Forgotten Fiction

by Lloyd Eshbach

  At the precise instant when Norcott, the slowest at preparing, had finished arranging his spherical, transparent head-covering, the Rocket came to an abrupt, crashing halt. The three were thrown against the wall of the vehicle with such force as to be momentarily stunned.

  In a few seconds they recovered and leaped hastily to the windows.

  Craig, at the base of the Rocket, saw a slightly convex expanse of crimson metal, against which the sky-car was anchored, seemingly at right angles to the curving, perpendicular plane, thus lying parallel with the moon’s surface.

  Kennard and Norcott, looking out through two of the Rocket’s small side windows—the side now forming the floor—gasped in incredulity at the sight that met their eyes. Two huge figures, grotesquely clad in awkward, crimson armor, stood a short distance away, contemplating the Rocket. They were fully twenty feet tall, but with bodies strangely narrow and thin. Apparently they were human in form, though, for they possessed a head, a torso, two arms and two legs. More than that, the men in the sky-car could not see, due to the concealing armor. As they watched, one of the giants walked beyond their range of vision.

  Suddenly the Rocket fell from its moorings, and dropped to the moon; the force that had held it had evidently been released. Protected as they were by the heavy, padded suits, the three men escaped injury in the crash.

  Hastily Kennard leaped to his feet and sprang to the controls.

  “We can make it now!” he cried—though no one heard him, the sound being held in by his suit. Then he closed a switch.

  A thunderous roaring at the base of the Rocket—the sudden, crushing weight of acceleration—and they were speeding away from the moon into space again.

  “Where on earth did they come from?” Nevil Craig muttered to himself, referring to the giants—then he was hurled violently through the air, landing with a crash against the wall of the Rocket’s prow. At the same moment, Kennard and Norcott, too, were spun through the sky-car. It happened so abruptly that none of the three knew what it was all about. And their senses left them so suddenly that they knew nothing of what happened afterwards.

  The same force that had captured the Rocket in the first place, had cut short their attempted escape. The sky-car had stopped, but Kennard, Craig and Norcott had continued moving. During the return to the moon, they lay silent and unmoving in the base of the huge projectile.

  KENNARD was the first to recover consciousness.

  His robust, muscular body was less affected by the crash than the weaker frames of the others. His first conscious impression was the knowledge of a blinding light that seemed to pierce his eyelids. He opened his eyes—and closed them immediately, blinded by a dagger of crimson radiance. By degrees he grew accustomed to the intense light; then he stared curiously around.

  He was lying flat on a hard, metal surface. A hundred feet above him was the crimson metal ceiling of the chamber. He followed it with his eyes. Seventy-five feet at least, it stretched from wall to wall, a flat disc of gleaming crimson. The walls, slanting inward from the ceiling to the fifty-foot, circular floor, also were crimson, smooth and unbroken, having neither doors nor windows. Along the wall at one point was a complexity of colossal, crimson machinery—huge cones and notched discs—a gigantic flywheel—mighty levers—a bewildering mechanism.

  Crimson machinery, crimson chamber, brilliant crimson light—Kennard closed his eyes tightly to shut out the maddening sight. Dully he wondered at the spectacle, his mind still slightly befogged.

  Then he heard a sound behind him, a low rumble of voices in conversation that penetrated his heavy, isol-glass head covering. He turned his head and opened his eyes. A vision of two red, twenty-foot giants—the sudden, complete regaining of his faculties—and Kennard sprang to his feet. A sharp pang of pain shot through his body; he felt bruised and sore. Landing about twelve feet away, he faced the tall figures, his pain forgotten, body rigid, and every sense alert.

  The red beings glanced in his direction for an instant; then they continued their conversation. As they stood there, motionless, Kennard studied them.

  They had removed the crimson armor that they had worn when Kennard first saw them, and were now clad in a single garment of red chain mail, like close-fitting, metal tights. Their bare skin, a brilliant crimson that in nowise resembled the coppery-red of the American Indian, had a strangely leathery appearance, as wrinkled and fissured as old parchment. This hung from their towering bodies in loose folds, as though there were not enough flesh to hold it from their bones. It was completely hairless, even the head being devoid of covering.

