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Brigands of the Moon

<h2>XIX</h2> "Try again. By the infernal, Snap Dean, if you do anything to balk us, you die!" Miko scanned the apparatus with keen eyes. How much technical knowledge of signaling instruments did this brigand leader have? I was tense and cold with apprehension as I sat in a corner of the radio room, watching Snap. Could Miko be fooled? Snap, I knew, was trying to fool him. The Moon spread close beneath us. My log-chart, computed up to thirty minutes past, showed us barely some thirty thousand miles over the Moon's surface. A silver quadrant. The sunset caught the Lunar mountains, flung slanting shadows over the Lunar plains. All the disc was plainly visible. The mellow Earthlight glowed serene and pale to illumine the Lunar night. The Planetara was bathed in silver. A brilliant silver glare swept the forward deck, clean white and splashed with black shadows. We had partly circled the Moon so as now to approach it from the Earthward side. Miko for a time had been at my side in the turret. I had not seen Coniston or Hahn of recent hours. I had slept, awakened refreshed, and had a meal. Coniston and Hahn remained below, one or other of them always with the crew to execute my sirened orders. Then Coniston came to take my place in the turret, and I went with Miko to the radio room. "You are skillful, Haljan." A measure of grim approval was in his voice. "You evidently have no wish to try and fool me in this navigation." I had not, indeed. It is delicate work at best, coping with the intricacies of celestial mechanics upon a semicircular trajectory with retarding velocity, and with a makeshift crew we could easily have come upon real difficulty. We hung at last, hull down, facing the Earthward hemisphere of the Lunar disc. The giant ball of the Earth lay behind and above us—the Sun over our stern quarter. With forward velocity almost checked, we poised, and Snap began his signals to the unsuspecting Grantline. My work momentarily was over. I sat watching the radio room. Moa was here, close beside me. I felt always her watchful gaze, so that even the play of my emotions needed reining. Miko worked with Snap. Anita too was here. To Miko and Moa it was the somber, taciturn George Prince, shrouded always in his black mourning cloak, disinclined to talk; sitting alone, brooding and sullen. This is how they thought of Anita. Miko repeated: "By the infernal, if you try to fool me, Snap Dean!" The small metal room, with its grid floor and low arched ceiling, glared with moonlight through its window. The moving figures of Snap and Miko were aped by the grotesque, misshapen shadows of them on the walls. Miko gigantic—a great menacing ogre. Snap small and alert—a trim, pale figure in his tight-fitting white trousers, broad-flowing belt, and white shirt open at the throat. His face was pale and drawn from lack of sleep and the torture to which Miko had subjected him earlier on the voyage. But he grinned at the brigand's words, and pushed his straggling hair closer under the red eyeshade. The room over long periods was deadly silent, with Miko and Snap bending watchfully at the crowded banks of instruments. A silence in which my own pounding heart seemed to echo. I did not dare look at Anita, nor she at me. Snap was trying to signal Earth, not the Moon! His main grids were set in the reverse. The infra-red waves, flung from the bow window, were of a frequency which Snap and I believed that Grantline could not pick up. And over against the wall, close beside me and seemingly ignored by Snap, there was a tiny ultra-violet sender. Its faint hum and the quivering of its mirrors had so far passed unnoticed. Would some Earth station pick it up? I prayed so. There was a thumbnail mirror here which would bring an answer. Would some Earth telescope be able to see us? I doubted it. The pinpoint of the Planetara's infinitesimal bulk would be beyond vision. Long silences, broken only by the faint hiss and murmur of Snap's instruments. "Shall I try the graphs, Miko?" "Yes." I helped him with the spectro. At every level the plates showed us nothing save the scarred and pitted Moon surface. We worked for an hour. There was nothing. Bleak cold night on the Moon here beneath us. A touch of fading sunlight upon the Apennines. Up near the South Pole, Tycho with its radiating open rills stood like a grim dark maw. Miko bent over a plate. "Something here? Is there?" An abnormality upon the frowning ragged cliffs of Tycho? We thought so. But then it seemed not. Another hour. No signal came from Earth. If Snap's calls were getting through we had no evidence of it. Abruptly Miko strode at me from across the room. I went cold and tense; Moa shifted, alert to my every movement. But Miko was not interested in me. A sweep of his clenched fist knocked the ultra-violet sender and its coils and mirrors in a tinkling crash to the grid at my feet. "We don't need that, whatever it is!" He rubbed his knuckles where the violet waves had tinged them, and turned grimly back to Snap. "Where are your ray mirrors? If the treasure lies exposed—" This Martian's knowledge was far greater than we believed. He grinned sardonically at Anita. "If our treasure is here on this hemisphere, Prince, we should pick up its rays. Don't you think so? Or is Grantline too cautious to leave it exposed?" Anita spoke in a careful, throaty drawl. "The rays came through enough when we passed here on the way out." "You should know," grinned Miko. "An expert eavesdropper, Prince, I will say that for you.... Come, Dean, try something else. By God, if Grantline does not signal us, I will be likely to blame you—my patience is shortening. Shall we go closer, Haljan?" "I don't think it would help," I said. He nodded. "Perhaps not. Are we checked?" "Yes." We were poised very nearly motionless. "If you