CHAPTER I
_The Message_
[Sidenote: Once more Chet, Walt and Diane are united in a wild ride to
the Dark Moon--but this time they go as prisoners of their deadly enemy
Schwartzmann.]
In a hospital in Vienna, in a room where sunlight flooded through
ultraviolet permeable crystal, the warm rays struck upon smooth walls
the color of which changed from hot reds to cool yellow or gray or to
soothing green, as the Directing Surgeon might order. An elusive
blending of tones now seemed pulsing with life; surely even a flickering
flame of vitality would be blown into warm livingness in such a place.
Even the chart case in the wall glittered with the same clean, brilliant
hues from its glass and metal door. The usual revolving paper disks
showed white beyond the glass. They were moving; and the ink lines grew
to tell a story of temperature and respiration and of every heart-beat.
On the identification-plate a name appeared and a date: "Chet
Bullard--23 years. Admitted: August 10, 1973." And below that the
ever-changing present ticked into the past in silent minutes: "August
15, 1973; World Standard Time: 10:38--10:39--10:40--"
For five days the minutes had trickled into a rivulet of time that
flowed past a bandaged figure in the bed below--a silent figure and
unmoving, as one for whom time has ceased. But the surgeons of the
Allied Hospital at Vienna are clever.
10:41--10:42--The bandaged figure stirred uneasily on a snow-white
bed....
* * * * *
A nurse was beside him in an instant. Was her patient about to recover
consciousness? She examined the bandages that covered a ragged wound in
his side, where all seemed satisfactory. To all appearances the man who
had moved was unconscious still; the nurse could not know of the thought
impressions, blurred at first, then gradually clearing, that were
flashing through his mind.
Flashing; yet, to the man who struggled to comprehend them, they passed
laggingly in review: one picture followed another with exasperating
slowness....
Where was he? What had happened? He was hardly conscious of his own
identity....
There was a ship ... he held the controls ... they were flying low....
One hand reached fumblingly beneath the soft coverlet to search for a
triple star that should be upon his jacket. A triple star: the insignia
of a Master Pilot of the World!--and with the movement there came
clearly a realization of himself.
Chet Bullard, Master Pilot; he was Chet Bullard ... and a wall of water
was sweeping under him from the ocean to wipe out the great Harkness
Terminal buildings.... It was Harkness--Walt Harkness--from whom he had
snatched the controls.... To fly to the Dark Moon, of course--
What nonsense was that?... No, it was true: the Dark Moon had raised the
devil with things on Earth.... How slowly the thoughts came! Why
couldn't he remember?...
Dark Moon!--and they were flying through space.... They had conquered
space; they were landing on the Dark Moon that was brilliantly alight.
Walt Harkness had set the ship down beautifully--
* * * * *
Then, crowding upon one another in breath-taking haste, came clear
recollection of past adventures:
They were upon the Dark Moon--and there was the girl, Diane. They must
save Diane. Harkness had gone for the ship. A savage, half-human shape
was raising a hairy arm to drive a spear toward Diane, and he, Chet, was
leaping before her. He felt again the lancet-pain of that blade....
And now he was dying--yes, he remembered it now--dying in the night on a
great, sweeping surface of frozen lava.... It was only a moment before
that he had opened his eyes to see Harkness' strained face and the
agonized look of Diane as the two leaned above him.... But now he felt
stronger. He must see them again....
He opened his eyes for another look at his companions--and, instead of
black, star-pricked night on a distant globe, there was dazzling
sunlight. No desolate lava-flow, this; no thousand fires that flared and
smoked from their fumeroles in the dark. And, instead of Harkness and
the girl, Diane, leaning over him there was a nurse who laid one cool
hand upon his blond head and who spoke soothingly to him of keeping
quiet. He was to take it easy--he would understand later--and everything
was all right.... And with this assurance Chet Bullard drifted again
into sleep....
* * * * *
The blurring memories had lost their distortions a week later, as he sat
before a broad window in his room and looked out over the housetops of
Vienna. Again he was himself, Chet Bullard, with a Master Pilot's
rating; and he let his eyes follow understandingly the moving picture of
the world outside. It was good to be part of a world whose every
movement he understood.