  What impressed Kennard most was the fact of their being so preposterously thin. Their breadth, about a foot and a half at the shoulder, was grotesquely out of proportion to their extreme tallness. They appeared to have grown far too rapidly in height, without a corresponding increase in width, thus reaching this disproportionate state. The thought came to Kennard that they had come into being on some sphere where an extremely slight gravity had permitted their astounding elongation.

  Their heads were long and narrow, roughly conical in shape, about the height of a half-grown boy. Their chests, on the contrary, were high and bulbous, suggesting the bloated body of a spider. Their waists and limbs were incredibly thin and fragile—taken as a whole, they resembled nothing more than disproportionate human greyhounds!

  After a brief scrutiny of the men’s bodies—for they were men in spite of their fantastic structure—Kennard turned his attention to the face of one of them. He shuddered involuntarily. That countenance was cruel, hard—and emotionless.

  The upper three-quarters was forehead, a high, narrow forehead that denoted great intelligence—warped probably. The eyes, great orbs that protruded from the sides of the head, with thin, membranous coverings like the eyelids of a bird, were terrifying, devoid as they were of a coloring iris—an expanse of pink eyeball, broken by a large, jet-black pupil. An ugly, moist, perpendicular gash below the eyes evidently served as a nose, for it quite certainly wasn’t a mouth—that was the toothless, quivering orifice in the base of the chinless face. And finally, the ears, insignificant blobs of flesh that dangled lifelessly, were a fit completion to that monstrous cranium.

  Kennard’s eyes were drawn from the Red-men—as he thought of them—by a motion on the floor a few feet away. Craig and Norcott had recovered their senses and were crawling to their feet. They stared around the stupendous, crimson chamber in wide-eyed amazement. Norcott’s lips moved, but Kennard could hear no sound. Then their eyes fell upon the Red-men, and they gazed in unbelieving wonder.

  Suddenly Craig fumbled with his head-gear, and raised it from his head. Since he suffered no ill effects, the other two—who had been startled by his seeming rashness—followed his example.

  In another moment they were engaged in excited conversation. The amazing, crimson room, the grotesque Red-men, the future of the three—all were topics of discussion. When practically everything had been said that was worth saying, Norcott summed it up in his quiet, concise way.

  “These beings probably came to the moon in this vehicle, traveling along the pillar of light, for I certainly don’t believe that they are natives of the moon. With some great force, perhaps an unknown form of magnetism, they captured the Rocket, which, may I remind you, is constructed in part of that super-magnetic alloy, parminvar. While we were unconscious, they made an opening into the sky-car, reached in, and pulled us out. Then they carried us into their machine, and deposited us here on the floor.

  “I think they brought us here to study us, for to them we’re too insignificant to bother with for any other reason. What the future holds, we’ll learn in due course.”

  With that their discussion ended, further talk being impossible due to the intervention of the Red-men. With a single, great stride they reached the three. In another moment Kennard and Norcott dangled high above the floor, held close to fearful, repellent eyes. For a moment they hung there; then they were lowered to the side of Craig. A
n instant later, he, too, was whisked into the air to receive scrutiny of a protruding eye; then he was returned to his feet.

  Something of warning, of reprimand, had been in those eyes—of admonition to good behavior—as though a warning finger had been shaken at refractory children!

  TIME passed rapidly for the three men from earth.

  The Red-men didn’t object to their wandering about in the huge vehicle; there was so much to see and study that their minds were constantly occupied.

  Their greatest interest lay in the observatory at the top of the vehicle, or in the great laboratory and workroom in its base. These were reached by a long climb around a great, winding stairway in the outer shell of the vehicle, the entrance to which lay behind the machinery in the huge central chamber.

