I was aroused from a doze by Molo's activities in the turret. The
girls and Meka were still below. The ever-silent Venusian, squatting
in the turret corner, still had his gun upon me.
I saw that Grantline's ships, over a wide fan-shaped spread, were
advancing.
And presently we were engaged in the soundless turmoil of battle. I
cannot relate more than fragments, things I saw and experienced,
during six or more hours of bursting electronic light and puffs of
darkness in that spread of battle area within the Moon-shadow. It was
a silent battle of crossing lights, ships a thousand miles apart,
gathering velocity with great tangential curves; passing each other in
a second; sweeping a thousand miles apart again; turning and coming
back. A hundred engagements.
The _Star-Streak_ was very fast, very mobile, and, unlike all the
other Wandl ships, had the allies' own weapons to use against them. I
saw now why they called Molo the terror of the starways!
We swept into the shadowed battle area. Over all its thousand-mile
spread were the radiant Wandl gravity-beams, disturbing and impeding
the course of Grantline's ships. There was the luminous gleam of
projectile rockets, like little comets, soundless, launched by the
Wandl craft, and the radiance of the rocket-streams which all the
vessels were using now for close maneuvering; the glare of Grantline's
searchlight bombs and his white search-beams to disclose the deadly
whirling discs which the weapons of his vessel must seek out and
destroy. A chaos of silent light, stabbed here and there with
Grantline's darkness bombs, bombs of limited local range which
exploded in space and which, for a few minutes duration, absorbed all
light-rays, giving a temporary effect of darkness.
And then wreckage! Broken, leprous Wandl vessels whose barrage at
close range had been smashed by Grantline's guns; torn and littered
allied ships, struck by the huge exploding comet-projectiles and the
whirling discs; airless hulks, and scattered fragments which no longer
resembled a ship at all but only a hull plate or a torn segment of
dome. And little drifting blobs, the survivors in pressure suits who
had leaped from the wreckage; little blobs ignored, whirled away or
drawn forward as by chance the sweeping gravity-beams fell upon them;
tiny derelicts, floating stormtossed until the Moon's attraction
caught and pulled them down, or a whirling disc cut through them, or
the distant aura of a bolt shocked them to a merciful death.
It was a three-dimensional, thousand-mile spread of fantasy infernal.
Out of it, after an hour or two, a steady sift of every manner of
wreckage was drifting down upon the Moon. The scene began to blur. A
haze like glowing star-dust, or the radiance from a comet's tail, was
spreading a weirdly luminous mist, blurring, obscuring the scene. This
was the released electrons and the dissipating gases of the space guns
and exploding projectiles, forming dust which glowed in the mingled
starlight and Earthlight.
The _Star-Streak_ had plunged, during those six or eight hours,
through the battle area. Our several encounters were all characterized
by the _Star-Streak's_ extreme flexibility, her speed, mobility, and
Molo's reckless skill. We came through unscathed. There is a certain
advantage for the man who seems not to care for his own life. But
there was an encounter, the last one as it chanced, just before we
emerged downward out of the fog and found ourselves no more than a
thousand miles above the Moon's surface, where our adversary was
equally reckless and only Molo's skill saved us.
We came upon a Venus police ship. We plunged, as though seeking a
collision, and the Venus ship was willing. For a moment of chaos, both
barrages held against the exchange of bolts. Then we rolled over and
tilted down from the impulse of the stern rockets. The passing must
have been within feet, not miles; and in that second, Molo timed a
shot to strike at the enemy bottom. It went through their barrage.
Behind us, a second later, there was only strewn wreckage of the ship,
so finely powdered that it became a silvery radiance, like moonlight
shining on a little patch of fog.
"Not too bad?" Molo gazed around for appreciation. "Not bad, Gregg
Haljan? Molo is not too unskillful?"
We hung now close above the Moon's surface, with the battle area over
us. Out of the fog up there came the drifting wreckage; and now the
Wandl ships were coming down, one by one. Not so many of them now; no
more than ten of them emerged.
Grantline did not follow. His ships withdrew the other way. The fog
gradually dispersed. Grantline could now take stock of the battle; he
had been victorious. One might call it that, since his percentage of
strength, numerically, was greater now than when the battle began. Ten
remaining Wandl ships, and the allies had about twenty-five.
Another hour passed. Grantline's twenty-five ships were gathered in a
close group, ten thousand miles above the Moon's surface. Under them,
the ten Wandl vessels and the _Star-Streak_ seemed ranging in a five
hundred mile circle. Down through it, on the rocks of the Moon in the
foothills of the Apennines, the mechanism established there abruptly
sprang into action.
