The Finding of Haldgren Read online

  CHAPTER IV

  _Life Monstrous and Horrible_

  "It looks," said Spud O'Malley, "as if some bad little spalpeen of theskies had thrown pebbles at it when 'twas soft. It's fair pockmarkedwith places where the stones have hit."

  He was staring through a forward lookout, where the whole sky seemedfilled with a tremendous disk. One quarter was brilliantly alight; itformed a fat crescent within whose arms the rest of the globe was heldin fainter glowing. By comparison, this greater portion was dark, thoughilluminated by earthlight far brighter than any moonlight on Earth.

  But light or dark, the surface showed nothing but an appallingdesolation where the rocky expanse had been still further torn anddisrupted--pockmarked, as O'Malley had said, with great rings that hadbeen the walls of tremendous volcanoes.

  Chet was consulting a map where a similar area of circular markings hadbeen named by scientists of an earlier day.

  "Hercules," he mused, and stared out at the great circle of the moon."The crater of Hercules! Yes, that must be it. That dark area off to oneside is the Lake of Dreams; below it is the Lake of Death. Atlas!Hercules! Suffering cats, what volcanoes they must have been!"

  "I don't like your names," objected O'Malley. "Lake of Death! That'snot so good. And I don't see any lake, and the whole Moon is wrong sideup, according to your map."

  Chet reached for the ball-control, moved it, and swung their ship in aslow, rotary motion. The result was an apparent revolution of the Moon.

  "There, it's right side up," Chet laughed; "that is, if you can tell mewhat direction is 'up' out here in space. And, as for the names, don'tlet them disturb you; they don't mean anything. Some old-timer with alittle three-inch telescope probably named them. The darker areas lookedlike seas to them. Astronomers have known better for a long time; andyou and I--we're darned sure of it now."

  * * * * *

  The great sea of shadow, a darker area within the shaded portion whoseonly light came from the Earth, was plainly a vast expanse of blackenedrock. An immense depression, like the bottom of some earlier sea, it washeaved into corrugations that Chet knew would be mountain-high at closerange. Marked with the orifices of what once had been volcanoes, thefloor of that Lake of Death was hundreds of miles in extent.

  But as for seas and lakes, there was no sign of water in the whole,vast, desolate globe. An unlikely place, Chet admitted, for thebeginning of their search, and yet--those flashes of light!--the S O S!They had been real!

  The bow blast had been roaring for over an hour; their strongdeceleration made the forward part of the ship seem "down." And down itwas, too, by reason of the pull of the great globe they wereapproaching. But the roaring exhaust up ahead was checking their speed;Chet measured and timed the apparent growth of the Moon-disk and noddedhis satisfaction at their reduced speed.

  "This will stop us," he said. "I didn't know but we would have to swingoff, shoot past, and return under control. But we're all right, andthere is the place we are looking for--the big ring of Hercules, thelevel floor of rock inside it. And over at one side the smallercrater--"

  * * * * *

  He was gazing entranced at the mammoth circle that had been a volcano'sthroat--the very one he had seen flashed on the screen. He moved thecontrol to open a side exhaust and change their direction of fall. Hewas still staring, with emotions too overwhelming for words, and SpudO'Malley was silent beside him, as the great ring spread out and becamean up-thrust circle of torn, jagged mountains some thirty or more milesacross and directly below.

  They fell softly into that circle. Its mountainous sides were high; theyblocked off the view of the enormous terraces beyond that had been thecrater's sloping sides.

  From the direction that had suddenly become "east," the rising sun'sstrong light struck in a slant to make the bar rocks seem incandescent.On one side the giant rim of the encircling mountains was black withshadow. The shadow reached out across the vast, rocky floor almost tothe foot of the opposite wall many miles away. It enveloped theirfalling ship like a cushioning, ethereal sea: velvety, softly black,almost palpable.

  It was wrapping them about in the darkness of night as Chet's slenderhand touched so delicately upon the ball-control--checked them, easedoff, drew back again until the thundering exhausts echoed softly wheretheir ship hung suspended a hundred feet above a rocky floor. Theshrouding darkness erased the harsh contours of mountain and plain; itseemed shielding this place of desolation and horror from critical,perhaps unfriendly eyes of these beings from another world. And Chetlaid their ship down gently and silently on the earthlit plain as if he,too, felt this sense of intrusion--as if there might be those who wouldresent the trespass of unwanted guests.

  But Spud O'Malley must have experienced no such delicacy of feeling. Helet go one long pent-up breath.

  "And may the saints protect us!" he said. "The Lake of Death outside,and inside here is purgatory itself, or I don't know my geography. Butyou made it, Chet, me bhoy; you made it! What a sweet little pilot youare!"

  * * * * *

  "There's air here," Chet was telling his companion later; "air of asort, but it's no good to us."

  He pointed to the spectro-analyzer with its groupings of lines and lightbands. "Carbon dioxide," he explained, "and some nitrogen, but mightylittle of either. See the pressure gage; it's way down.

