To Chet, staring at the strange conformation, came the quick sense of hanging above that ground and looking down upon it. And he knew that in New York he was looking through a great telescope down under the world and was staring straight down into the throat of an extinct volcano on the Moon.
There were few wonders of the modern world that could thrill the master pilot with any feeling of amazement, but here was a new experience. He would have spoken, would have ejaculated some word of wonder, but for the new light that claimed his eyes and brain.
The volcano, even in death, was ages old; its cold desolation showing plainly on the screen. No fires poured now from a hot throat; the molten sea that once had raged within had hardened and choked that vast throat with rock that had frozen to make one enormous plain. Ringed about by the jagged sides of the tremendous volcano, the floor within seemed smooth by comparison, except for another depression at its upper edge.
Here was another and smaller crater inside the great ringed wall of Hercules. The light of the sun struck slantingly across to throw one side of the gigantic cup into shadow, while the opposite rim blared brightly in the lunar dawn. And within the smaller crater, too, one side was dead black with shadow.
Dead!—No moving thing—no sign of life or indication that life might ever have been! A dead world, this!—its utter desolation struck Chet's half-uttered exclamation to a hoarse whisper of dismay. In all the universe what less likely place might one discover wherein to look for man?
His gaze was held in fascinated hopelessness on the barren, mountainous ring, on the inner inverted cone, on the shadow within that smaller crater—on a tiny pinpoint of light that was flashing there! ... He hardly knew when he raised one trembling hand and pointed, while a voice quite unlike his own said huskily:
"Look! Look! I told you it was so!... There! In that little crater!—it's signaling! Three dots—now three dashes—three dots again! The old S O S!—the old call for help! It's Haldgren!"
Again the screen showed the smiling scientist.
"Caught them just right," he said, "and glad to be of service. Now, if there's anything else I can do—"