Brigands of the Moon Part 34

He was down to her. "We're all right, Venza. It's over. We must get out of the s.h.i.+p. The air is escaping."

We gathered in the oval doorway. We fought the confusion of panic.

"The exit port is this way."

Or was it? I answered Snap, "Yes, I think so."

The s.h.i.+p suddenly seemed a stranger to me. So cold. So vibrationless.

Broken lights. These slanting wrecked corridors. With the ventilating fans stilled, the air was turning fetid. Chilling. And thinning, with escaping pressure, rarefying so that I could feel the grasp of it in my lungs and the pin-p.r.i.c.ks in my cheeks.

We started off. Four of us, still alive in this silent s.h.i.+p of death.

My blurred thoughts tried to cope with it all. Venza here. I remembered how she had bade me create a diversion when the women pa.s.sengers were landing on the asteroid. She had carried out her purpose! In the confusion she had not gone ash.o.r.e. A stowaway here.

She had secured the cloak. Prowling, to try and help us, she had come upon Hahn. Had seized his ray cylinder and struck him down, and been herself knocked unconscious by his dying lunge, which also had broken the tubes and wrecked the _Planetara_. And Venza, unconscious, had been lying here with the mechanism of her cloak still operating, so that we did not see her when we came and found why Hahn did not answer my signals.

"It's here, Gregg."

Snap and I lifted the pile of Moon equipment to which she referred.

We located four suits and helmets and the mechanisms to operate them.

"More are in the chart room," Anita said.

But we needed no others. I robed Anita and showed her the mechanisms.

Snap was helping Venza. We were all stiff from the cold; but within the suits and their pulsing currents, the blessed warmth came again.

The helmets had ports through which food and drink could be taken. I stood with my helmet ready. Anita, Venza and Snap were bloated and grotesque beside me. We had found food and water here, a.s.sembled in portable cases which the brigands had prepared. Snap lifted them, and signaled to me he was ready.

My helmet shut out all sounds save my own breathing, my pounding heart, and the murmur of the mechanism. The warmth and pure air were good.

We reached the hull port locks. They operated! We went through in the light of the headlamps over our foreheads.

I closed the locks after us: an instinct to keep the air in the s.h.i.+p for the other trapped humans lying in there.

We slid down the sloping side of the _Planetara_. We were unweighted, irrationally agile with this slight gravity. I fell a dozen feet and landed with barely a jar.

We were out on the Lunar surface. A great sloping ramp of crags stretched down before us. Gray-black rock tinged with Earthlight. The Earth hung amid the stars in the blackness overhead like a huge section of a glowing yellow ball.

This grim, desolate, silent landscape! Beyond the ramp, fifty feet below us, a tumbled naked plain stretched away into blurred distance.

But I could see mountains off there. Behind us, the towering, frowning rampart-wall of Archimedes loomed against the sky.

I had turned to look back at the _Planetara_. She lay broken, wedged between spires of upstanding rock. A few of her lights still gleamed.

The end of the _Planetara_!

The three grotesque figures of Anita, Venza and Snap had started off.

Hunchback figures with the tanks mounted on their shoulders. I bounded and caught them. I touched Snap. We made audiphone contact.

"Which way do you think?" I demanded.

"I think this way, down the ramp. Away from Archimedes, toward the mountains. It shouldn't be too far."

"You run with Venza. I'll hold Anita."

He nodded. "But we must keep together, Gregg."

We could soon run freely. Down the ramp, out over the tumbled plain.

Bounding, grotesque, leaping strides. The girls were more agile, more skillful. They were soon leading us. The Earth shadows of their figures leaped beside them. The _Planetara_ faded into the distance behind us. Archimedes stood back there. Ahead, the mountains came closer.

An hour perhaps. I lost track of time. Occasionally we stopped to rest. Were we going toward the Grantline camp? Would they see our tiny waving headlights?

Another interval. Then far ahead of us on the ragged plain, lights showed! Moving, tiny spots of light! Headlights on helmeted figures!

We ran, monstrously leaping. A group of figures were off there.

Grantline's party? Snap gripped me.

"Grantline! We're safe, Gregg! Safe!"

He took his bulb light from his helmet; we stood in a group while he waved it. A semaph.o.r.e signal.

"_Grantline?_"

And the answer came, "_Yes. You, Dean?_"

Their personal code. No doubt of this--it was Grantline, who had seen the _Planetara_ fall and had come to help us.

I stood then with my hand holding Anita. And I whispered, "It's Grantline! We're safe, Anita, my darling!"

Death had been so close! Those horrible last minutes on the _Planetara_ had shocked us, marked us. We stood trembling. And Grantline and his men came bounding up, weird, inflated figures.

A helmeted figure touched me. I saw through the helmetpane the visage of a stern-faced, square-jawed young man.

"Grantline? Johnny Grantline?"

"Yes," said his voice at my ear-grid. "I'm Grantline. You're Haljan?

Gregg Haljan?"

They crowded around us. Gripped us, to hear our explanations.

Brigands! It was amazing to Johnny Grantline. But the menace was over now, over as soon as Grantline realized its existence.

We stood for a brief time discussing it. Then I drew apart, leaving Snap with Grantline. And Anita joined me. I held her arm so that we had audiphone contact.

"Anita, mine."

"Gregg--dear one!"

Murmured nothings which mean so much to lovers!

As we stood in the fantastic gloom of Lunar desolation, with the blessed Earthlight on us, I sent up a prayer of thankfulness. Not that the enormous treasure was saved. Not that the attack upon Grantline had been averted. But only that Anita was given back to me. In moments of greatest emotion the human mind individualizes. To me, there was only Anita.