The Metal Moon Read online

  CHAPTER V

  The Struggle for Freedom

  They were afloat, and comparatively safe from the rockets which shriekedout of the leaden sky and threw spectral waterspouts up into the fogbefore they exploded. Unless one exploded directly under them, or verynear, they would be safe--for the time being.

  "Which way is shore?" Lents puffed.

  "Rockets seem to come from that way," Sine answered, flipping his hand."Swim that way. Fish probably lost appetites, so won't bother us."

  The bombardment had indeed frightened away the monsters of the deep, andeven the dead in the ruined submarine city would rest in peace for awhile. But the Earthmen, after several hours of swimming, doubted thatthis was more than a postponement of death. The long greasy swells wererising, presaging another of Jupiter's unimaginably violent storms.

  "I see a light!" Sine strained his eyes to get another glimpse of itthrough the brown fog. "There it is again." Something was moving slowlythrough the air a short distance over the water, following the course ofthe rockets, which had ceased coming. A powerful searchlight was cuttingthrough the murk. A war party of the First Race, looking for wreckage.

  In their methodical search they soon found the swimming men, and theywere helped into the chief's cabin. Sine, looking up with half-blindedeyes, saw Governor Nikkia sitting in his chair, looking at him coldly.

  "So!" the governor bit off his words. "The traitors are fished out." Hisarrogant, handsome face was vindictive, uncompromising. "We forgot thatthe aborigines of Earth would naturally sympathize with their equals,the Mugs! That was nicely timed, your 'visit.' How long have you been incommunication with the rebels?"

  The Earthmen, weak and exhausted by their long exposure, resisted theirdesire to lie down on the floor. They stood before the governor, hemmedin by hostile fighting men, and tried to maintain the traditions anddignity of their planet.

  "We were not in communication with your slaves," Sine declared. "Youshould know that. Your radio monitors would have picked up any messages,and your own patrol ships picked us up when we were far out in space.Our mission is one of peace. As for your quarrels, they do not concernus. We are strictly neutral."

  Nikkia laughed, a short, clipped bark in which there was littleamusement.

  "Well, your guilt is a matter of small moment anyway. We have paid theMugs for the damage they did, and they will not have another chance. Andif they had an idea of getting help from Earth, you shall be an objectlesson on the uselessness of such hopes."

  "Meaning?" But Sine and his companions knew that the meaning must beevil.

  "Meaning," Nikkia snapped, "that from now on you three are Mugs, nobetter and no worse than the Jovian Mugs. Except that I shall instructthe labor office to put you to work at one of the powerintegrators--perhaps in The Bubble. We don't want to waste you" he addedwith grim humor--"and the gravity here on Jupiter might reduce your lifeof usefulness."

  The governor turned his back in dismissal, and the prisoners werehustled into a dark, extremely hot storage hold. Here they lay down amidan untidy collection of miscellaneous gear, thick with dust. They restedgratefully until some of their strength should return to them.

  When they awoke from their sleep of exhaustion they were aware that theship had landed, and a few minutes later the door of their prison wasopened and an officer, heat pistol trained on them, commanded theprisoners to get into another ship for transfer to the metal and crystalsatellite where they were condemned to drag out the rest of their livesas slaves.

  The second coming of the Earthmen to The Bubble was in marked contrastto their first. Instead of the large, commodious lock in the upperhemisphere, they entered this time through a drab, dull orifice in theblack half of the sphere. The patrol ship which brought them wascontacted without ceremony. They were thrust though with curt orders toask somebody for the Mug superintendent's office. Then the valve closedbehind them. There was a grating sound as it was locked from theoutside, and then silence. The ship was gone. They were marooned in thegloom, the grisly domain of the rays and the Mugs. Sentenced for life,with their only companions, a few broken, despairing men.

  The corridor in which they found themselves sloped gently downward, andartificial gravity made it possible to walk naturally. Sine taking thelead, they passed into the depths. Everywhere were monstrous shadows,with occasional stabbing eerie beams of light. But it seemed that anominous hush hung over this metal-interlaced gulf. Here there was nosense of motion--no sense of bubble-like lightness. It was like adescent into the nether regions of the ancient--into an inferno. But ofthe denizens of this dismal place there was no trace.

  "Let's go to Proserpina's home," Sine suggested. "I'm anxious to see ifshe's still all right. And the old man too."

