_In the Zed-light Glow_
"Try again. By the infernal, Snap Dean, if you do anything to balk us!"
Miko scanned the apparatus with keen eyes. How much technical knowledge
of signaling instruments did this brigand leader have? I was tense and
cold with apprehension as I sat in a corner of the helio-room, watching
Snap. Could Miko be fooled? Snap, I knew, was trying to fool him.
The Moon spread close beneath us. My log-chart, computed up to thirty
minutes past, showed us barely some thirty thousand miles over the
Moon's surface. The globe lay in quadrature beneath our bow quarter--a
huge quadrant spreading across the black starry vault of the lower
heavens. A silver quadrant. The sunset caught the Lunar mountains, flung
slanting shadows over the empty Lunar plains. All the disc was plainly
visible. The mellow Earth-light glowed serene and pale to illumine the
Lunar night.
The _Planetara_ was bathed in silver. A brilliant silver glare swept the
forward deck, clean white and splashed with black shadows. We had partly
circled the Moon, so as now to approach it from the Earthward side. I
had worked with extreme concentration through the last few hours,
plotting the trajectory of our curving sweep, setting the gravity plates
with constantly shifting combinations. And with it a necessity for the
steady retarding of our velocity.
* * * * *
Miko for a time was at my elbow in the turret. I had not seen Coniston
and Hahn of recent hours. I had slept, awakened refreshed, and had a
meal. Coniston and Hahn remained below, one or the other of them always
with the crew to execute my sirened orders. Then Coniston came to take
my place in the turret, and I went with Miko to the helio-room.
"You are skilful, Haljan." A measure of grim approval was in Miko's
voice. "You evidently have no wish to try and fool me in this
navigation."
I had not, indeed. It is delicate work at best, coping with the
intricacies of celestial mechanics upon a semicircular trajectory with
retarding velocity, and with a make-shift crew we could easily have
come upon real difficulty.
We hung at last, hull-down, facing the Earthward hemisphere of the Lunar
disc. The giant ball of the Earth lay behind and above us--the Sun over
our stern quarter. With forward velocity almost checked, we poised, and
Snap began his signals to the unsuspecting Grantline.
My work momentarily was over. I sat watching the helio-room. Moa was
here, close beside me; I felt always her watchful gaze, so that even the
play of my expression needed reining.
Miko worked with Snap. Anita too was here. To Miko and Moa it was the
somber, taciturn George Prince, shrouded always in his black mourning
cloak, disinclined to talk; sitting alone, brooding and cowardly sullen.
Miko repeated, "By the infernal, if you try to fool me, Snap Dean!"
The small metal room, with its grid floor and low-arched ceiling, glared
with moonlight through its windows. The moving figures of Snap and Miko
were aped by the grotesque, misshapen shadows of them on the walls. Miko
gigantic--a great, menacing ogre. Snap small and alert--a trim, pale
figure in his tight-fitting white trousers, broad-flowing belt, and
white shirt open at the throat. His face was pale and drawn from lack of
sleep and the torture to which Miko had subjected him. But he grinned at
the brigand's words, and pushed his straggling hair closer under the red
eyeshade.
"I'm doing my best, Miko--you can believe it."
* * * * *
The room over long periods was deadly silent, with Miko and Snap bending
watchfully at the crowded banks of instruments. A silence in which my
own pounding heart seemed to echo. I did not dare look at Anita, nor she
at me. Snap was trying to signal Earth, not the Moon! His main helios
were set in the reverse. The infra-red waves, flung from the bow
window, were of a frequency which Snap and I believed that Grantline
could not pick up. And over against the wall, close beside me and
seemingly ignored by Snap, there was a tiny ultra-violet sender. Its
faint hum and the quivering of its mirrors had so far passed unnoticed.
Would some Earth-station pick it up? I prayed so. There was a thumb nail
mirror here which could bring an answer. I prayed that it might swing.
Would some Earth telescope be able to see us? I doubted it. The pinpoint
of the _Planetara's_ infinitesimal bulk would be beyond them.
