CHAPTER XX
_The Grantline Camp_
In the mid-northern hemisphere upon the Earthward side of the Moon, thegiant crater of Archimedes stood brooding in silent majesty. Grim, loftywalls, broken, pitted and scarred, rising precipitous to the uppercircular rim. Night had just fallen. The sunlight clung to thecrater-heights; it tinged with flame the jagged peaks of the ApennineMountains which rose in tiers at the horizon; and it flung great inkyshadows over the intervening lowlands.
Northward, the Mare Imbrium stretched mysterious and purple, its millionrills and ridges and crater holes flattened by distance and thegathering darkness into a seeming level surface. The night slowlydeepened. The dead-black vault of the sky blazed with its brilliantstarry gems. The gibbous Earth hung high above the horizon, motionless,save for the invisible pendulum sway over the tiny arc, of itslibration: widening to quadrature, casting upon the bleak naked Lunarlandscape its mellow Earth-glow.
Slow, measured process, this coming of the Lunar night! For an Earth-daythe sunset slowly faded on the Apennines; the poised Earth widened alittle further--an Earth-day of time, with the Earth-disc visiblyrotating, the faint tracery of its oceans and continents passing inslow, majestic review.
Another Earth-day interval. Then another. And another. Full night nowenveloped Archimedes. Splotches of Earth-light and starlight sheenslowly shifted as the night advanced.
Between the great crater and the nearby mountains, the broken,pseudo-level lowlands lay wan in the Earth-light. A few hundred miles,as distance would be measured upon Earth. A million million rills werehere. Valleys and ridges, ravines, sharp-walled canyons, cliffs andcrags--tiny craters like pock-marks.
Naked, gray porous rock everywhere. This denuded landscape! Cracked andscarred and tumbled, as though some inexorable Titan torch had searedand crumbled and broken it, left it now congealed like a wind-lashed seaabruptly frozen into immobility.
* * * * *
Moonlight upon Earth so gently shines to make romantic a lover's smile!But the reality of the Lunar night is cold beyond human rationality.Cold and darkly silent. Grim desolation. Awesome. Majestic. A frowningmajesty that even to the most intrepid human beholder is inconceivablyforbidding.
And there were humans here now. On this tumbled plain, betweenArchimedes and the mountains, one small crater amid the million of itsfellows was distinguished this night by the presence of humans. TheGrantline camp! It huddled in the deepest purple shadows on the side ofa bowl-like pit, a crudely circular orifice with a scant two milesacross its rippling rim. There was faint light here to mark the presenceof the living intruders. The blue-glow radiance of Morrell tube-lightsunder a spread of glassite.
The Grantline camp stood mid-way up one of the inner cliff-walls of thelittle crater. The broken, rock-strewn floor, two miles wide, lay fivehundred feet below the camp. Behind it, the jagged precipitous cliffrose another five hundred to the heights of the upper rim. A broadlevel shelf hung midway up the cliff, and upon it Grantline had builthis little group of glassite dome shelters. Viewed from above there wasthe darkly purple crater floor, the upflung circular rim where theEarth-light tinged the spires and crags with yellow sheen; and on theshelf, like a huddled group of birds nests, Grantline's domes clung andgazed down upon the inner valley.
Intricate task, the building of these glassite shelters! There werethree. The main one stood close at the brink of the ledge. A quadrangleof glassite walls, a hundred feet in length by half as wide, and a scantten feet high to its flat-arched dome roof. Built for this purpose inGreat-New York, Grantline had brought his aluminite girders and bracesand the glassite panels in sections.
* * * * *
The air here on the Moon surface was negligible--a scant onefive-thousandth of the atmospheric pressure at the sea-level on Earth.But within the glassite shelter, a normal Earth-pressure must bemaintained. Rigidly braced double walls to withstand the explosivetendency, with no external pressure to counteract it. A tremendousnecessity for mechanical equipment had burdened Grantline's smallship to its capacity. The chemistry of manufactured air, thepressure equalizers, renewers, respirators, the lighting andtemperature-maintenance systems--all the mechanics of a space-flyer werehere.
