by Jimmy Guieu
“That’s impossible! We’d have to admit that these nightmarish creatures could… communicate with one another… and do so from one pole of the Moon to the other.”
“And why not? Isn’t this siege proof enough? Follow me here: A group of Selenites has found a rich source of metal and other matter—our spaceship and Bubble Base—a source that some of them have drawn from. The five Selenites we captured died but not before that had tasted our metals, our artificial atmosphere… and unfortunately Teddy Brown. And they had time to send a message out, sounding the alarm and giving the location of this precious food. That, I believe, is how it happened.”
Streiler’s throat went dry. “We have to alert the base right away.”
“Without waiting for this advice Kariven had already tuned his transmitter to centimetric waves. “Patrol K calling base… Patrol K calling base…”
A few seconds passed before he heard, “Base here, go ahead Patrol K.”
“Warning! From every direction the Selenites are converging on the base. They’ll reach it in less than 20 hours. Cordon off the area and organize a defense. We’re heading back and should be there in ten minutes. Over and out.”
“Message received. General alert is on. Over and out.”
In the crater where the Russian astronauts had unwisely set up their base before knowing about the Selenites, the situation was getting worse.
When they became aware of these mysterious metallophage creatures on the bottom of the crater, the Russians armed themselves with steel bars and in a rage started hitting the monsters stuck to the bottom of their spaceship. They had to whack the brown shells hard to pry them loose and yet most of them were not killed but simply dazed. When a Selenite let go of the metal and dropped into the dust, ten others popped up from the other side and tried to crawl up the metal rocket leaning over the base.
Dripping with sweat inside their spacesuits, muscles flexed, nerves on edge, Colonel Zavkom and his comrades fought fiercely against the mounting tide of lunar creatures.
“We’ll never be done with them!” Petrov griped, swinging his steel bar at the monsters.
“We have to!” Zavkom grumbled through clenched teeth, panting as he bashed the filthy shells. “If we let them overwhelm us we’re f…”
The physicist Boris Ilyine, being more accustomed to the delicate instruments in a laboratory than to an axe used for slaughter, took a break from the exhausting effort. In spite of his healthy physique (he and his comrades had undergone serious physical training before leaving the secret base in Kaluga) he felt his strength failing rapidly. Suddenly, during this pause, an idea popped up in his mind.
“Colonel Zavkom! These metallophage creatures must be partly made of metal. So, we should be fighting them with fire. Let’s try a blowtorch!”
The Colonel grabbed onto this idea like a shipwrecked sailor latches onto a plank. He gave orders right away. Ten minutes later six men came back from the base. Three of them held in their claws big fluoride torches connected by a flexible tube to metal tanks that the other three were carrying.
Three long, bright flames were quickly aimed at the monsters glued to the bottom of the spaceship. The result was immediate. The Selenites hit by the flame fell like flies! Shouts of joy filled the soviet astronauts’ helmets. After 15 minutes, the tail pipes and what remained of the fins were freed up.
“The base! They’re attacking the base now!”
The man leaped up, carried away by this new alarm. The torch carriers rushed to the three transparent domes of the base. When they got there they froze, mouths agape. Not a single square inch of the surface was visible. Everything was covered by the monsters huddled side by side and even on top of one another. The torches started spitting flames again but handling them here was a more delicate operation since the material could not last long under flames reaching 3,000C!
Spraying little jets of flame aimed only at the center of the brown shells, it took them more than an hour to clear off the three airtight cabins of the base. When they had finished their cleaning operation, the men with the big metal tanks—despite the weak gravity—sat down, or rather dropped down, on the ground exhausted.
One of them pointed a weary hand at the gauge, “The pressure is 300 grams! They’re almost empty. We’ll have to get the other ones out of the hold.”
