CHAPTER XXI
_The Wreck of the_ Planetara
On the _Planetara_, in the helio-room, Snap and I stood with Moa'sweapon upon us. Miko held Anita. Triumphant. Possessive. Then as shestruggled, a gentleness came to this strange Martian giant. Perhaps hereally loved her. Looking back on it, I sometimes think so.
"Anita, do not fear me." He held her away from him. "I would not harmyou. I want your love." Irony came to him. "And I thought I had killedyou! But it was only your brother."
He partly turned. I was aware of how alert was his attention. Hegrinned. "Hold them, Moa--don't let them do anything foolish. So, Anita,you were masquerading to spy upon me? That was wrong of you." He wasagain ironic.
Anita had not spoken. She held herself tensely away from Miko; she hadflashed me a look--just one. What horrible mischance to have broughtthis catastrophe!
The completion of Grantline's message had come unnoticed by us all.
"Look! Grantline again!" Snap said abruptly.
But the mirrors were steadying. We had no recording-tape apparatus; therest of the message was lost. The mirrors pulsed and then steadied.
No further message came. There was an interval while Miko waited. Heheld Anita in the hollow of his great arm.
"Quiet, little bird. Do not fear me. I have work to do, Anita--this isour great adventure. We will be rich, you and I. All the luxuries threeworlds can offer, all for us when this is over. Careful, Moa! ThisHaljan has no wit."
Well could he say it! I, who had been so witless to let this come uponus! Moa's weapon prodded me. Her voice hissed at me with all the venomof a reptile enraged. "So that was your game, Gregg Haljan! And I was sograceless to admit love for you!"
* * * * *
Snap murmured in my ear, "Don't move, Gregg! She's reckless."
She heard it. She whirled on him. "We have lost George Prince, it seems.Well, we will survive without his ore knowledge. And you, Dean--and thisHaljan--mark me, I will kill you both if you cause trouble!"
Miko was gloating. "Don't kill them yet, Moa. What was it Grantlinesaid? Near the crater of Archimedes? Ring us down, Haljan! We'll land."
He signaled the turret. Gave Coniston the Grantline message, andaudiphoned it below to Hahn. The news spread about the ship. The banditswere jubilant.
"We'll land now, Haljan. Ring us down. Come, Anita and I will go withyou to the turret."
I found my voice. "To what destination?"
"Near Archimedes. The Apennine side. Keep well away from the Grantlinecamp. We will probably sight it as we descend."
There was no trajectory needed. We were almost over Archimedes now. Icould drop us with a visible, instrumental course. My mind was whirlingwith a confusion of thoughts. What could we do? What could we dareattempt to do? I met Snap's gaze.
"Ring us down, Gregg," he said quietly.
I nodded. I pushed Moa's weapon away. "You don't need that. I obeyorders."
* * * * *
We went to the turret. Moa watched me and Snap, a grim, cold Amazon. Sheavoided looking at Anita, whom Miko helped down the ladders with astrange mixture of courtierlike grace and amused irony. Coniston gazedat Anita with falling jaw.
"I say! Not George Prince? The girl--"
"No time for argument now," Miko commanded. "It's the girl, masqueradingas her brother. Get below, Coniston. Haljan takes us down."
The astounded Englishman continued gazing at Anita. "I mean to say,where to on the Moon? Not to encounter Grantline at once, Miko? Ourequipment is not ready."
"Of course not. We will land well away. He won't be suspicious--we cansignal him again after we land. We will have time to plan, to assemblethe equipment. Get below, I told you."
The reluctant Coniston left us. I took the controls. Miko, still holdingAnita as though she were a child, sat beside me. "We will watch him,little Anita. A skilled fellow at this sort of work."
I rang my signals for the shifting of the gravity plates. The answershould have come from below within a second or two. But it did not. Mikoregarded me with his great bushy eyebrows upraised.
"Ring again, Haljan."
I duplicated. No answer. The silence was frightening. Ominous.
Miko muttered, "That accursed Hahn. Ring again!"
I sent the imperative emergency demand.
* * * * *
No answer. A second or two. Then all of us in the turret were startled.Transfixed. From below came a sudden hiss. It sounded in the turret: itcame from shifting-room call-grid. The hissing of the pneumatic valvesof the plate-shifters in the lower control room. The valves wereopening; the plates automatically shifting into neutral, anddisconnecting!