Long silences, broken only by the faint hiss and murmur of Snap's
instruments.
"Shall I try the 'graphs, Miko?"
"Yes."
I helped him with the spectroheliograph. At every level the plates
showed us nothing save the scarred and pitted Moon-surface. We worked
for an hour. There was nothing. Bleak cold night on the Moon here
beneath us. A touch of fading sunlight upon the Apennines. Up near the
South Pole, Tycho with its radiating open rills stood like a grim dark
maw.
Miko bent over a plate. "Something here? Is there?"
An abnormality upon the frowning ragged cliffs of Tycho? We thought so.
But then it seemed not.
* * * * *
Another hour. No signal came from Earth. If Snap's calls were getting
through we had no evidence of it. Abruptly Miko strode at me from across
the room. I went cold and tense; Moa shifted, alert to my every
movement. But Miko was not interested in me. A sweep of his clenched
fist knocked the ultra-violet sender and its coils and mirrors in a
tinkling crash to the grid at my feet.
"We don't need that, whatever it is!"
He rubbed his knuckles where the violet waves had tinged them, and
turned grimly back to Snap.
"Where are your Gamma ray mirrors? If the treasure is exposed--"
This Martian's knowledge was far greater than we believed. He grinned
sardonically at Anita. "If our treasure is on this hemisphere, Prince,
we should pick up Gamma rays? Don't you think so? Or is Grantline so
cautious it will all be protected?"
Anita spoke in a careful, throaty drawl. "The Gamma rays came plain
enough when we passed here on the way out."
"You should know," grinned Miko. "An expert eavesdropper, Prince--I will
say that for you. Come Dean, try something else. By God, if Grantline
does not signal us, I will be likely to blame you--my patience is
shortening. Shall we go closer, Haljan?"
"I don't think it would help," I said.
He nodded. "Perhaps not. Are we checked?"
"Yes." We were poised, very nearly motionless. "If you wish an advance,
I can ring it. But we need a surface destination now."
"True, Haljan." He stood thinking. "Would a zed-ray penetrate those
crater-cliffs? Tycho, for instance, at this angle?"[B]
"It might," Snap agreed. "You think he may be on the Northern inner side
of Tycho?"
"He may be anywhere," said Miko shortly.
"If you think that," Snap persisted, "suppose we swing the _Planetara_
over the South Pole. Tycho, viewed from there--"
"And take another quarter-day of time?" Miko sneered. "Flash on your
zed-ray; help him hook it up, Haljan."
[B] An allusion to the use of the zed-ray light for making
spectro-photographs of what might be behind obscuring rock masses,
similar to the old-style X-ray.
* * * * *
I moved to the lens-box of the spectroheliograph. It seemed that Snap
was very strangely reluctant: Was it because he knew that the Grantline
camp lay concealed on the north inner wall of Tycho's giant ring? I
thought so. But Snap flashed a queer look at Anita. She did not see it,
but I did. And I could not understand it.
My accursed, witless incapacity! If only I had taken warning!
"Here," commanded Miko. "A score of 'graphs with the zed-ray. I tell you
I will comb this surface if we have to stay here until our ship comes
from Ferrok-Shahn to join us!"
The Martian brigands were coming. Miko's signals had been answered. In
ten days the other brigand ship, adequately manned and armed, would be
here.
Snap helped me connect the zed-ray. He did not dare even to whisper to
me, with Moa hovering always so close. And for all Miko's sardonic
smiling, we knew that he would tolerate nothing from us now. He was
fully armed, and so was Moa.
I recall that Snap several times tried to touch me significantly. Oh, if
only I had taken warning!
We finished our connecting. The dull gray point of zed-ray gleamed
through the prisms, to mingle with the moonlight entering the main lens.
I stood with the shutter trip.
"The same interval, Snap?"
"Yes."
Beside me, I was aware of a faint reflection of the zed-light--a gray
Cathedral shaft crossing the helio-room and falling upon the opposite
wall. An unreality there, as the zed-light faintly strove to penetrate
the metal room-side.