  In the observatory they spent hours at an amazing device that bore no resemblance to a telescope, except for the fact that it had lenses. The image of the earth on a great, glowing screen in the center of the device, appeared to be less than five miles away. They could see cities, the larger streams and lakes, the mountains—and all in detail. Except for the fact that everything was tinged with scarlet, the observation was all that could be desired. Their one regret lay in their inability to focus the device upon any other heavenly body. It pointed fixedly toward the earth.

  The workroom, too, was a source of never-ending wonder. Here the tall Red-men spent most of their time, working at the construction of two amazingly intricate machines, using complex tools that had no counterparts on earth. It was a pleasure for the terrestrial artisans to watch the labor of greater scientists.

  At regular intervals the Red-men gave the three a quantity of a queer, crimson paste that answered for both food and water. It was almost tasteless, but it was very satisfying, nevertheless. That the times for eating were more infrequent than those to which they had been accustomed, was recompensed, to some extent, by the greater quantity of the food.

  Except for two things, their stay in the great, metal vehicle was pleasant. In the first place, they were subjected to an occasional close scrutiny on the part of the Red-men; secondly, the crimson light of the place was maddening in its ceaseless, unchanging brilliance. But gradually they became accustomed to this latter annoyance.

  During the time they were in the vehicle, they sought frequently for some means of escape; but their efforts were in vain. They were unable to find even an exit. Gradually, the three became reconciled to their position, consigning their hopes to the future.

  Then finally, after they seemed to have spent many weeks in the crimson structure, hope sprang into being again like a newly lighted flame. The complex machines in the work-room were complete at last. With the final detail attended to, the grotesque Red-men began donning their clumsy, metal armor. In excited anticipation Kennard, Craig and Norcott hastily put on the space suits they had discarded so long before. Escape, they hoped, was near.

  CHAPTER III

  The Beam from Tycho

  KENNARD, Craig and Norcott watched intently every movement of the armored giants as they busied themselves with the colossal, crimson machinery in the central chamber. There seemed little to do—merely the closing of a huge switch and the slow turning of a great, notched disc.

  Immediately the machinery sprang into action. The great flywheel began turning, speeding up with each revolution; cones began to whirl madly—the entire intricate maze coming to life. The crimson air about the machine crackled ominously; pinpoint sparks of fire flashed through the red chamber. And above all could be heard a shrill, unearthly whine, rising higher and higher, piercing the ear-drums. In a few moments this became inaudible, having mounted above the range of human hearing.

  Then the earth-men became aware of a strange trembling in the floor beneath their feet. An infinitely rapid vibrating—as though the electrons in the red metal were whirling with an incalculable, unwonted rapidity. Minutes passed by while this vibration increased in intensity; then suddenly the floor, ceiling, walls and machinery were transparent! Wraithlike, they could still be seen, but beyond them the landscape of the moon stretched away on every side, strange and unearthly, seen through a crimson mist. Kennard’s eyes searched for the Rocket, but it was not in sight.

  Needless to say, the three men watched the strange behavior of the machine in amazed fascination. Forgotten were their thoughts of escape. And then a moment later, came the culmination! The moon’s surface sank rapidly from beneath the huge vehicle, and began flowing away—the great machine in horizontal motion.

  Rapidly they sped through the crimson light, passing over miles of harsh, dead desolation. Crag rose upon crag, and precipice upon precipice, mingled with craters and yawning pits, towering pinnacles of rock, and piles of volcanic debris. As far as eye could reach through the crimson radiance, the landscape was the realization of a fearful dream of desolution and lifelessness—utter and complete death! A scene of wild, forbidding grandeur. It was a queer sensation, this moving high above a dead world in an almost invisible vehicle, as though they were flying without support.

  They had gone but a comparatively short distance when, without warning, the red radiance ended, and they plunged into an awful, pitchy blackness. High above shone the glowing earth, at its third quarter, and brilliant, unwinking stars studded the ebony dome, but these were powerless to mitigate the impenetrable gloom. There was still crimson light in the vehicle, though, probably emanating, in some inexplicable way, from the transparent walls.

