CHAPTER II

_Into Space_

A pulsing pain that stabbed through his head was Chet's first

conscious impression. Then, as objects came slowly into focus before

his eyes, he knew that above him a ray of light was striking

slantingly through the thick glass of a control-room lookout.

Other lookouts were black, the dead black of empty space. Through

them, sparkling points of fire showed here and there--suns, sending

their light across millions of years to strike at last on a speeding

ship. But, from the one port that caught the brighter light, came that

straight ray to illumine the room.

"Space," thought Chet vaguely. "That is the sunlight of space!"

He was trying to arrange his thoughts in some sensible sequence. His

head!--what had happened to his head?... And then he remembered. Again

he saw a clubbed weapon descending, while the face of Schwartzmann

stared at him through bulbous eyes....

And this control-room where he lay--he knew in an instant where he

was. It was his own ship that was roaring and trembling beneath

him--his and Walt Harkness'--it was flying through space! And, with

the sudden realization of what this meant, he struggled to arise. Only

then did he see the figure at the controls.

The man was leaning above an instrument board; he straightened to

stare from a rear port while he spoke to someone Chet could not see.

"There's more of 'em coming!" he said in a choked voice. "_Mein Gott!_

Neffer can we get away!"

* * * * *

He fumbled with shaking hands at instruments and controls; and now

Chet saw his chalk-white face and read plainly the terror that was

written there. But the cords that cut into his own wrists and ankles

reminded him that he was bound; he settled back upon the floor. Why

struggle? If this other pilot was having trouble let him get out of it

by himself--let him kill his own snakes!

That the man was having trouble there was no doubt. He looked once

more behind him as if at something that pursued; then swung the

ball-control to throw the ship off her course.

The craft answered sluggishly, and Chet Bullard grinned where he lay

helpless upon the floor; for he knew that his ship should have been

thrown crashingly aside with such a motion as that. The answer was

plain: the flask of super-detonite was exhausted; here was the last

feeble explosion of the final atoms of the terrible explosive that was

being admitted to the generator. And to cut in another flask meant the

opening of a hidden valve.

Chet forgot the pain of his swelling hands to shake with suppressed

mirth. This was going to be good! He forgot it until, through a

lookout, he saw a writhing, circling fire that wrapped itself about

the ship and jarred them to a halt.

The serpents!--those horrors from space that had come with the coming

of the Dark Moon! They had disrupted the high-level traffic of the

world; had seized great liners; torn their way in; stripped these of

every living thing, and let the empty shells crash back to earth. Chet

had forgotten or he had failed to realize the height at which this new

pilot was flying. Only speed could save them; the monsters, with their

snouts that were great suction-cups, could wrench off a metal

door--tear out the glass from a port!

* * * * *

He saw the luminous mass crush itself against a forward lookout and

felt the jar of its body against their ship. Soft and vaporous, these

cloud-like serpents seemed as they drifted through space; yet the

impact, when they struck, proved that this new matter had mass.

Chet saw the figure at the controls stagger back and cower in fear;

the man's bullet-shaped head was covered by his upraised arms: there

was some horror outside those windows that his eyes had no wish to

see. Beside him the towering figure of Schwartzmann appeared; he had

sprung into Chet's view, and he screamed orders at the fear-stricken

pilot.

"Fool! Swine!" Schwartzmann was shouting. "Do something! You said you

could fly this ship!" In desperation he leaped forward and reached for

the controls himself.

Chet's blurred faculties snapped sharply to attention. That yellow

glow against the port--the jarring of their ship--it meant instant

destruction once that searching snout found some place where it could

secure a hold. If the air-pressure within the ship were released; if

even a crack were opened!--

"Here, you!" he shouted to the frantic Schwartzmann who was jerking

frenziedly at the controls that no longer gave response. "Cut these

ropes!--leave those instruments alone, you fool!" He was suddenly

vibrant with hate as he realized what this man had done: he had struck

him, Chet, down as he would have felled an animal for butchery; he had

stolen their ship; and now he was losing it. Chet hardly thought of

his own desperate plight in his rage at this threat to their ship, and

at Schwartzmann's inability to help himself.