And within the glassite double walls, there was necessity for a constantcirculation of the Erentz temperature insulating system.[D]
There was this main Grantline building, stretching low and rectangularalong the front edge of the ledge. Within it were living rooms, messroomand kitchen. Fifty feet behind it, connected by a narrow passage ofglassite, was a similar, though smaller structure. The mechanicalcontrol rooms, with their humming, vibrating mechanisms were here. Andan instrument room with signaling apparatus, senders, receivers,mirror-grids and audiphones of several varieties; and anelectro-telescope, small but modern, with dome overhead like a littleEarth observatory.
From this instrument building, beside the connecting pedestrian passage,wire cables for light, and air-tubes and strings and bundles ofinstrument wires ran to the main structure--gray snakes upon theporous, gray Lunar rock.
The third building seemed a lean-to banked against the cliff-wall, aslanting shed-wall of glassite fifty feet high and two hundred inlength. Under it, for months Grantline's borers had dug into the cliff.Braced tunnels were here, penetrating back and downward into this veinof radio-active rock.
[D] An intricate system of insulation against extremes of temperature, developed by the Erentz Kinetic Energy Corporation in the twenty-first century. Within the hollow double shell of a shelter-wall, or an explorer's helmet-suit, or a space-flyer's hull, an oscillating semi-vacuum current was maintained--an extremely rarified air, magnetically charged, and maintained in rapid oscillating motion. Across this field the outer cold, or heat, as the case might be, could penetrate only with slow radiation. This Erentz system gave the most perfect temperature insulation known in its day. Without it, interplanetary flight would have been impossible.
And it served a double purpose. Developed at first for temperature insulation only, the Erentz system surprisingly brought to light one of the most important discoveries made in the realm of physics of the century. It was found that any flashing, oscillating current, whether electronic, or the semi-vacuum of rarified air--or even a thin sheet of whirling fluid--gave also a pressure-insulation. The kinetic energy of the rapid movement was found to absorb within itself the latent energy of the unequal pressure.
(The intricate postulates and mathematical formulae necessary to demonstrate the operation of the physical laws involved would be out of place here.)
The _Planetara_ was so equipped, against the explosive tendency of its inner air-pressures when flying in the near-vacuum of space. In the case of Grantline's glassite shelters, the latent energy of his room interior air pressure went largely into a kinetic energy which in practical effect resulted only in the slight acceleration of the vacuum current, and thus never reached the outer wall. The Erentz engineers claimed for their system a pressure absorption of 97.4%, leaving, in Grantline's case, only 2.6% of room pressure to be held by the building's aluminite bracers.
It may be interesting to note in this connection that without the Erentz system as a basis, the great sub-sea developments on Earth and Mars of the twenty-first century would also have been impossible. Equipped with a fluid circulation device of the Erentz principle within its double hull, the first submarine was able to penetrate the great ocean deeps, withstanding the tremendous ocean pressures at depths of four thousand fathoms.
* * * * *
The work was over now. The borers had been dismantled and packed away.At one end of the cliff the mining equipment lay piled in a litter.There was a heap of discarded ore where Grantline had carted and dumpedit after his first crude refining process had yielded it as waste. Theore-slag lay like gray powder-flakes strewn down the cliff. Tracks andore-carts along the ledge stood
discarded, mute evidence of the weeksand months of work these helmeted miners had undergone, struggling uponthis airless, frowning world.
But now all that was finished. The radio-active ore was sufficientlyconcentrated. It lay--this treasure--in a seventy-foot pile behind theglassite lean-to, with a cage of wires over it and an insulation barrageguarding its Gamma rays from escaping to mark its presence.
The ore-shelter was dark; the other two buildings were lighted. Andthere were small lights mounted at intervals about the camp and alongthe edge of the ledge. A spider ladder, with tiny platforms some twentyfeet one above the other, hung precariously to the cliff-face. Itdescended the five hundred feet to the crater floor; and, behind thecamp, it mounted the jagged cliff-face to the upper rim-height, where asmall observatory platform was placed.
* * * * *
Such was the outer aspect of the Grantline Treasure Camp near thebeginning of this Lunar night, when, unbeknown to Grantline and hisscore of men, the _Planetara_ with its brigands was approaching. Thenight was perhaps a sixth advanced. Full night. No breath of cloud tomar the brilliant starry heavens. The quadrant Earth hung poised like agiant mellow moon over Grantline's crater. A bright Earth, yet no airwas here on this Lunar surface to spread its light. Only a glow,mingling with the spots of blue tube-light on the poles along the cliff,and the radiance from the lighted buildings.
