CHAPTER VI
_Heart of the Moon_
In the grasp of the winged creatures' long, clawed hands Chet washelpless. He was struggling vainly when they released their hold and hefelt himself falling into a pit that, as far as he knew, was abottomless abyss. He was still struggling to right himself in mid-airwhen he struck.
To fall even so short a distance on Earth would have meant instantdeath. Here, where gravitation's pull was but one-sixth that of Earth,he still struck on a rocky floor with a thud that made him sick for lackof breath.
Above him was a pale circle of light. Tipping the edge of a vast cratermouth high above was a rim of brilliance. Earthlight! Chet was suddenlycertain that he was seeing that glow for the last time as the circlewent black, and there came to him the unmistakable clang of metal wherea door was shut.
Through the countless mingled emotions that filled him he was wonderingwhat manner of creatures these were into whose hands he had fallen.Intelligent, beyond a doubt, in their own way; he could not question theevidence of his own eyes and ears. They were able to work in metals andto seal the mouth of this lunar tomb.
But he was still alive; he could not give up now. This adventure uponwhich he had launched with such high hopes had turned out differentlythan expected; but, he told himself, it was not ended yet.
And, instead of a lifeless globe, he had found this: a place peopledwith strange, half-human life. And, more marvelous still, instead ofHaldgren, whom he had come to seek, there had been a girl!
* * * * *
Chet had recovered his ability to breathe, had made sure that the oxygentank was intact; and now he called softly into the blackness of thisdark vault where he had seen her thrown.
"Are you alive?" he asked. "Can you hear me?"
For answer came quick rustling of moving bodies, the smooth rasping ofwings on leathery wings, hands that fumbled for him, then closed aboutarms and legs and throat, while in his ears was a chattering ofhigh-pitched squeals. Again he was lifted in air, held there in the gripof a score of lean, long-fingered hands. He was nerving himself toundergo without flinching whatever new torture might be in store. Yet hethrilled inexplicably as through the sounds of these things about him,he heard a muffled: "Yes--yes! Oh, I am glad--"
The sentence was unfinished. Before Chet's eyes a light was growing. Amere slit at first, it grew to a luminous circle in the rocky floor. Andas it opened, he felt the pressure of his metal suit upon his body,where before it had been slightly ballooned by the pressure of oxygen hehad maintained.
With the opening of this door to another subterranean chamber had come arenewed atmospheric pressure. And now, in the denser gas, he saw, inghastly silhouette against the lighted pit, flying figures that floatedand soared on outstretched wings of inky black.
* * * * *
Beside him and above he heard the swishing flutter of other wings; hefelt himself lifted from the floor; he was being floated out above theluminous pit by the flying things that held him.
No direct glare came from below, but a soft violet radiance. It shonefull upon him--past him--to light up and give detail to those faces thathad been featureless before. Chet had just one moment of fascinatedstaring into the diabolical, pasty faces where narrow, red eyes staredback into his. Then the squealing voices were stilled!
One, louder than the rest, rasped an order. And again Chet felt thehands relax; once more he was falling, down--down--and still down--untilhe knew that his velocity of fall meant an impact he could neversurvive.
And, curiously, as he fell, his mind was entirely unconcerned with hisown fate. For himself, he had accepted death. But he saw for what seemedlike hours a vision of a familiar control room and an Irish pilot whosat by the controls. He was looking sharply ahead, he was checkingspeed, he was landing softly--safely--on a familiar field of Earth....
That passed; and, following, came a feeling of regret, a deep hurt anda rage at his own inability to be of help. For, above him, through theluminous air, he saw another body falling, and he knew that the girl,too, had been thrown to the same fate.
* * * * *
Those eyes of blue had locked with his for but a few brief seconds. Whoshe was--what she was--he had no way of knowing. But in that instant ofmental meeting there had passed a flash between the two that had burneddeeply into Chet's real and hidden self.
