A week elapsed, after the departure of the young inventor, with no word
from Ted. During this time, Roger, busy with the duties of the chief
executive, ate and slept in the office of his employer.
Professor Ederson had meanwhile tried nightly to get into communication
with the Lunites, but without success.
It was on this, the seventh night, that a terrific storm struck Chicago.
Unable to sleep because of the howling wind and terrific peals of
thunder, Roger switched on the lights and was about to step to the
window when his name was called from the disc of the radiovisiphone.
“Mr. Sanders.”
He hurried to the instrument and saw the face of the night operator.
“Yes.”
“The President of the United States is calling Mr. Dustin. What shall I
do?”
“Mr. Dustin is not in,” said Roger, who had shared the secret of his
employer’s absence only with Professor Ederson. “Let me talk to him.”
In an instant the face of President Whitmore appeared on the disc. To
his intense surprise, Roger noticed that he wore a fur cap and a great
fur coat with the collar turned up. That he was in an intensely cold
place was indicated by the visibility of his breath as he spoke and
exhaled.
“Where is Mr. Dustin?” were his first words on seeing Roger instead of
the man he had called.
“He is not here,” replied Roger. “As his assistant, can I be of service
to you?”
“You have not answered my question,” persisted the President. “_Where_
is Mr. Dustin?”
“I—I promised not to tell,” answered Roger. “He left here a week ago in
the interests of our country and our allies.”
The President frowned.
“You forget, Mr. Sanders,” he said, “that this is a war emergency, that
the country is on a military basis, and that I am Mr. Dustin’s superior
officer as well as yours. I demand to know where he is.”
Roger was nonplussed. He had told everyone that Ted had gone away on
business for the country, leaving them to assume what they pleased in
the matter. People had, of course, assumed that he had gone to some
other city, and would be back shortly. But the President was within his
rights in demanding to know where he was. Ted, himself, would not have
had the right to refuse this demand.
“He left for the moon a week ago,” said Roger, “and I have heard nothing
from him since.”
“What!”
The President appeared dumfounded.
“How did he go? Who went with him?”
“He went alone in a small interplanetary vehicle of his own invention,
knowing that the war would be in full swing before his larger vehicle
could be completed.”
“Well I’ll be damned!” exploded the President. “This is a pretty how
d’ye do. Gone just when we need him most.”
“I’m sorry,” answered Roger, “but he hoped to be able to stop the war by
this trip. If there’s anything I can do—”
“Maybe there is,” said the President, with forced calmness. “Perhaps you
can explain some things that I had hoped he could explain. For instance,
what is the cause of this intensely cold weather in the middle of the
summer, and why does the moonlight appear green?”
“We can’t see the moon from here,” replied Roger, “and it’s not cold.
There is a terrific storm raging, plenty of lightning, rain and wind,
but no cold.”
“A devastating cold wave has spread over this part of the country,
affecting Washington and Baltimore, and extending as far south as
Richmond,” said the President. “The Potomac is frozen solid, and
although we have our heating plants going to the utmost capacity, it is
impossible to keep warm. Thousands of people, caught unexpectedly, have
perished from the intense cold. My thermometer here in the White House
registers 10° above zero. Outside, I am told the thermometers have
dropped under 60° below zero, Fahrenheit.”
“And you say the moon looks green?”
“As green as grass. The country is bathed in a weird, green light at
this moment.”
“Must be some connection,” mused Roger, “I mean between the green light
and the intense cold localized around Washington. Wish Mr. Dustin were
here.”
“But he isn’t,” snapped the President, “so see what _you_ can find out,
and report back, either by radiovisiphone or in person at your earliest
convenience. Off!”
As the face of the President disappeared from the disc, Roger slumped
down in his chair and lighted a cigarette. What should he do? What could
he do?
There was a tap at the door.
“Come in,” he said, listlessly.
Professor Ederson entered.
“No use to try to use the radio tonight,” he said. “With the unknown
interference we have been getting lately and this storm, it would be
useless to try to communicate with the moon. I had our operator notify
all stations that we wouldn’t attempt it tonight.”
“Hear about the cold snap in the east?” asked Roger.
“Yes. Got it on the small set just before I came down. Terrible thing,
isn’t it?”
“And about the green moonlight?”
“Yes. Some new wrinkle of the Lunites, I fancy. They are clever and
resourceful and, for all we know, a thousand years ahead of us in
scientific knowledge.”
“What do you suppose it is?”
“I don’t know. An observation might be made from here, seeing that this
part of the country is unaffected, if it were not for the raging storm.
But it would be suicidal to go up in an electroplane just now.”
“If I thought there were anything to be learned, I’d go up,” said Roger,
“danger or no danger.”
