GODDESS OF THE MOON

A Complete Planet Novel

By JOHN MURRAY REYNOLDS

Death hid behind a smile in the white-and-gold
city of Gral-Thala. Gibson, Earth-spy off the
derelict strathoship, well knew his captive-fate.
But if he died, then the Good Green planet
perished from the Gray Death.... If he died, then
died Diana, fair Goddess of the Moon.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The Tokyo-to-New York Stratholiner swept down toward the Manhattan Municipal Airport early on a winter evening, with the port-holes gleaming all along the 300-foot length of her polished steel body. Rockets cut off well above the city in accordance with the strict American traffic regulations, she came down with half a dozen big props spinning under the drive of her powerful Diesel auxiliaries. A dozen whirling helicopters had been upthrust to take the strain. She came down to a city that lay murmurous and uneasy under the greatest threat that mankind had ever faced—the threat of the Gray Death!

A band was playing in the liner's saloon, and passengers in the smoking-room were hurriedly gulping down the last of their drinks. There was a forced and unnatural gaiety on board. Most of the passengers had taken more than a few drinks on the way across from Tokyo—for the news of the spread of the Gray Death was ominous. It is hard to retain peace of mind when a strange new epidemic rages unchecked from Alaska to Cape Horn and from Nova Zembla to New Zealand. Men and women were dying like flies, and all the medical science of this Twenty-fourth Century seemed helpless before the deadly plague.

It was the steady vibration of the Diesels that brought Larry Gibson back to an awareness of his surroundings. Their resonant hum was distinctly different from the pounding blast of the rockets, and any experienced stratho-pilot could tell the difference in a second. Larry tossed off the last of his drink and wiped his mouth with the back of an unsteady hand. Then he pushed back his chair and stood up, swaying as he tried to hold his balance on the slightly tilted floor of the descending liner. A man at the next table glanced curiously up at him.

"Guess we're landing, friend," he said. "Y'know, they say that there are a thousand deaths a day here in New York City now. They're digging graves in the cemeteries with electric shovels, I understand."

"Life," said Larry with alcoholic gravity, "is cheap. Too cheap. One hundred lives equals a man's career. It's all been worked out mathematically. Good evening."

Larry left the third-class bar where he had been sitting, and walked slowly along the corridor. Mechanically he turned the collar of his frayed coat up around his neck and pulled the brim of his wide hat well down over his eyes. There was always the possibility that someone would recognize him, and in these past months he had learned to keep in the shadowy byways of life. The time would come when men would forget that an unlucky person named Larry Gibson had ever existed, but in this year 2332 there were still plenty of people who would recognize his face.

Gibson was not traveling in the first-class section of the big liner, in those luxurious quarters built into the giant wings to which his rank had once given him free entry. Back in the days when he had been Chief Pilot of all the Strathofleet he could ride there as a matter of course. Now he could not afford it. He could not even afford the second-class accommodations amidships. Instead, he rode in the third-class quarters back in the tail. When a man knows that he has no possible chance of getting another job, he has to hoard the money he has saved up.

The giant airliner came down to an easy landing, and rolled across the field on her big wheels. The lights of the airport burned as brightly as ever, but anyone accustomed to New York could tell that there was something wrong. There were no crowds of spectators at all, and the few people who met the incoming travelers looked harassed and nervous. Even the airport attendants went about their business in a listless and somehow furtive manner.

It had been ten days ago that the blight first struck a peaceful World that believed it had at last made life safe and pleasant for its inhabitants. A few peasants in Honan province in China had taken convulsions and died while their skins turned a peculiar silver gray. Within twenty-four hours similar deaths were reported from points as widely separated as Bergen, Norway and Santos in Brazil.

Since then the strange new epidemic had raged unchecked. All the medical and financial resources of the Confederated Nations of Earth had been thrown into the fight without effect. The Gray Death struck quickly, men and women alike dying within six hours of the appearance of the first tell-tale patches of silver on their skin. The population had not yet started to panic, except in a few isolated instances, but the nerves of all men were ragged and jumpy from the strain.

Standing in the crowd of third-class passengers that had just alighted from the liner, Larry Gibson heard two of the airport attendants talking.

"He claims he's going to take that old rocket-ship to the Moon!" one of them said, and his companion chuckled.

"Crazy, all right."

"Guess he is. But what I'm wondering is how he got a crew to go along with him."

"Have you seen them? They're the damnedest bunch of derelicts I ever saw."

For a moment Larry was tempted to ask the attendant for the name of the vessel they were discussing. It sounded like the one place where a disgraced and black-listed officer might get a berth. Then he shrugged and turned away. Nothing mattered very much, any more.

II

The alighted passengers strayed slowly across toward the glass and chromium entrance to the Administration Building. The landing lights were cut off, and the airport became a deep pool of quiet shadow in the midst of the towering ramparts of New York's buildings. Most of the structures were two hundred stories high in this queenly city that had been built on the site of the old one destroyed in the final World War of 2132.

Then a woman began to scream. She was standing in the glow of light from the Administration Building, holding out a shaking hand that was already turning silver on the back. People hurriedly backed away from her. She was already in convulsions before the white-garbed attendants from the airport hospital could get her under shelter. A man swore tonelessly, and people kept far apart as they hurried from the field. The Gray Death had struck again!

Most of the passengers took elevators to the upper floors. There they boarded monorail trains that took them to the part of the city where they were bound. Or, if they happened to live near the airport, they simply went along one of the glass-enclosed cross-walks that clung to the outside of the buildings and bridged the streets in graceful curves. Larry Gibson did not go into the Administration Building at all. There would be too many people who might know him, and he dreaded their sneering smiles of recognition. He went out a small gate at the side of the airport, a gate that led to the tenth-floor level.

The lower parts of New York's towering buildings formed the zone of factories and warehouses. There were few lights here at this hour, and the cross-walk was nearly deserted. Larry was looking for a cheap place to stay, to conserve his dwindling resources. It wasn't that Larry was particular about the kind of work that he was willing to do. That stage was far behind him! It was simply that, in this simplex and highly organized civilization of the Twenty-fourth Century, a man couldn't get a job without showing his properly authenticated identity papers. And when a prospective employer saw his papers, it always turned out that there were no vacancies available. There was a hard bitterness in Larry Gibson's eyes as he trudged away from the airport.

After about half a block, Larry turned in at a little place called the Moorings Bar. It was dingy, and smelled of stale beer. Most of the customers were night-shift factory employees, waterfront loafers, and the crews of the water-borne ships that still crawled sluggishly across the ocean with those bulky and cheap commodities that the airliners did not care to handle. Half a dozen roughly clad men leaned on the greasy bar. Larry sat down at a corner table and called for a drink.

So he was back in New York—the city that had been his home before the Stratholiner Pegasus fell into the sea with a loss of a hundred lives two years before! Larry wondered how long he would stay here. Not long. A month, or perhaps six weeks. The latter would be a long time for him to remain in one place nowadays. He had become a wanderer. A rolling stone that gathered neither moss nor worldly goods, nor even much of the peace of mind that he sought. So he passed like a shadow from city to city and from land to land. He made no friends nowadays. Larry Gibson was still a young man, but there was a cold grimness about his face that did not encourage advances.

A radio behind the bar had been playing music, but now the sound abruptly ceased and the television screen went blank. Then the face of a government announcer appeared on the screen. His voice came from the speaker sharp and clear.

"Though the toll of the Gray Death continues to be very heavy, the government of the Confederation is pleased to announce to the peoples of Earth that the mystery of the disease has been solved. It is found to be a new and malignant form of leprosy, caused by some hitherto unknown germ. It has also been found that the proper use of radium can control the disease, when applied by what doctors call the Riesland Method. That is the end of this bulletin."

