“Not me. Where you go I go also. I am not taking any chances of being separated from you in this strange world. To be candid I don’t like these cricket Things; and I don’t like the pigmy men who ride on them and direct them in battle.”
“Have it your way. We will communicate with Michael, and tell him to keep a constant watch, and that at the first approach of the enemies get into the air with the Aerolite. I am quite sure that in the airship they will be safe.”
But when they spoke to Michael and informed him that they contemplated going in search of Billy and Toplinsky, the young guard demurred.
“Suppose you discover them prisoners in the hands of a large army?” he suggested. “What will you do?”
“Scheme to free them. I certainly will not leave human beings at the mercy of myriads of cricket-shaped Things that may eat them.”
Equipped with food to last for a week, armed with tear guns and automatics, and carrying with them two large air helmets which they thought they might need in case they were forced to seek high altitude, they entered their gliders, and sailed toward the range of mountains in the north. There were many tall peaks ahead of them—mountains that stuck their noses high into the dark sky, and which Epworth knew were pitted with enormous craters.
When they got to the point where the cricket army had disappeared, they circled around for half an hour studying the country with their glasses. In front of them, near the range of mountains which they encircled, they saw another large valley, almost circular. Beyond this valley came a rugged foothill country and further on there was an immense peak, eighteen thousand feet high.
Epworth jockeyed his glider close to his sister.
“According to the maps of the earth astronomers,” he explained, “that mountain is the Crater Agrippa. I’ve got a hunch that our crickets dwell inside of that crater. It is deep down, over five miles, to the bottom, and if my reasoning is sound the air in the bottom of the crater is heavier than on the surface of the moon. It would, it seems, make an ideal place for Things like these crickets to live. They are thin of body, elongated in form, spread out broadly, light in weight but strongly muscled, and the gravity of the moon would about fit their physical shapes.”
“Granting all your science, what are you going to do?”