by Jimmy Guieu
“So, on the Moon, around 300 miles from this crater, is a huge base, a permanent base established ages ago by the ‘men’ who come from a solar system that we Earthlings call Polaris?”
“That’s the unvarnished truth, Zavkom. And that’s why now, using the rational mind of these supra-evolved beings, I think the international disagreements are a little like the bickering of little boys who deserve a good spanking. But before attempting an ‘educational crusade’ among you, for your own good, the Polarians have to purge the solar system of a ruthless enemy threatening our planet… That’s why the Earthlings, above all else, have to be united and think of one another as brothers.
“Don’t question me. You’ll learn everything you want to know before too long. Now I have to fire the signal flare. The Weasels should be here soon.”
CHAPTER NINE
The two steel mammoths mounted on tracks were pushing on through the plain headed for a group of craters. Rolling in a place lacking air, they were kicking up—as happened on Earth—a cloud of dust. The billows of ash spitting out on both sides of the tracks sprinkled down in gentle waves. Soon the bare dust gave way to the Selenites that the Weasels crushed pitilessly. Behind them stretched the long double trail from their tracks filled with brown shells.
Streiler at the wheel of the first Weasel scrutinized the craters and the sky, hoping every second to see the signal flare. Six miles from a crater with gently sloping sides they finally saw a bright red light shoot up into the black sky.
“The flare! They’re down there!”
“I saw it too,” Lieutenant Clark said as he slowed down. “It came from the crater to the right of that 50-yard wide rift… It won’t be easy to climb over the walls covered with Selenites. Look at that mess! I can’t see an inch of open ground. The nasty creatures have covered everything.”
The Weasels were forced to circle the crater before spotting a part of wall that had collapsed, making a less steep ramp from the plain. Naturally the whole thing was brown and purple with Selenites. The teeming creatures were attacking the walls behind which they knew was the metal food of the rocket and the equipment of the Russian base.
When the Weasels began climbing, Streiler began swearing: the ground seemed to be sinking under the weight of the armored vehicles!
“We’re driving on a huge hill of Selenites stacked on top of each other. To form what we thought was a natural slope, these monsters must be piled up 100 feet from the base of the crater. If we want to get through this we’re going to have to give it all we’ve got.”
“OK, full speed ahead!”
With the accelerator floored the tracks slid but promptly caught hold and launched the steel mammoths forward. The huge pile of monsters was packed down by the weight of the Weasels that skated over it, sometimes almost tipping over. Speeding up and rearing up, performing one stunt after another, the vehicles continued climbing. Only a few yards from the top Streiler and Clark received a message from the camp:
“Commander Taylor to Patrol S… Commander Taylor to Patrol S…”
“Patrol S here. Go ahead, Commander.”
“The Selenites are digging more and more tunnels and coming out in great number beyond the fire zone. We have to use torches more and more often. If the monsters launch more ‘sub-lunar’ attacks we won’t be able to contain them. Get a move on, boys, and come back as quickly as possible. Over.”
“Understood, Commander. We’ll be back in about two hours. Over.”
“Try to make it an hour and a half… Maximum. It’s bad here. Over and out.”
After this message they turned back on their individual transmitters.
“That’s all we need!” Clark railed. “There’s only six of them at the camp and I bet they’re biting their nails.”
At the top of the crater they stopped their machines.
“Can we get down the inside slope?” Streiler worried. “I can’t see over the front.”
Clark’s Weasel was leaning farther over to give him a full view. “Everything’s OK, Kurt. We can go… and go fast! Look at the Ruskies and Kariven. They’re in deep trouble.”
In fact, almost all the six fluoride torches were completely run out. The two still working did so in fits and starts, spluttering a weak yellow flame only a few inches long. Petrov and Kariven were handling these two feeble torches, jumping around to face the various fronts. The other astronauts, armed with steel bars, were fighting like they did at first to free the bottom of the rocket covered with the monsters.