At these words, all of them turned their heads to the leaning spaceship, its nose embedded in the split spike rising out of the middle of the crater. Petrov and two men went to the crashed ship. The metal ladder was sticking up toward the sky. Petrov adeptly threw a cable around it and pulled it down. Crawling on all fours he was able to climb slowly into the decompression chamber. Once inside the cockpit, although much was damaged—lights broken in the fall, the short-wave transmitter on the blink, compasses and sextants beyond repair—the walls had stood up. But it was not the same higher up. A 10-foot gash was opened 30 feet from the nose of the rocket. The nose and its radar mast were completely crushed. The rip was in the cabin with the fragile astronavigation equipment. No repair was possible here. Some shrapnel from the American missile had smashed the electronic counter and a piece of rock from the spike had mangled some of the vital instruments. With their rocket rendered useless the Russian astronauts were henceforth condemned to rest on the Moon!
Petrov had to stiffen up in order not to faint at the extent of this horrible disaster. He knew that the spare parts that the rocket had in storage were not enough to replace the front section of the ship and all the electronic devices it contained.
Exiled! They were forever exiled to the Moon! Forever? Certainly not. Forever meant an eternity. But for the members of an astronautical expedition with a limited amount of supplies and artificial air, this “eternity” meant… three months! Maybe four with severe rationing but no more.
Petrov felt exhausted and hopeless. He lumbered up to the gaping tear through which he could see part of the black sky spanned by the Milky Way. He grabbed the twisted metal and poked his head out.
Down below his comrades, like toy soldiers seen from this height, were sitting in a circle with their backs against the base. Petrov shook his head sadly and was about to go back down to get the metal bottles with the other men but an unbelievable sight froze him in place.
From the summit of the crater in which they were set up, a tidal wave of Selenites was slowly flowing toward the center, meaning toward their base!
CHAPTER SEVEN
After receiving Kariven’s message the American base went into feverish action.
“You’re sure that the Selenites from the whole planet are heading for us?” Commander Taylor asked anxiously.
“Absolutely certain, Commander. We flew over a strip of land over 60 miles wide making the complete tour of the Moon. All across this line, millions and millions of metallophage monsters, big and small, were moving continually in the same direction: apparently toward the center of this hemisphere. I say ‘apparently’ because, in fact, they’re heading for our camp.”
After listening to the three pilots’ succinct report the head of the expedition assigned them to organize the southern wing of the camp. Every 30 feet they placed fluoride torches. Each of them was provided with an extra supply of reinforced tanks31 containing the fluoride mixture that produced a 3,900C flame.
When the base on the crater floor and the spaceship were well protected, Kariven, Streiler and Lieutenant Clark rejoined their friends who were finishing the installation of the six huge parabolic reflectors begun during their absence. These adjustable “mirrors”, 30 feet in diameter, would capture the solar rays and convert them into pure heat that, in turn, would be transformed into energy. An extremely complex assemblage of tiny mirrors covered the inside surface of each parabolic reflector.
Away from the rocket, perched on the summit of a small crater was a metal tower on top of which was turning the dome of a panoramic radar. The tower stood over 450 feet tall and therefore well higher than the nose of the vertical spaceship.
With this, no false blip (echo) caused by radar waves from the ship would be registered.
“According to our predictions, Kariven,” Commander Taylor consulted his space watch, “the Selenites won’t reach us for around 12 more hours. In one hour and 17 minutes our supply rocket, Mickey, will be arriving from Earth.” After a moment of silence full of troubled thoughts he continued, “If Mickey doesn’t come, we won’t be able to lift anchor. In fact, if we have to face a siege for a while, we’ll run out of fluoride and, which is worse, our supply of oxygen and helium, the two elements that the torches gobble up like hogs.”
Kariven frowned, “I hate to be the bearer of bad news but if we really have to face a siege, it’ll last a long time. These are only the first ‘attack squadrons’ that will be assailing us. Most of the Selenite forces, if I can call them this, will reach us three or four hours later, and then things will really heat up. The monsters will keep coming non-stop!”
