Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 by Various (best books to read for students .TXT) ๐
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The secret exit dome seemed to be the answer.
"You can manage without me, father?" asked Sarka.
he elder Sarka nodded.
"Of the other Spokesmen of Earth," went on Sarka, "I trust Gerd the most. Might I suggest that you bring him here, trust him in all details, and let him take my place wherever possible? Or, better still, keep Jaska here with you! I ... I may not be able to return! I'll try to find a way, butโwe can always communicate telepathically. Jaska...."
"Jaska," said that young lady grimly, "goes with Sarka wherever Sarka goes!"
"But it may mean death! We can only guess at the cunning of the Moon dwellers! They may have been in secret communication with Dalis for centuries! Dalis, who somehow discovered our secret finger code, may also know of the secret exit dome, and the principle upon which it operates! If he does, he may know how to combat it! Perhaps that explains his laughter! Perhaps he heard and understood every word we spoke, hears and understands every word we speak now! Who knows? He may wait until I have passed through the secret exit dome, and then make it impossible for me to be reincarnated on the Moonโor elsewhere!"
"No matter," said Jaska softly, "wherever Sarka goes, there goes Jaska! It is useless to attempt to dissuade me, and it is time you learned that!"
In spite of himself Sarka smiled, and his father met his smile with a quizzical one of his own. Both men had the same thought.
"The eternal woman!" said Sarka the Elder. "No man has ever understood herโno man ever will! And all men are ruled by her!"
Sarka shrugged, and Jaska spoke again.
"Don't you think it is time we tried this new experiment?"
arka nodded, and his face was suddenly alight with the excitement which burned within him.
"First," he said, "we need accoutrements of the Gens of Dalis for two people!"
Jaska smiled.
"Forseeing that we might have need of such equipment, I had several complete outfits sent here when I took charge of the Gens of Dalis as its Spokesman!"
Two minutes later, arrayed in the green clothing of the House of Dalis, swathed in it from neck to toe, wearing their belts and the masks which were necessary to life in space where there was no atmosphere, the whole topped by the gleaming helmets whose skull-pans held the infinitesimally small anti-gravitational ovoids, Jaska and Sarka entered the secret exit dome, side by-side.
On the breast and back of each showed the yellow stars of the Gens of Dalis. There was no hiding their identity otherwise, and if any of the Gens saw them, both would be immediately recognizedโfor Jaska had commanded the Gens, and Sarka was the world's greatest scientist known to every human being. But they planned on carrying out their investigations by stealth.
"Father," said Sarka, "when the inner door is closed upon us, you have but to press the button to the right of the door. Press it when the light beside it glows red, which will indicate that we have willed ourselves to go to a certain destination!"[217]
he inner door closed upon Sarka and Jaska, and, hand in hand, side by side, their bodies glowing with knowledge of warm, sympathetic contact, they waited for a miracle which had never before been attempted.
"Are you afraid, beloved?" queried Sarka.
"When I am with you," she said softly, "I have no fear."
"Then face the outer door, and will to go wherever I will to take you!"
Side by side, hand-in-hand still, they faced the outer door, and Sarka willed:
"Let us appear together in a deserted spot, within sight but unseen, of the Moon crater from which those aircars were sent against us!"
A sudden blur, a cessation of all knowledge, and then....
Sarka and Jaska stood side by side in a desolate expanse surrounded by bleak and appalling mountains of grotesque shape, in a light that was weirdly, awesomely blue. Their feet were invisible, deeply rooted in some soft, fine material which looked like snow.
After a swift glance around to see if anything lived or moved in this awful desolation, Sarka stooped and dipped up some of the fine stuff with his fingers, touched it to his lips.
he material seemed to be fine blue ashes and on his tongue it had a soapy savor. He peered at Jaska, whose eyes were glowing with excitement, whose lips were parted with anticipation, and instantly he opened a mental conversation with her.
"We must speak with each other telepathically, but do not speak with me until I have explained to you how to mask your thoughts from all persons save the one with whom you hold converse! First, I love you! Second, let us see if, searching the sky, we can find the Earth!"
In a few brief, highly technical words, Sarka told his beloved how to talk with him in the manner which he had never before explained to her. They had used telepathy before, countless times, but they had not cared who heardโwhile now secrecy in all things was the prime essential for success, even for life.
When he had told her, and she replied, "I understand perfectly, and it seems quite easy," they turned and surveyed the heavens, out of which, by this new miracle of the secret exit dome, they had dropped to the face of the Moon.
Away across the space between worlds, its transfiguration plainly visible to the two, they could make out and identify the world from which they had come. Save that they knew themselves standing on the Moon, they would have thought as far as appearances went, that the place where they had come was the Moon, many times enlarged. It seemed incredible that they had come so far in the twinkling of an eye; but that they had was proved by the fact of their physical presence.
"Look, Jaska!" said Sarka suddenly. "See how our Earth glows, as though it were afire inside!"
hey stared at the great circular yellowish flame that he pointed out, and Sarka, always the scientist whose science was one of exactness, tried to estimate just where, on the Earth's surface, the glow was.