Those cylinders with stubby wings that crossed and recrossed the sky;
their sterns showed a jet of thin vapor where a continuous explosion of
detonite threw them through the air. He knew them all: the pleasure
craft, the big, red-bellied freighters, the sleek liners, whose multiple
helicopters spun dazzlingly above as they sank down through the shaft of
pale-green light that marked a descending area.
That one would be the China Mail. Her under-ports were open before the
hold-down clamps had gripped her; the mail would pour out in an
avalanche of pouches where smaller mailships waited to distribute the
cargo across the land.
And the big fellow taking off, her hull banded with blue, was one of
Schwartzmann's liners. He wondered what had become of Schwartzmann, the
man who had tried to rob Harkness of his ship; who had brought the
patrol ships upon them in an effort to prevent their take-off on that
wild trip.
For that matter, what had become of Harkness? Chet Bullard was seriously
disturbed at the absence of any word beyond the one message that had
been waiting for him when he regained consciousness. He drew that
message from a pocket of his dressing gown and read it again:
"Chet, old fellow, lie low. S has vanished. Means mischief. Think
best not to see you or reveal your whereabouts until our position
firmly established. Have concealed ship. Remember, S will stop at
nothing. Trying to discredit us, but the gas I brought will fix all
that. Get yourself well. We are planning to go back, of course.
Walt."
Chet returned the folded message to his pocket. He arose and walked
about the room to test his returning strength: to remain idle was
becoming increasingly difficult. He wanted to see Walter Harkness, talk
with him, plan for their return to the wonder-world they had found.
* * * * *
Instead he dropped again into his chair and touched a knob on the
newscaster beside him. A voice, hushed to the requirements of these
hospital precincts spoke softly of market quotations in the far corners
of the earth. He turned the dial irritably and set it on "World
News--General." The name of Harkness came from the instrument to focus
Chet's attention.
"Harkness makes broad claims," the voice was saying. "Vienna physicists
ridicule his pretensions.
"Walter Harkness, formerly of New York, proprietor of Harkness
Terminals, whose great buildings near New York were destroyed in the
Dark Moon wave, claims to have reached and returned from the Dark Moon.
"Nearly two months have passed since the new satellite crashed into the
gravitational field of Earth, its coming manifested by earth shocks and
a great tidal wave. The globe, as we know, was invisible. Although still
unseen, and only a black circle that blocks out distant stars, it is
visible in the telescopes of the astronomers; its distance and its
orbital motion have been determined.
"And now this New Yorker claims to have penetrated space; to have landed
on the Dark Moon; and to have returned to Earth. Broad claims, indeed,
especially so in view of the fact that Harkness refuses to submit his
ship for examination by the Stratosphere Control Board. He has filed
notice of ownership, thus introducing some novel legal technicalities,
but, since space-travel is still a dream of the future, there will be
none to dispute his claims.
"Of immediate interest is Harkness' claim to have discovered a gas that
is fatal to the serpents of space. The monsters that appeared when the
Dark Moon came and that attacked ships above the Repelling Area are
still there. All flying is confined to the lower levels; fast
world-routes are disorganized.
"Whether or not this gas, of which Harkness has a sample, came from the
Dark Moon or from some laboratory on Earth is of no particular
importance. Will it destroy the space-serpents? If it does this, our
hats are off to Mr. Walter Harkness; almost will we be inclined to
believe the rest of his story--or to laugh with him over one of the
greatest hoaxes ever attempted."
Chet had been too intent upon the newscast to heed an opening door at
his back....
* * * * *
"How about it, Chet?" a voice was asking. "Would you call it a hoax or
the real thing?" And a girl's voice chimed in with exclamations of
delight at sight of the patient, so evidently recovering.
"Diane!" Chet exulted, "--and Walt!--you old son-of-a-gun!" He found
himself clinging to a girl's soft hand with one of his, while with the
other he reached for that of her companion. But Walt Harkness' arm went
about his shoulders instead.
"I'd like to hammer you plenty," Harkness was saying, "and I don't even
dare give you a friendly slam on the back. How's the side where they got
you with the spear?--and how are you? How soon will you be ready to
start back? What about--"
Diane Delacouer raised her one free hand to stop the flood of questions.