The steel bars rose and fell in rhythm on the mounting tide of Selenites that entirely covered the floor several yards thick. In spite of their efforts the men were steadily losing ground. They were gathered in front of Kariven’s space taxi. The teeming monsters formed a kind of second crater whose walls were relentlessly closing in.
Kariven’s torch went out. In anger he threw it at the monsters and raising the tank over his head threw it as well at the first waves of attack. The heavy tank, though it killed four or five Selenites, was a source of joy to those it did not hit. In seconds its black mass was covered with pink scars. Rolling around under the hungry monsters it crumbled to pieces, corroded pieces that finally disappeared under the sacs of the purple metallophages.
From the base that was almost completely destroyed Kariven tore off a section of metal pipe and used it like a club. Backed up against his single-man rocket he defended it against attack, bashing the Selenites like a maniac.
“Hold on, buddy!”
Kariven was startled. These words of encouragement were still echoing in his helmet when he saw the two steel mammoths covered in yellow paint come storming down the southeast slope of the crater. The tractors carved a path by crushing the squirming shells. In five minutes they stopped before the weary survivors. Through their transparent domes Clark and Streiler smiled and waved at the soviet astronauts.
“Climb on, Zavkom,” Kariven said. “Split your men between the two vehicles. And make sure they can hold on fast because on the plain the Weasels can reach get up to almost 150 miles an hour. I’ll take the lead in the rocket. Good luck!”
Without hearing the Russian officer’s thanks, Kariven used the steel pipe to free his space taxi from three giant Selenites and after closing the hatch behind him took off. His rear boosters and two side pipes helped the takeoff, pouring a torrent of fuel over the monsters.
The seven Russian astronauts lying forward on the back of the Weasels held on tight. With a violent jerk the powerful vehicles skid out of the living “turf” that was already sticking to its tracks.
The inner walls of the crater were scaled at 50 mph. Bouncing from left to right, jolted when a tread hit a stiff pile of purple shells, the Russians did all they could to keep their precarious balance. Once over the top they came down at 100 mph and on the plain they went full speed at almost 150 mph.
Clenching their jaws, trying to keep their helmets from banging against the steel, the Russian astronauts felt worse than during their first test flight in a rocket!
“Well, Kariven, what are the Russians like?” Commander Taylor asked when he landed.
“They’ve got two arms, two legs, a body and a head, all stuffed unto a spacesuit,” Kariven joked. “If you want to talk about their behavior, I think I can assure you that their many mishaps have made them gentle as lambs. They’ll be coming here as a consequence… and not as promoters of discord. Events have pacified them.”
“And none too soon. We’ll welcome them with open arms. But questions remain: What are we going to do? Sharing our rations with them—it’d be inhuman not to—we’ll cut in half the length of our stay. That’s one! At the end of our shortened stay either we’ll all stay here forever or our team will take off and go back to Earth, leaving the Russians to their fate. That’s two! And there’s no way we can do that either. But since Daisy can’t take an extra seven men we’re stuck in a rut. Plus, Mickey, the second spaceship, isn’t equipped to transport people. As I said, what are we
going to do now?”
Just as Kariven was about to answer, the ground felt like it was shaking under his boots. He jumped to the side and looked down. The lunar dust was moving. It rose up, made a big hump and then erupted as a giant Selenite scrambled through.
“It’s starting again!” Commander Taylor was furious as he grabbed his torch. He pointed the flame at the burrow swarming with monsters and told Kariven, “Since they can’t get out of the burrows, the moon demons are digging horizontally and coming back up a few yards away. We’ve been forced to jump all over camp, constantly, to kill the first Selenites coming out of the tunnels. Since they can’t break through the ring of fire maintained by the reflectors, they’re turning into miners.”
Heading at full speed toward the camp, crushing thousands of metallophage creatures in their tracks, the two Weasels appeared on the horizon. The shapes grew bigger to the naked eye.