The crater floor was dimly purple. Beyond the opposite upper rim, fromthe camp-height, the towering top of distant Archimedes was visible.
No evidence of movement showed about the silent camp. Then a pressuredoor in an end of the main building opened its tiny series of locks. Abent figure came out. The lock closed. The figure straightened and gazedabout the camp. Grotesque, bloated semblance of a man! Helmeted, withrounded dome-hood suggestion of an ancient sea diver, yet goggled andtrunked like a gas-masked fighter of the twentieth century war.
He stooped presently and disconnected metal weights which were upon hisshoes.[E]
Then he stood erect again, and with giant strides bounded along thecliff. Fantastic figure in the blue-lit gloom! A child's dream of cragsand rocks and strange lights with a single monstrous figure inseven-league boots.
He went the length of the ledge with his twenty-foot strides, inspectedthe lights, and made adjustments. Came back, and climbed with agile,bounding leaps up the spider ladder to the dome on the crater top. Alight flashed on up there. Then it was extinguished.
The goggled, bloated figure came leaping down after a moment.Grantline's exterior watchman making his rounds. He came back to themain building. Fastened the weights on his shoes. Signaled within.
The lock opened. The figure went inside.
It was early evening, after the dinner hour and before the time ofsleep, according to the camp routine Grantline was maintaining. Nine P.M. of Earth Eastern-American time, recorded now upon his Earthchronometer. In the living room of the main building Johnny Grantlinesat with a dozen of his men dispersed about the room, whiling away asbest they could the lonesome hours.
[E] Within the Grantline buildings it was found more convenient to use a gravity normal to Earth. This was maintained by the wearing of metal-weighted shoes and metal-loaded belt. The Moon-gravity is normally approximately one-sixth the gravity of Earth.
* * * * *
"All as usual. This cursed Moon! When I get home--if ever I do gethome--"
"Say your say, Wilks. But you'll spend your share of the gold-leaf andthank your constellations that you had your chance!"
"Let him alone! Come on, Wilks, take a hand here. This game is no goodwith three."
The man who had been outside flung his hissing helmet recklessly to thefloor and unsealed his suit. "Here, get me out of this. No, I won'tplay. 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 hesat 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'sinfernal doing nothing."
"He's been struck by Earth-light," another man laughed. "Commander, Itold you not to let that guy Wilks out at night."
* * * * *
A rough but good-natured lot of men. Jolly and raucous by nature intheir leisure hours. But there was too much leisure here now. Theirmirth had a hollow sound. In older times, explorers of the frozen polarzones had to cope with inactivity, loneliness and despair. But at leastthey were on their native world. The grimness of the Moon was eatinginto the courage of Grantline's men. An unreality here. A weirdness.These fantastic crags. The deadly silence. The nights, almost two weeksof Earth-time in length, congealed by the deadly frigidity of Space. Thedays of black sky, blaring stars and flaming Sun, with no atmosphere todiffuse the daylight. Days of weird blending sheen of illumination withmost of the Sun's heat radiating so swiftly from the naked Lunar surfacethat the outer temperature still was cold. And day and night, always thefamiliar beloved Earth-disc hanging poised up near the zenith. Fromthinnest crescent to full Earth, and then steadily back again tocrescent.
All so abnormal, irrational, disturbing to human senses. With the miningwork over, an irritability grew upon Grantline's men. And perhaps sincethe human mind is so wonderful, elusive a thing, there lay upon thesemen an indefinable sense of impending disaster. Johnny Grantline feltit. He thought about it now as he sat in the room corner watching Wilksbeing forced into the plaget-game, and he found it strong within him.Unreasonable, ominous depression! Barring the accident which haddisabled his little space-ship when they reached this small crater hole,his expedition had gone well. His instruments, and the information hehad from the former explorers, had picked up the ore-vein with a scantmonth of search.
* * * * *
The vein had now been exhausted; but the treasure was here. Nothing wasleft 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 doyou figure she'll be back here, and signal us?"