"Cut these ropes!" he repeated. "Damn it all, turn me loose; I can fly

us out!" He added his frank opinion of Schwartzmann and all his men.

And Schwartzmann, though his dark face flushed angrily red for one

instant, leaped to Chet's side and slashed at the cords with a knife.

The room swam before Chet's dizzy eyes as he came to his feet. He half

fell, half drew himself full length toward the valve that he alone

knew. Then again he was on his feet and he gripped at the ball-control

with one hand while he opened a master throttle that cut in this new

supply of explosive.

* * * * *

The room had been silent with the silence of empty space, save only

for the scraping of a horrid body across the ship's outer shell. The

silence was shattered now as if by the thunder of many guns. There

was no time for easing themselves into gradual flight. Chet thrust

forward on the ball-control, and the blast from their stern threw the

ship as if it had been fired from a giant cannon.

The self-compensating floor swung back and up; Chet's weight was

almost unbearable as the ship beneath him leaped out and on, and the

terrific blast that screamed and thundered urged this speeding shell

to greater and still greater speed. And then, with the facility that

that speed gave, Chet's careful hands moved a tiny metal ball within

its magnetic cage, and the great ship bellowed from many ports as it

followed the motion of that ball.

Could an eye have seen the wild, twisting flight, it must have seemed

as if pilot and ship had gone suddenly mad. The craft corkscrewed and

whirled; it leaped upward and aside; and, as the glowing mass was

thrown clear of the lookout, Chet's hand moved again to that maximum

forward position, and again the titanic blast from astern drove them

on and out.

There were other shapes ahead, glowing lines of fire, luminous masses

like streamers of cloud that looped themselves into contorted forms

and writhed vividly until they straightened into sharp lines of speed

that bore down upon the fleeing craft and the human food that was

escaping these hungry snouts.

Chet saw them dead ahead; he saw the out-thrust heads, each ending in

a great suction-cup, the row of disks that were eyes blazing above,

and the gaping maw below. He altered their course not a hair's breadth

as he bore down upon them, while the monsters swelled prodigiously

before his eyes. And the thunderous roar from astern came with never a

break, while the ship itself ceased its trembling protest against the

sudden blast and drove smoothly on and into the waiting beasts.

There was a hardly perceptible thudding jar. They were free! And the

forward lookouts showed only the brilliant fires of distant suns and

one more glorious than the rest that meant a planet.

* * * * *

Chet turned at last to face Schwartzmann and his pilot where they had

clung helplessly to a metal stanchion. Four or five others crept in

from the cabin aft; their blanched faces told of the fear that bad

gripped them--fear of the serpents; fear, too, of the terrific plunges

into which the ship had been thrown. Chet Bullard drew the metal

control-ball back into neutral and permitted himself the luxury of a

laugh.

"You're a fine bunch of highway-men," he told Schwartzmann; "you'll

steal a ship you can't fly; then come up here above the R. A. level

and get mixed up with those brutes. What's the idea? Did you think you

would just hop over to the Dark Moon? Some little plan like that in

your mind?"

Again the dark, heavy face of Schwartzmann flushed deeply; but it was

his own men upon whom he turned.

"You," he told the pilot--"you were so clever; you would knock this

man senseless! You would insist that you could fly the ship!"

The pilot's eyes still bulged with the fear he had just experienced.

"But, Herr Schwartzmann, it was you who told me--"

A barrage of unintelligible words cut his protest short. Schwartzmann

poured forth imprecations in an unknown tongue, then turned to the

others.

"Back!" he ordered. "Bah!--such men! The danger it iss over--yess!

This pilot, he will take us back safely."

He turned his attention now to the waiting Chet. "Herr Bullard, iss it

not--yess?"

He launched into extended apologies--he had wanted a look at this so

marvelous ship--he had spied upon it; he admitted it. But this

murderous attack was none of his doing; his men had got out of hand;

and then he had thought it best to take Chet, unconscious as he was,

and return with him where he could have care.

* * * * *

And Chet Bullard kept his eyes steadily upon the protesting man and

said nothing, but he was thinking of a number of things. There was

Walt's warning, "this Schwartzmann means mischief," and the faked

message that had brought him from the hospital to get the ship from

its hiding place; no, it was too much to believe. But Chet's eyes were

unchanging, and he nodded shortly in agreement as the other concluded.

