"Look!" I shouted again, and on the instant the thing wound itself
around Garth's foot.
He swung down, hacking it loose. I had got to my feet. "Run for the
ship," I cried, and started off.
"Not that way."
I looked back, and saw that I had run in the wrong direction. But it
made no difference. Over a whole circle around us the sand was rising,
and directly between us and the _Comet_ there was a great green-brown
mass. We were surrounded.
We stood staring at the creatures. Spread out to full dimensions, each
one made a sphere about four feet in diameter. In the center, a solid
mass whose outlines were difficult to discern; and spreading out from
this a hundred long, thin, many-jointed arms or legs or branches or
whatever one could call them.
The things were not yet definitely hostile--only their circle, of
perhaps fifty yards radius, grew continually thicker and more
impenetrable. Within the enclosed area, the only ripples we could see in
the sand were heading outward. There was to be no surprise attack from
below, at least; only one in mass. What, I wondered, might be a sign of
friendship, to persuade them to let us go.
* * * * *
And then the circle began to close in. The things rolled over and over
on themselves, like gigantic tumbleweeds. At one point, to the right of
the direct route to the _Comet_, the line seemed thinner. I pointed the
place out to Garth.
"Break through there, and make a run for it."
We charged into the midst of them with swinging blades. The very
suddenness of our rush carried us half-way through their midst. Then
something had my legs from behind. I almost fell, but succeeded in
turning and cutting myself free. The creatures from the other side of
the circle must have made the hundred yards in four or five seconds. And
the rest had now covered the breach in front. It was hopeless.
And so we stood back to back, hewing out a circle of protection against
our enemies. They seemed to have no fear, and in spite of the
destruction our blades worked among them, they almost overcame us by
sheer numbers and weight. It was a case of whirling our swords back and
forth interminably in the midst of their tentacles. Against the light,
the long arms were a half-transparent brown. Our swords broke them in
bright shivers. Formed from the predominant silicon of the planet, the
creatures were living glass!
For perhaps a quarter of an hour we were in the thick of them, hewing
until I thought my arms must fall, slashing and tearing at the ones that
had got underfoot and were clamping their tentacles around our legs.
Only for the space-suits, we should have, by this time, been overpowered
and torn into bits--and yet these garments could not be expected to hold
indefinitely.
* * * * *
But at last there was a breathing space. The crippled front ranks
dragged themselves away, and there was left around us a brief area of
sand, covered with coruscating splinters of glass. Garth got the breath
to say something or other encouraging. It was like old days at school.
Only this time the odds were all against us. We were still a good
hundred yards from the _Comet_, and in our path stood a solid wall of
the creatures. Even if we got free, they could outrace us to the goal.
And with our limited strength, we could not hope to kill them all. In a
minute or two, they would attack us again.
Somehow we must fight our way as long as we lasted. Perhaps they might
be frightened. We threw ourselves at the side next our goal. The line
gave perhaps a yard, then stiffened, and we found ourselves swallowed up
in a thick cloud of brown smoke.
Poison gas! It must be shot out of their bodies, at a cost so great that
it was kept as a last resort. Through the rolling vapor it was just
possible to see our opponents, but they made no forward move. They were
waiting for us to be overcome. Suppose their compound could eat through
even our helio-beryllium? But it did not. We were safe.
"Stand still, Garth," I whispered, counting on the radio to carry my
voice. "Let them think we're dead, and then give them a surprise."
"All right."
Long, long minutes.... If only they did not know that it was the
customary thing for a dead man to fall.... Slowly they began to move in.
Then Garth and I were upon them. They halted as if stupefied. We had
hacked our way half through their mass. The rest fled, and we began
running toward the _Comet_, praying that we might reach the ship before
they could get organized again. How we floundered through the sand in
wild and desperate haste.
* * * * *
Before we had covered half the distance, the pursuit began. There was no
attempt to drag us down directly, but the two wings raced past to cut us
off in front. At the base of the little cliff where the _Comet_ lay, the
circle closed.
"Jump," I called, and threw myself up over them toward the stone. Garth
would have fallen back, but I caught his hand and pulled him to safety.
We had won.
But had we? Joined by reinforcements from somewhere, the creatures were
packed all around the base of the cliff and had begun to climb its
walls, to cut us off from the ship. We rushed separately toward the two
sides, and they backed away. But those in front were now established on
the top. We stepped backward, and the whole line came on. But now we
turned and ran for the _Comet_.
We were just able to turn again and clear them away with our swords. In
a moment others would be climbing up from behind over the ship. And the
door to safety was on a level with our heads.
There was just one chance. Stamping threateningly, we cleared the things
out for ten feet in front of us. But once we turned our backs for a
running start they were at us again.
"Boost you up, Dunal," said Garth pantingly.
"No, you first."
But in the midst of my words, he almost threw me into the doorway. I
turned to pull him up after me. They were around his legs, and one had
jumped down upon his helmet. And he must have known it would happen.
"Go back to her," he cried, and slammed shut the door.
* * * * *
There was no time to help him, to interfere with the way of expiation he
had chosen. I tried to look away, but a sort of fascination kept me
watching him through the glass. He had been dragged to his knees. Then
he was up again, whirling to keep them away on all sides in a mad,
gallant fight. But the creatures knew it was the kill. Now they were
around his knees, now up to his waist in their overpowering mass. It was
only a matter of minutes.