“Charming perspective,” the Commander growled into the mic.
“The parabolics are up and running, Commander,” Professor Harrington announced.
The astronauts contemplated the six big “mirrors” pointed at the sun to collect its rays. Each of them sparkled with blinding flashes. A watchwork movement kept them following the progress of the sun in the sky.
“In fact, Professor,” Kariven asked out of the blue, “what temperature can your reflectors reach?”
“Properly positioned and considering their period of ‘acclimation,’ in five minutes they’ll be able to boil mercury in the thermometers before producing usable energy. So, around 360C. But if we adjust the angle and direction—by aligning them perpendicular to the sunrays, for example—it could be ten times higher. Really, in a place without an atmosphere, the convergence of rays at its optimal point would be—for this type of reflector—near 4,000C, or 200 degrees hotter than an atomic hydrogen torch. But our present needs don’t call for such temperatures…”
“Super!” Kariven rejoiced. “That’s what’s going to save us without a hassle!”
All the others looked at him curiously.
“It’s very simple,” he explained. “Listen up. If we move these six reflectors far enough away from the spaceship, if we point them all, center them all on the sun…”
“We can surround the base with a burning circle of at least 3,500C,” Streiler added feverishly, knowing exactly where his friend was going. “Bravo, Kariven! You’ve got a really bright idea there!”
“Bright and scorching!” Commander Taylor smiled. “Let’s go, Kariven, I’ll let you direct the operations. Place the reflectors wherever you want.”
Everything else stopped and the Earthlings got to work under the orders of Kariven and Professor Harrington as they chose the best placement for the reflectors. Considering their weight and huge size (each weighed 4.6 tons and measured 30 feet in diameter) it was not possible to move them all at once.
In feverish activity the fragile parabolic reflectors with mirrored facets were lifted up by the mobile jaws and placed on the ground in front of the massive platforms that contained the mechanics for their rotating and tilting movements.
Commander Taylor looked frequently at his watch.
Kariven remarked, “We’ll never get them all moved if we leave the motor-blocs intact. How long until Mickey gets here?”
“27 minutes.”
Then Commander Taylor called Gordon who had stayed in the spaceship to spot the approach of the huge, guided rocket on the radar.
“I’ve had Mickey on the radar for a few minutes,” Gordon informed him. “I’m guiding it now with my controls.”
“Great. Bring it down as close as possible to Daisy. We’ll free up some space.”
Hurriedly the astronauts took away all the instruments and material for research and observation that they had set up. Everything was brought down to the bottom of the fissure with the Bubble Base.
“There it is! I see the rocket,” Clark shouted and pointed at the sky where two blinking lights, red and green among the white stars, indicated the approach of the supply ship.
Automatically programmed to light up at a precise distance from the Moon, Mickey’s bright sidelights had just turned on. They seemed to fly back up into outer space before being replaced by a big, red-orange disc. The spaceship had just flipped around to descend and was now perpendicular to the lunar surface, its tail section spitting out torrents of ignition fuel.
All the astronauts bounded away and went to crouch behind a hill to protect themselves from the dangerous exhaust from the tailpipes.
Visible to the naked eye now the body of the rocket grew bigger faster. And the purple glow of its underside grew brighter as it neared.
In Daisy’s command post Gordon, the physicist/radar man, was busy on his electronic keyboard adjusting the output of the ship’s exhaust, increasing the lateral exhaust to correct the angle of descent and reducing the opposite action while keeping a constant eye on the green blip blinking on the screen.
Mickey was only 500 feet off the ground. It had slowed down considerably and was coming down slowly on a short column of red flames that were quickly absorbed by the lunar air. Its powerful exhaust started kicking up the white lunar dust that spurted out in all directions, sprinkling the reflector mirrors with a thick layer of ash that had to be carefully wiped off to make sure they worked.