Chet, himself, had he been in laughing mood, might have smiled at theidea of affection being born in that brief time. Yet he might have askedinstead how long was needed to bridge the sharp gap of a radio-powertransmitter; how much time was needed for anode and cathode each torecognize the other. Something of this was passing in confusion throughhis mind while his more conscious faculties were tensing his body forthe fatal impact he knew must come.
Without thinking the thought in words he knew that the luminous wallshad receded. They were more distant now; their glow came to him from farabove, and, as his falling body turned again and again in air, he sawthat below him was nothing but a vast emptiness filled with luminousvapors that swirled and writhed.
Then the last gleam of lighted walls faded; he was falling at terrificspeed through a black tempest whose winds tore and screamed about him.
* * * * *
It was his own falling speed that made these winds; there remained withhim enough of reasoning power to realize this. And he waited, andmarveled that he could fall so tremendous a distance. First had beenthe great shaft down which he had plunged; then, as it widened, had comethis greater void. The crater of Hercules must have opened, into a vastshell or a cavern of incredible depth. The winged things of the Moonknew of it; they had cast him to his death--him and the girl.
Her slowly turning body was not far away; it was as if they two hungsuspended in air, while frightful blasts of whatever gas filled thisspace whipped and shrieked past and wrapped them round with a terrificpressure. And then the tempest ceased. Slowly the blasts diminished; thepressure relaxed; gradually the sense of falling passed away, and withthis there came a glimpse of light.
Again the walls glowed as they had before, but far off in the distance.Chet saw them grow luminous while he seemed hung motionless in space.Then once more they drew away from him; once more he knew he was fallingaway from that light--plunging again into the depths he had traversed.
And now, despite the oxygen that came to him uninterruptedly, he foundhis head swimming. The limit of human endurance had been reached.
Desperately he tried to bring his reason to bear upon this miracle thathad happened. He had not struck; instead of falling to his death he hadcushioned against something; he was falling again where, not far away,another metal-clad figure hung limply in air and fell as he fell. Andwith that knowledge the whirling turmoil within his brain ended in ablood-red flashing that went finally to merciful darkness....
* * * * *
That darkness still wrapped him thickly about when he regainedconsciousness--a darkness saved from utter black only by a faintluminosity that seemed to penetrate and be part of the air about him.
Still hardly more than half-conscious, lying, it seemed, on a soft bedwhere he was weightless, he stirred and flung out one arm. From hisfingertips he saw whirls of violet light sweep out and away, as vorticesmight have been set in motion by a swimmer in a more liquid medium.
Fascinated, failing utterly to comprehend where he was, he moved hishands deliberately, swept one arm from side to side--and a number ofluminous whirlpools went spinning out into space. And then heremembered.
He remembered the terrific fall that miraculously brought him back to aplace of light like that where his fall had begun. He rememberedbeginning the second fall; and, while he still could not know what itmeant, he knew that he must have been unconscious for hours. And, withthat, his thoughts came back to the girl. For the first time he foundleisure to give mental voice to his wonderment.
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The mystery of it all!--of her presence here on the Moon! Again he wasoverwhelmed with the wonder of his surprising discovery. It was nearlybeyond belief; almost he doubted the reality of what his own eyes hadseen.
* * * * *
But there was no doubting his own presence here in this strange place.The unreality of it--the strangeness of his own sensations--were bornein upon him. Where was he? he asked. What was this soft cushion uponwhich he rested so lightly? He tried to sit up and found that he merelytwisted his body and set other eddies of light into motion.
Cautiously, he swung one arm out as far as he could reach. There wasnothing there. He moved the arm down; reached with his hand beneathhim--and still there was nothing tangible! Through his mind swept agripping fear, a wordless, incoherent terror of something he could notname. Desperately he wanted to touch something firm and solid; lay hishands upon something he knew was real; and he flung out arms and legs ina paroxysm of futile effort.
