Lunar Vengeance: A Collection of Science Fiction Stories

by Fearn, John Russell

  “They wanted vengeance,” Andrews repeated seriously; “and they chose an amazing way of exacting it. At the time they erected the city of Tri-Konam the Sahara desert did not exist; it was a rock-strewn plain. The outcast Selenites, it appears, hit on the idea of hurling meteorites at the moon which had disowned them! In other words, giant blocks of stone from the plain were used, blocks which would become hell-laden bombs of devastation when they hit the Moon because of her small area compared to Earth.”

  “My God, the lunar craters!” Hart exclaimed.

  “So it would appear. Nor did they put over a rush job. They collected endless blocks, using giant levitators whose lifting system we can as yet only guess at. They gathered vast piles of ammunition, high enough to be level with the tops of the guns they intended using. That is why the Pyramids are the same height as those four square tower-guns. Machinery obviously lowered the blocks into the gun muzzles. As far as I can judge, atomic force fired the blocks. And the effect on the Moon can be imagined!

  “Endless meteors must have hurtled at it from Earth, pounded it to blazes, raised vast mountains, gouged deep craters, lifted the tortured atmosphere to boiling point and evaporated the seas themselves. But apparently the Selenites on the Moon had the time to retaliate for this brutal vindictiveness. They devised similar methods and fired numberless rocks back at Earth. They were better aimed than those from the aggressors and the vast majority crashed down on Tri-Konam. There are faded photographs to prove that much. As one crashed on another at white heat they liquefied into each other, became a solid wall round the city, since the city itself was no doubt protected by some means or another. But finally the city was buried in a cup of molten rock. The Pyramids remained, their sloping sides permitting no grip for hurtling rock. The surface rocks underwent weather change and a desert formed. Tri-Konam vanished under what has become the Sahara desert.

  “So apparently both sides were wiped out,” Andrews concluded. “Apparently the Earth-guns fused with the excessive heat, a block in each barrel—which by the way can be easily removed. The Moon was wiped out, her air gone, and her face bearing to this day the scars of the onslaught…”

  “And,” Hart said slowly, rubbing his chin, “you say these Selenites probably looked like the Sphinx?”

  “Probably,” Andrews nodded. “Of course it is possible that some of them escaped to the outer world—but each succeeding generation would more and more conform to the laws governing this planet, would become more bipedal. Eventually, no doubt, they formed the nucleus of what later became the Egyptian race, and by a mass instinct they chose to live near the site of their long forgotten ancestors from the Moon.”

  “Which might explain Brice Mynak’s dying visions,” Mason put in quickly. “He was Egyptian by descent, of course. Suppose, as he died, he had a flashback of memory through his ancestry—as so often happens just before death? He spoke of a city being bombarded by chariots of fire: that bears out the meteors. And then he mentioned about loading the towers, which also fits in.”

  Hart nodded slowly, thinking. “And it might explain—though I don’t know how—the reason for the mad insanity in the void.”

  “But where is the connection?” Beryl asked, puzzled.

  “Listen,” Hart said seriously. “If a race throws out a collection of undesirables, and it has great scientific power, it also makes darned well sure that said undesirables never return. And not only them, but their descendants! These few on Earth would presumably be destroyed far quicker than the vast number on the Moon. Those on the Moon no doubt wanted to be sure that all survivors and descendants of the outcasts would stay on Earth and never again reach the Moon to perpetrate more villainy. So, between Earth and Moon some sort of barrier was established. Something to defeat all efforts to reach the Moon!”

  “Just a theory,” Mason shrugged, unconvinced.

  “I disagree!” Hart shook his head emphatically. “Stratopilots, as we know, sometimes go crazy by flying too high, whereas aeronauts of the ordinary type get spells of amnesia. We know what happened to Brice and to us in space where no atmosphere at all could shield us— Again, don’t forget that at full moon lunacy on Earth is by no means an uncommon thing among certain types of people, and usually in spots where the atmosphere is least dense.”

  Mason gave an incredulous smile. “Are you seriously suggesting that the Moon is training waves of—of lunacy to prevent anybody reaching it?”