The radio returned to playing music. The bald-headed bartender grinned broadly.

"Maybe we'll have a chance to go on living after all, boys," he said. "I guess that calls for a drink on the house."

"Aye—the mystery of the Gray Death is removed!" a deep voice behind Larry rumbled with heavy sarcasm. "I could have told them that answer a week ago, if I'd thought the thick-headed fools who run this planet would listen to me! But what they haven't announced is that the Riesland Method calls for a lot of radium, and all Earth's supply is not enough to check this epidemic in time to save the population of the planet!"

Larry turned around to glance at the speaker. It was a man who sat alone at a table by the wall. He was a very tall man, gaunt and gray-haired with a pointed beard that jutted forward at a pugnacious angle. Exceptionally heavy eyebrows gave him a quizzical appearance. His unpressed clothes were badly stained, and rakishly tilted on one side of his head was a slouch hat of a type that had gone out of style many years before. A half-empty bottle of rum stood on the table before him. Somehow he gave the impression of having already consumed what liquor was missing from the bottle, and of having every intention of emptying it before leaving his table.

Well, Larry Gibson reflected with a sardonic grin, he was no one to criticize a man for a little thing like excessive drinking. His own record in that regard had been pretty lurid for the past two years. Just then the other man grasped his bottle firmly in one hand, and his glass in the other, and lurched over to Larry's table.

"Mind if I join you for a bit of conversation, young feller?" he boomed. "Rum, more than any other essence of Bacchus, is a friendly drink that needs to be shared."

Larry looked up at him without cordiality. He had been living alone with his bitterness and frustration for so long that he resented any intrusion on his privacy. Then he suddenly grinned. There was a reckless and irrational gallantry about this gaunt old man that appealed to some part of his own nature that had now been dormant for a long time.

"Sure, sit down," he said.

"Thanks, young feller. My name is Crispin Gillingwater Ripon, and I feel the need of a little company after a hard day trying to recondition a rocket ship with the lousiest collection of shiftless renegades that ever signed on as crew for such a craft."

"What ship is that?" Larry wanted to know.

"The Sky Maid."

"Never heard of her," Larry said thoughtfully and slowly.

"You wouldn't! She used to be the Orion, but she is now renamed and my ship—subject to a matter of a few liens and some faulty hull insulation and a very good chance of never coming back to port again after I start on my voyage. Have a drink, young feller!"

"The Orion!" Larry exclaimed "Why, she was condemned as not air-worthy over a year ago!"

"How else do you think I bought her?" Ripon grinned. "I'll concede that, if the world had shown a proper appreciation for my varied talents, I'd be a millionaire many times over, but I happen to be almost broke. You appear to be a promising lad, young feller. How about signing on for a trip to the Moon?"

"So you're the crazy man who is talking of going to the Moon," Larry grinned. Ripon glowered at him from under his heavy brows for a minute, then grinned in return.

"Be more careful with your language, young feller, or I'll bust this bottle over your head! I may be eccentric, but I'm a lot saner than those pedants who claim the trip can't be made."

III

Ripon was sprawled back at his ease, a smoldering pipe in one hand and his glass in the other. He was smiling at Larry's startled expression, but he seemed to be serious. Vague memories were stirring in Larry Gibson's mind, memories of things he had read and heard in the old days before he became a drifter whose main effort was to avoid thinking at all. Crispin Gillingwater Ripon! He had heard the name before, though it had been in connection with abstract science rather than with practical rocket-ship flying. Somehow, his memory of the name was connected with failure, with public derision, and with rumors of outright charlatanism.

"I think I've heard of you," he said cautiously.

"In that case you have heard no good!" Ripon said cheerfully. "I am at present the problem child of the scientific world. The horrible example! A laughing stock for seedy professors and callow students. Mention of my name produces hoarse guffaws of mirth in scientific circles at the moment, young feller, but it will be different when I return from my successful trip to the Moon. Better come along."

"Why are you going at this time?"

"Because there are radium salts on the Moon, I am convinced. This world hasn't treated me with much respect, young feller, but I've had a good time on it for my sixty-odd years and I'm fond of the old place. I want to make the trip and get back before the Gray Death wipes out our population—including myself!"

"But you can't take a rocket-ship to the Moon," Larry protested. "Professor Staunton's attempt proved that thirty years ago."

"All it proved was that neither Staunton nor his ship were ever heard of again," Ripon said calmly. "I knew Staunton well. He was a good man, a careful man—but he wasn't Crispin Gillingwater Ripon! I'm making some changes of my own in the Sky Maid; changes that should spell the difference between success and failure."

When he looked back at it later, Larry had only a hazy recollection of the rest of that evening. The rum got to him. The one thing that did stick in his mind was a snatch of song that he and Ripon had sung over and over again, pounding their glasses on the table while the other men in the dingy little barroom stared at them in good-natured derision.

"There's only a few of us left,

And we never were worth a damn,

But I'll follow my vagrant star,

That's the kind of a guy I am!

(Drink it down!)

That's the kind of a guy I am!"

Larry Gibson awoke the next morning to the sound of many hammers beating on a steel shell. There was also a sharp and comprehensive ache that started at the top of his head, which felt as though someone had been hitting him with the butt of a ray-gun, and spread all down through his body. He groaned and sat up.

He lay in a bunk, in a steel-walled cabin. Evidently the officers' quarters on some strathoship. Across the white painted ceiling, where flakes of red rust were showing through the dirty paint, the word CONDEMNED had been stenciled in black. Sitting upright on the edge of his bunk, Larry momentarily dropped his head in his hands. Then he stood up and left the cabin, grinding his teeth at the ceaseless pound of the hammers on the steel shell.

At intervals, as Larry went slowly down the corridor, he passed the word CONDEMNED stenciled on the walls and bulk-heads. When the government inspectors decided that a a rocket-ship was no longer safe for flights through the vast emptiness of the strathosphere, they made the fact very evident! He climbed a ladder to an open manhole, and emerged into the bright sunlight of a winter morning. For an instant he filled his smoke-tainted lungs with deep gulps of fresh air. Then he looked about him.

He stood atop the red-painted hull of a rocket-ship. It was an old V-39, a type that had been first built some thirty years before and was now obsolete. The weathered paint was badly rust streaked, and the worst spots had been touched up with bright red lead so that they looked like livid scars. The ship was lying in a corner of the airport, and a gang of men were busy at what appeared to be an attempt at general reconditioning. After one look Larry didn't think it would do much good.

Turning forward along the top of the super-structure, Larry met a man in a faded blue uniform that bore the two stripes of a second officer. He was a lean, swarthy-faced man with a meticulously pointed mustache that contrasted strangely with his otherwise down-at-the-heels appearance.

"Morning," he said shortly. "I'm Colton, the second officer. Guess you're the new first mate."

"If so, it's news to me!" Larry said grimly. "Where's the madman that commands this decrepit craft?"

"You'll find the Old Man in the control room. And if you use your head, you won't speak slightingly of the Sky Maid in his presence."

"When I want your advice I'll ask for it," Larry said. Colton's eyes blinked momentarily, but then he smiled and Larry immediately marked him down as a man to be watched. He didn't trust people who smiled when they were insulted.

"Suit yourself," Colton said as he turned away.

Crispin Gillingwater Ripon was bent over a set of strange diagrams spread out on the chart table in the control room. Thick smoke swirled from the short pipe clenched in his teeth. His face was deeply lined this morning, and there were wrinkled hollows under his eyes, but he looked up with a broad grin as Larry came into the dusty control room. His reckless eyes were bright and cheerful in spite of being bloodshot.

