Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930, Anthony Pelcher [essential reading TXT] 📗

out of this. No, I won't play. I can't play your cursed game with nothing at stake!"

"Commissioner's orders."

A laugh went up at the sharp look Johnny Grantline flung from where he sat reading in a corner of the room.

"Commander's orders. No gambling gold-leafers tolerated here."

"Play the game, Wilks." Grantline said quietly. "We all know it's infernal doing nothing."

"He's been struck by Earth-light," another man laughed. "Commander, I told you not to let that guy Wilks out at night."

A rough but good-natured lot of men. Jolly and raucous by nature in their leisure hours. But there was too much leisure here now. Their mirth had a hollow sound. In older times, explorers of the frozen polar zones had to cope with inactivity, loneliness and despair. But at least they were on their native world. The grimness of the Moon was eating into the courage of Grantline's men. An unreality here. A weirdness. These fantastic crags. The deadly silence. The nights, almost two weeks of Earth-time in length, congealed by the deadly frigidity of Space. The days of black sky, blaring stars and flaming Sun, with no atmosphere to diffuse the daylight. Days of weird blending sheen of illumination with most of the Sun's heat radiating so swiftly from the naked Lunar surface that the outer temperature still was cold. And day and night, always the familiar beloved Earth-disc hanging poised up near the zenith. From thinnest crescent to full Earth, and then steadily back again to crescent.

All so abnormal, irrational, disturbing to human senses. With the mining work over, an irritability grew upon Grantline's men. And perhaps since the human mind is so wonderful, elusive a thing, there lay upon these men an indefinable sense of impending disaster. Johnny Grantline felt it. He thought about it now as he sat in the room corner watching Wilks being forced into the plaget-game, and he found it strong within him. Unreasonable, ominous depression! Barring the accident which had disabled his little space-ship when they reached this small crater hole, his expedition had gone well. His instruments, and the information he had from the former explorers, had picked up the ore-vein with a scant month of search.

The vein had now been exhausted; but the treasure was here. Nothing was left but to wait for the Planetara. The men were talking of that now.

"She ought to be well mid-way from here to Ferrok-Shahn by now. When do you figure she'll be back here, and signal us?"

"Twenty days. Give her another five now to Mars, and five in port. That's[89] ten. We'll pick her signals in three weeks, mark me."

"Three weeks! Just give me three weeks of reasonable sunrise and sunset! This cursed Moon! You mean, Williams, next daylight."

"Hah! He's inventing a Lunar language. You'll be a Moon-man yet, if you live here long enough."

Olaf Swenson, the big blond fellow from the Scandia fiords, came and flung himself down by Grantline.

"Ay tank they bane without not enough to do, Commander. If the ore yust would not give out—"

"Three weeks—it isn't very long, Ollie."

"No. Maybe not."

From across the room somebody was saying, "If the Comet hadn't smashed on us, damn me but I'd ask the Commander to let some of us take her back. The discarded equipment could go."

"Shut up, Billy. She is smashed."

The little Comet, cruising in search of the ore, had come to grief just as the ore was found. It lay now on the crater floor with its nose bashed into an upflung spire of rock. Wrecked beyond repair. Save for the pre-arrangement with the Planetara, the Grantline party would have been helpless here on the Moon. Knowledge of that—although no one ever suspected but that the Planetara would come safely—served to add to the men's depression. They were cut off, virtually helpless on a strange world. Their signalling devices were inadequate even to reach Earth. Grantline's power batteries were running low.[F] He could not attempt wide-flung signals without jeopardizing the power necessary for the routine of his camp in the event of the Planetara being delayed. Nor was his electro-telescope adequate to pick small objects at any great distance.[G]

All of Grantline's effort, in truth, had gone into equipment for the finding and gathering of the treasure. The safety of the expedition had to that extent been neglected.

Swenson was mentioning that now.

"You all agreed to it," Johnny said shortly. "Every man here voted that, above everything, what we wanted was to get the radium."

A dynamic little fellow, this Johnny Grantline. Short of temper sometimes, but always just, and a perfect leader of men. In stature he was almost as small as Snap. But he was thick-set, with a smooth shaven, keen-eyed, square-jawed face, and a shock of brown tousled hair. A man of thirty-five, though the decision of his manner, the quiet dominance of his voice, mode him seem older. He stood up now, surveying the blue-lit glassite room with its low ceiling close overhead. He was bowlegged; in movement he seemed to roll with a stiff-legged gait like some sea captain of former days on the deck of his swaying ship. Queer-looking figure! Heavy flannel shirt and trousers, boots heavily weighted, and bulky metal-loaded belt strapped about his waist.