Garth took a staggering step backward, dragging them all with him. He
was facing me, and swung up his sword in the old Lunar salute. "Good
luck, Dunal." The words, coming clearly over the radio, had a note of
exaltation.
Then flashing his blade over his head, he hurled it into the midst of
the accursed things. With a tremendous effort, Garth tore the protecting
helmet from his head, and plunged backward over the cliff....
There was nothing to do but get in out of the lock and start for home,
and little on the trip is worthy of recounting. Without unsurpassable
difficulty, I was able to operate the machinery and steer, first for
Betelguese, then for the sun. Counting on the warning bells to arouse
me, I managed to get in snatches of sleep at odd intervals. At times the
strain of the long watches was almost maddening.
By the time the midpoint had been passed, I was living in a sort of
waking dream; or rather, a state of somnambulism. I ate; my hands moved
the controls. And yet all the while my mind was wandering elsewhere--out
to Garth's body under the blazing light of Rigel, back to the moon and
Kelvar, or else in an unreal, shadowy world of dreams and vague
memories.
* * * * *
With perfect mechanical accuracy I entered the solar system and adjusted
the projectors for the sun's attraction. Running slower and slower, I
watched Venus glide by. And then, gradually, everything faded, and I was
walking along the great Nardos bridge with Kelvar. The ocean was so
still that we could see mirrored in it the reflection of each white
column, and our own faces peering down, and beyond that the stars.
"I shall bring you a handful for your hair," I told her, and leaned over
farther, farther, reaching out.... Then I was falling, with Kelvar's
face growing fainter, and in my ears a horrible ringing like the world
coming to an end.
Just before I could strike the water, I wakened to find the alarm bell
jangling and the object-indicator light flashing away. Through the
telescope, the moon was large in the sky.
It was an hour, perhaps two, before I approached the sunlit surface and
hovered over the shore by Nardos. Try as I would, my sleep-drugged body
could not handle the controls delicately enough to get the _Comet_ quite
in step with the moon's rotation. Always a little too fast or too slow.
I slid down until I was only ten or fifteen feet off the ground that
seemed to be moving out from under me. In another minute I should be
above the water. I let everything go, and the _Comet_ fell. There was a
thud, a sound of scraping over the sand, a list to one side. I thought
for an instant that the vessel was going to turn over, but with the
weight of the reserve mercury in the fuel tanks it managed to right
itself on a slope of ten or fifteen degrees.
From the angle, I could barely see out the windows, and everything
looked strange. The water under the bridge seemed too low. The half-full
Earth had greenish-black spots on it. And the sky?
* * * * *
So dead with sleep that I could scarcely move, I managed to crane my
neck around to see better. There was no sky, only a faint gray haze
through which the stars shone. And yet the sun must be shining. I
stretched still further. There the sun burned, and around it was an
unmistakable corona. It was like airless space.
Was I dreaming again?
With a jerk, I got to my feet and climbed up the sloping floor to the
atmosphere tester. My fingers slipped off the stop-cock, then turned it.
And the air-pressure needle scarcely moved. It was true. Somehow, as the
scientists had always told us would be the case eventually, the air of
the moon, with so little gravity to hold it back, had evaporated into
space.
But in six months? It was unthinkable. Surely someone had survived the
catastrophe. Some people must have been able to keep themselves alive in
caves where the last of the atmosphere would linger. Kelvar _must_ be
still alive. I could find her and bring her to the _Comet_. We would go
to some other world.
Frantically, I pulled on my space-suit and clambered through the
air-lock. I ran, until the cumbersome suit slowed me down to a
staggering walk through the sand beside the Oceanus Procellarum.
Leaden and dull, the great sea lay undisturbed by the thin atmosphere
still remaining. It had shrunk by evaporation far away from its banks,
and where the water once had been there was a dark incrustation of
impurities. On the land side, all was a great white plain of glittering
alkali without a sign of vegetation. I went on toward Nardos the
Beautiful.
* * * * *
Even from afar off, I could see that it was desolate. Visible now that
the water had gone down, the pillars supporting it rose gaunt and
skeletal. Towers had fallen in, and the gleaming white was dimmed. It
was a city of the dead, under an Earth leprous-looking with black spots
where the clouds apparently had parted.
I came nearer to Nardos and the bridge, nearer to the spot where I had
last seen Kelvar. Below the old water level, the columns showed a
greenish stain, and half-way out the whole structure had fallen in a
great gap. I reached the land terminus of the span, still glorious and
almost beautiful in its ruins. Whole blocks of stone had fallen to the
sand, and the adamantine pillars were cracked and crumbling with the
erosion of ages.
Then I knew.
In our argument as to the possible speed of the _Comet_, Garth and I had
both been right. In our reference frame, the vessel had put on an
incredible velocity, and covered the nine-hundred-odd light-years around
Rigel in six months. But from the viewpoint of the moon, it had been
unable to attain a velocity greater than that of light. As the
accelerating energy pressed the vessel's speed closer and closer toward
that limiting velocity, the mass of the ship and of its contents had
increased toward infinity. And trying to move laboriously with such vast
mass, our clocks and bodies had been slowed down until to our leaden
minds a year of moon time became equivalent to several hours.
The _Comet_ had attained an average velocity of perhaps 175,000 miles
per second, and the voyage that seemed to me six months had taken a
thousand years. A thousand years! The words went ringing through my
brain. Kelvar had been dead for a thousand years. I was alone in a world
uninhabited for centuries.