"Cheerio, young feller!" he boomed. "How's the pride of the strathosphere this morning?"

"All right," Larry said shortly. "It seems that I owe you thanks for a night's lodging. But what's this about my being first mate of this hulk?"

"Accepting your unspoken apology for having maligned my ship," Ripon said severely, "the statement is correct. You signed on last night. I have your signature to prove it—although it's a bit shaky because I had to guide your hand which seemed unable to hold the pen."

"Do you know who I am?" Larry asked grimly.

"Do I know who you are?" Ripon's lean, brown face suddenly crinkled into a smile. "Good Lord, young feller, you spent two hours last night telling me your life's history while you cried into your beer."

"Then I can't have told you the whole story." The hang-over, and the fact that he had not had any solid food in nearly twenty-four hours, were making Larry slightly dizzy. His voice rose in spite of himself. "I'm Larry Gibson, black-listed in every airport in the world. 'Gibson the Murderer,' the newspapers called me. I'm the man who was master of the rocket-liner Pegasus when she fell into the South Pacific with a loss of a hundred lives. It wasn't really my fault, but the inspectors believed some fools who lied to save their own skins. Now, my friend, do you see why I can't sail on even your shaky old craft? I was drummed out of the service, and ever since...."

"And ever since you've been going around feeling sorry for yourself!" Ripon's voice cut sharply through the mists of Larry's bitterness. "Hell, young feller, I've been disgraced worse than that more than once. I just don't pay any attention to it. Forget it. I need a first officer on this trip, and I believe your story that the disaster wasn't your fault, and there's an end to it! You're coming along."

"But I haven't even a license any more."

"That doesn't matter. Governmental regulations don't apply to a trip to the Moon. They don't license a man for what they think is suicide, you know! Go ashore and get some breakfast to steady you down. Then, when you feel better, come back and I'll go over the details of the trip with you."

For a long moment Larry stared at Ripon. Then he began to laugh.

"By the Lord Harry, I think you're crazy!" he said. The gaunt scientist grinned back at him with complete good humor.

"Better people than you have called me that, young feller," he said cheerfully. "They've been expecting me to get myself killed for years. But Crispin Gillingwater Ripon is still alive and healthy—albeit somewhat battered. Follow my star and you'll have plenty of excitement, even though it may get you nothing more than a broken head."

IV

When Larry Gibson returned to the ancient and seedy-looking Sky Maid after a breakfast at a nearby restaurant, he paused to look at the work in progress outside her hull. It was like nothing that he had ever seen before. A network of interlacing wires was being bolted to the outside of the ship's cigar-shaped hull, so that they formed a sort of screen with the strands some two inches apart. Other men were busy at caulking rivets and repacking insulation. This last was routine stuff in connection with any attempt to recondition an old vessel for travel in the thin, chill regions of the strathosphere—but he was completely puzzled by the painstaking labor of fastening those criss-crossing wires in place.

He found Ripon still in the vessel's dusty control room. Much of the equipment had been ripped out when the ship was first condemned. The missing articles had been hastily replaced with second-hand equipment which was often of a slightly different pattern from the original, so that the whole room had a makeshift appearance. The lean scientist looked up from the clouds of blue and vile-smelling smoke that swirled upward from his pipe.

"Well, young feller!" he boomed in his deep voice that could easily carry above the dull roar of rocket motors. "How do you feel now? Ready to go to work?"

"Listen!" Larry said. He had intended to be sharp and sarcastic, but he was grinning in spite of himself. It was hard to stay angry with anyone as irresponsibly cheerful as Crispin Gillingwater Ripon. "Seriously! You couldn't take the best rocket-ship on Earth to the Moon, let alone this old derelict. Not if you want to come back alive. It's been proven that, by the time you reach the velocity of escape to get away from the Earth's attraction, you have a speed too great for our present knowledge of rocket-ship technique to brake in time to prevent disaster...."

"How has that been proven?" Ripon interrupted, jerking the pipe from between his teeth and pointing the smoking stem at Larry as though it were the barrel of a ray-gun.

"Why—by the two attempts that have been made! You know the story. Two hundred years ago, at the time we had the last war on Earth, that group of defeated outlaws stole the giant transport Mercury and started for the Moon and vanished. Then, it was only thirty years ago that Professor Lester Staunton made his attempt in the rocket cruiser Orestes, and he vanished."

"You're like all the rest," Ripon grumbled. "Always jumping to conclusions based on a few scraps of evidence. No man on Earth really knows how a rocket-ship would behave in interplanetary travel, because it hasn't yet been done. There is a great mass of unproven theories that are generally accepted as true—but those are not facts. It was once generally accepted that the Earth was flat. However—I have a new method of propulsion for this ship, by means of the amplification of magnetic currents, and I expect to supplement the rockets with that new equipment."

"I think you're crazy," Larry said, "but I'll go along with you anyway."

"Now you show the proper spirit, even if not good sense," Ripon said cheerfully.

It was after midnight that night before the Sky Maid was ready to go. The crew were at launching stations, and the ship's old-fashioned Diesels were rumbling as they were warmed up. Larry was standing under the dome of duralite glass that covered the upper observation platform when Colton came up to stand beside him.

"Well—we'll be off in a few minutes!" the swarthy second officer said.

"Wonder if we'll ever come back."

"Lord knows!" Colton shrugged, and his dark eyes were somber. "The police of half a dozen countries are looking for me anyway. I've had my fingers crossed the whole time we've been refitting this craft."

"Why tell me all this?" Larry asked. Colton shrugged again, and his smile was half a sneer.

"Your own reputation isn't much better, Gibson. I figure that if this trip works out it may give us both a chance to square ourselves, and if it doesn't we're not much worse off than we are now."

"You may have something there," Larry admitted.

Then Ripon shouted a command, and the helicopters started to spin. Only a handful of loafers watched the Sky Maid take off. A few waved. Others tapped their heads derisively. Man's third attempt to navigate the 239,000 empty miles to the Moon had begun!

The old ship's rickety helicopters and creaking Diesels could hardly lift her high enough to reach the level required by law before the rockets could be started. High clouds veiled the stars, but the many lights of New York were still visible below them when Ripon at last cut in the rocket motors. The Sky Maid shivered all along her length as their blasting roar began, and then she started to shoot upward at a steep angle. Her whole fabric creaked and groaned, and Larry Gibson shook his head dubiously. A few air-leaks would be all they would need to make their situation utterly hopeless.

The drive of the rockets carried them into the belt of clouds. For a few seconds the glass ports were veiled by gray mist. Then they were above the clouds and zooming upward in the cold light of the Moon. The crew were released from their launching stations as the ship settled down to a smooth routine, and Larry took over the watch. A minute later he was alone in the darkened control room with the dim glow of the varied instrument panels to keep him company. Already the air was starting to thin out, so he closed the ports and turned on the vessel's air-conditioning system. The atmosphere took on the faintly chemical odor characteristic of travel in a sealed ship in the high places.

From somewhere nearby Larry could hear a deep voice lifted in song, a voice that rose above the pulsating throb of the rockets. The words were familiar:

"There's only a few of us left,

And we never were worth a damn,

But I'll follow my vagrant star...."

Larry wondered if Ripon was hitting the bottle again. They were in a bad spot if he was, for certainly no one else on board understood the new equipment that Ripon had installed to solve the difficulties that had blocked previous attempts at interplanetary travel.