He grinned at Swenson. "When we divide this treasure, everyone will be happy, Ollie."

The treasure was estimated by Grantline to be the equivalent of ninety millions in gold-leaf. A hundred and ten millions in the gross as it now stood, with twenty millions to be deducted by the Federated Refiners for reducing it to the standard purity of commercial radium. Ninety millions, with only a million and a half to come off for expedition expenses, and the Planetara Company's share another million. A nice little stake.

Grantline strode across the room with his rolling gait.

"Cheer up, boys. Who's winning there? I say, you fellows—"

An audiphone buzzer interrupted him, a call from the duty man in the[90] instrument room of the nearby building.

Grantline clicked the receiver. The room fell into silence. Any call was unusual—nothing ever happened here in the camp.

The duty man's voice sounded over the room.

"Signals coming! Not clear. Will you come over, Commander?"

Signals!

It was never Grantline's way to enforce needless discipline. He offered no objection when every man in the camp rushed through the connecting passages. They crowded the instrument room where the tense duty man sat bending over his helio receivers. The mirrors were swaying.

The duty man looked up and met Grantline's gaze.

"I ran it up to the highest intensity. Commander. We ought to get it—not let it pass."

"Low scale, Peter?"

"Yes. Weakest infra-red. I'm bringing it up, even though it uses too much of our power." The duty man was apologetic.

"Get it," said Grantline shortly.

"I had a swing a minute ago. I think it's the Planetara."

"Planetara!" The crowding group of men chorused it. How could it be the Planetara?

But it was. The call presently came in clear. Unmistakably the Planetara, turned back now from her course to Ferrok-Shahn.

"How far away, Peter?"

The duty man consulted the needles of his dial scale. "Close! Very weak infra-red. But close. Around thirty thousand miles, maybe. It's Snap Dean calling."

The Planetara here within thirty thousand miles! Excitement and pleasure swept the room. The Planetara's coming had for so long been awaited so eagerly!

The excitement communicated to Grantline. It was unlike him to be incautious; yet now with no thought save that some unforeseen and pleasing circumstance had brought the Planetara ahead of time; incautious Grantline certainly was.

"Raise the ore-barrage."

"I'll go! My suit is here."

A willing volunteer rushed out to the ore-shed. The Gamma rays, which in the helio-room of the Planetara came so unwelcome to Snap and me, were loosed.

"Can you send, Peter?" Grantline demanded.

"Yes, with more power."

"Use it."

Johnny dictated the message of his location which we received. In his incautious excitement he ignored the secret code.

An interval passed. The ore was occulted again. No message had come from us—just Snap's routine signal in the weak infra-red, which we hoped Grantline would not get.

The men crowding Grantline's instrument room waited in tense silence. Then Grantline tried the telescope. Its current weakened the lights with the drain upon the distributors, and cooled the room with a sudden deadly chill as the Erentz insulating system slowed down.

The duty man looked suddenly frightened. "You'll bulge out our walls, Commander. The internal pressure—"

"We'll chance it."

They picked up the image of the Planetara! It came from the telescope and shone clear on the grid—the segment of star-field with a tiny, cigar-shaped blob. Clear enough to be unmistakable. The Planetara! Here now over the Moon, almost directly overhead, poised at what the altimeter scale showed to be a fraction under thirty thousand miles.

The men gazed in awed silence. The Planetara coming....

But the altimeter needle was motionless. The Planetara was hanging poised.

A sudden gasp went about the room.[91] The men stood with whitening faces, gazing at the Planetara's image. And at the altimeter needle. It was moving. The Planetara was descending. But not with an orderly swoop.

The image showed the ship clearly. The bow tilted up, then dipped down. But then in a moment it swung up again. The ship turned partly over. Righted itself. Then swayed again, drunkenly.

The watching men were stricken into horrified silence. The Planetara's image momentarily, horribly, grew larger. Swaying. Then turning completely over, rotating slowly end over end.

The Planetara, out of control, was falling!