Brigands of the Moon Part 32

Once inside the s.h.i.+p, our senses steadied. With the rotating, reeling heavens shut out, there were only the shouts and tramping steps of the panic-stricken crew to mark that there was anything amiss. That, and a pseudo sensation of lurching caused by the pulsing of gravity--a pull when the Moon was beneath our hull to combine its forces with our magnetizers; a lightening, when it was overhead. A throbbing, pendulum lurch!

We ran down to the corridor incline. A white-faced member of the crew came running up.

"What's happened, Haljan? What's happened?"

"We're falling!" I gripped him. "Get below. Come with us."

But he jerked away from me. "Falling?"

A steward came running. "Falling? My G.o.d!"

Snap swung at them. "Get ahead of us! The manual controls--our only chance--we need all you men at the compressor pumps!"

But it was instinct to try and get on deck, as though here below we were rats caught in a trap. The men tore away from us and ran. Their shouts of panic resounded through the dim, blue lit corridors.

Coniston came lurching from the control room. "I say--falling! Haljan, my G.o.d, look!"

Hahn was sprawled at the gravity plate switchboard. Sprawled, head down. Dead. Killed? Or a suicide?

I bent over him. His hands gripped the main switch. He had ripped it loose. And his left hand had reached and broken the fragile line of tubes that intensified the current of the pneumatic plate-s.h.i.+fters. A suicide? With his last frenzy, determined to kill us all? Why?

Then I saw that Hahn had been killed! Not a suicide! In his hand he gripped a small segment of black fabric, a piece torn from an invisible cloak!

Snap was rigging the hand compressors. If he could get the pressure back in the tanks....

I swung on Coniston. "You armed?"

"Yes." He was white-faced and confused, but not in a panic. He showed me his heat ray cylinder. "What do you want me to do?"

"Round up the crew. Get all you can. Bring them here to man the pumps."

He dashed away. Snap called after him, "Kill them if they argue!"

Miko's voice sounded from the turret call grid: "Falling! Haljan, you can see it now! Check us!"

Desperate moments. Or was it an hour? Coniston brought the men. He stood over them with menacing weapon.

We had all the pumps going. The pressure rose a little in the tanks.

Enough to s.h.i.+ft a bow plate. I tried it. The plate slowly clicked into a new combination. A gravity repulsion just in the bow-tip.

I signaled Miko. "Have we stopped swinging?"

"No. But slower."

I could feel it, that lurch of the gravity. But not steady now. A limp. The tendency of our bow was to stay up.

"More pressure, Snap."

One of the crew rebelled, tried to bolt from the room.

Coniston shot him down.

I s.h.i.+fted another bow plate. Then two in the stern. The stern plates seemed to move more readily than the others.

"Run all the stern plates," Snap advised.

I tried it. The lurching stopped. Miko called, "We're bow down.

Falling!"

But not falling free. The Moon gravity pull on us was more than half neutralized.

"I'll go up, Snap, and try the engines. You don't mind staying down here? Executing my signals?"

"You idiot!" He gripped my shoulders. His eyes were gleaming, his face haggard, but his pale lips twitched with a smile.

"Maybe it's good-bye, Gregg. We'll fall--fighting."

"Yes. Fighting. Coniston, you keep the pressure up."

With the broken tubes it took nearly all the pressure to maintain the few plates I had s.h.i.+fted. One slipped back to neutral. Then the pumps gained on it, and it s.h.i.+fted again.

I dashed up to the deck. Oh, the Moon was so close now! So horribly close! The deck shadows were still. Through the forward bow windows the Moon surface glared up at us.

Those last horrible minutes were a blur. And there was always Anita's face. She left Miko. Faced with death, he sat clinging. Moa too, sat apart--staring.

And Anita crept to me. "Gregg, dear one. The end...."

I tried the electronic engines from the stern, setting them in reverse. The streams of their light glowed from the stern, forward along our hull, and flared down from our bow toward the Lunar surface.

But no atmosphere was here to give resistance. Perhaps the electronic streams checked our fall a little. The pumps gave us pressure just in the last minutes, to slide a few of the hull plates. But our bow stayed down. We slid, like a spent rocket falling.

I recall the horror of that expanding Lunar surface. The maw of Archimedes yawning. A blob. Widening to a great pit. Then I saw it was to one side, rus.h.i.+ng upward.

"Gregg, dear one--good-bye."

Her gentle arms about me. The end of everything for us. I recall murmuring, "Not falling free, Anita. Some hull plates are set."

My dials showed another plate s.h.i.+fting, checking us a little further.

Good old Snap!

I calculated the next best plate to s.h.i.+ft. I tried it. Slid it over.

Then everything faded but the feeling of Anita's arms around me.

"Gregg, dear one--"

The end of everything for us....

There was an up-rush of gray-black rock.