  “It’s worth a bet,” Hart snapped. “We’ve evidence to support the theory, too— And I’m going to get busy proving it on the next hop. One half of the mystery is solved: the rest will come the same way.”

  “And the next immediate move?” Beryl questioned.

  “We radio to the Mount Everest Observation Unit. I want lunar recordings…”

  With that Hart headed out of the tent to the radio camp, left the others looking at each other dubiously…

  *

  Another week passed in the sweltering heat of the desert, Dr. Andrews finding more evidences to support his already provable explanation of the Pyramids and Moon. Spaceships, battered but well capable of revival, were brought to light.

  To Hart, however, all this was a side issue. He was waiting for a reply from Mount Everest— And at last the needed reports came through. He spent an evening studying them with Beryl, Mason, and Andrews grouped around him.

  “Definitely we’ve got something,” he breathed at last, pointing to the graphs which had been tele-radioed to him. “These show a distinct and unusual radiation being generated by the Moon when she is at the full, dwindling as she reaches the quarters, and fading entirely at New Moon. Lunacy is always at full moon, and we and Brice made our trips at the full moon also—so we got the full blast of this unknown radiation…”

  He paused, studying the Observatory notes. Again he contacted Mount Everest by radio, said as he waited, “They don’t know what this unknown wavelength represents. Their Physical Laboratory had better find out—”

  As the Observatory replied he gave the details, then added, “Better make sure that nobody in your Physics department gets in the way of that radiation when you try and duplicate its wavelength. It might either kill or produce total imbecility…”

  With that he switched off and waited, pondered a while.

  “Since it occurs at full Moon it must be connected with the Sun,” Beryl said thoughtfully. “The Moon only shines by reflected light. It seems that the absence of radiation at new moon is—”

  “Idiots that we are!” Hart interrupted her suddenly, his eyes gleaming. “What are the most dominant things on the Moon at the full? And partly at the quarters? Why, the bright rays and streaks from Tycho, Ptolomey, and Copernicus! Nobody has ever yet figured them out—and no wonder!”

  “But,” Mason argued, “at the new Moon they can still be seen reflecting Earthshine.”

  “What of it? Earth’s illumination means nothing. It is solar action that does something, and since the Moon always reveals the same face to Earth the effect repeats every time— By God, I’ll swear we’re getting at it!”

  He fell to eager thought, pulling his underlip—then he switched on the radio as the signal sounded again.

  “Say, Hart,” came the voice from Everest, “it’s a darned good job you warned us to keep clear of this radiation! It’s dynamite! We tried it on a rabbit and it went stark crazy.”

  “Did it die?” Hart questioned.

  “No— just went nuts. Same thing happened to a white mouse—”

  “That’s all I need to know. Thanks a lot.”

  Hart switched off and looked at the others tensely.

  “We’ve got it! Lunacy radiations are generated by the Moon, but in the main very few of them reach Earth’s surface because of the atmosphere. Maybe they’re not intended to anyway: they are just there to stop anybody trying to get to the Moon. Begins to look as though my guess was right. The Selenites went to a great deal of trouble to stop any gangsters getting back.”
r />   “But the Selenites must be dead by now!” Beryl cried. “What is the idea of prolonging—”

  “I don’t know. But I’m going to the Moon to find out. Maybe it’s a legacy—automatic—which will go on until somebody stops it.”

  “You daren’t try again!” Mason protested.

  “There is a way!” Hart breathed, his eyes gleaming. “I must start off from Earth just after the last quarter of the Moon when the radiations are ebbing to minimum at new Moon. I’ve got to reach the Moon then before the first quarter—that is in fourteen days. I should make it…” He straightened up. “I’ve got to,” he finished simply.

  “Then I’m coming with you,” Beryl said quickly; but he shook his head.

  “Not this time, Berry. This is a real gamble with death and I’m not taking that chance.”

  She was silent, looking out towards the desert. Then she gave a shrug.

  “Okay, perhaps you’re right. And I suppose you know that the Moon’s last quarter is tomorrow night?”