An instant of startled silence. Miko may have realized the significanceof what had happened. Certainly Snap and I did. The hissing ceased. Igripped the emergency plate-shifter switch which hung over my head. Itsdisc was dead! The plates were dead in neutral. In the positions theywere only placed while in port! And their shifting mechanisms wereimperative!
I was on my feet. "Snap! Good God, we're in neutral!"
Miko, if he had not realized it before, was aware if it now. TheMoon-disc moved visibly as the _Planetara_ lurched. The vault of theheavens was slowly swinging.
Miko ripped out a heavy oath. "Haljan! What is this?"
He stood up, still holding Anita. But there was nothing that he could doin this emergency. "Haljan--what--"
The heavens turned with a giant swoop. The Moon was over us. It swung indizzying arc. Overhead, then back past our stern; under us, thenappearing over our bow.
The _Planetara_ had turned over. Upending. Rotating, end over end.
For a moment or two I think all of us in that turret stood and clung.The Moon-disc, the Earth, Sun and all the stars were swinging past ourwindows. So horribly dizzying. The _Planetara_ seemed lurching andtumbling. But it was an optical effect only. I stared with grimdetermination at my feet. The turret seemed to steady.
Then I looked again. That horrible swoop of all the heavens! And theMoon, as it went past, seemed expanded. We were falling! Out of control,with the Moon-gravity pulling us inexorably down!
"That accursed Hahn--" Miko, stricken with his lack of knowledge ofthese controls, was wholly confused.
* * * * *
A moment only had passed. My fancy that the Moon-disc was enlarged wasmerely the horror of my imagination. We had not fallen far enough yetfor that.
But we were falling. Unless I could do something, we would crash uponthe Lunar surface.
Anita, killed in this _Planetara_ turret. The end of everything for us.
Action came to me. I gasped, "Miko, you stay here! The controls aredead! You stay here--hold Anita."
I ignored Moa's weapon which she was still clutching mechanically. Snapthrust her away.
"Sit back! Let us alone! We're falling! Don't you understand?"
This deadly danger, to level us all! No longer were we captors andcaptured. Not brigands for this moment. No thought of Grantline'streasure! Trapped humans only! Leveled by the common, instinct ofself-preservation. Trapped here together, fighting for our lives.
Miko gasped. "Can you--check us? What happened?"
"I don't know. I'll try."
I stood clinging. This dizzying whirl! From the audiphone gridConiston's voice sounded.
"I say, Haljan, something's wrong! Hahn doesn't signal."
The look-out in the forward tower was clinging to his window. On thedeck below our turret a member of the crew appeared, stood lurching fora moment, then shouted, and turned and ran, swaying, aimless. From thelower hull-corridors our grids sounded with the tramping of runningsteps. Panic among the crew was spreading over the ship. A chaos belowdecks.
* * * * *
I pulled at the emergency switch again. Dead....
But down below there was the manual controls.
"Sn
ap, we must get down. The signals."
"Yes."
Coniston's voice came like a scream from the grid. "Hahn is dead--thecontrols are broken! Hahn is dead!"
We barely heard him. I shouted, "Miko--hold Anita! Come on, Snap!"
We clung to the ladders. Snap was behind me. "Careful, Gregg! Good God!"
This dizzying whirl. I tried not to look. The deck under me was now ablurred kaleidoscope of swinging patches of moonlight and shadow.
We reached the deck. Ran, swaying, lurching.
It seemed that from the turret Anita's voice followed us. "Be careful!"
Within the ship our senses steadied. With the rotating, reeling, heavensshut out, there were only the shouts and tramping steps of thepanic-stricken crew to mark that anything was amiss. That, and apseudo-sensation of lurching caused by the pulsing of gravity--a pullwhen the Moon was beneath our hull to combine its force with ourmagnetizers; a lightening when it was overhead. A throbbing, pendulumlurch--that was all.
We ran down to the corridor incline. A white-faced member of the crew,came running up.
"What's happened? Haljan, what's happened?"
"We're falling!" I gripped him. "Get below. Come on with us!"
But he jerked away from me. "Falling?"
A steward came running. "Falling? My God!"
Snap swung at them. "Get ahead of us! The manual controls--our onlychance--we need all you men at the compressor pumps!"
But it was an instinct to try and get on deck, as though here below wewere rats caught in a trap. The men tore away from me and ran. Theirshouts of panic resounded through the dim, blue-lit corridors.
