"Try it again," Snap urged. "Good God, Johnny, we've got to raise some
Earth station! Chance it! Use the power--run it up full. Chance it!"
We were gathered in Grantline's instrument room. The duty man, with
blanched grim face, sat at his senders. The Grantline crew shoved
close around us. There were very few observers in the high-powered
Earth stations who knew that an exploring party was on the Moon.
Perhaps none of them. The Government officials who had sanctioned the
expedition and Halsey and his confreres in the Detective Bureau were
not anticipating trouble at this point. The _Planetara_ was supposed
to be well on her course to Ferrok-Shahn. It was when she was due to
return that Halsey would be alert.
Grantline used his power far beyond the limits of safety. He cut down
the lights; the telescope intensifiers and television were completely
disconnected; the ventilators were momentarily stilled, so that the
air here in the little room crowded with men rapidly grew fetid. All,
to save power pressure, that the vital Erentz system might survive.
Even so, it was strained to the danger point. Our heat was radiating
away; the deadly chill of space crept in.
"Again!" ordered Grantline.
The duty man flung on the power in rhythmic pulses. In the silence,
the tubes hissed. The light sprang through the banks of rotating
prisms, intensified up the scale until, with a vague, almost invisible
beam, it left the last swaying mirror and leaped through our overhead
dome and into space.
"Enough," said Grantline. "Switch it off. We'll let it go at that for
now."
It seemed that every man in the room had been holding his breath in
the chill darkness. The lights came on again; the Erentz motors
accelerated to normal. The strain on the walls eased up, and the room
began warming.
Had the Earth caught our signal? We did not want to waste the power to
find out. Our receivers were disconnected. If an answering signal
came, we could not know it. One of the men said:
"Let's assume they read us." He laughed, but it was a high-pitched,
tense laugh. "We don't dare even use the telescope or television. Or
electron radio. Our rescue ship might be right overhead, visible to
the naked eye, before we see it. Three days more--that's what I'll
give it."
But the three days passed and no rescue ship came. The Earth was
almost at the full. We tried signaling again. Perhaps it got
through--we did not know. But our power was weaker now. The wall of
one of the rooms sprang a leak, and the men were hours repairing it. I
did not say so, but never once did I feel that our signals were read
on Earth. Those cursed clouds! The Earth almost everywhere seemed to
have poor visibility.
Four of our eight days of grace were all too soon passed. The brigand
ship must be half way here by now.
They were busy days for us. If we could have captured Miko and his
band, our danger would have been less imminent. With the treasure
insulated, and our camp in darkness, the arriving brigand ship might
never find us. But Miko knew our location; he would signal his
oncoming ship when it was close and lead it to us.
During those three days--and the days which followed them--Grantline
sent out searching parties. But it was unavailing. Miko, Moa and
Coniston, with their five underlings, could not be found.
We had at first hoped that the brigands might have perished. But that
was soon dispelled! I went--about the third day--with the party that
was sent to the _Planetara_. We wanted to salvage some of its
equipment, its unbroken power units. And Snap and I had worked out an
idea which we thought might be of service. We needed some of the
_Planetara's_ smaller gravity plate sections. Those in Grantline's
wrecked little _Comet_ had stood so long that their radiations had
gone dead. But the _Planetara's_ were still working.
Our hope that Miko might have perished was dashed. He too had returned
to the _Planetara_! The evidence was clear before us. The vessel was
stripped of all its power units save those which were dead and
useless. The last of the food and water stores were taken. The weapons
in the chart room--the Benson curve lights, projectors and heat
rays--had vanished!
Other days passed. Earth reached the full and was waning. The fourteen
day Lunar night was in its last half. No rescue ship came from Earth.
We had ceased our efforts to signal, for we needed all our power to
maintain ourselves. The camp would be in a state of siege before long.
That was the best we could hope for. We had a few short-range weapons,
such as Bensons, heat-rays and projectors. A few hundred feet of
effective range was the most any of them could obtain. The
heat-rays--in giant form one of the most deadly weapons on Earth--were
only slowly efficacious on the airless Moon. Striking an intensely
cold surface, their warming radiations were slow to act. Even in a
blasting heat beam a man in his Erentz helmet-suit could withstand the
ray for several minutes.
We were, however, well equipped with explosives. Grantline had brought
a large supply for his mining operations, and much of it was still
unused. We had, also, an ample stock of oxygen fuses, and a variety of
oxygen light flares in small, fragile glass globes.
It was to use these explosives against the brigands that Snap and I
were working out our scheme with the gravity plates. The brigand ship
would come with giant projectors and some thirty men. If we could hold
out against them for a time, the fact that the _Planetara_ was missing
would bring us help from Earth.
Another day. A tenseness was upon all of us, despite the absorption of
our feverish activities. To conserve power, the camp was almost dark,
we lived in dim, chill rooms, with just a few weak spots of light
outside to mark the watchmen on their rounds. We did not use the
telescope, but there was scarcely an hour when one or the other of the
men was not sitting on a cross-piece up in the dome of the little
instrument room, casting a tense, searching gaze through his glasses
into the black, starry firmament. A ship might appear at any time
now--a rescue ship from Earth, or the brigands from Mars.
Anita and Venza through these days could aid us very little save by
their cheering words. They moved about the rooms, trying to inspire
us; so that all the men, when they might have been humanly sullen and
cursing their fate, were turned to grim activity, or grim laughter,
making a joke of the coming siege. The morale of the camp now was
perfect. An improvement indeed over the inactivity of their former
peaceful weeks!
Grantline mentioned it to me. "Well put up a good fight, Haljan. These
fellows from Mars will know they've had a task before they ever sail
off with the treasure."
I had many moments alone with Anita. I need not mention them. It
seemed that our love was crossed by the stars, with an adverse fate
dooming it. And Snap and Venza must have felt the same. Among the men,
we were always quietly, grimly active. But alone.... I came upon Snap
once with his arms around the little Venus girl. I heard him say:
"Accursed luck! That you and I should find each other too late, Venza.
We could have a lot of fun in Greater New York together."
"Snap, we will!"