He seemed hung in nothingness, an utter emptiness where nothing moved;only the ghostly whirls of light that ran lazily away from his beatinghands until they died silently away into darkness, swallowed up in thisunspeakable horror of soundless space. And, when he had quieted again,he knew with a dreadful certainty that there was nothing there; he wassuspended in a great void--immersed in an ocean of some unknown gas.
The sense of loneliness that filled him was devastating. He could havefaced death as he had faced it before, unflinchingly; that was all inthe day's work. But here was something that tested sanity itself. Couldhe but touch something substantial, he told himself, it would help himto keep a grip on reality; even to see and feel one of the wingedhorrors would be in a way a relief.
* * * * *
His struggles had ceased; all about him the atmosphere was quivering andwrithing with whirling light that swirled and danced and mingled oneglowing vortex with another. Then it, too, died; and, through the darkthat was relieved only by the faint luminosity of the quiescent gas, hesaw far off a point of light.
Here was something to which he could pin his eyes; something outside ofhimself and the horror of nothingness in which he was immersed. Hestared through the window of his helmet while the light grew andexpanded into nebulous, cloudy glowing that faded and was gone.
Again it came and died; and a third time. And then Chet Bullard sworeloudly and harshly within the silence of his own metal sheath, while hecursed his own dullness that had kept him from instant comprehension.
That light was far away, but, "Keep moving!" Chet called, hoping thathis voice might span the void. "Keep moving so I can see your light!I'll try to swim over."
He threw himself over with a convulsive jerk and flattened the palms ofhis hands in a breaststroke, while he kicked with his feet against thedense atmosphere about him. And he saw with delight that the whirlingripples of light moved back of him; he felt that he was making someheadway, slight though it must be.
* * * * *
He saw her at last, and heard her call:
"I am swimming, too," she cried. "How wonderful to see you! Thisloneliness! It is horrible--unbearable!"
"I understand," Chet said; "it is pretty bad."
Then, at sound of a stifled sob, he gripped one reaching hand hard andtried to bring himself out from under the pall that numbed his own mind;he even attempted to force a note of lightness into his words.
"I've flown everything with wings," he told her, "but this is the firsttime I ever flew myself. Guess I was never properly designed."
Feeble, this attempt at humor; but there was none to note the strainededge in his tone, only a girl, whose metal-clad hand closed in a tighthold upon his.
"You can joke--_now_," she said with a catch in her voice that showedhow desperately hard she was trying to meet Chet's fortitude and forceher own words to steadiness. "That takes--real nerve. I like that!"
Then she added: "But it's hopeless; you know that. They've got us. Andnow that some of them have been killed they will--they will--"
And the trace of Chet's strained smile that lingered on his lips, couldshe have seen it, would have appeared grim.
"Whatever it was you didn't say, I agree with. I imagine the finish willnot be pleasant." Once more he was facing the inevitable; and, asbefore, he faced it squarely and knowingly, then put it completely fromhis mind. There was so much he must know before that adventure's end wasreached.
"Tell me," he demanded, "who are 'they'? Where are they? How many arethere of them? And where have they got us? What kind of a place is this,where all natural laws are suspended, where gravitation is at zero?
"And, for heaven's sake, tell me: who are you? Where are you from? Howdid you get here on the Moon?"
* * * * *
That uncontrollable catch in the girl's voice had taken on a trace ofbrave laughter that overlay the trembling sob in her throat.
"That is a lot of information," she said, "and I am afraid it will notmake much difference if you know. Oh, I wish I had some atom ofencouragement for you! I do not know who you are either--and you havebeen so brave! You have come here, I brought you with my signals forhelp--brought you to your death.
"For it _is_ death! This is the end of our adventuring--mine and yoursas well--here at the center, the exact center of the Moon."
"Ah-h!" answered Chet Bullard softly, as understanding came to him. "Ishould have guessed it. The atmospheric pressure and density--and wefell past the center, then back again; we've been vibrating back andforth until we came to rest at last. And now we die! Well, it might havebeen worse."