  "But that won't bother us too much. We've got some suits stowed away inthe supplies that will hold an atmosphere of pressure, and their oxygentanks will do the rest. We were ready for anything we might find on ourDark Moon trip, but we didn't need them there. Now they'll come inhandy."

  "That's all right," O'Malley assured him; "I've gone down under water ina diving suit; I've gone outside a ship for emergency repairs in a suitlike yours when the air was as thin as this; I can stand it either way.But what I want to know is this:

  "What the divil chance is there of findin' your man, Haldgren, in sucha frozen corner of purgatory as this? How could he live here? Hereyou've come in a fine, big ship, and his was a little bit of a bullet bycomparison. Yet I doubt if you could live here for five years with allyour big oxygen supply. Now, how could he have done it with his littleoutfit?

  "And what has he eaten? Does this look like a likely place for shootin'rabbits, I ask you? Can a man catch a mess of fish in that empty Lake ofDeath? Or did Haldgren bring a sandwich with him, it may be?"

  * * * * *

  Chet Bullard shook his head doubtfully.

  "Don't get sarcastic!" he grinned. "You can't think of any wilderquestions than I have asked myself.

  "He couldn't have lived here, Spud; that's the only answer. It justisn't humanly possible. All I know is that he did it. I can't tell youhow I know it, but I do. Those lights were a human call for help. Noliving man but Haldgren could have flashed them. He's alive--or he wasthen; that's all I know."

  Spud crossed the control room as he had done a score of times to lookthrough a glass port at the world outside. Chet, too, turned to thelookout by which he stood and stared through it. The men had foundthemselves surprisingly light within the ship. They had been compelledto guard against sudden motion; a step, instead of carrying them onestride, might hurl them the length of the room. This loweredgravitational pull helped to explain to the pilot that outer world.

  There, close by, was the rocky plain on which he had landed the ship:Smooth and shiny as obsidian in places, again it was spongy gray, thecolor of volcanic rock, bubbling with imprisoned gases at the instantof hardening. It stretched out and down, that gently rolling plain, fora thousand yards or more, then ended in a welter of nightmare forms donein stone. It was like the work of some demented sculptor's torturedbrain.

  * * * * *

  Jutting tongues of rock stood in air for a hundred--two hundred--feet.Chet hardly dared estimate size in this place where all was so strangeand unearthly. The hot rock had s
pouted high in the thin air, and it hadfrozen as it threw itself frantically out from the inferno of heat thathad given it birth. The jets sprayed out like spume-topped waves; theywere whipped into ribbons that the winds of this world could not teardown, and the ribbons shone, waving white in the earthlight. Thetortured stone was torn and ripped into twisted contortions whose verywrithing told of the hell this had been. Its grotesque horror struckthrough to the deeper levels of Chet's mind with a feeling he could nothave depicted in words.

  From the higher elevation where their ship lay he could look out andacross this welter of storm-lashed rock to see it level off, then vanishwhere another crater mouth yawned black. Here was the inner crater! Ithad seemed small before; it was huge now--a place of mystery, a black,waiting throat into which Chet knew he must go--a place of indefinableterror.

  But it was the place, too, whence strange flashes had come, flashes thathad told of the distress and suffering of men since the time whenwireless waves had been widely used. The old call--the S O S!--it hadcome from that throat; it had seemed a call sent directly to him! AndChet Bullard's eyes held steadily toward that place of mystery and of asender unknown.

  "I'm going down," he told himself more than O'Malley. "There's somethingabout it I can't understand, something pretty damnable about it, Iadmit. But, whatever it is, that's what I am here to find out."

  "'Tis a divil of a place to die," said O'Malley, "and not one I'd pickout at all. But it may be we won't have to. I'm goin' along, of course."

  * * * * *

  The master pilot was reaching for the flexible metal suit he had broughtfrom the store room. It was air-tight, gas-proof; it would hold aninternal pressure far beyond anything the wearer would demand; and itsheadpiece was flexible like the body of the suit, and would fit himclosely.

  He drew the suit up over the clothes he wore and closed the front withone pull of a metal tab. Within, soft rubber-faced cushions hadinterlocked; the body would fasten to the headpiece in the same way. ButChet paused with the headpiece in his hand.

  He looked at the glass window that would be before his eyes; at the thindiaphragms that would come over his ears and that would admit allordinary sounds; and he tried out the microphone attachment that hecould switch on to bring to his ears the faintest whisper from outside.All this he examined with care while he seemed to be thinking deeply.Then he straightened and looked at his companion.

  "No, Spud, you're not going," he said. "This is my job. You'll stay withthe ship. You and I make a rather small army: we don't know yet what wemay be up against, and we mustn't risk all our forces in one advance.I'll see what is there; and, in case anything happens, you can take theship back. I've taught you enough on the way over; I had this verything in mind."

  He slipped the helmet over his blond head before O'Malley could reply.

  * * * * *

  The ear-pieces and the microphone allowed him to hear. Another diaphragmin the center of the metal across his chest took his own voice andshouted it into the room.