I said, "Shall I make the exposure?"
* * * * *
Snap nodded. But that 'graph was never made. An exclamation from Moa
made us all turn. The Gamma mirrors were quivering! Grantline had picked
our signals! With what undoubtedly was an intensified receiving
equipment which Snap had not thought Grantline able to use, he had
caught our faint zed-rays, which Snap was sending only to deceive Miko.
And Grantline had recognized the _Planetara_, and had released his
occulting screens surrounding the radium ore. The Gamma rays were here,
unmistakable!
And upon their heels came Grantline's message. Not in the secret system
he had arranged with Snap, but unsuspectingly in open code. I could read
the swinging mirror, and so could Miko.
And Miko decoded it triumphantly aloud:
"_Surprised but pleased your return. Approach Mid-Northern hemisphere,
region of Archimedes, forty thousand toises[C] off nearest Apennine
range._"
The message broke off. But even its importance was overshadowed. Miko
stood in the center of the helio-room, triumphantly reading the
light-indicator. Its beam swung on the scale, which chanced to be almost
directly over Anita's head. I saw Miko's expression change. A look of
surprise, amazement came to him.
"Why--"
He gasped. He stood staring. Almost stupidly staring for an instant. And
as I regarded him with fascinated horror, there came upon his heavy gray
face a look of dawning comprehension. And I heard Snap's startled intake
of breath. He moved to the spectroheliograph, where the zed-ray
connections were still humming.
But with a leap Miko flung him away. "Off with you! Moa, watch him!
Haljan, don't move!"
[C] About fifty miles.
* * * * *
Again Miko stood staring. Oh dear God, I saw now that he was staring at
Anita!
"Why George Prince! How strange you look!"
Anita did not move. She was stricken with horror: she shrank back
against the wall, huddled in her cloak. Miko's sardonic voice came
again:
"How strange you look. Prince!" He took a step forward. He was grim and
calm. Horribly calm. Deliberate. Gloating--like a great gray monster in
human form toying with a fascinated, imprisoned bird.
"Move just a little Prince. Let the zed-ray light fall more fully."
Anita's head was bare. That pale, Hamletlike face. Dear God, the
zed-light reflection lay gray and penetrating upon it!
Miko took another step. Peering. Grinning. "How amazing, George Prince!
Why, I can hardly believe it!"
Moa was armed with an electronic cylinder. For all her amazement--what
turgid emotions sweeping her I can only guess--she never took her eyes
from Snap and me.
"Back! Don't move, either of you!" She hissed it at us.
Then Miko leaped at Anita like giant gray leopard pouncing.
"Away with that cloak, Prince!"
* * * * *
I stood cold and numbed. And realization came at last. The faint
zed-light glow had fallen by chance upon Anita's face. Penetrated the
flesh; exposed, faintly glowing, the bone-line of her jaw. Unmasked the
waxen art of Glutz.
And Miko had seen it.
"Why George, how surprising! Away with that cloak!"
He seized her wrist, drew her forward, beyond the shaft of zed-light,
into the brilliant light of the Moon. And ripped her cloak from her. The
gentle curves of her woman's figure were so unmistakable!
And as Miko gazed at them, all his calm triumph swept away.
"Why, Anita!"
I heard Moa mutter: "So that is it?" A venomous flashing look--a shaft
from me to Anita and back again. "So that is it?"
"Why, _Anita_!"
Miko's great arms gathered her up as though she were a child. "So I have
you back; from the dead delivered back to me!"
"Gregg!" Snap's warning, and his grip over my shoulders brought me a
measure of sanity. I had tensed to spring. I stood quivering, and Moa
thrust her weapon against my face. The helio mirrors were swaying again
with another message from Grantline. But it came ignored by us all.
In the glare of moonlight by the forward window, Miko held Anita, his
great hands pawing her with triumphant possessive caresses.
"So, little Anita, you are given back to me."
Against her futile struggles he held her.
Dear God, if only I had had the wit to have prevented this!