  Accordingly they watched for the numbered corridor, and after somefruitless wandering, came again to the deep crack that was the only homethis timid girl knew. She started up in terror as the Earthmen came intoview. Not unnaturally, for they were all bristly with unshaven beardsand grimy with the dust they had collected when prisoners in the Jovianship's hold.

  But after her first reaction of terror she gave a glad cry, and runningup to Sine, threw her thin arms around his muscular neck.

  "Now listen, kid!" The young scientist began with unwontedembarrassment. But the girl clung to him, and he could not quite bringhimself to tear her arms away. She released him herself, in a fewmoments, became suddenly shy.

  Lents laughed with genuine amusement.

  "Don't be silly, Sine. She's just glad to see us again. Poor kid waslonesome. Come here, Prosie."

  * * * * *

  She went to him, gravely embraced him; then Kass.

  They noticed she was trembling.

  "What's the matter?" Kass asked. "You act as if you're glad to see us,but wished we hadn't come."

  "Why are you here?" she asked with a troubled frown.

  The Earthmen told her of what had transpired--that they were nowcondemned for life to serve in the dark hemisphere. As they spoke herfears seemed to vanish. She became radiant with delight.

  "Then you have come at the right time!" she cried. "Our slavery is at anend, and you shall pilot us back to the Mother planet!"

  "You're not crazy, are you kid?" Sine asked, lifting her little pointedchin with his hand.

  "No!" she laughed delightfully. "Not crazy!" And she would have embracedSine again. "My father has been building a ship for the past two years,hoping to escape to Ganymede, or some other moon of Jupiter. But now weshall go to Earth!" She clapped her hands excitedly.

  "Listen! Let's get this straight," Lents demanded. "You say your dad hasbuilt a ship. Where is it?"

  "Way down in the bottom of the hemisphere. That's where all the Mugsare, working on it when they have time. Dad's chest feels better again."

  "They have built a ship, huh?" Sine was trying to suppress the hope thatflamed up madly. "How'll they get it out?"

  "They've made an airlock, so that when we leave the escaping air won'tgive us away."

  It was one of these things that seem too good to be true. But when theEarthmen accompanied the girl to the secret workshop, directly next tothe sphere's outer skin, they found she had spoken the truth in everyrespect. The men there, nearly all pathetic wrecks of the First Race'ssystem, were at first a little doubtful about admitting the Earthmen,but one after another they were won over to the idea of seekingsanctuary on Earth rather than on some satellite of Jupiter where theywould never be entirely safe. Besides, the Earthmen, though they hadbeen stripped of all their weapons, represented additional fightingstrength.

  They made their final preparations with mixed feelings. Many of the Mugshad relatives on Jupiter, though few had wives or children. Even womenof the Second Race had no desire to share the fate of a man condemned toa lifetime in the black half of the Bubble. Those few women who hadaccompanied their men to the metal satellite would, of course, be takenalong, for the escape ship was commodious.

  The nex
t two weeks were filled with arduous labor, but at last the shipwas ready, and observation through a small port which had beeninstalled, showed that they were about to enter the shadow of Jupiter.Under cover of darkness they would leave the airlock. They wouldaccelerate past The Bubble. Centrifugal force would send them away fromJupiter. At the same time their velocity with relation to the sun wouldbe diminished. Lents plotted a long, graceful curve that would bringthem to Earth with the best possible speed.

  Proserpina's father lay on the floor, peering out through the port.

  "Remember, Jan," Lents reminded him, "as soon as we cut the shadow, yougive the order." They were all in the ship save the Earthmen and Jan,lying on the floor like a great spider, with his tremendous chestlaboring painfully.

  "In a moment now," Jan said. "The sun is nearing the limb."

  "Open! Open, you aberrated spores!" The command came but faintly throughthe inside valve of the emergency airlock.

  "They've found out!" Kass gasped. "Quick, never mind the shadow!"

  Jan had already leaped to the long cylindrical hull, the product ofendless labor and sacrifice.

  "Inside!" Sine shouted. Kass and Sine made for the ship's manports."I'll take care of the thermite."

  In his hand he carried a small heat pistol that had long ago been stolenand hidden by a Mug. Quickly he made a circuit of the room, which waslike an enormous sheet-metal blister on the inside of the metalsatellite. After the thermite had cut out the ship free, that blisterwould prevent the escape of air, saving the lives of thousands of theFirst Race and also preventing discovery of their escape for a time.

  The thermite was piled generously in a ridge all the way around. Sineleaped inside the first valve of the manport, colliding with a softbody.