“Commander Taylor,” Professor Harrington called into his mic. “I’m going to stop the reflector beams for ten seconds to let the vehicles through. Cover them and seal off the breach when they’re inside the circle. I’ll need 17 to 20 seconds of down time to bring the rays back to their optimal performance.”
“Got it, Professor. Come with me, Kariven.”
The two men, armed with torches, posted themselves 30 feet apart and a few steps back from the zone being continually protected by the heat energy at 3,500C.
At the edge of the camp the Weasels slowed down. When they were barely 30 feet from the heat zone Professor Harrington abruptly swung away a parabolic reflector: the sweeping spot of light disappeared and the breach was open. The Weasels came through at 50 mph, made a sharp turn and after skidding in the dust stopped near the spaceship Daisy.
Following in the wake of the tractors the Selenites crawled surprisingly fast toward the temporary hole in the defense. Commander Taylor and Kariven were up against a massive infiltration. They were attacked from all sides by the insidious slithering of the repulsive creatures.
“Clear the breach!” Professor Harrington shouted into his mic.
The two men jumped back to a respectable distance. Just in time. The reflector was “warmed up” enough to fire its bright 3,500C cone. Its work of destruction began again. The breach closed up. The Selenites that had infiltrated the circle during the short pause were exterminated with the torches.
A certain unease, a slight coldness followed the arrival of the Russians into the American base. Playing Head of Protocol, Kariven, with Commander Taylor at his side, went to welcome the soviet astronauts as they climbed off the Weasels. After the introductions were made with no formalities Kariven played interpreter for his expedition members to briefly sum up the situation.
“Now we’re all here together, not as representatives of opposite sides but as human beings, meaning inhabitants of the same planet in a fight against a common enemy. This enemy is here, facing us, behind us, to the side, everywhere. For now only one thing counts: to close ranks and wait for the final assault. Because we can’t fool ourselves, the really big attack hasn’t come yet. Look at the horizon just over a mile from here, that gigantic ‘wave’ of brown and purple coming slowly toward us. That’s the bulk of the Selenite troops shuffling along before charging.”
“I doubt a massive attack could be stopped by the reflectors heat,” Professor Harrington sounded worried.
“At most the stampede will be slowed down,” Kariven added.
He had barely finished speaking when a violent shock jolted the ground. The astronauts were thrown off balance, some of them fell into the dust, and the reflectors were shaken out of position, deflecting their rays that went shooting off into other areas inside the camp. Unfortunately, some of the observation and research equipment was in their new line of fire and got liquefied. Kariven’s space taxi, whose hatch was still open, was seriously damaged. But by miraculous luck there was no loss of life.
When the moment of surprise had passed the dazed astronauts looked at one another. Then, on the horizon, a column of dust rose up from a crater and came drizzling straight back down.
“That’s coming from our crater!” Zavkom grabbed his prismatic binoculars.
“I think I can explain the cause of the moonquake,” Petrov declared. “After we left the Selenites must have rushed onto our damaged spaceship, poured in through the gashes and entered all the cabins. They finally reached the holds where our 20 armed missiles were kept… waiting for moonquake experiments.”
“That must be it!” Colonel Zavkom agreed. “When the Selenites ate the missiles they must have set off the detonator and caused a missile to explode, which set off all the others. The crazy inferno will pulverize our spaceship and devastate the crater floor.”
“Out of every bad some good comes,” Kariven philosophized. “And that gives me an idea. Why aren’t we attacking the Selenites with our own missiles? The monsters might stop attacking it we bombard them with TNT.”
“That’s worth a shot,” Taylor willingly accepted the proposition on the spot. “Take four men, Kariven, and bring the remaining 25 missiles here. In the meantime I’ll set up the mobile launch ramps.”
Glad to be of assistance the Russians offered to go with Kariven. He accepted and took Zavkom, Petrov and two other men to Daisy. Streiler followed them in his Weasel to carry back the missiles.