In Larry's mind there was a steadily strengthening conviction that this whole expedition was destined to failure from the start. It was too makeshift. Too poorly organized and planned, too lightly financed. Ill-manned and poorly equipped, led by a drunken genius on a rickety ship that wasn't really fit to navigate at all, they were probably sailing to their doom somewhere in the cold reaches of outer space. If they reached the Moon at all, it would likely be as a twisted wreck dropped on the cold slope of one of that body's barren craters. Larry shrugged. He had made his decision, and he did not regret it.

And then, leaning beside one of the control room's glass ports while he kept an eye on the slowly climbing needle of the speed indicator, Larry suddenly realized that he had found the peace of mind he had so long been seeking. The clouds were a silvery ocean far below, the Moon was a glowing disc ahead. The Sky Maid snored onward through the night with her rockets pounding. He was again back where he belonged, standing a watch in a vessel's control room. Nothing else seemed to matter very much at the moment.

Ripon came out into the control room a little later, a faded uniform cap pushed to the back of his graying head and his empty pipe clenched in his teeth.

"It's tough not to smoke," he rumbled glumly, "but I don't want to put a strain on our none too good air-conditioning equipment. How are things going?"

"Not so well," Larry said, "The rockets aren't balanced, and we have a drift to starboard. Three micro-units in every fifteen minutes. I have to keep cutting down the port rocket tubes for short periods to equalize it."

"How's the speed?"

"Not what it should be." Larry looked dubiously at the indicator needle. "Even with as much rocket power as she's got, we've only built our speed up to a thousand miles an hour even though the atmosphere is greatly thinned. I don't think that we can build up the necessary velocity, Chief. I'm afraid it just can't be done."

"Okay, friend Pinzon," Ripon said. Catching Larry's look of puzzled surprise, the gaunt scientist smiled faintly. "There was once a man named Columbus who thought he could sail the Atlantic, which had not been done before. He was a bit of a faker and a bluff, that Genoese adventurer, and there was more than a touch of the charlatan in him. The Pinzon brothers who commanded the other two ships of his fleet knew from the start that the voyage could never succeed. I'll admit that Columbus didn't find just what he expected to find, but he did cross the Atlantic!" Ripon laughed, and dropped a hand on Larry's shoulder. "Hold her on to the course a while, my friend. We're not licked quite so soon!"

V

Ripon was still staring out the control room window at the disc of the Moon ahead of them. His voice came somberly as he spoke without turning around.

"What's the speed now?"

"Eleven hundred. Velocity of escape is twenty-five hundred."

"Y'know, Larry, it seems one of Fate's little ironies that the only hope of saving the people of Earth from the Gray Death lies with this creaking ship and her polyglot crew! Oh—I have no illusions about the forlornness of our hope! We have no right to get through. But I'm not entirely a fool, and I have a few aces in my sleeves. I guess it's time to try out my magnetron controls. Stand by to cut rocket motors!"

Ripon moved to several strange-looking control boxes that had been set up at one side of the room. Instrument dials glowed into light as he threw a switch, and there came a faint hum.

"These tubes are the Magnetron Oscillators," Ripon said. "These switches control the magnetic converters. This other bank governs the selectors."

"But I don't get the general principle," Larry said.

"It's simply a selective utilization of the lines of magnetic force that fill outer space. This ship is naturally para-magnetic, so that she is easily permeable by the lines of force. By charging the wires outside the hull I can make all or part of the ship diamagnetic. Furthermore, I can change its charge so that the lines will draw in either direction."

"I know enough of the general principles of magnetism to understand that," Larry said. "You can vary the direction of the effect, and perhaps vary the dynes. But...."

"This indicator shows the hysteresis loop, the lag of magnetic indication behind the magnetizing force at any particular time," Ripon continued. "The heart of my system is the group of selectors and amplifiers set up in the compartments directly below us. With them I can select the magnetic currents suited to our course, and amplify them till they move the ship along with them just as the lines of magnetic force move iron filings about a bar magnet. At least," he said with a sudden flash of his reckless smile, "that's what I think I can do. If not, we'll probably never be heard of again. You'd better hope I'm right, young feller!"

Ripon's craggy profile with its jutting beard was silhouetted against the moon as he bent over his dials and switches. Twice he checked them, then he lifted one hand.

"Ready—cut rockets!" he snapped. Larry threw over the lever of the engine room indicator, and the roar of the rockets abruptly ceased.

The sudden silence was strangely startling to ears that had become accustomed to that steady pounding astern. Running feet sounded in the passage as Colton came charging into the control room to find what had gone wrong. For a moment Larry had a sensation of falling, and then the Sky Maid danced about like a leaf in a wind. He steadied himself by clinging to a stanchion and anxiously watched Ripon. The gaunt scientist was hunched above his control boards like a gnome, his hands leaping from switch to dial and back again at furious speed.

Then the motion abruptly ceased. The Sky Maid became steady as a rock, with the bright disc of the Moon dead ahead through the forward port. There was a faint singing sound from one of the control boxes, but otherwise everything was so quiet and still that it seemed as though the ship lay motionless in space. Then Larry looked at the speed indicator, and saw the needle moving steadily upward. The Sky Maid was shooting through the heavens at a speed faster than she had ever traveled when she was new and in good condition!

"Gentlemen," said Ripon, solemnly shaking hands with both Larry and Colton, "this is an historic moment! This is a prelude to that day when interplanetary travel becomes as commonplace as are rocket ship flights through the strathosphere nowadays! No longer will the name of Crispin Gillingwater Ripon be a thing of scorn and derision. And just wait till I get a chance to spit in the faces of some of those living fossils back at the National University...."

"If the ship holds together!" Larry said. Ripon sighed.

"You would bring that up, young feller. But maybe our luck will hold good. At least this method of travel is less hard on an old craft than the steady strain of a rocket blast. If the ship holds together, we'll be on the Moon in forty-eight hours!"

Colton was grinning broadly as Ripon left the control room a minute later. The second officer gave the points of his mustache an added twist, and then rubbed his hands together.

"Looks like the old goat really came through with something after all," he said. Larry looked at him grimly. For all Ripon's eccentricities, he was an able man in a great many things. It annoyed Larry to hear somebody like Colton, a confessed thief and an indifferent officer, speak of him in quite that tone of disrespect.

"Don't speak of Doc Ripon in that way when you're with me, Colton!" he snapped. The other man's thin mouth twisted in a sneer.

"Trying to go high hat on me, Gibson? You're no better than I am."

"If we go into that I'm likely to throw you through the bulkhead," Larry said evenly. "So we'll just let it go that I have some gratitude and respect for the man who picked me up out of the gutter—even if you haven't. Now clear out of here till it's time for you to take over the watch."

For two days and nights the Sky Maid moved steadily forward on her way. There was, of course, neither day nor night in the airless emptiness of outer space, but they kept routine hours on board. The whole atmosphere of the ship had brightened and changed since Ripon's utilization of magnetic force had proven practical. Even the slovenly crew went around with their shoulders straighter. The feeling of gloom and failure had been succeeded by one of optimism. Now the talk was of whether or not they would really get the desired radium salts on the Moon, and of what reward they would all receive when they got back to Earth. The watch off duty started a poker game based on notes against the rewards they all expected to get.

Ahead of the Sky Maid, the Moon was now a vast disc that filled half the sky when seen from the control room ports. The bigger peaks and craters were visible to the naked eye now. Back in the after observation room, the dwindling but still vast profile of Earth had taken on a strange and unfamiliar appearance. It was a lonely feeling, to be so far from that friendly planet. Larry wondered how things were now going there, and what had caused the spread of the Gray Death in the first place. Probably a virus brought in on a meteor from some unknown and unhealthy planet.