  "Sure, I know you want to go. Spud; but you'll have to stay in reserve.Now show me how well you can fly the ship. Lift her off; then drift overthat crater, and we'll have a look-see!"

  Spud O'Malley's face was glum as he obeyed. Spud had seen nothing butdeath in this place of horror--Chet had observed that plainly--yet itwas equally plain that the Irish pilot was finding the order to live insafety a bitter dose. But Spud knew how to take orders; he lifted thelittle ball gently and swung the ship out toward the blackness of thatdeeper pit.

  Chet was watching the changing terrain. He saw the place ofsolid-spouted rock end; saw it flatten out to an undulating surface thathad rolled and heaved itself into many-colored shapes. Even in theearthlight the kaleidoscopic colors were vivid in their changing redsand blues and yellow sheens. Then this surface sloped sharply away,though here it was rough with broken rock where half-hardened lava,coughed from that throat, had fallen back and adhered to the moltensides.

  This rock in the inner crater was gray, pale and ghostly in theearthlight. It went down and still down where Chet's eyes could notfollow--down to an utter blackness. Chet was staring speculatively atthat waiting dark when the first flash came.

  Blindingly keen! A flash of white light!--another and another! Itblazed dazzlingly into their cabin in vivid dashes and dots--the samesignal as before was being repeated!

  * * * * *

  A hundred yards away was a little shelf of rock. Chet jerked atO'Malley's shoulder with his metal-cased hand and pointed. "Set herdown!" he ordered "Let me out there! We can't put the ship down wherethose lights are; the throat is too narrow; there may be air-currentsthat would smash us on a sharp rock. I'll go down! You wait! I'll beback."

  He was opening the inner door of the entrance port. Another closure inthe outer shell made an air-lock. He took time for one grip at the handof Spud O'Malley, one grin of excited, adventurous joy that wrinkledabout his eyes behind the window of his helmet--then he picked up adetonite pistol, examined again its charge of tiny shells, jammed itfirmly into the holster at his waist and swung the big door shut behindhim.

  And Pilot O'Malley watched him go with a premonition that he dared notspeak. He heard the closing of the outer door; saw the tall, slenderfigure in a metal suit like a knight of old as Chet waved once, settledthe oxygen tank across his shoulders and picked his way carefully over awaste of shattered stone that led down and down into the dark.

  Then the Irishman looked once at the suit he had expected to wear,stared back where the figure of Chet had vanished, then dropped his headupon his hands while his homely face was twisted convulsively.

  * * * * *

  It had come so soon! The great adventure was upon them before he hadrealized. The reconnaissance--the flashes--and then Chet had gone! Andnow he was alone in a silent ship that rested quietly in this soundlessworld. The silence was heavy upon him; it seemed pressing in with actualweight to bear him down. It was shattered at the last by the faintest ofwhispered echoes from without.

  Spud was on his feet in an instant, his eyes straining at one lookoutafter another, each giving him a view of only the desolation he knew andhated.

  What could it have been? he demanded. He found and rejected a dozenanswers before he saw, far down in the black crater-mouth, a flash ofred; then heard again that ghost of a sound and knew it for what it was.

  Thick walls, these of the space ship, and insulated well; and the thinatmosphere of this wild world could cut a blast of sound to a merefraction of its volume! But the walls were admitting a fragmental echoof what must have been a reverberating voice. They were quivering to theroar of exploding detonite!

  It was Chet! He was fighting, he was in trouble! Spud's trembling handssteadied upon the metal control; he lifted the ship as smoothly as evenChet might have done, and he drove it out and down into a throat toonarrow for safety, but where the tiny, red flash of a weapon had calledwith an S O S as plain as any lettered call--a message to which bravemen have everywhere responded.

  * * * * *

  He saw Chet but once. The master pilot had shown him the flare releaselever; he moved it now, and the place of darkness was suddenly blindingwith light. There were rocks close at hand; the crater had narrowed to afunnel throat that was cut and terraced as if by human hands. Below, itended in a smooth stone floor where the lava had sealed it shut.

  From a terrace came the gleaming reflection of Chet's suit. Miraculouslythe gleam was doubled, as if another in similar garb stood at his side.And beyond, from blocks of stone, came leaping things--living creatures!

  The light died. Spud realized he had not opened the release lever full.He fumbled for it--found it, jammed it over! And in the light thatfollowed he saw only empty, terraced walls where nothing moved, and alava floor below that, for an instant, gaped open, then again was smoothand firm.

  And the
thunder of his ship's exhausts came back to him from thosethreatening walls to tell of a loneliness more certain and terrible thanany solitude he had found in the silence where he had waited above.

  But through all his dismay ran an undercurrent of puzzled wonderment.For here on a dead world, where all men agreed there could be no life,he had seen the impossible.

  Only one glimpse before the light had died; only for an instant had heseen the things that leaped upon Chet--but he knew! Never again couldany man tell Spud O'Malley that the Moon was a lifeless globe ... and heknew that the life was of a form monstrous and horrible and malign!