  “I know. I leave first thing tomorrow morning…”

  *

  At dawn, after an undemonstrative farewell, Hart took off in the fully repaired rocket ship. His mind was so concentrated on his job that he hardly gave a thought to the desperate risk he was undoubtedly taking. Imbecility, death itself, lay before him unless he made the grade in time. Space was not even charted to help him: he was the first lone pioneer blazing the trail between Earth and Moon—

  Yet he sat down before the control board as calmly as if he were making the usual flight from New York to Australia.

  In a few minutes the dawn-lit vista of the Sahara was whirling away under the rear tubes. Again blood trickled from his nostrils; and anguish belted him as he tore against Earth’s gravity—up and out into the void. Regardless of his physical sufferings he pushed the power up notch by notch. Speed! Everything depended on it!

  Ahead of him the Moon was a thick crescent, the copper brown of the earth-lit portion merging into ragged lines along the terminator. Two hundred and forty thousand miles in fourteen days? It might be possible. He was using no super-fuel, though, only ordinary monoxite, the most powerful fuel known to Earth so far. Yes, he might do it, but with precious little margin to spare.

  Rest was the most incessant demand made of him. The strain of space flying was unbelievable, he found, and there were no fancy gadgets to help him; those would come from the space engineers of the future. All he got were the crushing pressures of acceleration, the light-headedness and sickness of disorganized internal functions. For hours at a stretch he lay in the eternally sunlit cabin, sprawled out, giving out radio signals to Earth to say what grand condition he was in.

  Time and again he was delayed, swerved off his course by brickbat swarms. Later, he decided, ships must have repellers. Each time he re-set the course he noted worriedly how much schedule had been nipped.

  With growing anxiety he watched the crescent appear on the waxing edge of the new Moon. Earth was well behind now, pink-rimmed, green tinted. The Moon filled all the void, and deep in the coppery bowl of its night, reflecting star and earth-shine, Hart saw quite clearly those deadly points from which he was convinced spewed death and insanity…the streaks and rays.

  He had been on the way now for 12 days, 16 hours—but now he was within the Moon’s gravity field his speed would increase even more. More than once he thought his heart would stop from the sensation of everlasting headlong falling. Hours—minutes—days—nights— He didn’t know which was which or where he was. Everything was in hopeless confusion in his brain. He lay now on his stomach, one leaden hand on the rocket switches, the ship dropping towards the ever-spreading sunlit tide engulfing plain, mountain, and dead sea bottom.

  Already the fingers of the Sun were creeping to the fatal points. He drove on desperately, headed round the limb of the Moon away from the centre to the furthest point on the still dark side.

  Lower—faster— Jerking—twisting. A headlong dive!

  He landed with a crash that shook the wits out of him. But as his senses departed he had a deep subconscious thrill…. He was the first man to reach the Moon!

  CHAPTER IV

  The Final Gamble

  It was still dark when he recovered—the frozen, searing dark of the lunar night, the stars frostily still in coal-black sky; the Earth bisected by the saw teeth of the mountain range beside which the ship had dropped. It was dreary, unthinkably desolate. Hart shuddered, made himself some hot coffee and ate a little food; then he scrambled into his spacesuit and made his way outside cautiously, torch in one hand and lethal gun in the other.

  Sunrise, he realized, was still some time off, and for that he was thankful: he had little desire to wander around in a temperature near that of boiling water. He was none too sure of this first spacesuit’s insulation: it might let him down.

  First he examined the ship—and got a shock. Three of the tubes were smashed to hell! Grim-faced, he stared at them, then with a fatalistic shrug of his shoulders he turned and headed to the top of the ridge forming the lower foothills of the mountain range. From here the sight which greeted him was surprising.

  Across a ragged plain he was gazing at a solitary ray, pale grey in shade and hardly visible, projecting upwards— Earthwards! Beyond the near-horizon were two more rays, obviously from more distant craters, and they too were pale and dim like faded searchlights, reflecting only star and Earthshine at the moment.

  “Tycho, Copernicus, Ptolomey,” Hart whispered to himself. “This one as I figure the geography, must be Tycho…”

  Down here, behind the rays so to speak, no sense of mental turmoil touched him. He advanced again, over rills and crevices, leapt ravines in the lighter gravity—on and on, until he came to within close range of Tycho crater. Through a cleft in the surrounding hills he stared down onto it, perplexed.