The hope of mankind resting within her rusty hull, the Sky Maid slogged onward. By Earthly standards she was moving at a terrific speed, but compared with the velocity of heavenly bodies and the vastness of interplanetary space she crawled slowly across a small corner of the solar system.

VI

At last there came the hour when the ship hovered a few hundred miles above the surface of the Moon. Below them was a vast and uneven surface of barren and pitted rock, round craters and jagged peaks stretching to the horizon in all directions. Larry realized now how uneven the surface of the satellite really was, how different from the orange-peel appearance it had when seen through a telescope from Earth. All the crew were at landing stations. Ripon had adjusted his controls to hold the ship steady in space, and now he stepped back.

"There's no use bothering with helicopters," he said. "Since there's no atmosphere here, they'd be useless. That's probably what wrecked the ships before us—you can't make an easy landing with rockets alone, and we have no padded landing platform."

"Can't you lower her down easy with your magnetic control?" Larry asked.

"That's what I hope to do, but we're not experienced and there may be a jolt. Cut off the reserve air tanks, and have all hands put on space suits."

The crew of the Sky Maid looked like a group of fantastic monsters in the metal-cloth space suits with their round helmets of duro-glass. Designed for use by emergency repair crews aboard stratholiners in case of trouble, the space suits would keep a man alive and warm in an airless atmosphere for a great many hours. Small containers of chemicals kept the air purified, and earphones made communication possible.

"Stand by for a landing!" Ripon's voice buzzed in the ear phones as Larry reported all hands ready. "We're going down!"

The Sky Maid went down in a series of jerky drops. With eventual refinement, a ship equipped with the Ripon Magnetic Control would probably be able to come down as gently as a falling leaf, but this first apparatus was crude and experimental. Just at the end one of Ripon's elbows touched the wrong switch. The rocky surface swept up to meet them at high speed. He shouted hoarsely and spun compensating dials, but before he could check the momentum they struck with a heavy crash. The ship heeled over, and all the lights went out. As Larry was flung off his feet he heard a sharp hiss of escaping air.

Momentarily half stunned, Larry lay on the floor in a corner of the control room with the body of another of the crew across his legs. Then he saw a bulky, space-suited figure heave to its feet across the room and heard Ripon's voice in his ear phones.

"Leaping ray-blasts, what a crash! But I seem to be alive and in one piece. How about the rest of you?"

Other men struggled to their feet and answered their names. One had his helmet smashed and was already dead in the airless atmosphere that remained after the air had rushed out through the shattered wall of the control room, but the rest had nothing more serious than a few bruises.

"Well," Colton said. "Here we are! And here we're likely to stay."

"It may not be that serious. The first thing is to take stock of our damage."

The Sky Maid, they found on making a complete survey, was far less seriously damaged than might have been the case. The wall of the control room was punctured by a jagged splinter of rock, but there were only a few other minor leaks. Many of the compartments had retained their air. Once the hole was patched and the other leaks stopped, their reserve tanks still held enough air to let them make a homeward voyage in safety. The network of wires outside the hull would require considerable reconditioning, but none of the internal magnetic equipment was ruined.

"About five days' work!" Ripon summed up. "And it's primarily a job for the engine room force. Gibson, Colton, the two quartermasters and I will go ashore with several days' supply of chemical capsules for the air conditioners on our helmets. Chief Engineer Masterson remains in command of the ship. Get her back in navigating shape as soon as you can, Chief."

Masterson, a grimy and bullet-headed little man with a drooping mustache and something of the look of a mournful Airedale, slapped the side of his duro-glass helmet in a casual salute. Larry knew that the ship was being left in good hands. He had come to have considerable respect for the taciturn engineer. He did not know why Masterson was on board the Sky Maid, very likely because he had been in some trouble similar to Larry's own, but he was certainly an efficient engineer. He wished he felt as sure of the three men who were going ashore with Ripon and himself. Colton he considered thoroughly untrustworthy, and the two quartermasters were a pair of sullen derelicts of the sort that Ripon had picked up off the beach for most of the crew.

"Landing party ashore!" Ripon snapped. "Let's get going! This isn't an ordinary exploring party, and every hour counts."

VII

They stood on a bare expanse of pitted rock. The Sky Maid had crashed on the outer slope of one of the craters, and the ground rose steadily to the jagged rim of the rocky bowl. Other bare peaks were all about them, black teeth against the starry sky. The earth gleamed large and pale above them. The scene was bleak and silent, unutterably desolate and forlorn, and the little group of Earthlings drew closer together. Then Ripon pointed up the ridge.

"We'll go up there and look around. Larry—you carry the radium detector. We mustn't let the exploring fever make us forget our main purpose in having come here."

They toiled slowly up the slope. Walking was difficult. Due to the power of their Earthly muscles on this planet of so much lighter gravity, they had a tendency to bound into the air at each step in spite of the heavy leaden soles on the feet of the space suits. Gradually they learned the necessary muscular control, a sort of sliding step, and then they made better progress.

Ripon was some yards in the lead as they reached the rim of the crater. For a moment the tall scientist was silhouetted against the stars, then he abruptly dropped flat on the rock and motioned back to them to do the same. His voice was a faint whisper in the ear phones.

"Crawl up here slowly, one at a time. Careful!"

Larry was the first to join him, lying flat on the rock at Ripon's side. Together they peered down into the crater. It's flat floor was swarming with some sort of queer animal!

This particular crater was a small one, and the level floor was only some thirty yards below the rim. Larry stared in amazement at the creatures who were coming to sit in long rows around a small mound in the center of the crater. He hardly knew whether to call them men or animals. They had the hard shell and articulated legs of an insect, but their faces had a semi-human appearance in spite of the pair of long antennae that grew out of their foreheads. Their feet made a dry rustling sound as they clambered down over the rock, and they carried metal clubs with spiked heads. Larry saw that they walked with four of their six limbs while the upper pair were equipped with three curved fingers each. On the top of each antenna was a round ball that glowed with a phosphorescent light.

"I thought there wasn't any life on the Moon!" Larry whispered. Ripon grinned at him through the duro-glass of his helmet.

"You thought a lot of things that were wrong, young feller!"

It was a weird scene in the cold pale light of the Earth. Some of the insect men came out of small, dome-shaped mounds that might have been houses. Others came climbing down the far side of the crater. Their glowing antennae bobbed in ceaseless motion, and there was a constant dry clicking. Suddenly Larry realized that the creatures were talking together!

That meant that there was at least some atmosphere on the Moon! Enough to carry sound! Perhaps it had a different composition than the atmosphere of the Earth. It was certainly very thin, for the air in the control room had instantly escaped through the shattered side and the man with the broken helmet had smothered, but there was enough here to sustain these odd creatures. Then Ripon touched him on the arm, and Larry saw something that a group of the insect-men were very ceremoniously carrying to the mound in the center of the crater. It was an ordinary metal chair of a very common and familiar Earthly pattern, the sort of chair to be found in the cabins and mess rooms of any stratholiner.

"One of those old ships must have reached the Moon after all!" Larry whispered. "That chair must be from the wreckage."

"Heaven help the survivors if those many-legged devils got hold of them!"

"They can't be very strong, with the Moon's gravity so slight," Larry said.

"That doesn't prove a thing. They can be light in frame and still very strong. Think how many times his own weight our ant can carry, or how far a flea can jump."