The rocket finally landed in a tumultuous cloud of whirling dust and in deathly silence. On Earth, its reactors would have created a deafening din but on the Moon, since sound does not travel in a void, no noise at all could be heard.
The radar man, Gordon, cut the ignition by remote control, closed all contacts and left the cabin to join his friends who were already running toward the newly arrived rocket.
“Let’s get to work, boys,” Commander Taylor encouraged them. “We’ve got to get the Weasels32 out quick. That way we can move the motor-blocs for the reflectors.”
The rocket, 90 feet tall and 115 feet wide at the base, looked like a gigantic torpedo, a “well fed” sister of the Daisy rocket. An extraordinary diversity of supplies had been stuffed in its sides: six months worth of rations, drinking water, airtight material for a 165-foot diameter permanent base, scientific instruments of all kinds, fuel and combustive, survey and mining equipment, and finally the famous Weasels, four of them, which the Commander had just mentioned.
Already activated by remote control during the landing, a huge panel was open in the rocket’s hull. Around 15 by 20 feet it would soon turn into a ramp by adding extensions that could ultimately be used to build the floor of the future base.
The first hold opened 140 feet off the ground. The lower section of the rocket contained the incredibly complex and crowded system of boosters, fuel tanks, pumps, mixers, and of course the tailpipes themselves.
It took more than two hours to assemble the long ramp so they could slide out the important material sent by their home planet.
“The Weasels first!” Commander Taylor ordered, grabbing the ramp to get to one of the machines.
Kariven, Streiler and Lieutenant Clark followed him. 15 minutes later at the opening of the hold, 130 feet up, a kind of yellow mammoth appeared: the first Weasel, a huge tractor mounted on treads, equipped with an airtight cabin with a Plexiglas cockpit, and thanks to its two independent engines protected by hermetically sealed armor it could drive in an empty atmosphere.
Looking like a tank and a crane, the first two Weasels rolled out slowly a few minutes apart onto the ramp that led them to the ground. Through the transparent cockpits of the yellow steel monster a man in a spacesuit was waving hello. From this distance Professor Harrington could not see who it was, so he looked for the identification number that every astronaut wore (a black number on a white background) on the front and back of his helmet. He saw the number 3 and knew it was Kariven giving his friendly salute.
Coming next was Commander Taylor followed by two other, different shaped Weasels. On the back of thes
e was a huge, articulated, metal arm with a bucket at the end fitted with steel spikes on the edge to work as an excavator a little like the vibrating picks used by miners. When these giant claws were brought up against a rock wall or rocky ground they would attack it with great violence, able to dislodge the hardest rock. Turning the claws over the machine worked as a very efficient “dredging shovel”.
Streiler and Lieutenant Clark were at the helm of these powerful vehicles. With remarkable handling and speed the first two Weasels driven by Taylor and Kariven were steered toward the motor-blocs of the parabolic reflectors. Operating the commands with expertise the two men maneuvered the strong, metal arms of the Weasels over the blocs. The steel jaws clamped down and lifted the blocs with unsettling ease. Like dogs carrying their puppies in their teeth the big vehicles rolled to the locations chosen wisely by Professor Harrington.
In three trips the six motor-blocs were set in place and while three other trips brought over the parabolics the technicians reconnected them—the blocs to the generator—with extension cables. The installation, cleaning and assembly of the reflectors took another couple of hours of feverish activity seeing that time was running out, every minute bringing the Selenites closer to the hustling Earthlings.
“We’ve still got another hour and a half,” Kariven breathed a sigh of relief looking at his watch. “Maybe two hours before the Selenites show up. Everything’s OK, Professor?”
Professor Harrington, who was scurrying from one bloc to another checking their working order, answered, “Everything’s fine. We can test them out.”
“Everyone back to the rocket,” Commander Taylor ordered. “Nobody, no matter what, wander off because when the Selenites get here, you won’t be able to get through furnace protecting the camp.”