  With the plunge into the blackness, a sudden wave of incredible cold struck the car, immediately penetrating the space suits. Hastily the men switched on their heaters.

  A sudden thought came to Kennard, and he looked back. The vehicle was speeding away from a colossal pillar of crimson light that presented a curving surface miles upon miles in length. In a flash the scientist understood two things. They had been in the center of the pillar; and the Red-men had donned their armor to guard against the intense cold that they knew would follow their departure from the pillar’s confines.

  Immediately after the vehicle’s entrance into the darkness, the Red-men had turned their attention to the whirling machinery. They worked with the intricate device for a moment; then suddenly a bright beam of crimson leaped from the apparatus, pierced the transparent walls, and spread fan-wise ahead of the vehicle, lighting up the surface of the moon below them. Then the five of them, grotesquely armored Red-men, and clumsily clad earth men, devoted their complete attention to the desolate cosmorama.

  On and on over Luna’s scarred face they flashed, moving with incredible speed. At the pace they had attained, Kennard thought, they’d circle the globe in a short time. Then he noticed that they were slowing down. Finally, they came to rest, suspended high above the surface.

  Far below, casting back the rays of the crimson searchlight, lay a great crateral amphitheatre. From every side of it diverged wide, radial streaks which stood out in sharp contrast to their darker surroundings. Some of these rays reached over miles of the Lunar surface, faintly outlined by the minute quantity of light that was shed by the distant earth. The great length of those radiating, lava-filled fissures marked this crater unmistakably as Tycho.

  As they descended into the heart of the crater, the eyes of the three scientists sought to take in every detail of the magnificent spectacle. The jagged ridges of the rampart, in some places reaching 16,000 feet above the surface of the plateau; the concentric, terrace-like formation that led to the crater’s center; the great, central cone, 5,000 feet high—they studied these.

  The vehicle landed softly in the heart of the crater at the base of the huge cone. All about stretched the silver-gray surface of volcanic glass. At some time in the remote past when Tycho was the scene of a vast disruptive cataclysm which rent the solid crust of the moon into radiating fissures, the crater had been a veritable pool of molten sandstone.

  While Kennard, Craig and Norcott were inspecting Tycho, the Red-men were busy with what was evidently their reason for
coming to the crater. First they bent their efforts toward the huge machine, manipulating a second great lever. In a moment they stepped back and watched the wall.

  Something was happening to the wraithlike side of the vehicle opposite the spot through which the crimson searchlight shone. Somehow it gave the impression of a great swirling and vibrating, as though it were shaking itself into nothingness. And that apparently was what happened, for suddenly a great circular opening appeared in the wall.

  Immediately the Red-men made their way to the workroom in the base of the vehicle. The three watched them through the transparent floor as they grasped one of the intricate machines on which they had labored so long, and carried it up the winding stairway to the opening. After pausing a moment they leaped to the floor of the crater—a distance of about forty feet—bearing their device between them.

  By common consent the three watchers followed, the forty foot jump offering no difficulty whatsoever, due to the moon’s lesser gravity. After recovering their footing—they had lost their balance in landing—they faced the vehicle with one accord, curious to see the outside of the prison that had held them.

  Approximately one hundred and seventy feet the vehicle towered above them, resembling nothing more than a huge, top-heavy hour glass. It was wide at the top, gradually tapering toward a point some distance below the center, then spreading out abruptly. Its resemblance to an hour glass was accentuated by its wraithlike transparency. For a few seconds they eyed the vehicle; then they turned toward the Red-men.

  They were a considerable distance away by this time, moving up the slope of Tycho’s cone with great, Brobdingnagian strides. Hastily the three men followed, moving more rapidly than the giants, in prodigious leaps.

  On the summit of the cone they paused. The Redmen were busily engaged in placing their apparatus in position on the flattened apex. In a few moments they evidently had it adjusted to their satisfaction, with its eleven huge tubes pointing toward so many different portions of the crater’s floor; then they made their way down to the vehicle again.