Rocket Ship Galileo (22 page)

Morrie nodded. “Bomb the
Wotan
. I hate to do that.” He stared wistfully at the big ship, their one chain to the earth.

“But you’ve got to. You and Art have got to run for it, then, and get back to the Dog House and hole up. It’ll be your business, Art, to manage somehow or other to throw together a set that can get a message back to earth. That’s your only business, both of you. Under no circumstances are you to come back here looking for Ross and me. If you stay holed up, they may not find you for weeks—and that will give you your chance, the
earth
’s chance. Agreed?”

Morrie hesitated. “Suppose we get a message through to earth. How about it then?”

Cargraves thought for a moment, then replied, “We can’t stand here jawing—there’s work to be done. If you get a message through with a reply that makes quite clear that they believe you and are getting busy, then you are on your own. But I advise you not to take any long chances. If we aren’t back here in thirty minutes, you probably can’t help us.” He paused for a moment and decided to add one more thing—the boy’s personal loyalty had made him doubtful about one point. “You know, don’t you, that when it comes to dropping that bomb, if you do, you must drop it where it has to go, even if Ross and I are standing on your target?”

“I suppose so.”

“Those are orders, Morrie.”

“I understand them.”

“Morrie!”

“Aye aye, Captain!”

“Very well, sir—that’s better. Art, Morrie is in charge. Come on, Ross.”

Nothing moved on the rocket field. The dust of the bombing, with no air to hold it up, had dissipated completely. The broken air lock showed dark and still across the field; near them the sleek and mighty
Wotan
crouched silent and untended.

Cargraves made a circuit of the craft, pistol ready in his gloved fist, while Ross tailed him, armed with one of the Garands. Ross kept well back, according to plan.

Like the
Galileo
, the
Wotan
had but one door, on the port side just aft the conning compartment. He motioned Ross to stay back, then climbed a little metal ladder or staircase and tried the latch. To his surprise the ship was not locked—then he wondered why he was surprised. Locks were for cities.

While the pressure in the air chamber equalized, he unsnapped from his belt a flashlight he had confiscated from the Nazi jeep rocket and prepared to face whatever lay beyond the door. When the door sighed open, he dropped low and to one side, then shot his light around the compartment. Nothing…nobody.

The ship was empty of men from stem to stern. It was almost too much luck. Even if it had been a rest period, or even if there had been no work to do in the ship, he had expected at least a guard on watch.

However a guard on watch would mean one less pair of hands for work…and this was the moon, where every pair of hands counted for a hundred or a thousand on earth. Men were at a premium here; it was more likely, he concluded, that their watch was a radar, automatic and unsleeping. Probably with a broad-band radio alarm as well, he thought, remembering how promptly their own call had been answered the very first time they had ever sent anything over the rim of their crater.

He went through a passenger compartment equipped with dozens of acceleration bunks, through a hold, and farther aft. He was looking for the power plant.

He did not find it. Instead he found a welded steel bulkhead with no door of any sort. Puzzled, he went back to the control station. What he found there puzzled him still more. The acceleration chairs were conventional enough; some of the navigational instruments were common types and all of them not too difficult to figure out; but the controls simply did not make sense.

Although this bewildered him, one point was very clear. The Nazis had not performed the nearly impossible task of building a giant space ship in a secret hide-out, any more than he and the boys had built the
Galileo
singlehanded. In each case it had been a job of conversion plus the installation of minor equipment.

For the
Wotan
was one of the finest, newest, biggest ships ever to come out of Detroit!

The time was getting away from him. He had used up seven minutes in his prowl through the ship. He hurried out and rejoined Ross. “Empty,” he reported, saving the details for later; “let’s try their rat hole.” He started loping across the plain.

They had to pick their way carefully through the rubble at the mouth of the hole. Since the bomb had not been an atom bomb but simply ordinary high explosive, they were in no danger of contamination, but they were in danger of slipping, sliding, falling, into the darkness.

Presently the rubble gave way to an excellent flight of stairs leading deep into the moon. Ross flashed his torch around. The walls, steps, and ceiling were covered with some tough lacquer, sprayed on to seal the place. The material was transparent, or nearly so, and they could see that it covered carefully fitted stonework.

“Went to a lot of trouble, didn’t they?” Ross remarked.

“Keep quiet!” answered Cargraves.

More than two hundred feet down the steep passageway ended, and they came to another door, not an air lock, but intended apparently as an air-tight safety door. It had not kept the owners safe; the blast followed by a sudden letting up of normal pressure had been too much for it. It was jammed in place but so bulged and distorted that there was room for them to squeeze through.

There was some light in the room beyond. The blast had broken most of the old-fashioned bulbs the Nazis had used, but here and there a light shone out, letting them see that they were in a large hall. Cargraves went cautiously ahead.

A room lay to the right from the hall, through an ordinary non-air-tight door, now hanging by one hinge. In it they found the reason why the field had been deserted when they had attacked.

The room was a barrack room; the Nazis had died in their bunks. ‘Night’ and ‘day’ were arbitrary terms on the moon, in so far as the working times and eating times and sleeping times of men are concerned. The Nazis were on another schedule; they had had the bad luck to be sleeping when Morrie’s bomb had robbed them of their air.