The chair had been placed in the center of the mound, and the Insect-men drew back. Now thin jets of steam or mist began to pour up around the mound, forming a foggy curtain that hid it. The mist only rose a little way, then dropped slowly down again to form an icy film on the cold rocks. The jets ceased, and mist vanished, and Larry Gibson stared in open-mouthed amazement. A dark-haired girl was standing erect on the crest of the mound!

VIII

The girl was white-skinned and lovely, utterly different from the grotesque creatures who surrounded her. Larry was crouching near enough to see her faintly smiling eyes, and the curve of her red lips, and the dark hair that fell to her waist behind. Except for the grotesque metallic helmet on her head, and the fact that she wore no clothing except for a silver loin cloth, she might have been a girl of the sort to be seen along the elevated cross-walks of New York City.

"Do you see her too?" Ripon whispered.

"I do."

"We can't both be that crazy, so she must really be there. But how she breathes in that atmosphere, and how she avoids freezing to death, is more than I can tell you."

The ceremony had evidently some sort of a religious significance, for the Insect-men were clicking rhythmically and were bowing down before the dark-haired girl. Goddess of the Moon! The girl's head-dress was a grotesque representation of an insect, set with jewels. At the tops of the flexible antennae were a pair of giant rubies.

"Boy! Wouldn't I like to get my hands on those stones!" Colton whispered from where he crouched on Ripon's left.

Then Larry noticed something else! A group of perhaps a hundred of the Insect-men were moving swiftly forward between the ranks of their bowing comrades. This group carried shields as well as clubs, and they had the purposeful air of men with a grim and serious errand to perform. The girl was staring over the heads of the crowd with a distant and goddess-like manner, and did not notice the newcomers till they had almost reached her. Then her eyes widened in alarm. She leaped up from her throne and burst into a torrent of shrill clicking.

In an instant the crater was in a turmoil. The group of the heavily armed Insect-men charged straight for the mound in the center. Others flung themselves in their path, rallying to the defense of the Goddess. There was a wild flurry of swinging clubs. The spiked heads clanged on metal shields, or cracked sharply on the brittle brown shells of the Insect-men. The significance of the scene before him was still obscure to Larry, but it was evident that some kind of a revolt had broken out.

The rebels among the Insect-men were outnumbered, but their metal shields gave them a big advantage and they were better organized. Like a spear-point they drove straight through the confused mass of worshipers and surrounded the low knoll in the center. They brushed its defenders aside and swarmed up toward the dark-haired Goddess. Larry had already drawn his ray-gun, but Ripon was the first to leap to his feet.

"Come on, young feller!" he roared. "That girl is the first human thing we've seen on the Moon. We can't let her down. Let's show those many-legged devils how an Earth man can fight!"

Larry and Ripon went down the slope of the crater in a series of bounding leaps. The milling Insect-men opened before them, seeming to welcome these unexpected reinforcements. Some of the rebels had already forced the struggling girl to her knees and were lashing her hands behind her back. A solid rank of them faced about with their round shields locked and a tossing fringe of spiked clubs waving atop the metal wall.

The two Earthlings dove for the shield-wall with their guns flashing. Larry ducked as one of the Insect-men hurled a club which just missed his glass helmet, then pressed the trigger of his ray-gun. The murky beam of the rays stabbed into the shield, melted a hole through it in a fraction of a second, and struck down the man behind. The flashing ray-guns of the two adventurers ripped the shield-wall asunder. A wave of the loyal Insect-men poured in behind them.

Larry shifted his ray-gun to his left hand, and snatched up a fallen club with his right. It was heavier than he had expected, a well balanced and efficient weapon. The hard brown shells of the rebels cracked like china under the smashing blows of his Earthly muscles. Then he bounded up on the mound and struck down the pair of rebels who held the girl. Her wrists were now tied behind her.

Throwing an arm about the girl's shoulders, Larry hastily faced about. Ripon was a few yards away. A ring of his slain lay around him, but his weapons had been knocked from his hands and he was struggling in the grip of a pair of the Insect-men. A third of the creatures was swinging a club to strike a blow at the scientist's glass helmet. Larry instantly fired, the beam of the ray striking the arm that held the club and shearing it clean off at the shoulder. A viscous yellow liquid dripped out, and the creature dropped writhing on the rock while it clicked in pain. Then Colton and the two quartermasters came charging belatedly up, and the fight was over.

The crater was dotted with the still forms of dead Insect-men. Larry noticed that their hard shells gleamed dully in the dim light. The surviving rebels had fled off across the far rim of the crater, and the rest of the throng had gone chasing after them. No one remained in the crater except the strange girl and the party from the Sky Maid.

When Larry had freed the girl's hands, she turned to the five Earth-men and touched her forehead in a gesture of thanks. Then she stepped across to touch some hidden spring on the far side of the mound, and a trap door opened in what had apparently been solid rock. The girl led the way down a narrow flight of stairs, motioning for the last man down to pull the trap closed behind them.

They stood in a small chamber that had walls of roughly smoothed rock. It was evidently the work of men, for tool marks showed here and there. It was lighted by a green globe set in one wall. The globe appeared to be made of some kind of flexible glass, and it glowed with a faint greenish radiance that overcame the darkness enough to give the place a dim and eerie light. At one side of the room was an oval hole like a slanting well cut in the floor. Beside it stood a pile of low, flat carts. They were about two feet wide by four feet long, and they were supported on axles bearing small wheels the diameter of a man's hand.

The girl spoke to Larry twice, first in the clicking talk of the Insect-men and then in some soft and musical tongue that was unlike anything Larry had ever heard. Both times he shook his head. Motioning for them to follow her, she put one of the low carts down near the rim of the hole and sat on it. Then she gave a push with her hands—and vanished.

"Come on," Larry said, raking another of the carts. Colton stared at him.

"Down that hole?" he asked.

"Why not? We've got to find out what all this is about."

A second later Larry Gibson found himself shooting down into the interior of the Moon by means of a sloping tunnel cut in the rock. A series of the greenish globes were set in the ceiling at intervals to give the rocky shaft a dim light. The wheels of the cart ran in two grooves cut in the floor, and he shot swiftly downward with a dull humming sound.

Larry was trying to estimate the speed of his downward movement. It was not so terribly fast, probably not really as fast as the nearness of the walls made it appear while they flashed by on either hand. The slope was a gentle one. Although he had gathered considerable momentum, he had no feeling of the car being out of control.

As the minutes passed, Larry saw something else. The moisture that had been on the outside of his space suit from the air within the Sky Maid had frozen into a white frost a few seconds after the breaking of the control room wall let the outer cold into the ship. Now the frost was melting! They were getting into warmer regions as they went down. Perhaps they were also running into a heavier atmosphere! Larry held his hand up before him, and had a distinct feeling of pressure against it from the rush of air sweeping up to meet him. A minute later he had tested the atmosphere with the portable oxygen-gauge carried in the equipment pocket of any space suit. Then he took off his helmet.

The air was quite warm, and though still very thin it was definitely breathable. Its clean, earthy odor was a pleasant contrast to the chemical product used over and over again inside the helmet of a space suit. A moment later he saw a brighter light ahead and realized that he had come to the bottom of the long shaft.

They were in a square room whose walls were of polished gray stone. As Larry got up from his cart and moved in aside from the landing platform, the girl gave him a friendly smile. She had already taken off her ornately jeweled head-dress and placed it in a metal cabinet fastened to the wall. Completely without embarrassment, she tied a strip of gayly colored silk across her bare breasts. Then she tossed her long hair back from her forehead and bound another strip of silk to keep it in place. "That was quite a ride," Larry said.

He had spoken in English, knowing that the girl would not understand but hoping the sound of the words would convey a generally friendly impression. She stared at him in startled surprise for a second.