  "Get inside, kid!" He leveled his pistol at the thermite ridge where itwas nearest to him. High time too. The walls of the blister wereradiating heat. The fools were turning their infra-red beams on it!

  "Lock!" Sine shouted, pressing the trigger and jumping back.

  Instantly the ship was surrounded by an oval of brilliant orange andwhite fire. The valve clicked shut in Sine's face, and he dived throughthe second one into the interior, tripping the lock of that one also.

  Through the ports nothing was to be seen now save fire. They were in aninferno of brilliant light and heat. But through the glare and smokeSine saw a white-hot spot suddenly appear on the blister wall. TheJovians were melting their way through! The metal plates sagged like wetpaper, dropped limply. Back of the hole, luridly illuminated, stood theforemost of a detachment of fighting men, eager to leap to the fray,waiting only for the metal to cool a little.

  But the thermite had been burning steadily, biting through the toughskin of the metal moon. Just as the fugitives were beginning to wonderwhether they would be incinerated in their self-made prison there was alurch. Through the hull of their own vessel they could hear the tearingof metal as the weakened plates were sheared away. They found themselvesin space, with the great ball of the Pleasure Bubble floating away fromthem. Just outside of the gaping hole in the sphere floated the bodiesof twenty or thirty men, blown out by the escaping air.

  The air was escaping in a prodigious geyser; unimpeded by an atmosphere,it spewed out, visible like a cloud due to its moisture, smooth like aninflating balloon without billows. The ball of vapor expanded swiftlytoward the gray vastness of Jupiter 100,000 miles below, enveloping thefugitive ship for a time, then passing on, like an enormous milky whitecloud, falling swiftly until it was lost in the darkness, stillexpanding.

  Overhead The Bubble continued serenely on its course, the sweeping curveof its crystal hemisphere visible. But now the actinic lights that hadserved as artificial suns were dark. The great man-made paradise was ascold and dead as the Earth's moon. Death stalked its pleasure palaces.Already up there the pleasant rippling lakes must be skimmed over withice, the luxuriant vegetation stiff, crackling with frost.

  Despite the selfishness, the cruelty, the utter callousness of the FirstRace, Sine felt a pang of regret over the destruction of so much beauty.

  A messenger from the astrogator's cabin, a man whose skin was seared andscorched so that it looked like an alligator's hide, touched Lents' arm.

  "Jan would like to have you verify the course." There was apprehensionin the man's voice. Member of a race so long enslaved, restrained, hefeared the freedom of open space.

  They swept slowly past The Bubble, gaining speed. Suddenly there was acry from the stern look-out:

  "The ship's heating. Stop it! Something's wrong."

  Sine, rushing to answer the call, found that the ship was indeed heatingup. Shielded from the sun's rays as they were, this was inexplicable.And then he saw the dull red pinpoint of light.

  He had not seen it before, that patrol ship, clinging like a leech tothe airlock of the crystal hemisphere. There had been men in there whenthe air escaped. They had been saved from death by the closing of theirautomatic airlocks.

  "Better get back into the shelter of The Bubble," he told Jan after ahurried trip to the astrogator's cabin. The spider man turned thevessel, and they scurried back to shelter. Although the patrol shiptried its gravity buttons on them, the Mugs had fully equipped their ownvessel with similar, and larger buttons which were occasionally used inregulating the metal satellite's orbit. They could neutralize the othervessel's gravity force with ease.

  "And yet," Sine admitted to the serious little group in the cabin, asthey once more floated in space under the immense sphere, "they seem tohave us stymied."

  "Suppose they follow us around here?" Kass asked somewhat nervously.

  "I don't think they can," Sine said. "I noticed when we came to TheBubble first, the ships are locked to the gaskets from inside thesphere. The men inside the ship can not unlock their ship unless theyopen the emergency air curtain. If they did their air would all escapethrough the sphere. They could do it, of course, if they put on spacesuits. But that procedure would take an hour, and in the mean time wecould get out of range of their heat rays. So we have them stymied too.Except for one thing----"

  "Of course," Lents grunted. "We can't get at them, and they can't get atus, but in a few hours we'll be in sunlight again, and some patrol willpick us up."

  The Mugs, watching fearfully from beyond the doorway, turned aside. Werethey, after a mere glimpse of freedom, to be immediately returned to thebondage which had become unbearable to them? Sine felt a small, thinhand slip into his. He looked down into the wistful face of Proserpinalooking up at him with hope, with confidence. All at once his shynessvanished as he realized that Proserpina's obvious adoration for him wasonly the admiration of a child for a very big and very wonderfulbrother. At the same time his desire to do something to release them allfrom their peril was intensified by the imperatively felt need tojustify her confidence in him. An idea came.