"Jaska," he said again, "that glow comes out of the heart of the Gens area which Dalis ruled! And no one lives there, since Dalis' Gens flew out to do battle! That's why we did not know of it before we left! That glow, somehow, beloved, is the cause of the outward-from-the-Earth journey of the Moon! First we must locate the Moon-source of the glow, and render it incapable of further forcing itself away! For do you realize that, unless we do so, we will never again see home?"
Jaska said nothing, but her eyes were troubled for a moment. Then she smiled again.[218]
"What care I if I become a prisoner on the Moon, if you are with me?"
Sarka was just now realizing the wonder of this raven-haired woman whom, knowing her for half a century as he had, he had just known so little after all.
"If we seem in danger of discovery, Jaska," he said to her, "drop down instantly into the ashes, for if we are discovered by Dalis...."
He left it there and, with a deep intake of breath, started away for the nearest and highest hill. They desired to walk, yet found walking almost impossible, as they could not keep their feet on the ground save by the exercise of a really incredible effort of will. So, despairing of keeping their feet in contact with the ashes, they flew just above them, heading for the nearest weird-looking ridge.
n the strange light, which was oddly like moonlight in some painted desert of Earth, shapes were distorted and somehow menacing, colors were raw, almost bleedingโand distances that seemed but a step required hours to traverse.
Ever and anon, as they traveled they looked back up at the Earth which was their home. It still was visible, though plainly smaller with distance, and for a time Sarka's heart misgave him; but he only clasped tighter the hand of Jaska and moved on.
They were just at the base of the first hill, which had now become a mountain of gloomy, forbidding aspect, when the first sound they had heard on the moon came to them. A sound that was a commingling of the laughter of Dalis, the barking of jackals of the olden times, the humming of a million Beryls revolving at top speed, and a strident buzzing such as neither had ever heard.
Had they been discovered? Was the sound a warning? They could not know; but as they stared at the crest of the hill, two long, snaky, waving things appeared above the crest, undulating, waving to and fro, as though questing for something. They crouched low in the white ashes at the base of the mountain, and waited, scarcely breathing.
CHAPTER XIII The Lunar Cubesor a long time Sarka and Jaska remained still, like sentinels, listening to the strange discord which seemed to emanate from behind the hill at whose base they crouched.
"Look!" said Sarka at last. "There against the sky, beyond and between those two waving tentacles! Note that column of light, scarcely lighter than the light which surrounds it everywhere? It looks like a massive column just lighter than everything around it, yet so little lighter that you have to watch closely to see it at all?"
Jaska stared for all of a minute, before she thought back her answer.
"I see it," she said.
"Note now whether it goes, as it reaches outward into Space!"
Jaska followed the mighty height of the thing, outward and outward, and then gasped.
"Sarka," she said, "its end touches the Earth in the very heart of that strange glow we spoke about!"
"Exactly! And people of Earth know nothing about it, because it is invisible to them! It is only from Outside that the glow it makes against the Earth is visible! If we can divert its direction, or render it useless in any way, the Moon will no longer be thrust away by its force!"
A pause of indecision, then Sarka thought again:
"Let us go, Jaska! Keep behind me, right on my heels!"
Slowly, fighting against something that seemed determined to pull, or hurl, them outward from the surface of the Moon with each forward movement they made, they essayed the side of the hill, pausing at the end of what seemed like hours in a sort of hollow[219] just large enough to mask their bodies and stared over its edge into one of the craters of the Moon. Out of the depths of that crater came the discordant sounds, which now were almost deafening, and out of that crater too came the almost invisibly bluish column whose outer tip touched the Earth.
ight before them, so close that they all but rested in its shadow, was one of those monster aircars, its tentacles moving to and fro as though wafted into motion by some vagrant breeze. But since neither Sarka nor Jaska could feel the breeze, Sarka knew that it was life which caused the waving motion of those tentacles of terror.
"Note," he said to Jaska, "that there is a tiny trap-door in the bottom of the aircar, and that the thing rests on a half-dozen of those tentacles!"
"I see," came Jaska's reply.
Jaska went on:
"Note the gleaming thing on the ground, right below the aircar? I wonder what it is?"
They studied the thing there, which seemed to be a huge jewel of some sort that glittered balefully in the eery light of the Moon. It was, perhaps, twice the size of an average man's torso, and was almost exactly cubical in shape. As Sarka studied the thing, he sensed that feeling flowed out of itโthat the cube, whatever it was, was alive!
He tore his glance away from it, and realized that he accomplished the feat with a distinct effort of willโas though the cube had willed to hold his gaze, knew he was there. His eyes, peering around the inner slope of the craterโwhich dipped over, some hundreds of feet down, and plunged downward to some unknown depthโnoted a broad, flat stone, off to his right; and around the rim of the crater he counted a full hundred of the aircars, all with their tentacles waving as if they belonged
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