"It is much pleasanter than the upward trip," she said at last.

"But—but you spoke in English!" Larry gasped.

"Why shouldn't I? My father is a man from Earth. I am Diana Staunton."

IX

As the others came sliding down into the room, Larry gave each one a formal introduction to Diana. The glow in the girl's eyes showed that she enjoyed their utter amazement. For a girl who had been born on the Moon, even though of Earthly parents, Diana Staunton had a great deal of poise and self-possession.

"I am only a Goddess to the sluggish minds of the Insect-men," she explained in answer to Ripon's question. "To our own people of the Lost Caverns I am simply the daughter of one of the nobles."

"I knew your father thirty years ago," Ripon said.

"He has always told me that other men from Earth would come some day."

"Your father can tell me most of the things I want to know, but I am wondering how you managed to survive up there on the surface where there is little or no air and it is always so cold."

"I could not stay very long." From a fold in her loin cloth the girl drew out a tightly closed glass bottle that held some white tablets. "These contain oxygen mixed with some gases unknown on Earth, the whole very strongly compressed into solid form. Ten minutes after I swallow one, it is safe for me to go out on the surface. The effect lasts for about fifteen minutes."

"Pretty risky if anything delays you," Larry said. Diana shrugged, and her blue eyes grew somber.

"Someone has to do it. The loyalty of the Insect-men is our greatest protection against the evil Lords of Gral-Thala. This is the first time there has ever been anything like a revolt among the Insect-men. I do not know what lies behind it, but it probably means trouble for us of the Lost Caverns."

Colton was the last to come down the rocky shaft. Larry noticed that the second officer was ill at ease, disinclined to meet his eyes, and wondered if Colton was ashamed of either his late entry into the fight or his fear of coming down into the Moon's interior. Hardly likely! From what he knew of Gerald Colton, the man was not likely to be ashamed of anything he did.

They went through a maze of gray walled passages, still trending downward. Once or twice Larry thought he heard stealthy footsteps behind them, but there was no one in sight when he looked back. On several occasions they passed sentries wearing a makeshift armor, who saluted Diana with long bladed swords. Sometimes they spoke to her in English with a peculiar soft accent, sometimes in that strange tongue that Diana had first used.

Larry noticed that these Lunarians looked only slightly different from the peoples of Earth. They had larger eyes, and a greater delicacy of feature. The principle distinguishing feature was their very thin legs. Often they had wide shoulders and deep chests, but since they did not need strong supporting muscles in view of the Moon's slight gravity their legs were thin and narrow.

The sentries stared curiously at the Earth-men in their bulky space suits, but the fact that the newcomers were with Diana Staunton seemed to be sufficient passport. They began to pass a greater number of people in the corridors, and finally they stepped through a heavily guarded gate and came to a vast cavern.

The place was huge, extending for a good mile ahead of them and with a lofty roof lost in the shadows overhead. Some of the gigantic columns that supported the roof were made of heavy stone blocks. Others were natural rock that had been smoothed and polished. All over the floor of the cavern were narrow streets, and small cottages built of some queer composition that came in a rainbow of different colors, and little patches of some sort of green grass. A golden and rather misty light pervaded the whole cavern. Square shafts of a brighter radiance darted down from above at irregular intervals, and wherever one of them struck the floor of the cavern there was a small patch of cultivated ground with long-leafed plants.

"Agriculture by chemical control!" Ripon whispered in Larry's ear. Diana glanced back at them over her shoulder.

"This is Chotan, largest of the Lost Caverns," she said. "The Council of Elders is now in session, and it will be best that we go direct to them."

"Why do you call these the Lost Caverns?" Larry asked.

"Because we who live here are outlaws, and the location of these vast caves is not known to the Lords of Gral-Thala who rule the other side of the Moon."

"Apparently not all the inhabitants of the Moon are so friendly," Ripon said.

"If you came into the hands of the Lords of Gral-Thala," she said grimly, "they would tear the skin from your bodies and use it to lace their scented golden boots!"

Large-eyed Lunarians stared curiously at the Earth-men as they hurried through the streets of the underground village. Diana led them direct to a broad-beamed, red-roofed building that stood by itself in the center of the cavern. A dozen elderly men sat behind a long table of carved wood that was black and cracked with age. It was, Larry realized, the first wooden thing he had seen since he landed on the Moon. At either side of the chamber stood a squad of armored warriors.

Larry was staring at a curious device that was carved in the center of the table, and carried on a banner hung above the heads of the council, and inlaid in a white metal on the bluish steel shields of the guards. And then he recognized it! It was the crescent Earth, the profile of the mother planet as seen from the Moon when the Americas were still in sunlight and the shadows of night were creeping across the Atlantic. The sight of it made him home-sick. The crescent moon had been a religious symbol to many of the ancient races of Earth, and it was fitting that the crescent earth should hold a similar place on this isolated satellite.

It seemed to Larry that Diana was a trifle nervous over something. She had entered the council chamber with an air of confidence, lifting one arm in a stately gesture of greeting and asking the Elders to accept the men from Earth as friends and guests, but he sensed a degree of uncertainty behind her manner. In hasty phrases she told the council of the revolt of part of the Insect-men, and of the timely arrival of the strangers from the mother planet.

"And so I request that you accept these men into the Brotherhood of the Caverns!" she finished. The graybeards behind the long table nodded gravely, but before they could speak another voice rang but in a sharp challenge.

"And I, O Elders of Chotan, demand that these interlopers be put to death in accordance with the ancient law of the Caverns concerning unwanted strangers!"

X

The speaker was a fair-haired young man in a green cloak. He looked more like an Earthling than a Lunarian, with his sturdy legs and small eyes. He pointed an accusing finger straight at Larry in a dramatic gesture, and Diana wheeled to face him with anger in her voice.

"You talk very loudly of the ancient laws, Xylon, for a newcomer only recently taken into the Brotherhood because you fled as an outlaw from the Lords of Gral-Thala!"

"I did not make the laws!" Xylon retorted.

"The death penalty for strangers has not been strictly enforced for many years—or you would not now be alive! It is up to the decision of the Elders!"

The council chamber was in an uproar, with shouted phrases flung back and forth. Larry laid a hand on the butt of his ray-gun. A keen-eyed officer of the guards caught the gesture, and instantly Larry found a pair of rifles directed at his chest. At least, they looked like some sort of compressed air rifles. They had fiber stocks, and long barrels, and a cylindrical magazine beneath the barrel. Then a deep voice dominated the tumult as a red-haired man in full armor forced his way through to the forefront of the crowd.

"The girl is right, O Elders and members of the Brotherhood!" he boomed. "Xylon talks like a fool. I, Pyatt of Kagan, urge that the strangers from Earth be accepted. Let Xylon remain among us for a little while longer before he attempts to dominate our councils!"

Larry could sense the swing of sentiment in their favor, could feel the lessening of the tension. The man called Xylon shrugged and turned away. Then the council took a formal vote, waving the ancient death penalty and allowing the strangers the freedom of the Caverns. One of the Elders near the end of the table rose to his feet. He wore the typical black robes of the Council, but as Larry looked closely at the man's lined face he saw the resemblance to Diana and knew that he was looking at Lester Staunton.

"Since these men are from what was once my own land," Staunton said, "I will make them comfortable in my house for the duration of their stay here."

As the crowd began to stream out of the council-chamber, the red-headed man pushed his way through to Ripon and Larry. He was unusually burly and big-thewed for a Lunarian, and though his face was marred by a pair of old scars he had a wide and cheerful smile.

