Jaska followed the mighty height of the thing, outward and outward, and then gasped.
"Sarka," she said, "its end touches the Earth in the very heart of that strange glow we spoke about!"
"Exactly! And people of Earth know nothing about it, because it is invisible to them! It is only from Outside that the glow it makes against the Earth is visible! If we can divert its direction, or render it useless in any way, the Moon will no longer be thrust away by its force!"
A pause of indecision, then Sarka thought again:
"Let us go, Jaska! Keep behind me, right on my heels!"
Slowly, fighting against something that seemed determined to pull, or hurl, them outward from the surface of the Moon with each forward movement they made, they essayed the side of the hill, pausing at the end of what seemed like hours in a sort of hollow just large enough to mask their bodies and stared over its edge into one of the craters of the Moon. Out of the depths of that crater came the discordant sounds, which now were almost deafening, and out of that crater too came the almost invisibly bluish column whose outer tip touched the Earth.
ight before them, so close that they all but rested in its shadow, was one of those monster aircars, its tentacles moving to and fro as though wafted into motion by some vagrant breeze. But since neither Sarka nor Jaska could feel the breeze, Sarka knew that it was life which caused the waving motion of those tentacles of terror.
"Note," he said to Jaska, "that there is a tiny trap-door in the bottom of the aircar, and that the thing rests on a half-dozen of those tentacles!"