It was a giant gravity-beam. Of infinitely greater power than any
Wandl vessel could generate, it flung out its spreading, conical ray.
So this had been the purpose of all the Wandl tactics, to manipulate
Grantline into his present position. This gravity-beam, though far
smaller, was comparable to the one used by the Wandl control station.
A rock contact against a huge mass, Wandl, and here, the Moon were
necessary to give the ray its power. No ship could generate such a
ray, so the Wandlites chose this battleground where they could
establish themselves upon our deserted Moon.
The beam had about a hundred foot diameter at its base on the rocks;
it passed upward through the circle of Wandl vessels and its spread
bathed all of Grantline's ships at once. An attractive beam, so
powerful that the ships were helpless; against all their efforts they
were pinned and drawn downward. A slight velocity at first, but with a
tremendous acceleration.
Within an hour they were hurtling, coming together as they speeded
down the narrowing cone of the beam. The ten thousand miles, their
distance above the Moon, was cut to five thousand. The Wandl ships
drew aside, keeping well out of range to let them pass; in another
thirty minutes they would crash against the rocks.
I gazed in horror from the _Star-Streak's_ turret. We were sidewise to
the angle of the beam. Grantline's ships were pulled together now into
almost a fifty-mile group. They hung all askew, helplessly pinned,
some broadside, some upended. The movement of their fall was so rapid
that even with the naked eye it was apparent.
"Got them now," Molo chuckled. "This is the end for them, Gregg
Haljan."
There were only three of us in the turret: Molo and I, and my
watchful, silent guard who sat cross-legged, with a ray-gun pointed at
me.
Meka and the two girls were below during all the engagement.
It was over now.
During this lull Molo had sent the men from the deck gun ports to
their hull quarters. Our decks were empty now; the bridges and
catwalks up here had momentarily no occupants. The _Star-Streak_ had
little velocity, only a slow drift downward toward the Moon's surface,
which now was only a few hundred miles beneath us.
The lunar disc was a great dark spread of desolation, with only the
sunlight topping the distant horizon limb. And from under us, to the
side, was the source of the giant gravity-beam. Over us were the
watch-Wandl vessels, and, still higher, the helpless knot of
Grantline's ships hurtling down.
"Got them now," Molo repeated. "In another...."
He never finished. From the open doorway of the turret a figure rose
up. Snap! His aspect, even more than his appearance, transfixed me.
Snap, with his clothes torn; grimy and spattered with blood; his face
pale and gaunt, with hollow, blazing eyes. And above it, the shock of
rumpled red hair. In one hand he clutched a ray-gun, and in the other
a blood-stained knife!
My guard squatting on the floor, half-turned. Snap's bolt met him
before he could raise his weapon. He tumbled dead almost at my feet.
And mingled with the hiss of the bolt was Snap's shout at the unarmed
Molo.
"Into the corner, you! Back up, you damned traitor, else I'll kill you
as I've killed everyone else on this ship!"
19
I had leaped and seized the gun which was still in the hand of the
dead guard. "Snap, the girls!"
"Down below. Free. They've got Meka bound and gagged, locked and
sealed in a bunk-room. You bring them up! I'll hold this accursed
traitor. No need to kill him. By the gods, I've killed enough!"
He saw for the first time the vast silent drama in the firmament
outside the dome windows. "Gregg, for the love of...."
"No time now, Snap! I'll get the girls."
"Watch out. I might have missed somebody down below."
He had. Three men appeared on the forward deck near the foot of our
turret ladder. My bolt spat down upon them; two of them fell. The
other ran aft, toward where I saw Venza and Anita appearing from the
lounge doorway of the cabin superstructure. I fired again, and the
running man tumbled forward on his face. He was the last of the pirate
crew.
Molo was crouching, half-bending forward over his instrument table,
with Snap's gun upon him. The girls burst upon us. We armed them. Meka
was safely fastened down below. We backed Molo to the floor in the
corner, with Venza and Anita watching him.
Snap and I were in control of the ship. For temporary periods the
automatics would handle the gravity-shifters. I could operate them
here from the turret. We had a downward velocity toward the Moon. Five
hundred miles below us, no more, was the base of that diabolical
gravity-ray which was so swiftly pulling the twenty-five Grantline
ships to their destruction.
I gripped Snap and told him what we must do. "The forward gun on the
starboard side is almost identical with our Earth guns, the Francine
projectors. With a short range you can handle it and I'll give you a
close mark!"