"My dear," she protested, "give Chet a chance. He must be dying for
information."
"I was dying for another reason the last time I saw you," Chet reminded
her, "--up on the Dark Moon. But it seems that you got me back here in
time for repairs. And now what?" His nurse came into the room with extra
chairs; Chet waited till she was gone before he repeated: "Now what?
When do we go back?"
Harkness did not answer at once. Instead he crossed to the newscaster in
its compact, metal case. The voice was still speaking softly; at a touch
of a switch it ceased, and in the silence came the soft rush of sound
that meant the telautotype had taken up its work. Beneath a glass a
paper moved, and words came upon it from a hurricane of type-bars
underneath. The instrument was printing the news story as rapidly as any
voice could speak it.
Harkness read the words for an instant, then let the paper pass on to
wind itself upon a spool. It had still been telling of the gigantic hoax
that this eccentric American had attempted and Harkness repeated the
words.
"A hoax!" he exclaimed, and his eyes, for a moment, flashed angrily
beneath the dark hair that one hand had disarranged. "I would like to
take that facetious bird out about a thousand miles and let him play
around with the serpents we met. But, why get excited? This is all
Schwartzmann's doing. The tentacles of that man's influence reach out
like those of an octopus."
* * * * *
Chet ranged himself alongside. Tall and slim and blond, he contrasted
strongly with this other man, particularly in his own quiet self-control
as against Harkness' quick-flaring anger.
"Take it easy, Walt," he advised. "We'll show them. But I judge that you
have been razzed a bit. It's a pretty big story for them to swallow
without proof. Why didn't you show them the ship? Or why didn't you let
Diane and me back up your yarn? And you haven't answered my other
questions: when do we go back?"
Harkness took the queries in turn.
"I didn't show the old boat," he explained, "because I'm not ready for
that yet. I want it kept dark--dark as the Dark Moon. I want to do my
preliminary work there before Schwartzmann and his experts see our ship.
He would duplicate it in a hurry and be on our trail.
"And now for our plans. Well, our there in space the Dark Moon is
waiting. Have you realized, Chet, that we own that world--you and Diane
and I? Small--only half the size of our old moon--but what a place! And
it's ours!
"Back in history--you remember?--an ambitious lad named Alexander sighed
for more worlds to conquer. Well, we're going Alexander one
better--we've found the world. We're the first ever to go out into space
and return again.
"We'll go back there, the three of us. We will take no others along--not
yet. We will explore and make our plans for development; and we will
keep it to ourselves until we are ready to hold it against any
opposition.
"And now, how soon can you go? Your injury--how soon will you be well
enough?"
"Right now," Chet told him laconically; "today, if you say the word.
They've got me welded together so I'll hold, I reckon. But where's the
ship? What have you done--" He broke off abruptly to listen--
* * * * *
To all three came a muffled, booming roar. The windows beside them
shivered with the thud of the distant explosion; they had not ceased
their trembling before Harkness had switched on the news broadcast. And
it was a minute only until the news-gathering system was on the air.
"Explosion at the Institute of Physical Science!" it stated. "This is
Vienna broadcasting. An explosion has just occurred. We are giving a
preliminary announcement only. The laboratories of the Scientific
Institute of this city are destroyed. A number of lives have been lost.
The cause has not been determined. It is reported that the laboratories
were beginning analytical work, on the so-called Harkness Dark Moon
gas--
"Confirmation has just been radioed to this station. Dark Moon gas
exploded on contact with air. The American, Harkness, is either a
criminal or a madman; he will be apprehended at once. This confirmation
comes from Herr Schwartzmann of Vienna who left the Institute only a few
minutes before the explosion occurred--"
And, in the quiet of a hospital room, Walter Harkness drew a long breath
and whispered; "Schwartzmann! His hand is everywhere.... And that sample
was all I had.... I must leave at once--go back to America."
He was halfway to the door--he was almost carrying Diane Delacouer with
him--when Chet's quiet tones brought him up short.
"I've never seen you afraid," said Chet; and his eyes were regarding the
other man curiously; "but you seem to have the wind up, as the old
flyers used to say, when it comes to Schwartzmann."