Unloading them one by one from the hold using an automatic winch the missiles were grabbed by the strong, telescopic arms of the Weasel and carefully lined up on the rear bed. The Russians’ role was simply to guide the explosive cylinders in the claws of the articulated arm. Half an hour later the giant tractor made a tour of the base. Installed in a hurry by the other Russians helping the Americans the five missile launchers each received five missiles.
Now in the international moon camp everyone was working feverishly. The ramps were loaded with their 20-foot long, 3-foot wide missiles. Set up in a circle around the base and aimed to the outside the ramps were ready to go into action.
“Professor Harrington, get ready to cut off your heat rays when we launch the missiles,” Kariven advised. “We don’t need another incident like what happened with the Russian missiles. As soon as the moonquakes stop, check the reflectors’ aim, correct their discrepancies and fire them up again.”
“OK. You can start. I’ll turn off the rays when the missiles take off.”
Kariven talked briefly with Commander Taylor before giving orders in his microphone: “Set the angle of launch for one mile. First salvo, one missile per ramp. Ready?”
“Ready!”
“Fire! Now get down!”
Professor Harrington spun a dial on his control panel to change the angle of the focalizing mirrors and did as the others, throwing himself to the ground.
The five missiles shot into space, their burning rear end flying away, and struck the ground a mile away. Their charge of TNT exploded in absolute silence, throwing up tons of matter and crushing, blasting and pulverizing hundreds of thousands of Selenites. All around the explosion the terrible effects of the shockwave escalated. For almost two minutes the ground trembled violently. One reflector was completely dismantled, its faceted mirrors flying off as the parabolic structure collapsed. A pile of ration crates fell over; a tank of drinking water burst and its contents evaporated. The two spaceships, although huge and sitting solidly on their bases, teetered dangerously, throwing a serious fright into the Earthlings.
At every point of impact, within a range of 500 feet, a new crater was created where the Selenite corpses were piled up. The losses among the monsters were substantial. The bulk of the forces attacking in waves had been dispersed. The massive destruction gave the Earthlings several hours respite while the metallophage creatures regrouped for another attack.
Even at the edge of the base the front ranks were piled up and waiting, motionless, not budging an inch. Professor Harrington used the let-up to once again adjust the parabolic reflectors. Since one of them, however, was out of commission, he t
ook it apart to change the reflecting dome. Once the repairs were finished and the distances corrected the six reflectors went back to work and poured their heat waves over the paralyzed monsters. The Selenites did not even try to move; they just died on the spot. All over the plain they were frozen, petrified with fear of all the moonquakes.
“Take a rest,” Commander Taylor ordered his men, “but stay at your post.”
Everyone squatted down in the lunar dust, happy to be able to relax a little after the long hours of constant fighting.
“One thing surprises me, Kariven,” Taylor confessed. “Why don’t your friends the Polarians come to help us? Don’t they know that our situation is at the very least… tough, if not desperate?”
“They know, Commander. But they’ve got other fish to fry right now. They know that we’ve brought in the crew of the Russian expedition and that with their help we’ll organize our defense. What they might not know is that our weapons won’t last forever. Our means of defense are, unfortunately, very limited.”
“Well, what’s so important for them to do?” Colonel Zavkom asked.
“Remember, Zavkom, what I told you about the mission of the Polarians…”
The Russian officer thought for a moment and then remembered an enigmatic statement that Kariven had made. He repeated it as a question. “If I remember correctly, they have to ‘purge the solar system of a ruthless enemy threatening our planet’?”
“That’s right. And the ruthless enemy…”
He could not finish. Clark’s voice was shouting in his helmet, “A flying saucer!”
At these words everyone looked up, scrutinizing the skies. Out of the shimmering constellations in the dark of space a green disc came speeding down, glowing strangely.
Kariven’s heart leaped with joy. “The Men from Outer Space are paying us a visit!’
The disc was circling over the base now. It froze for a short while at 1,500 feet altitude, then came straight down.