“I mentioned it only as a possibility,” replied the professor. “The
probability is, that if you did learn anything, it would be of no
material value, even if you were to be so extremely fortunate as to get
back alive with it.”
“Nevertheless,” replied Roger, “I’m going up, just on the strength of
that possibility.”
“Don’t be an utter fool,” warned the professor, but Roger was already
calling Bevans.
“Have the Blettendorf 800 ready in five minutes,” he said. “I’ll be up
in a jiffy.”
He dressed rapidly while the professor remonstrated with him.
“No use,” said Roger, “I’m going.”
“Very well,” replied the professor. “If you must go I’ll go with you.
Perhaps the two of us can bring back some information of value—if we get
back.”
They took the elevator to the top, stepped out on the roof, and battled
their way through the driving rain, in which there was beginning to be a
hint of sleet, to the electroplane. Eight men held it, just outside the
hangar, while Bevans, in the pilot’s seat, tested the motor.
The two men entered and took their seats. Then Roger gave the order to
ascend. Came a roar from the helicopter blades, and they were off.
As they rose above the skyscrapers of Chicago, their craft tossing and
careening like a leaf in a gale, Roger took two parcels from beneath the
seat, one of which he handed to the professor.
“Folding parachutes,” he said. “Bevans is wearing one. Watch how I strap
mine on, and do likewise. We may need them.”
The wind swept them out over Lake Michigan—then they plunged into a
swirling, blinding snowstorm, and everything below, even the powerful
guide-lights of Chicago’s great landing fields, vanished.
With propeller and helicopter blades roaring, Bevans drove the plane
higher and higher, until they at length emerged above the seething,
moon-silvered clouds.
“No green moonlight here,” said the professor.
“But look—look to the southeast!” exclaimed Roger.
The professor looked, and saw a green band of light, wide at the bottom,
but narrowing as it extended upward straight toward the gibbous moon.
“The moon looks green from Washington,” said the professor, “because the
inhabitants had to look through the green lights to see it.”
Roger shouted an order through the speaking tube.
“Hover.”
As the big plane, now riding in comparatively calm air, hung smoothly
suspended by its helicopter blades, he turned a pair of powerful
binoculars on the moon. He focused them, looked for a moment longer,
then handed them to the professor.
“It’s coming from the ring-mountain, Copernicus,” he said. “Looks as if
a beam from an enormous green searchlight were coming directly from the
center of the crater.”
“So it is,” said the professor, after a careful scrutiny. “From the very
center of the crater.”
Then, before he had lowered the glasses, the green light winked out. So
sudden was the transformation, and so calm and natural did the moon
appear, that it seemed to both observers that the thing had not really
been—that it was a figment of their imaginations.
Came a call from Bevans:
“Three strange craft on the starboard quarter, sir. They seem to be
coming this way.”
The professor trained the binoculars in the direction indicated.
“My word, what odd looking craft,” he exclaimed. “They are globular in
form—globes, to each of which two whirling discs are attached.”
“An International Patrol Plane is coming from the port quarter,” called
Bevans. “It’s signaling the three strange craft, but they do not
respond. They are running without lights.”
“Ascend,” called Roger, “and turn off all lights.”
There was an answering roar as the Blettendorf shot upward.
“Too late for that,” said the professor. “We must have been seen.”
As the two men watched the one sided aerial parley below, they saw two
more Patrol Planes emerge from the upper cloud stratum and take places
behind the first.
“That makes the numbers even, at least,” said Roger.
The two squadrons drew together without sign or signal from the strange
craft, until the two leaders were within two thousand feet of each
other. Then a narrow green ray suddenly shot out from the foremost
globe, striking the first patrol plane. For a moment the plane seemed to
shrink—to draw together as if crushed in from all sides. Then it
crumbled asunder, and the pieces fell into the swirling clouds beneath.
The forward turret guns of the two remaining planes immediately went
into action, concentrating their fire on the foremost globe, but with no
apparent effect. Green rays shot out from the two other globes
simultaneously, and the planes shared the fate of their leader.
Then a green ray from the first globe sailed upward.
“Jump!” shouted Roger. “It’s our only chance. They’ll find us in a
minute.”
The professor tore the door open and jumped first. His parachute opened
just as Roger leaped after him followed by Bevans.
Roger could not see upward because of the parachute spread above him,
but fragments of the shattered Blettendorf began falling around him
before he had dropped far, and he was thankful that they had leaped in
time.
Looking downward to see how it fared with the professor, he saw to his
horror that the linguist was falling directly onto one of the globes.
Then he shot past the same globe himself, heard the hum of its rapidly
whirling discs, and dropped into the enveloping grayness of the raging
storm clouds beneath.