"Welcome to the Cavern of Chotan!" he boomed. "I am Pyatt of Kagan, military commander of all the armed forces of the Caverns. Later I will want to talk to you about that revolt of the Insect-men, which is something that has not happened before. Also, we will drink a goblet of wine together."

"Then you have wines on the Moon?" Ripon asked, visibly brightening.

"Aye, wines of many sorts. Though my own taste runs more to the strong-waters that fire the blood and set a man's head to spinning."

"I can see that you and I have a lot in common!" Ripon grinned.

Just before they left, Xylon came up to shake hands with Larry.

"No hard feelings, Earthling!" he said. "It is just that the safety and liberties of the Caverns are very precious to one like myself, who has so recently become an outlaw, and I did not think that we should take any chances."

"That's all right," Larry said shortly. Now that he saw Xylon at really close range, he realized that the man was older than he had thought. His appearance of youth vanished when you saw the many fine wrinkles in his face and the weariness around his eyes. He had a dissolute appearance. Xylon might be sincere in his bid for friendship, but Larry felt that there was something serpentine and evil about the man.

With Diana and her father and a few others, they walked along one of the many winding paths of Chotan. Larry noticed that the chemically grown plants had no scent at all. The motionless, warm air was suffused with a misty and golden light. Small, neat houses built in various bright colors stood amid their plots of grass. It was a strange scene to Earthly eyes, that cavern far below the Moon's chill surface, but it was a pleasant spot in its way.

The women they passed along the walks were dressed like Diana, in a gayly colored loin-cloth with a narrow band across the breasts. Most of the men wore a loose, colored cloak in addition to the single garment. Only a few were armed.

Larry had taken off the right mitten of his space suit to shake hands with Pyatt and Xylon in the council chamber. Several times he had started to replace the mitten, but something had always distracted him and he was still carrying it in his left hand. Now, as he happened to give the mitten a shake, a small insect of a blood-red color fell out and landed on the walk. It looked something like a miniature scorpion. Larry had only a hasty glimpse before Pyatt of Kagan leaped forward and crushed the crawling thing with the heavy sole of his sandal.

"That was a spanto!" he said. "Their bite means death within ten seconds. I wonder how it came to be in your glove!"

"I wonder myself!" Larry said grimly, looking across the field at the green-cloaked figure of Xylon, who had turned off on another of the branching walks. It would not have been hard for Xylon to have dropped the insect in his glove! As if in answer to his thought, Diana spoke quietly:

"I do not trust Xylon any farther than I can see him, friend Larry! There is something unclean in his eyes when he looks at me."

"If he looks at you too much while I'm here I'll break his jaw!" Larry said. The girl looked up at him with a sudden smile that was also a challenge.

"I begin to understand why my father has always said that I would like the men from Earth better than the Lunarians!"

XI

They sat in Professor Staunton's laboratory, a square chamber where Earthly equipment taken from the wreck of his space-ship was mingled with typically Lunarian furniture and equipment. The walls were light blue, of that polished composition resembling bakelite that was used for building in the Caverns. The walls were about ten feet high, and they ended in an ornamental cornice without any ceiling or roof at all. Overhead there was a glow of misty light, and far above the rocky top of the cavern.

"Why should we need roofs?" Diana said in reply to Larry's surprised comment. "Here in these Caverns there is neither rain nor snow nor wind, nor any change in temperature at all. The walls give privacy, and there is no need for anything else."

Ripon was bending over a table on which Staunton had spread a large map of the Moon. The cavern of Chotan was indicated by a red dot, and Larry saw that there were a dozen others scattered around within a radius of a few hundred miles.

"Our space-cruiser was wrecked near one of the entrances to this cavern when we landed here thirty years ago," Staunton said. "As you have guessed, it was the inability to land safely with rockets, in a practically airless atmosphere where helicopters were useless, that smashed us. As you did, we had fortunately put on space suits before trying to land. Our ship was too badly wrecked for any chance of return."

"But how have you succeeded in getting all these people to learn English?" Ripon asked.

"They knew that language before I came! But it is best that I give you a hasty outline of Lunarian history. The simple-minded but husky Insect-men were the aboriginal inhabitants of the Moon. Long æons ago, while most of the people of Earth were living crudely in caves and using chipped stones for tools and weapons, an isolated people developed a high civilization in what I have roughly identified as the region of the Himalayas. A series of great earthquakes destroyed their civilization, but a large number of them escaped and came to the Moon in some kind of a space-ship. Here they found, in those days, a small planetary body that had a thin but breathable air. They founded a civilization on the other side of the Moon where it is always sunny, and called it Gral-Thala. Those were pleasant days, if the old legends are to be believed, the Golden Age of Lunarian civilization."

For a moment Staunton paused. All those in the room, including the Lunarians who had been familiar with this tale since childhood, hung intently on his words. The broad face of Pyatt of Kagan was somber and moody as he sat bent forward with the scabbard of his sword resting across his armored knees.

"As the centuries passed, the atmosphere continued to thin," Staunton went on, "so the Ancients took care to preserve what was left. Gral-Thala is in the fertile part of the Moon, and lies in a vast valley completely surrounded by a lofty mountain range. By means of the superior engineering knowledge of the Ancients, they built a lofty wall or barrier along the crest of the range so that its top is miles above the level of the valley floor. They then sucked all the air within the Great Barrier. Gral-Thala itself thus lies in a great pool of air surrounded by the ranges and the barrier. On the rest of the Moon, as here, air only remains in deep crevices and caverns like this."

"But these caves were a great labor in themselves..." Ripon began.

"Originally these caverns were built as outposts of Gral-Thala, built here because of their nearness to valuable mineral deposits. People came out from the sunlit cities within the Great Barrier to put in a tour of duty in the caverns. Again life on the Moon had reached a pleasant equilibrium. And then came the great disaster! Some two centuries ago a group of several hundred outlaws fleeing from Earth came here in a big space-ship."

"The Mercury!" Larry exclaimed.

"Exactly. Those men and women who came from Earth were few in comparison to the population of the Moon, but they were cruel and ruthless and they had weapons of war. The peaceful Lunarians had at that time no weapons at all, for they had no need for them. Within a few months the invaders made themselves Lords of all Gral-Thala! That was when English, the language of the invaders, came to be spoken by everybody on the Moon as well as the softer tongue of the Lunarians themselves. A few of the hardier folk in Gral-Thala fled to these caverns as outlaws. The invaders made only half-hearted attempts to come after them, and with the passing of the years the location of these refuges has been forgotten by people living within the Great Barrier. That is why these places are now known as the Lost Caverns."

"And the invaders still rule?"

"Their descendants are still Lords of Gral-Thala. Cruel and ruthless they always were, decadent and dissolute they have now become as well, but they still rule the sunny valley that was the pride of the ancient Lunarians. They hold the power, and they are aided by a few groups among the people of Gral-Thala who have sacrificed their honor to fawn upon their masters. Our spies, who penetrate beyond the barrier, tell us that before long there will come a day when the people are ready for revolt—but the time is not yet."

"But surely!" said Pyatt of Kagan, his deep voice breaking in on the low monotone in which Staunton had spoken, "surely our visitors will return to Earth, now that interplanetary travel has become possible, and bring us the warriors and equipment to storm the high palaces of the tyrants of Gral-Thala!"

"I should think that the Confederation of Earth would send help, particularly since the original invaders were outlaws from that planet," Staunton said. "How about it, friend Ripon? How are conditions back on Earth at this time?"

Ripon straightened up and shook his shoulders. The glow in his eyes faded away, and the lines in his face deepened once more.