by Ray Cummings
XXXVII
With puny fists I pounded the panel. A small pane in it wastransparent. Within the lock I could see the blurred figures of Anitaand her captor--and it seemed, another figure there. The lock was someten feet square, with a low ceiling. It glowed with a dim tube-light.
I strained at it with futile, silent effort. The mechanism was here toopen this manual; but it was now clasped from within so would notoperate.
A few seconds, while I stood there in a panic of confusion, raging toget in. This disaster had come so suddenly. I did not plan: I had nothought save to batter my way in and rescue Anita. I recall that Ifinally beat on the glassite pane with my bullet projector until theweapon was bent and useless. And I flung it with a wild despairingrage at my feet.
They were letting the ship's air-pressure into this lock. Soon theywould open the inner panel, step into the secondary chamber--and in amoment more would be within the ship's hull corridor. Anita, lost tome!
The outer panel suddenly opened! I had lunged against it with myshoulder; the giant figure inside slid it. It was taken by surprise! Ihalf fell forward.
Huge arms went around me. The goggled face of the helmet peered intomine.
"So it is you, Haljan! I thought I recognized that little device overyour helmet bracket. And here is my little Anita, come back to meagain!"
Miko!
This was he. His great bloated arms encircling me, bending mebackward, holding me helpless. I saw over his shoulder that Anita wasclutched in the grip of another helmeted figure. No giant, but tallfor an Earth man--almost as tall as myself. Then the tube light in theroom illumined the visor. I saw the face, recognized it. Moa!
I gasped, "So--I've got you--Miko--"
"Got me! You're a fool to the last, Haljan! A fool to the last! Butyou were always a fool."
I could scarcely move in his grip. My arms were pinned. As he slowlybent me backward, I wound my legs around one of his: it was asunyielding as a steel pillar. He had closed the outer panel; the airpressure in the lock was rising. I could feel it against my suit.
My helmeted head was being forced backward; Miko's left arm held me.In his gloved right hand as it came slowly up over my throat I saw aknife blade, its naked, sharpened metal glistening blue-white in thelight from overhead.
I seized his wrist. But my puny strength could not hold him. Theknife, against all of my efforts, came slowly down.
A moment of this slow, deadly combat--the end of everything for me.
I was aware of the helmeted figure of Moa casting off Anita--and thenthe two girls leaping upon Miko. It threw him off his balance, and myhanging weight made him topple forward. He took a step to recoverhimself; his hand with the knife was flung up with an instinctive,involuntary balancing gesture. And as it came down again, I forced theknife-blade to graze his throat. Its point caught in the fabric of hissuit.
His startled oath jangled in my ears. The girls were clawing at him;we were all four scrambling, swaying. With despairing strength Itwisted at his wrist. The knife went into his throat. I plunged itdeeper.
His suit went flabby. He crumpled over me and fell, knocking me to thefloor. His voice, with the horrible gurgling rasp of death in it,rattled my ear-grids.
"Not such a fool--are you, Haljan--"
Moa's helmeted head was close over us. I saw that she had seized theknife, jerked it from her brother's throat. She leaped backward,waving it.
I twisted from beneath Miko's lifeless, inert body. As I got to myfeet, Anita flung herself to shield me. Moa was across the lock, backup against the wall. The knife in her hand went up. She stood for thebriefest instant regarding Anita and me, holding each other. I thoughtthat she was about to leap upon us. But before I could move, the knifecame down and plunged into her breast. She fell forward, her grotesquehelmet striking the grid-floor almost at my feet.
"Gregg!"
"She's dead."
"No! She moved! Get her helmet off! There's enough air here."
My helmet pressure indicator was faintly buzzing to show that a safepressure was in the room. I shut off Moa's Erentz motors, unfastenedher helmet and raised it off. We gently turned her body. She lay withclosed eyes, her pallid face blue. With our own helmets off, we kneltover her.
"Oh, Gregg--is she dead?"
"No. Not quite--but dying."
"Gregg, I don't want her to die! She was trying to help you there atthe last."
She opened her eyes. The film of death was glazing them. But she sawme, recognized me.
"Gregg--"
"Yes, Moa. I'm here."
Her vivid lips were faintly drawn in a smile. "I'm--so glad--you tookthe helmets off, Gregg. I'm--going--you know."
"No!"
"Going--back to Mars--to rest with the fire-makers--where I camefrom. I was thinking--maybe you would kiss me, Gregg?"
Anita gently pushed me down. I pressed the white, faintly smiling lipswith mine. She sighed, and it ended with a rattle in her throat.
"Thank you--Gregg--closer--I can't talk so loudly--"
One of her gloved hands struggled to touch me, but she had no strengthand it fell back. Her words were the faintest of whispers:
"There was no use living--without your love. But I want you tosee--now--that a Martian girl can die with a smile--"
Her eyelids fluttered down; it seemed that she sighed and then was notbreathing. But on her livid face the faint smile still lingered, toshow me how a Martian girl could die.