He was staring out through the little window of his helmet, staring intothe faintly luminous atmosphere, facing the end of his brave fling withfortune. It was an instant before he realized that there was somethingmoving in the void. He pressed softly upon the hand he held and pointed.
"See!" he said in a hushed tone. "There is something there!"
* * * * *
It took form slowly, a shapeless, round blur in the pale light. Inch byinch it drifted toward them, until Chet moved one hand abruptly andfound he had created a ripple of light by which he could see moreclearly. And he saw before him a bulging, membraneous sac.
It had been smoothly spherical before; it heaved itself into strangeprotuberances as he watched. He flipped his hand to set up anothervortex of light, and he saw the first rip that formed in the membrane.
Before his staring eyes the bag burst open; and Chet, who had wished forsome substantial thing, even a denizen of this wild world, found hiswish fulfilled. For the thin membrane tore in a score of places torelease a body from within--a shapeless, huddled mass of chalk-whiteflesh in a wrapping of black leather that unfolded before his eyes andbecame wings which waved feebly in their first attempt at flight.
The pallid body, supple as a giant worm, jerked spasmodically and turnedsightless eyes toward the watching Earth-folk. Then, as if drawn by somemagnet, invisible in the distance, the black wings began to beat theair, and the creature moved off in a straight line toward some unknowngoal.
* * * * *
Another of the membraneous spheres drifted past in the light that camefrom those fluttering wings. A second showed in repulsive shininess.Chet was aware that there were many of the things about.
"Eggs!" he exclaimed with a disgust that partook of nausea, "And thedamnable thing hatched--right here!--before our eyes!"
And the girl gave the final explanation: "The Moon is just a greatshell. They lay their eggs, these half-human creatures that you saw, andattach them to the inner surface of that shell. Then at a certain periodthey come loose and float away. I never knew what became of them; now Iunderstand at last."
"You know all this!" protested Chet. "How can you know it? How long haveyou been here?"
"I kept track of time for a while," said the voice beside him; "then
Iforgot it when they took Frithjof away. But it must be about five years.Five years of terror and vain hopes and wild plans for escape! And nowit ends--after five years!"
And Chet Bullard, within his metal helmet, was repeating inbewilderment: "Five years! Haldgren left five years ago! What does itmean?"
Nor did he pause to realize that through his amazement was woven athread of another hue, tinged faintly with jealousy that demanded ofhim: "Frithjof! Who is Frithjof who was taken away?"
Chet's mind was filled with a confusion of questions that jostled oneanother to silence when he tried to give them expression. And there waslittle time for questioning.
* * * * *
He saw other floating eggs whose membraneous coverings had turnedleathery and opaque. And he saw white phantom figures who gathered thoseeggs. One came near till Chet could make out the repulsive face andblack, staring eyes with their fiery red center. It was one of thethings that had captured him; he saw it move swiftly on broad wings. Itheld a leathery egg in its curled-claw hands while its long tail whippedaround and laid the egg open with one slash of a sharp spiked point.
One more of the young of this horrible species was liberated and wentwinging away into the dark, only the whirls of light in the atmospheremarking the beating of its wings.
Chet's eyes followed it to see far out beyond a light that expanded asit drew near. The beaten atmospheric gas was whipped to cold flame wheresome ten or a dozen phantom demons came swiftly on toward the waitinghumans.
They were swarming about in an instant. Chet had no time for even ashouted warning before he felt himself seized by their long, bony claws.Then a net of rough-fibered rope was flung about him, and he felt itdraw tight as the winged beasts lifted him up and out into the void.
"Wrong again!" Chet told himself ruefully. "We don't die at the centerof the Moon, after all!" But, as the whipping wings drove whirlingblasts of violet light back upon him he could find nothing of comfort inthe thought that some different experience still lay ahead.