"You will take us back?" Schwartzmann was asking. "I will repay you

well for what inconvenience we have caused. The ship, you will return

it safely to the place where it was?"

And Chet, after making and discarding a score of plans, knew there was

nothing else he could do. He swung the little metal ball into a

sharply-banked turn. The straight ray of light from an impossibly

brilliant sun struck now on a forward lookout; it shone across the

shoulder of a great globe to make a white, shining crescent as of a

giant moon. It was Earth; and Chet brought the bow-sights to bear on

that far-off target, while again the thunderous blast was built up to

drive them back along the trackless path on which they had come. But

he wondered, as he pressed forward on the control, what the real plan

of this man, Schwartzmann, might be....

* * * * *

Less than half an hour brought them to the Repelling Area, and Chet

felt the upward surge as he approached it. Here, above this magnetic

field where gravitation's pull was nullified, had been the air-lanes

for fast liners. Empty lanes they were now; for the R. A., as the

flying fraternity knew it--the Heaviside Layer of an earlier

day--marked the danger line above which the mysterious serpents lay in

wait. Only the speed of Chet's ship saved them; more than one of the

luminous monsters was in sight as he plunged through the invisible R.

A. and threw on their bow-blast strongly to check their fall.

Then, as he set a course that would take them to that section of the

Arctic waste where the ship had been, he pondered once more upon the

subject of this Schwartzmann of the shifty eyes and the glib tongue

and of his men who had "got out of hand" and had captured this ship.

"Why in thunder are we back here?" Chet asked himself in perplexity.

"This big boy means to keep the ship; and, whatever his plans may have

been before, he will never stop short of the Dark Moon now that he has

seen the old boat perform. Then why didn't he keep on when he was

started? Had the serpents frightened him back?"

He was still mentally proposing questions to which there seemed no

answer when he felt the pressure of a metal tube against his back. The

voice of Schwartzmann was in his ears.

"This is a detonite pistol"--that voice was no longer unctuous and

self-deprecating--"one move and I'll plant a charge inside you that

will smash you to a jelly!"

* * * * *

There were hands that gripped Chet before he could turn; his arms were

wrenched backward; he was helpless in the grip of Schwartzmann's men.

The former pilot sprang forward.

"Take control, Max!" Schwartzmann snapped; but he followed it with a

question while the pilot was reaching for the ball. "You can fly it

for sure, Max?"

The man called Max answered confidently.

"_Ja wohl!_" he said with eager assurance. "Up top there would have

been no trouble yet for that _verdammt, verloren_ valve. That one

experimental trip is enough--I fly it!"

Those who held Chet were binding his wrists. He was thrown to the

floor while his feet were tied, and, as a last precaution, a gag was

forced into his mouth. Schwartzmann left this work to his men. He paid

no attention to Chet; he was busy at the radio.

He placed the sending-levers in strange positions that would effect a

blending of wave lengths which only one receiving instrument could

pick up. He spoke cryptic words into the microphone, then dropped into

a language that was unfamiliar to Chet. Yet, even then, it was plain

that he was giving instructions, and he repeated familiar words.

"Harkness," Chet heard him say, and, "--Delacouer--_ja!_--Mam'selle

Delacouer!"

Then, leaving the radio, he said, "Put my ship inside the hangar;" and

the pilot, Max, grounded their own ship to allow the men to leap out

and float into the big building the big aircraft in which Schwartzmann

had come.

"Now close the doors!" their leader ordered. "Leave everything as it

was!" And to the pilot he gave added instructions: "There iss no air

traffic here. You will to forty thousand ascend, und you will wait

over this spot." Contemptuously he kicked aside the legs of the bound

man that he might walk back into the cabin.

* * * * *

The take-off was not as smooth as it would have been had Chet's slim

hands been on the controls; this burly one who handled them now was

not accustomed to such sensitivity. But Chet felt the ship lift and

lurch, then settle down to a swift, spiralling ascent. Now he lay

still as he tried to ponder the situation.

