Part 3 (2/2)

He sauntered away toward his chart room.

”By heavens, what a relief!” Snap murmured as the current went on. We had wired his cubby with the insulator; within its barrage we could at least talk with a degree of freedom.

”You've seen George Prince, Gregg?”

”No. He's a.s.signed A20. But I saw his sister. Snap, no one ever mentioned--”

Snap had heard of her, but he hadn't known that she was listed for this voyage. ”A real beauty, so I've heard. Accursed shame for a decent girl to have a brother like that.”

I could agree with him there....

It was now six A.M. Snap had been busy all night with routine cosmos-radios from the Earth, following our departure. He had a pile of them beside him.

”Nothing queer looking?” I suggested.

”No. Not a thing.”

We were at this time no more than sixty-five thousand miles from the Moon's surface. The _Planetara_ presently would swing upon her direct course for Mars. There was nothing which could cause pa.s.senger comment in this close pa.s.sing of the Moon; normally we used the satellite's attraction to give us additional starting speed.

It was now or never that a message would come from Grantline. He was supposed to be upon the Earthward side of the Moon. While Snap had rushed through with his routine, I searched the Moon's surface with our gla.s.s.

But there was nothing. Copernicus and Kepler lay in full sunlight. The heights of the lunar mountains, the depths of the barren, empty seas were etched black and white, clear and clean. Grim, forbidding desolation, this unchanging Moon. In romance, moonlight may s.h.i.+mmer and sparkle to light a lover's smile; but the reality of the Moon is cold and bleak. There was nothing to show my prying eyes where the intrepid Grantline might be.

”Nothing at all, Snap.”

And Snap's instruments, attuned for an hour now to pick up the faintest signal, were motionless.

”If he has concentrated any appreciable amount of ore,” said Snap. ”We should get an impulse from its rays.”

But our receiving s.h.i.+eld was dark, untouched. Our mirror grid gave the magnified images; the spectro, with its wave length selection, pictured the mountain levels and slowly descended into the deepest seas.

There was nothing.

Yet in those Moon caverns--a million million recesses amid the crags of that tumbled, barren surface--the pin point of movement which might have been Grantline's expedition could so easily be hiding! Could he have the ore insulated, fearing its rays would betray its presence to hostile watchers?

Or might disaster have come to him? He might not be on this hemisphere of the Moon at all....

My imagination, sharpened by fancy of a lurking menace which seemed everywhere about the _Planetara_ this voyage, ran rife with fears for Johnny Grantline. He had promised to communicate this voyage. It was now, or perhaps never.

Six-thirty came and pa.s.sed. We were well beyond the Earth's shadow now. The firmament blazed with its vivid glories; the Sun behind us was a ball of yellow-red leaping flames. The Earth hung, a huge, dull red half sphere.

We were within forty thousand miles of the Moon. A giant white ball--all of its disc visible to the naked eye. It poised over the bow, and presently, as the _Planetara_ swung upon its course for Mars, it s.h.i.+fted sidewise. The light of it glared white and dazzling in our windows.

Snap, with his habitual red celluloid eyeshade shoved high on his forehead, worked over our instruments.

”Gregg!”

The receiving s.h.i.+eld was glowing a trifle. Rays were bombarding it! It glowed, gleamed phosph.o.r.escent, and the audible recorder began sounding its tiny tinkling murmurs.

Gamma rays! Snap sprang to the dials. The direction and strength were soon obvious. A richly radioactive ore body was concentrated upon this hemisphere of the Moon! It was unmistakable.

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