* * * * *
Harkness looked at the girl he held so tightly, then grinned boyishly at
Chet. "I've someone else to be afraid for now," he said.
His smile faded and was replaced by a look of deep concern. "I haven't
told you about Schwartzmann," he said; "haven't had time. But he's
poison, Chet. And he's after our ship."
"Where is the ship; where have you hidden it? Tell me--where?"
Harkness looked about him before he whispered sharply: "Our old shop--up
north!"
He seemed to feel that some explanation was due Chet. "In this day it
seems absurd to say such things," he added; "but this Schwartzmann is a
throw-back--a conscienceless scoundrel. He would put all three of us out
of the way in a minute if he could get the ship. _He_ knows we have been
to the Dark Moon--no question about that--and he wants the wealth he can
imagine is there.
"We'll all plan to leave; I'll radio you later. We'll go back to the
Dark Moon--" He broke off abruptly as the door opened to admit the
nurse. "You'll hear from me later," he repeated; and hurried Diane
Delacouer from the room.
But he returned in a moment to stand again at the door--the nurse was
still in the room. "In case you feel like going for a hop," he told Chet
casually, "Diane's leaving her ship here for you. You'll find it up
above--private landing stage on the roof."
Chet answered promptly, "Fine; that will go good one of these days." All
this for the benefit of listening ears. Yet even Chet would have been
astonished to know that he would be using that ship within an hour....
* * * * *
He was standing at the window, and his mind was filled, not with
thoughts of any complications that had developed for his friend
Harkness, but only of the adventures that lay ahead of them both. The
Dark Moon!--they had reached it, indeed; but they had barely scratched
the surface of that world of mystery and adventure. He was wild with
eagerness to return--to see again that new world, blazing brightly
beneath the sun; to see the valley of fires--and he had a score to
settle with the tribe of ape-men, unless Harkness had finished them off
while he, himself, lay unconscious.... Yes, there seemed little doubt of
that; Walt would have paid the score for all of them.... He seemed
actually back in that world to which his thoughts went winging across
the depths of space. The buzz of a telephone recalled him.
It was the hospital office, he found, when he answered. There was a
message--would Mr. Bullard kindly receive it on the telautotype--lever
number four, and dial fifteen-point-two--thanks.... And Chet depressed a
key and adjusted the instrument that had been printing the newscast.
The paper moved on beneath the glass, and the type-bars clicked more
slowly now. From some distant station that might be anywhere on or above
the earth, there was coming a message.
The frequency of that sending current was changed at some central
office; it was stepped down to suit the instrument beside him. And the
type was spelling out words that made the watching man breathless and
intent--until he tore off the paper and leaped for the call signal that
would summon the nurse. Through her he would get his own clothes, his
uniform, the triple star that showed his rating and his authority in
every air-level of the world.
That badge would have got him immediate attention on any landing field.
Now, on the flat roof, with steady, gray eyes and a voice whose very
quietness accentuated its imperative commands, Chet had the staff of the
hospital hangars as alert as if their alarm had sounded a general
ambulance call.
* * * * *
Straight into the sky a red beacon made a rigid column of light; a radio
sender was crackling a warning and a demand for "clear air." From the
forty level, a patrol ship that had caught the signal came corkscrewing
down the red shaft to stand by for emergency work.... Chet called her
commander from the cabin of Diane's ship. A word of thanks--Chet's
number--and a dismissal of the craft. Then the white lights signaled
"all clear" and the hold-down levers let go with a soft hiss--
The feel of the controls was good to his hands; the ship roared into
life. A beautiful little cruiser, this ship of Diane's; her twin
helicopters lifted her gracefully into the air. The column of red light
had changed to blue, the mark of an ascending area; Chet touched a
switch. A muffled roar came from the stern and the blast drove him
straight out for a mile; then he swung and returned. He was nosing up as
he touched the blue--straight up--and he held the vertical climb till
the altimeter before him registered sixty thousand.
Traffic is north-bound only on the sixty-level, and Chet set his ship on
a course for the frozen wastes of the Arctic; then he gave her the gun
and nodded in tight-lipped satisfaction at the mounting thunder that
answered from the stern.
