They were recovering, Anita was bending over them. "Gregg, they're all
right. The shock is wearing off, thank God."
But I did not dare move to them. My light on the snarling thing across
the cave held it, but I did not dare to relax my attention.
I called, "Stay with them, Anita." I moved slowly forward, holding the
beam steady. The cave floor was littered with loose stones and
boulders. Ten feet from the pinned animal I selected a great chunk of
rock. It towered in my hand, but the weight of it was only a few
pounds.
The gravity held the animal as though I had pinned it by a pole. From
the distance of a few feet I heaved the boulder. The palpitating head
mashed against the wall. The body and the pulp of the head and the
boulder sank to the floor when I removed the beam.
"Snap, thank God you've recovered! And you, Venza!"
Anita and I sat with them. They had been fully conscious all the
while, but they were out of it now.
An hour passed while we sat crouched, listening to the storm.
"It's letting up," Venza said out of a silence.
Anita was sitting over the prone form of Molo. He had stirred and
mumbled several times.
"Let's see if we can get out of here," Snap suggested.
Rocks had fallen and blocked the only exit from the cave. But to our
strength, even the hugest of the rocks was movable.
"Shall we try it now, Gregg?"
As though we were elephants, heaving and pushing, we struggled with
the litter choking the passage. There was a danger that the whole
thing would cave in on us; but we were careful of that. We tossed the
small rocks aside like pebbles. There was one main mass. Together we
pulled and tugged and shifted it. A small opening was disclosed, large
enough for our bodies. The wind puffed in through it.
The girls called us. Molo had regained consciousness. The blow from
the rock had only stunned him. We bound his wrists with a portion of
his belt which we cut into strips.
"What is it you do with me? Is Wyk dead?"
"Yes."
He lay silent and sullen. "Look here, Molo, we're going to get out of
this, and you're going to help us. If you don't...." The knife which
we had taken from him to cut his belt was in my hand. I drew its blade
lightly across his throat. "Will you talk freely and truthfully?"
"Yes, I will talk the truth."
"Do you know where the control station is located?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Not far."
"The hell with that!" Snap burst out. "Get it meshed in your mind,
Molo, that we're in no mood for talk like that. How far is it?"
"On Earth you would call it ten miles."
"In these mountains?"
"He told us it was," said Anita. "Underground."
"Do you know where your ship is?" I persisted.
He told us that it was some thirty miles in another direction, not in
the mountains, but in the outskirts of a city like Wor. It was
equipped and ready for flight, all but the assembling of its crew.
And now we had weapons! Molo was carrying several of the gravity
projectors; two small searchlight beams, little hand torches; and
three electronic ray-guns of short-range size.
Hope filled us. The storm was abating. We could creep upon the single
small control room of the gravity station, where usually but two
operators were stationed. The delicate mechanisms there could be
wrecked.
And then we would seize the _Star-Streak_. No one would be on the
lookout for us. The fact that Molo's prisoners had escaped was as yet
unknown; he and Wyk had not dared tell it. Meka was back there
waiting. Our absence from the globe dwelling might have been
discovered; but Meka would say that we were with Molo. She was waiting
there, hoping that her brother and Wyk would recapture us. All this we
dragged piecemeal from Molo.
Snap and I shared the gravity projectors and the small electronic
guns. "Let's get started, Gregg. The storm seems over."
It was. We found the purple-red starry night again outside. The river
was lashed white with waves, but they were spent. There was only a
mild warm breeze remaining.
Molo's legs were free, but his wrists were lashed behind him. I hooked
an arm under his, holding him like a huge, but light, oblong bundle.
Snap called, "Ready, Gregg?"
"Yes."
Snap flashed on his gravity ray and mounted, with the girls clinging
to his ankles. Then I followed with Molo. By great arching swoops, we
swung up into the frowning, tumbled mountains.
15
"This will be the place to land, Gregg Haljan."
We were drifting down upon a barren region of naked crags, dark,
frowning rock-masses, broken and tumbled, as though by some great
cataclysm of nature. Mountains upon the Moon could not be more
desolate of aspect.
We landed on the rocks. The heights here had a purple-red sheen from
the starlight. We had seen frequent evidence of the storm; and it
showed here. Rocks were abnormally piled in drifts; smooth areas
showed, where the pebbles, stones and boulders had been swept away by
the wind.
Snap and the girls landed beside us. We spoke softly. None of us, not
even Molo, knew how far sound would carry in this air.
"Where is the place from here?" Snap demanded.
"Off there."
Molo spoke with docile, guarded softness. He gestured with his head
and shoulder. A quarter of a mile away, over these uplands, the broken
land went down in a sharp depression.
"It is there. I think from here we should go on the ground. There is
no guard, and I think seldom is anyone on top."
"If I help you now, if we should wreck the gravity controls, then
Wandl will be helpless to navigate space, or to interfere with the
rotation of Earth, Mars and Venus. The allied worlds might then defeat
the Wandl ships in battle. If that happened, perhaps your governments,
because of my help here, would forgive what my _Star-Streak_ has
done."
"Your piracy?" I said.
"Yes. I am outlawed. I might be reinstated if you would speak the good
words for me."
"Maybe."
"Maybe even they would reward me. You think so, Gregg Haljan?"
He wanted to be on the winning side; this suited us. "Let's try it and
see, Molo. I'll speak plenty of good words for you."
Now, as we landed on the uplands, he said, "You will do best to free
my hands."
"Oh, no!" Snap declared.
"But I am a good fighter. Something unexpected might come."
"Too good a fighter," I said. "We trust you because we have to, Molo,
but no more than is necessary."
A small recess in the rocks was near us. We put Molo there, with his
hands bound, and with Anita and Venza to guard him. Venza held the
electronic gun; she knew how to fire it. The girls crouched in a
depression about twenty feet away. They could see Molo plainly; if he
moved, a flash of the gun would kill him. He knew that.
The girls gazed at us as we were ready to start. "Good-by, Gregg.
Good-by, Snap. Good luck!"
"We won't be long. Sit where you are." Snap touched Venza's shoulder
for his good-by. "Listen, Venza: Molo has already told us enough to
enable us to find the ship. If he tries anything, kill him."
"Right," she said.
We left them. A minute or two, cautiously shoving ourselves along the
rocks, and we were crouching there. The cauldron was about two hundred
feet broad and fifty feet deep; an irregular circular bowl. The
starlight gleamed on it, and there were dots of small artificial
light. We saw a group of small metal buildings, very low and squat,
like balls mashed down, flattened in a bulging disc-shape; between
them were tiny skeleton towers.
The towers, twice the height of a man, were spread at irregular
intervals in a hundred-foot circle, with a group of three or four in
the center. There seemed some twenty of them. Taut wires connected
their tops, each tower with every other, so that the wires were a
lacework above the small disc buildings. The bottoms of the towers
were grounded with electrical contacts, and every tower had a ground
connection with each other by means of cables.
Far to one side, across the bowl from us, was a single globe-dwelling
with lighted windows. From its ground doorway, a narrow metal catwalk
extended like a sidewalk on the ground, winding and branching among
the towers and discs.
This was the exterior of the Wandl gravity station. It lay silent and
dark, save for the starlight and the little lights on the towers. No
sign of humans. Then we saw movement in the globe-dwelling. A man came
to the doorway, gazed at the sky and went back.