We had forgotten for the moment where we were. As I glanced up I sawthrough the inner panel, past the secondary lock, that the hull'scorridor was visible. And along its length a group of Martians wasadvancing! They saw us, and came running.
"Anita! Look! We've got to get out of here!"
The secondary lock was open to the corridor. We jammed on our helmets.The unhelmeted brigands by then were fumbling at the inner panel. Ipulled at the lever of the outer panel. The brigands were hurrying,thinking that they could be in time to stop me. One of the morecautious fumbled with a helmet.
"Anita, run! Try and keep your feet."
I slid the outer panel and pushed at Anita. Simultaneously thebrigands opened the inner port.
The air came with a tempestuous rush. A blast through the innerport--through the small pressure lock--a wild rush, out to the airlessMoon. All the air in the ship madly rushing to escape....
Like feathers, we were blown with it. I recall an impression of thehurtling brigand figures and swift flying rocks under me. A silentcrash as I struck.
Then soundless, empty blackness.
XXXVIII
"Is he conscious? We'd better take him back: get his helmet off."
"It's over. We can get back to the camp now. Venza dear, we'vewon--it's over."
"He hears us!"
"Gregg!"
"He hears us. He'll be all right!"
I opened my eyes, I lay on the rocks. Over my helmet, other helmetswere peering, and faint, familiar voices mingled with the roaring inmy ears.
"--back to the camp and get his helmet off."
"Are his motors smooth? Keep them right, Snap--he must have good air."
I seemed unhurt. But Anita....
She was here. "Gregg, dear one!"
Anita safe! All four of us here on the Earthlit rocks, close outsidethe brigand ship.
"Anita!"
She held me, lifted me. I was uninjured. I could stand: I staggered upand stood swaying. The brigand ship, a hundred feet away, loomed darkand silent, a lifeless hulk, already empty of air, drained in the madblast outward. Like the wreck of the _Planetara_--a dead, useless,pulseless hulk already.
We four stood together, triumphant. The battle was over. The brigandswere worsted, almost the last man of them dead or dying. No more thanten or fifteen had been available for that final assault upon the campbuildings. Miko's last strategy. I think perhaps he had intended, withhis few remaining men, to take the ship and make away, deserting hisfellows.
All on the ship, caught unh
elmeted by the explosion, were dead longsince.
I stood listening to Snap's triumphant account. It had not beendifficult for the flying platforms to hunt down the attacking brigandson the open rocks. We had only lost one more platform.
Human hearts beat sometimes with very selfish emotions. It was atriumphant ending for us, and we hardly gave a thought that half ofGrantline's men had perished.
We huddled on Snap's platform. It rose, lurching drunkenly barelycarrying us.
As we headed for the Grantline buildings, where still the rift in thewall had not quite broken, there came the final triumph. Miko had beenaware of it, and knew he had lost. Grantline's searchlight leapedupward, swept the sky, caught its sought-for object--a huge silvercylinder, bathed brightly in the white searchbeam glare.
The police ship from Earth.
* * * * *
TWO PLANETS CLASH FOR LUNAR TREASURE
Gregg Haljan was aware that there was a certain danger in having thegiant spaceship _Planetara_ stop off at the moon to pick upGrantline's special cargo of moon ore. For that rare metal--invaluablein keeping Earth's technology running--was the target of many greedyeyes.
But nevertheless he hadn't figured on the special twist the cleverMartian brigands would use. So when he found both the ship and himselfsuddenly in their hands, he knew that there was only one way in whichhe could hope to save that cargo and his own secret--that would be byturning space-pirate himself and paying the BRIGANDS OF THE MOON backin their own interplanetary coin.
* * * * *
Here is a science-fiction classic, as exciting and ingenious as only amaster of super-science could write.
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When RAY CUMMINGS took leave of this planet early in 1957, the worldof modern science-fiction lost one of its genuine founding fathers.For the imagination of this talented writer supplied a great many ofthe most basic themes upon which the present superstructure ofscience-fiction is based. Following the lead of Jules Verne and H. G.Wells, Cummings successfully bridged the gap between the early dawningof science-fiction in the last decades of the Nineteenth Century andthe full flowering of the field in these middle decades of theTwentieth.
Born in 1887, Cummings acquired insight into the vast possibilities offuture science by a personal association with Thomas Alva Edison.During the 1920's and 1930's, he thrilled millions of readers with hisvivid tales of space and time. The infinite and the infinitesimal wereall parts of his canvas, and past, present, and future, theinterplanetary and the extra-dimensional, all made their initialimpact on the reading public through his many stories and novels.
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Previously published in an ACE edition is his novel,_The Man Who Mastered Time_ (D-173).
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