Only then did he read again the message on a torn fragment of
telautotype paper. "Harkness," was the signature; and above, a brief
warning and a call--"Danger--must leave at once. You get ship and stand
by. I will meet you there." And, for the first time, Chet found time to
wonder at this danger that had set the hard-headed, hard-hitting Walt
Harkness into a flutter of nerves.
* * * * *
What danger could there be in this well-guarded world? A patrol-ship
passed below him as he asked himself the question. It was symbolic of a
world at peace; a world too busy with its own tremendous development to
find time for wars or makers of war. What trouble could this man
Schwartzmann threaten that a word to the Peace Enforcement Commission
would not quell? Where could he go to elude the inescapable patrols?
And suddenly Chet saw the answer to that question--saw plainly where
Schwartzmann could go. Those vast reaches of black space! If
Schwartzmann had their ship he could go where they had gone--go out to
the Dark Moon.... And Harkness had warned Chet to get their ship and
stand by.
Had Walt learned of some plan of Schwartzmann's? Chet could not answer
the question, but he moved the control rheostat over to the last notch.
From the body of the craft came an unending roar of a generator where
nothing moved; where only the terrific, explosive impact of bursting
detonite drove out from the stern to throw them forward. "A good little
ship," Chet had said of this cruiser of Diane's; and he nodded approval
now of a ground-speed detector whose quivering needle had left the 500
mark. It touched 600, crept on, and trembled at 700 miles an hour with
the top speed of the ship.
There was a position-finder in the little control-room, and Chet's gaze
returned to it often to see the pinpoint of light that crept slowly
across the surface of a globe. It marked their ever-changing location,
and it moved unerringly toward a predetermined goal.
* * * * *
It was a place of ice and snow and bleak outcropping of half-covered
rocks where he descended. Lost from the world, a place where even the
high levels seldom echoed to the roar of passing ships, it had been a
perfect location for their "shop." Here he and Walt had assembled their
mystery ship.
He had to search intently over the icy waste to find the exact location;
a dim red glow from a hidden sun shone like pale fire across distant
black hills. But the hills gave him a bearing, and he landed at last
beside a vaguely outlined structure, half hidden in drifting snow.
The dual fans dropped him softly upon the snow ground and Chet, as he
walked toward the great locked doors, was trembling from other causes
than the cold. Would the ship be there? He was suddenly a-quiver with
excitement at the thought of what this ship meant--the adventure, the
exploration that lay ahead.
The doors swung back. In the warm and lighted room was a cylinder of
silvery white. Its bow ended in a gaping port where a mighty exhaust
could roar forth to check the ship's forward speed; there were other
ports ranged about the gleaming body. Above the hull a control-room
projected flatly; its lookouts shone in the brilliance of the nitron
illuminator that flooded the room with light....
Chet Bullard was breathless as he moved on and into the room. His wild
experiences that had seemed but a weird dream were real again. The Dark
Moon was real! And they would be going back to it!
* * * * *
The muffled beating of great helicopters was sounding in his ears;
outside, a ship was landing. This would be Harkness coming to join him;
yet, even as the thought flashed through his mind, it was countered by a
quick denial. To the experienced hearing of the Master Pilot this sound
of many fans meant no little craft. It was a big ship that was landing,
and it was coming down fast. The blue-striped monster looming large in
the glow of the midnight sun was not entirely a surprise to Chet's
staring eyes.
But--blue-striped! The markings of the Schwartzmann line!--He had hardly
sensed the danger when it was upon him.
A man, heavy and broad of frame, was giving orders. Only once had Chet
seen this Herr Schwartzmann, but there was no mistaking him now. And he
was sending a squad of rushing figures toward the man who struggled to
close a great door.
Chet crouched to meet the attack. He was outnumbered; he could never win
out. But the knowledge of his own helplessness was nothing beside that
other conviction that flooded him with sickening certainty--
A hoax!--that was what they had called Walt's story; Schwartzmann had so
named it, and now Schwartzmann had been the one to fool them; the
message was a fake--a bait to draw him out; and he, Chet, had taken the
bait. He had led Schwartzmann here; had delivered their ship into his
hands--
[Illustration: _He landed one blow on the nearest face._]
He landed one blow on the nearest face; he had one glimpse of a clubbed
weapon swinging above him--and the world went dark.