foot leaps that amazed them still more, crossed a circular plaza over which were scattered indiscriminately, rock debris, fallen and broken statuary, and dead bodies, many of which were partly devoured, and dodged in among the remains of a fallen colossus.
The clank of arms and accoutrements became increasingly audible, and Ted turned to see if any of their pursuers were in sight. At that moment his foot encountered empty air, and he fell, dragging his companion with him, into a steeply slanting tunnel which was about four feet in diameter at the mouth.
Sliding and tumbling, the two at length brought up against the wall of a transverse passageway which slanted downward to their left.
A shout and the clatter of weapons from the ground above brought Ted quickly to his feet. Helping his companion to arise, he took her hand and the two hurried down the inclined ramp. They had not covered more than a hundred feet before the way grew dark and the tunnel tortuous, so they were forced to proceed with the utmost caution. They felt their way along in the inky blackness for some time. Presently all sounds save those of their own footsteps ceased. Then Ted was suddenly and temporarily blinded by a glare of light. When his eyes had become accustomed to it, he saw that it came from a small lens fastened in his companion’s helmet just above her forehead. Evidently she had not turned it on before for the sake of caution.
Then it was the girl who became the leader in their flight. As they encountered a labyrinth of passageways, she would turn now to the right, now to the left, always following the ramps which slanted downward, and Ted saw her glance from time to time at queer Lunite symbols painted on the walls, which evidently marked the way.
Presently she switched off her light, and Ted noticed that there was a strange, phosphorescent luminescence in the passageway ahead of them. Its source became apparent when they suddenly emerged from the end of the tunnel into a wide lane which wound through a thick grove of tall straight plants that appeared to Ted like gigantic shoots of asparagus painted with phosphorus. They varied from a thickness of six inches to well over three feet at the base, and some of the tallest towered fully seventy feet into the air. The light they gave off was quite as brilliant as the full moon appears from the earth, and was reflected by myriads of gleaming, white stalactites depending from an arched vault far above them. Stalagmites, also, gleamed here and there among the shining plants, and the lane or road which they were following was evidently made from the same white material crushed into small fragments and rolled smooth.
Suddenly the girl grasped Ted’s arm, and pulling him in among the tall, luminous trunks, secreted herself behind one of the larger ones and motioned him to do likewise.
Scarcely had he followed her example, ere there came to his ears a cracking, rumbling sound. Then, from around the bend in the lane, there waddled a huge, hulking creature of most fearsome aspect. Ted had seen pictures of wingless Chinese dragons, and this ugly vision, now less than fifty feet from him, was one of those pictures immensely magnified—for it was as tall as a camel and three times as long. Just in front of its spiny crest and behind its relatively small ears, a round-bodied Lunite was perched on its massive head. Luminous vapor issued from its nostrils at intervals of a few seconds, and the myriad scales that covered its long, twisting body, as well as its thousands of sharp dorsal spines, reflected the phosphorescent light of the forest that bordered the lane.
This ugly monster straddled a long pole with its four bowed legs, the front end of which was attached to a U shaped collar that circled its scaly neck, and the rear end of which was fastened to a long chain of creaking, bumping carts, fastened together by hooks and rings. Each of these carts traveled on two large rollers in lieu of wheels, and contained many metal cylinders which jolted and banged together as the vehicle lumbered along.
Walking beside the cart on each side was a long row of Lunites clad in sandals and coarse, loose fitting tunics that reached to the knees. The long black hair of these workmen was twisted up in a pointed, pagoda-like effect on top of the head. Each man carried a two handled metal urn, a short tube pointed at one end like a quill, and a small mallet.
Behind the first dragon came two others, similarly harnessed and attended, and Ted, noticing that the last dragon snatched from time to time at the shoots of the luminous plants which grew by the roadside, munching each phosphorescent mouthful with apparent relish, saw the reason these creatures appeared to breathe fire. It was some time later that he learned this was a crew of sap gatherers, returning with a supply of cylinders filled with the luminous fluid with which the Lunite chemists made the yellow, light-emitting liquid which, suspended in transparent containers, lighted their underground cities.
When the cavalcade had passed out of sight down the road the girl motioned him to rise, and together they resumed their flight. They passed many cross-lanes in the luminous forest, unmolested. Then the one on which they were traveling came to an end.
The cultivated area now gave way to an immense tangle of luminous and non-luminous plants of various hues and shades—a tremendous hodge podge of winding creepers, low fungi of every conceivable shape, and tall trunks, jointed, smooth, and spiny—some topped like mushrooms, spears, stars or globes, others with long waving fronds like palms or ferns.
Most of the non-luminous plants were white, although some were gray or black. Here and there among the common phosphorescent types of luminous plants were scattered groups and individuals which gave off red, green, pink, violet or yellow light. Some of them emitted two or three shades of one color, or even several colors of light. The whole scene was a vast, weird, fairyland of color and shade—at once, beautiful and forbidding.
Into this tangle the girl plunged without the slightest hesitation. Ted followed, a pistol degravitor in his hand ready for instant action.
As they progressed further and further into this subterranean wilderness the fauna of the place became more and more in evidence, indicating to Ted that, if one might judge from the conduct of the wild things, they were gradually receding from the haunts of man.
From the shadows many pairs of burning eyes glared out at them. Small animals, sensing their approach, scurried hastily from their pathway. Featherless birds, or winged reptiles—Ted did not know which to call them—flitted among the branches above their heads. Larger ones, some of them appearing huge enough to have flown off with elephants, soared far up near the vaulted roof or flapped lazily back and forth above the tree-tops, evidently in search of prey. Some of them had luminous body areas which gleamed dully as they flew, but flashed from time to time from crests, throats, or wing-tips like the display of a swarm of fireflies magnified ten thousand fold.
There were luminous insects and worms, also, of various shades—and luminous serpents coiled on boles and branches, some of them flashing crests or tail-tips when disturbed as if to warn an intruder of their dangerous presence.
The air was filled with a cacophonous medley of roars, bellows, croaks, shrieks, growls and hisses, sometimes interspersed with more melodious warbling, whistling or bell-like tones.