  "Jan," he asked. "What is the energy output--the total capacity--of ourgravity buttons?"

  Jan named an approximate figure in ergs.

  "Lents, if you've ever calculated to a purpose, calculate now! How muchenergy is represented by the mass of that sphere at its orbitalvelocity?"

  "I get you!" The fat scientist puffed out his cheeks with excitement."Have to estimate the mass first." He picked up a stylus from theastrogator's table, worked furiously on a tablet. Kass and Jan watchedapprehensively. The Pleasure Bubble, with its freight of the dead, washurrying remorselessly to its rendezvous with the sunlight.

  "Whoops!" Lents threw his tablet into the air in extravagant triumph."She'll do!"

  "Stations!" shouted Jan, in his curious strained voice, and men rushedeagerly to their posts, still hazy as to their object but cheered by theknowledge that there was hope after all.

  Then began one of the strangest duels in the history of the solarsystem. Setting the nose of their vessel against the gigantic metalsatellite, they directed the stern gravity buttons against a distantstar, and applied full force to slow the sphere in its orbit.

  Th
e forces liberated were terrific. The sphere's tough skin, threeinches thick, buckled and bent inward until the ship was almost buriedin a pit of its own creation. Jan stood hunched over the activator leverlike a great spider, ready to throw it into neutral at the first sign ofan actual rupture, which would send them crashing through the internalcells and girders of the sphere.

  "She's folding up like a squeezed orange peeling!" Kass muttered,running his hand over his bald head.

  "Built to withstand internal pressure--nothing like this," Jan gasped."Stout ship, this!" he added a moment later. "We thought we might haveto ram our way out."

  She was indeed a stout ship--this vessel of escape. Though she shiveredand groaned, she gave no indication of failure.

  "Wonder if the others are pushing against us!" Kass suddenly thought ofanother possibility.

  "We--can--outpush 'em." Jan gasped. "Got to sit down. Here you take it!"Sine stepped into his place. Vague shocks and noises were transmitted tothem through the hull. The huge sphere was collapsing progressively.

  Lents came puffing from an observation port.

  "She's slowing!" he reported triumphantly. "Our trajectory--give her alittle more!"

  The Joy Bubble was becoming more and more disc-shaped, and it was slowlyturning on a major axis as the contending forces became uncentered.

  "Flopping like a flapjack," Lents commented as he watched the shiftingvista. A moment later; "It's a close squeeze. See there, past thehorizon--a prominence?"

  It was like a white plume, this jet of vapor thrown far into space. Notuncommon in Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere. But it was bright, dazzling!That meant they were not far from the sunlight!

  "Pull away!" the fat mathematician shouted. "We have to take a chance!"Instantly Sine reversed the lever. Everyone grasped handholds as theship backed out of the pit. Now they could see the vast ruin they hadwrought. Sine gave her all the speed he dared, for the sun, for home!

  The great ruin was slowly turning, and in a few minutes they saw againthe darker shadow that was the fighting patrol ship, still clamped toher side. At the same instant the dull red pinpoint winked on. TheJovians had sighted them again! In a few minutes the hull was gettinguncomfortably warm.

  Lents laid down his pad.

  "They will crash!" he declared. "But they have an hour, the fools!Instead of trying to burn us why don't they get into their space suitsand free themselves?"

  Jan, resting on the bench, shook his shaggy head.

  "They are a great people, stupid but great. They will try to punish ustill they die."

  The wreckage drifted closer and closer to Jupiter, and still the redbeam played steadily on the fleeing prisoners' ship. The distance hadbecome so great that it could only be seen through an old telescopethat the prisoners had somehow procured. But the prisoners weregasping. Their hull was cherry-red on the outside, and still heating. Afew more minutes and the heat would be unbearable.

  "They are getting closer--closer--they are in the sunlight. Now I cansee better. I believe they will skip by--no! They've dived into thevapor! They're out again. Skipped out like a flat stone on water.Sinking again--almost over the horizon. Gone, I guess. Whew, it's hot!"

  They were accelerating so fast that they had to turn on the interiorgravity buttons to equalize the pressure on their bodies. Behind lay thevast, fog-bound planet of Jupiter. Ahead was the beautiful sun. Andsomewhere beyond, and still invisible, Earth the lovely, the green, theMother of the human race!

  THE END