"Twenty days. Give her another five now to Mars, and five in port.That's 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 youlive here long enough."
Olaf Swenson, the big blond fellow from the Scandia fiords, came andflung himself down by Grantline.
"Ay tank they bane without not enough to do, Commander. If the ore yustwould 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 smashedon us, damn me but I'd ask the Commander to let some of us take herback. The discarded equipment could go."
"Shut up, Billy. She is smashed."
The little _Comet_, cruising in search of the ore, had come to griefjust as the ore was found. It lay now on the crater floor with its nosebashed into an upflung spire of rock. Wrecked beyond repair. Save forthe pre-arrangement with the _Planetara_, the Grantline party would havebeen helpless here on the Moon. Knowledge of that--although no one eversuspected but that the _Planetara_ would come safely--served to add tothe men's depression. They were cut off, virtually helpless on a strangeworld. Their signalling devices were inadequate even to reach Earth.Grantline's power batteries were running low.[F] He could not attemptwide-flung signals without jeopardizing the power necessary for theroutine of his camp in the event of the _Planetara_ being delayed. Norwas his electro-telescope adequate to pick small objects at any greatdistance.[G]
All of Grantline's effort, in truth, had gone into equipment for thefinding and gathering of the treasure. The safety of the expedition hadto
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."
[F] The Gravely storage tanks--the power used by the Grantline expedition--were heavy and bulky affairs. Economy of space on the Comet allowed but few of them.
[G] Electro-telescopes of most modern use and power were too large and used too much power to be available to Grantline.
* * * * *
A dynamic little fellow, this Johnny Grantline. Short of tempersometimes, but always just, and a perfect leader of men. In stature hewas 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 manof thirty-five, though the decision of his manner, the quiet dominanceof his voice, mode him seem older. He stood up now, surveying theblue-lit glassite room with its low ceiling close overhead. He wasbowlegged; in movement he seemed to roll with a stiff-legged gait likesome sea captain of former days on the deck of his swaying ship.Queer-looking figure! Heavy flannel shirt and trousers, boots heavilyweighted, and bulky metal-loaded belt strapped about his waist.
He grinned at Swenson. "When we divide this treasure, everyone will behappy, Ollie."
The treasure was estimated by Grantline to be the equivalent of ninetymillions in gold-leaf. A hundred and ten millions in the gross as it nowstood, with twenty millions to be deducted by the Federated Refiners forreducing it to the standard purity of commercial radium. Ninetymillions, with only a million and a half to come off for expeditionexpenses, and the _Planetara_ Company's share another million. A nicelittle 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 theinstrument room of the nearby building.
Grantline clicked the receiver. The room fell into silence. Any call wasunusual--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 offeredno objection when every man in the camp rushed through the connectingpassages. They crowded the instrument room where the tense duty man satbending 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 getit--not let it pass."
"Low scale, Peter?"
"Yes. Weakest infra-red. I'm bringing it up, even though it uses toomuch 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 bethe _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 weakinfra-red. But close. Around thirty thousand miles, maybe. It's SnapDean calling."
The _Planetara_ here within thirty thousand miles! Excitement andpleasure swept the room. The _Planetara's_ coming had for so long beenawaited so eagerly!
The excitement communicated to Grantline. It was unlike him to beincautious; yet now with no thought save that some unforeseen andpleasing 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 inthe helio-room of the _Planetara_ came so unwelcome to Snap and me, wereloosed.
"Can you send, Peter?" Grantline demanded.
"Yes, with more power."
"Use it."
Johnny dictated the message of his location which we received. In hisincautious excitement he ignored the secret code.
An interval passed. The ore was occulted again. No message had come fromus--just Snap's routine signal in the weak infra-red, which we hopedGrantline would not get.
The men crowding Grantline's instrument room waited in tense silence.Then Grantline tried the telescope. Its current weakened the lights withthe drain upon the distributors, and cooled the room with a suddendeadly 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 telescopeand 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 thealtimeter 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 hangingpoised.
A sudden gasp went about the room. The men stood with whitening faces,gazing at the _Planetara's_ image. And at the altimeter needle. It wasmoving. 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 turningcompletely over, rotating slowly end over end.
The _Planetara_, out of control, was falling!