Cargraves stayed just long enough in the room to assure himself that all were dead. He did not let Ross come in at all. There was some blood, but not much, being mostly bleeding from mouths and bulging eyes. It was not this that caused his squeamish consideration; it was the expressions which were frozen on their dead faces.

He got out before he got sick.

Ross had found something. “Look here!” he demanded.

Cargraves looked. A portion of the wall had torn away under the sudden drop in pressure and had leaned crazily into the room. It was a metal panel, instead of the rock masonry which made up the rest of the walls. Ross had pulled and pried at it to see what lay behind, and was now playing his light into the darkness behind it.

It was another corridor, lined with carefully dressed and fitted stones. But here the stone had not been covered with the sealing lacquer.

“I wonder why they sealed it off after they built it?” Ross wanted to know. “Do you suppose they have stuff stored down there? Their A-bombs maybe?”

Cargraves studied the patiently fitted stones stretching away into the unfathomed darkness. After a long time he answered softly, “Ross, you haven’t discovered a Nazi storeroom. You have discovered the homes of the people of the moon.”

“—UNTIL WE ROT—”

• 17 •

FOR ONCE ROSS WAS ALMOST
as speech-bound as Art. When he was able to make his words behave he demanded, “Are you sure? Are you sure, Doc?”

Cargraves nodded. “As sure as I can be at this time. I wondered why the Nazis had built such a deep and extensive a base and why they had chosen to use fitted stone masonry. It would be hard to do, working in a space suit. But I assigned it to their reputation for doing things the hard way, what they call ‘efficiency.’ I should have known better.” He peered down the mysterious, gloomy corridor. “Certainly this was not built in the last few months.”

“How long ago, do you think?”

“How long? How long is a million years? How long is ten million years? I don’t know—I have trouble imagining a thousand years. Maybe we’ll never know.”

Ross wanted to explore. Cargraves shook his head. “We can’t go chasing rabbits. This is wonderful, the biggest thing in ages. But it will wait. Right now,” he said, glancing at his watch, “we’ve got eleven minutes to finish the job and get back up to the surface—or things will start happening up there!”

He covered the rest of the layout at a fast trot, with Ross guarding his rear from the central hall. He found the radio ‘shack’, with a man dead in his phones, and noted that the equipment did not appear to have suffered much damage when the whirlwind of escaping air had slammed out of the place. Farther on, an arsenal contained bombs for the jeep, and rifles, but no men.

He found the storeroom for the guided missiles, more than two hundred of them, although the cradles were only half used up. The sight of them should have inspired terror, knowing as he did that each represented a potentially dead and blasted city, but he had no time for it. He rushed on.

There was a smaller room, well furnished, which seemed to be sort of a wardroom or common room for the officers. It was there that he found a Nazi who was not as the others.

He was sprawled face down and dressed in a space suit. Although he did not move Cargraves approached him very cautiously.

The man was either dead or unconscious. However, he did not have the grimace of death on his face and his suit was still under pressure. Wondering what to do, Cargraves knelt over him. There was a pistol in his belt; Cargraves took it and stuck it in his own.

He could feel no heart beat through the heavy suit and his own gauntlet, nor could he listen for it, while wearing a helmet himself.

His watch showed five minutes of the agreed time left; whatever he did must be done fast. He grappled the limp form by the belt and dragged it along.

“What have you got there?” Ross demanded.

“Souvenir. Let’s get going. No time.” He saved his breath for the climb. The sixty-pound weight that he and his burden made, taken together, flew up the stairs six at a time. At the top his watch still showed two minutes to go. “Leg it out to the jeep,” he commanded Ross. “I can’t take this item there, or Morrie may decide it’s a trap. Meet me in the
Wotan
. Get going!” Heaving his light burden over one shoulder, he set out for the big ship at a gallop.

Once inside he put his load down and took the man out of his space suit. The body was warm but seemed dead. However, he found he could detect a faint heart-beat. He was starting an artificial respiration when the boys piled out of the lock.

“Hi,” he said, “who wants to relieve me here? I don’t know much about it.”

“Why bother?” asked Morrie.

Cargraves paused momentarily and looked at him quizzically. “Well, aside from the customary reasons you have been brought up to believe in, he might be more use to us alive than dead.”

Morrie shrugged. “Okay. I’ll take over.” He dropped to his knees, took Cargraves’ place, and started working.

“Did you bring them up to date?” Cargraves asked Ross.

“I gave them a quick sketch. Told them the place seemed to be ours and I told them what we found—the ruins.”

“Not very ruined,” Cargraves remarked.

“Look, Uncle,” demanded Art. “Can I go down there? I’ve got to get some pictures.”

“Pictures can wait,” Cargraves pointed out. “Right now we’ve got to find out how this ship works. As soon as we get the hang of it, we head back. That comes first.”

“Well, sure,” Art conceded, “but…after all—I mean. No pictures at all?”

“Well… Let’s put it this way. It may take Ross and Morrie and me, not to mention yourself, quite some time to figure out how they handle this craft. There might be twenty minutes when we could spare you. In the meantime, table the motion. Come on, Ross. By the way, what did you do with the prisoner?”

“Oh, him,” Morrie answered, “we tied him up and left him.”