"Now what dirty work are they up to?" he asked himself. He had seen a

sullen fury on the dark face of Herr Schwartzmann as he spoke the

names of Walt and Diane into the radio. Chet remembered the look now,

and he struggled vainly with the cords about his wrists. Even a

detonite pistol with its tiny grain of explosive in the end of each

bullet would not check him--not when Walt and Diane were endangered.

And the expression on that heavy, scowling face had told him all too

clearly that some real danger threatened.

But the cords held fast on his swollen wrists. His head was still

throbbing; and even his side, not entirely healed, was adding to the

torment that beat upon him--beat and beat with his pulsing

blood--until the beating faded out into unconsciousness....

Dimly he knew they were soaring still higher as their radio picked up

the warning of an approaching patrol ship; vaguely he realized that

they descended again to a level of observation. Chet knew in some

corner of his brain that Schwartzmann was watching from an under

lookout with a powerful glass, and he heard his excited command:

"Down--go slowly, down!... They are landing.... They have entered the

hangar. Now, down with it, Max! Down! down!"

* * * * *

The plunging fall of the ship roused Chet from his stupor. He felt the

jolt of the clumsy landing despite the snow-cushioned ground; he

heard plainly the exclamations from beyond an open port--the startled

oath in Walter Harkness' voice, and the stinging scorn in the words of

Diane Delacouer.

Herr Schwartzmann had been in the employ of Mademoiselle Delacouer,

but he was taking orders no longer. There was a sound of scuffling

feet, and once the thud of a blow.... Then Chet watched with heavy,

hopeless eyes as the familiar faces of Diane and Walt appeared in the

doorway. Their hands were bound; they, too, were threatened with a

slim-barreled pistol in the hands of the smirking, exultant

Schwartzmann.

A tall, thin-faced man whom Chet had not seen before followed them

into the room. The newcomer was motioned forward now, as Schwartzmann

called an order to the pilot:

"All right; now we go, Max! Herr Doktor Kreiss will give you the

bearings; he knows his way among the stars."

Herr Schwartzmann doubled over in laughing appreciation of his own

success before he straightened up and regarded his captives with cold

eyes.

"Such a pleasure!" he mocked: "such charming passengers to take with

me on my first trip into space; this ship, it iss not so goot. I will

build better ships later on; I will let you see them when I shall come

to visit you."

He laughed again at sight of the wondering looks in the eyes of the

three; stooping, he jerked the gag from Chet's mouth.

"You do not understand," he exclaimed. "I should haff explained. You

see, _meine guten Freunde_, we go--ach!--you have guessed it already!

We go to the Dark Moon. I am pleased to take you with me on the trip

out; but coming back, I will have so much to bring--there will be no

room for passengers.

"I could have killed you here," he said; and his mockery gave place

for a moment to a savage tone, "but the patrol ships, they are

everywhere. But I have influence here und there--I arranged that your

flask of gas should be charged with explosive, I discredited you, and

yet I could not so great a risk take as to kill you all."

"So came inspiration! I called your foolish young friend here from the

hospital. I ordered him to go at once to the ship hidden where I could

not find, and I signed the name of Herr Harkness."

* * * * *

Chet caught the silent glances of his friends who could yet smile

hopefully through the other emotions that possessed them. He ground

his teeth as the smooth voice of Herr Schwartzmann went on:

"He led me here; the young fool! Then I sent for you--and this time I

signed his name--und you came. So simple!"

"Und now we go in my ship to my new world. And," he added savagely,

"if one of you makes the least trouble, he will land on the Dark

Moon-yess!-but he will land hard, from ten thousand feet up!"

The great generator was roaring. To Chet came the familiar lift of the

R. A. effect. They were beyond the R. A.; they were heading out and

away from Earth; and his friends were captives through his own

unconscious treachery, carried out into space in their own ship, with

the hands of an enemy gripping the controls....

Chet's groan, as he turned his face away from the others who had tried

to smile cheerfully, had nothing to do with the pain of his body. It

was his mind that was torturing him.

But he muttered broken words as he lay there, words that had reference

to one Schwartzmann. "I'll get him, damn him! I'll get him!" he was

promising himself.

And Herr Schwartzmann who was clever, would have proved his cleverness

still more by listening. For a Master Pilot of the World does not get

his rating on vain boasts. He must know first his flying, his ships

and his air--but he is apt to make good in other ways as well.