He dashed for the deck. I set the levers. Gravity-plates with full bow
attraction. Stern repulsion to the Earth and the stern rocket-streams
at highest power.
The _Star-Streak_ responded smoothly; with acceleration such as only
Molo's famous terror of the starways could attain, we dove for the
Moon.
Breathless minutes! Those Wandl ships up in the firmament behind our
stern would probably do nothing; they would not understand this sudden
move of their friendly ship. The brain masters, the insect-like
Wandlites down on the Moon rocks operating the mechanism of the
gravity-ray, would not suspect until too late what the _Star-Streak_
was doing.
Uprushing rocks, the Apennines to one side; the dark yawning maw of
Archimedes on the other. We were diving parallel with the gravity-ray
now, hardly a mile from it, diving for the mechanisms of its source.
Twenty thousand feet of altitude. I bent our rocket-streams up for the
start of our turning. Bow-hull gravity-plates next. Ten thousand feet.
Five thousand.
How close we went I never knew. It was seconds now, not minutes. I
shifted all the controls. Our bow lifted as we straightened. The whole
spreading lunar surface tilted and dipped. Snap fired. I saw the bolt
flash at the tilting landscape and a puff of light down there on the
rocks. And an instant later there were vacant rocks where the little
cluster of men and mechanisms had been. And the upflung gravity-beam
was gone!
The giant towering cliffs of the mountain of Archimedes seemed to rush
at our upturning bow. The great dark crater-mouth slid under our hull.
But we cleared it; the maw of blackness slid down and away; the whole
lunar world tilted down and dwindled as we mounted again into the
starlight.
Minutes passed while we mounted. Above our upstanding bow was a new
drama. The suddenly-released Grantline ships, almost level with the
ten Wandl vessels when the ray vanished, turned sidewise. The poised
Wandl craft, devoid of velocity, could not pick up the ray to
escape now. Grantline, for those minutes, ignored the frantically
flung discs; it was a desperate encounter, all at close quarters. We
saw the spitting, puffing lights and the silent turmoil, hidden
presently by the spreading clouds of luminous fog.
Then out of it came drifting the wreckage. We plunged through an end
of the glowing fog, encountered nothing but two triumphant Venus
vessels. With them we mounted into the upper starlight.
This was the end of the battle. The victorious Grantline ships one by
one came lunging up: only twelve of them now. No Wandl vessels were
left.
The great spreading cloud drifted down like a shroud to hide the
wreckage, drifted and settled to the lunar surface, a great, radiant
area of fog, gleaming in the Earthlight.
20
There is very little more, pertinent to this narrative, that I need
add of the events on Earth, Venus, and Mars during this momentous
summer. The main facts are history now: the wild storms, the damage
done by outraged nature and the panic among the people--all of it has
been detailed as public news. The strange light-beams planted by Wandl
in Greater New York, Grebhar, and Ferrok-Shahn have not yet burned
themselves away. But they are lessening and scientists say that they
will soon be gone.
The changed calendars call this the New Era. The axis of each of the
three worlds was not appreciably altered; the climates are at last
restoring to normal. But the axial rotations of all three planets were
slowed by that attacking Wandl beam before we wrecked the gravity
station. The Earth day has been lengthened, resulting in the new
calendar, the New Era. Our year, formerly of approximately 365-1/4
days, now contains, but 358.7 days.
Molo and Meka have been returned to Ferrok-Shahn. They were tried
there for piracy and treason and are imprisoned.
And Wandl? With her gravity-controls wrecked, Wandl became subject to
the balancing celestial forces. During those succeeding months of the
summer and autumn no other spaceships appeared from her: nor did our
world investigate. Her presence here, even a little world one-sixth
the size of the Moon, was causing disturbance enough!
Wandl moved with slow velocity, like a dallying, strangely sluggish
comet about to round our Sun. What would her final orbit be? By
fortunate chance she headed in, far from the Earth and Venus; missed
Mercury by a wide margin; went close around the Sun: came out again.
But the pull of the Sun, and Mercury dragged her back. Her velocity
was not great enough.
I recall that late autumn afternoon when, with Anita, Snap, and Venza,
I sat in the observatory near Washington, gazing at Wandl through the
dark glass of the solar-scope. Doomed invader! She showed now as a
tiny dark dot over the Sun's giant, blazing surface. This was her
final plunge. The dot was presently swallowed and gone. It seemed,
amid those giant, licking streamers of blazing gas, that there was an
extra puff of light.
And some claim now that for a brief time our sunlight was a trifle
warmer, a little pyre to mark the end of Wandl, the Invader.
* * * * *