wish an advance, I can ring it. But we need a surface destination now." "True, Haljan." He stood thinking. "Would a zed-ray penetrate those crater cliffs? Tycho, for instance, at this angle?" "It might," Snap agreed. "You think he may be on the northern inner Tycho?" "He may be anywhere," said Miko shortly. "If you think that," Snap persisted, "suppose we swing the Planetara over the South Pole. Tycho, viewed from there—" "And take another quarter day of time?" Miko sneered. "Flash on your zed-ray; help him hook it up, Haljan." I moved to the lens box of the spectroheliograph. It seemed that Snap was very strangely reluctant. Was it because he knew that the Grantline camp lay concealed on the north inner wall of Tycho's giant ring? I thought so. But Snap flashed a queer look at Anita. She did not see it, but I did. And I could not understand it. My accursed, witless incapacity! If only I had taken warning! "Here," commanded Miko. "A score of 'graphs with the zed-ray. I tell you I will comb this surface if we have to stay here until our ship comes from Ferrok-Shahn to join us!" The Martian brigands were coming. Miko's signals had been answered. In ten days the other brigand ship, adequately manned and armed, would be here. Snap helped me connect the zed-ray. He did not dare even to whisper to me, with Moa hovering always so close. And for all Miko's sardonic smiling, we knew that he would tolerate nothing from us now. He was fully armed and so was Moa. I recall that several times Snap endeavored to touch me significantly. Oh, if only I had taken warning! We finished our connecting. The dull gray point of zed-ray gleamed through the prisms to mingle with the moonlight entering the main lens. I stood with the shutter trip. "The same interval, Snap?" "Yes." Beside me, I was aware of a faint reflection of the zed-ray—a gray cathedral shaft crossing the room and falling upon the opposite wall. An unreality there, as the zed-ray faintly strove to penetrate the metal room side. I said, "Shall I make the exposure?" Snap nodded. But that 'graph was never made. An exclamation from Moa made us all turn. The gamma mirrors were quivering! Grantline had picked our signals! With what was undoubtedly an intensified receiving equipment which Snap had not thought Grantline able to use, he had caught our faint zed-rays, which Snap was sending only to deceive Miko. And Grantline had recognized the Planetara, and had released his occulting screens surrounding the ore. And upon their heels came Grantline's message. Not in the secret system he had arranged with Snap, but unsuspectingly in open code. I could read the swinging mirror, and so could Miko. And Miko decoded it triumphantly aloud: "Surprised but pleased your return. Approach Mid-Northern Hemisphere region of Archimedes, forty thousand off nearest Apennine range." The message broke off. But even its importance was overshadowed. Miko stood in the center of the radio room, triumphantly reading the little indicator. Its beam swung on the scale, which chanced to be almost directly over Anita's head. I saw Miko's expression change.... A look of surprise, amazement, came over him. "Why—" He gasped. He stood staring. Almost stupidly staring, for an instant. And as I regarded him with fascinated horror, there came upon his heavy gray face a look of dawning comprehension. And I heard Snap's startled intake of breath. He moved to the spectro, where the zed-ray connections were still humming. But, with a leap, Miko flung him away. "Off with you! Moa, watch him! Haljan, don't move!" Again Miko stood staring. I saw now that he was staring at Anita! "Why, George Prince! How strange you look!" Anita did not move. She was stricken with horror; she shrank back against the wall, huddled in her cloak. Miko's sardonic voice came again: "How strange you look, Prince!" He took a step forward. He was grim and calm. Horribly calm. Deliberate. Gloating like a great gray monster in human form toying with a fascinated, imprisoned bird. "Move just a little, Prince. Let the zed-ray light fall more fully." Anita's head was bare. That pale, Hamlet-like face. Dear God, the zed-ray light lay gray and penetrating upon it! Miko took another step. Peering. Grinning. "How amazing, George Prince! Why, I can hardly believe it!" Moa was armed with an electronic cylinder now. For all her amazement—what turgid emotions sweeping her I can only guess—she never took her eyes from Snap and me. "Back! Don't move either of you!" she hissed at us. Then Miko leaped at Anita like a giant gray leopard pouncing. "Away with that cloak, Prince!" I stood cold and numbed. And realization came at last. The faint zed-light had fallen by chance upon Anita's face. Penetrating the flesh; exposed, faintly glowing, the bone line of her jaw. Unmasked the art of Glutz. Miko seized her wrists, drew her forward, beyond the shaft of zed-light, into the brilliant light of the Moon. And ripped her cloak from her. The gentle curves of her woman's figure were so unmistakable! And as Miko gazed at them, all his calm triumph swept away. "Why, Anita!" I heard Moa mutter, "So that is it?" A venomous flashing look—a shaft from me to Anita and back again. "So that is it?" "Why, Anita!" Miko's great arms gathered her up as though she were a child. "So I have you back! From the dead, delivered back to me!" "Gregg!" Snap's warning, and his grip on my shoulders brought me a measure of sanity. I had tensed to spring. I stood quivering, and Moa thrust her weapon against my face. The grids were swaying again with a message from Grantline. But it was ignored. In the glare of moonlight by the forward window, Miko held Anita, his great hands pawing her with triumphant possessive caresses. "So, little Anita, you are given back to me!" <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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