  The whole crater floor was a shifting sea of pearly light—and being to one side of it no influence reached him. As yet the sun had not reached this far, though it was approaching as he could see from distant mountain peaks, tipped with ice-white brightness.

  Finally he scrambled down towards the crater, tripped over something, and went flying. Going back to examine it he found a thin wire, of all things! And tracing it back he found it went in a circle round the crater, fastened to stumps of substance that seemed like ebonite.

  Animal snare? Private property? He didn’t know; but it seemed an odd idea to put a wire around a crater as one might round an earthly sheep field. He gave it up at last, went to the very edge of the shifting substance on the crater floor—and then found that it did not shift. It was motionless: the illusion of movement was created by endless rippling of radiation.

  Pulling a ladle from his equipment he gathered a scoopful of the stuff and withdrew it carefully, began to return to the ship. But as he went, looking back, he was aware of something. For some reason the three ashy-grey beams had now been augmented by three more beams, pale violet in colour, tracing like lavender fingers into the void.

  The riddles buzzing in his brain deepened—and deepened again when, still continuing shipwards, he did his best to find some sort of entrance into the Moon’s interior. Every time he drew a total blank. All openings, gaps, crevices, pits, were sealed up—apparently by flowed lava. There was no way in.

  Disgusted, weary, he got back to the ship and set to work on the crater’s material with analysing instruments. He had been at it for an hour when the sun smote down through the window like a finger from hell, sending the ship’s temperature up by leaps and bounds.

  Hart shut the airlock promptly and took off his spacesuit. The heat abated somewhat as insulation returned. He screwed his eyes at girdling prominences and flame white brilliance beating from over the mountain range, then went on with his analysis out of the sunlight.

  Finally he gave a little gasp of amazement, contacted Earth over the radio short wave and heard the welcome voices of Mason and Beryl answer back immediately.

>   “I’ve solved what causes the lunacy, anyway,” he said, when the fervent greetings were over. “The craters responsible for rays are filled with a metallic isotope, laboratory-created, I should think. It absorbs and retransmits solar wave-lengths, these wavelengths being identical to the ones produced in the Mount Everest laboratory. Some crystals on Earth—tourmaline for one—absorb only one particular radiation and retransmit it: tourmaline does that with light. This isotope does it with brain-irritating radiations.

  “Normally of course the sun transmits a whole mass of radiations, one of which neutralizes another. Taken in bulk they are harmless: but one of them singled out can be deadly. The one singled out here is deadly, as we know. And in each case the radiation is aimed at Earth. Thanks to the atmosphere it doesn’t penetrate all the way to Earth’s surface—”

  “But it is doing!” Mason cried abruptly. “It started about two hours ago. Reports are coming in from everywhere of serious disturbances affecting people the moment the Moon rises! Something has happened, Hart! Stratopilots report that the atmosphere at the upper levels is being affected by some electronic stream which is disrupting parts of the ionic layer—”

  “Wait!” Hart gasped. “Wait a minute—!”

  He stumbled quickly to the port, a memory blazing through his brain—a memory of a wire round Tycho crater, which he had snapped. Wire on ebonite poles. Then those subsidiary beams of violet which had mysteriously come into being…!

  Dumbfounded, he stared outside on the blinding brilliance of the rays from the now sunlit craters. Yes, those violet beams were also still visible against the jet backdrop of sky…He swung back to the radio.

  “I believe I’ve done something terrible!” he panted. “I fell over a wire a while back, and snapped it. It was some sort of a bait, I guess—broke a contact or something which started machinery hidden under the craters. Machinery in this lunar underworld…That must be it,” he went on desperately. “For all I know this Moon may be honeycombed with such snares. It must be the second and final safeguard laid by the Selenites. If anybody did chance to reach the Moon they laid this other trap, knowing it would be bound to be started finally. Electromagnetic beams directed at Earth’s atmosphere are to stop anybody else coming from Earth by driving them—everybody—to madness!”