* * * * *
Coniston came lurching from the control room. "I say--falling! Haljan,my God, look at him!"
Hahn was sprawled at the gravity-plate switchboard. Sprawled,head-down. Dead. Killed by something? Or a suicide?
I bent over him. His hands gripped the main switch. He had ripped itloose. And his left hand had reached and broken the fragile line oftubes that intensified the current of the pneumatic plate-shifters. Asuicide? With his last frenzy determined to kill us all?
Then I saw that Hahn had been killed! Not a suicide! In his hand hegripped a small segment of black fabric, a piece torn from an invisiblecloak? Was it?
The questions were swept away by the necessity for action. Snap wasrigging the hand-compressors. If he could get the pressure back in thetanks....
I swung on Coniston. "You armed?"
"Yes." He was white-faced and confused, but not in a panic. He showed mehis heat-ray cylinder. "What do you want me to do?"
"Round up the crew. Get all you can. Bring them here to man thesepumps."
He dashed away. Snap shouted after him. "Kill them down if they argue!"
Miko's voice sounded from the turret call grid: "Falling! Haljan, youcan see it now! Check us!"
I did not answer that. I pumped with Snap.
Desperate moments. Or was it an hour? Coniston brought the men. He stoodover them with menacing weapon.
We had all the pumps going. The pressure rose a little in the tanks.Enough to shift a bow-plate. I tried it. The plate slowly clicked into anew combination. A gravity repulsion just in the bow-tip.
* * * * *
I signaled Miko. "Have we stopped swinging?"
"No. But slower."
I could feel it, that lurch of the gravity. But not steady now. A limp.The tendency of our bow was to stay up.
"More pressure, Snap."
"Yes."
One of the crew rebelled, tried to bolt from the room. "God, we'llcrash, caught in here!"
Coniston shot him down.
I shifted another bow-plate. Then two in the stern. The stern-platesseemed to move more readily than the others.
"Run all the stern-plates," Snap advised.
I tried it. The lurching stopped. Miko called. "We're bow down.Falling!"
But not falling free. The Moon-gravity pull upon us was more than halfneutralized.
"I'll go up, Snap, and try the engines. You don't mind staying down?Executing my signals?"
"You idiot!" He gripped my shoulders. His eyes were gleaming, his facehaggard, but his pale lips twitched with a smile.
"Maybe it's good-by, Gregg. We'll fall--fighting."
"Yes. Fighting. Coniston, you keep the pressure up."
With the broken set-tubes it took nearly all the pressure to maintainthe few plates I had shifted. One slipped back to neutral. Then thepumps gained on it, and it shifted again.
I dashed up to the deck. Ah, the Moon was so close now! So horriblyclose! The deck shadows were still. Through the forward bow windows theMoon surface glared up at us.
* * * * *
I reached the turret. The _Planetara_ was steady. Pitched bow-down, halffalling, half sliding like a rocket downward. The scarred surface of theMoon spread wide under us.
These last horrible minutes were a blur. And there was always Anita'sface. She left Miko. Faced with death, he sat clinging. Ignoring her,Moa, too, sat apart. Staring--
And Anita crept to me. "Gregg, dear one. The end...."
I tried the electronic engines from the stern, setting them in thereverse. The streams of their light glowed from the stern, forwardalong our hull, and flared down from our bow toward the Lunar surface.But no atmosphere was here to give resistance. Perhaps the electronicstreams checked our fall a little. The pumps gave us pressure, just inthe last minutes, to slide a few of the hull-plates. But our bow stayeddown. We slid, like a spent rocket falling.
I recall the horror of that expanding Lunar surface. The maw ofArchimedes yawning. A blob. Widening to a great pit. Then I saw it wasto one side. Rushing upward.
A phantasmagoria of uprushing crags. Black and gray. Spires tinged withEarth-light.
"Gregg, dear one--good-by."
Her gentle arms around me. The end of everything for us. I recallmurmuring, "Not falling free, Anita. Some hull-plates are set."
My dials showed another plate shifting, checking us a little further.Good old Snap.
I calculated the next best plate to shift. I tried it. Slid it over.Good old Snap....
Then everything faded but the feeling of Anita's arms around me.
"Gregg, dear one--"
The end of everything for us....
There was an up-rush of gray-black rock.
An impact....