Part 3

The ceremony had evidently some sort of a religious significance, for the Insect-men were clicking rhythmically and were bowing down before the dark-haired girl. Goddess of the Moon! The girl's head-dress was a grotesque representation of an insect, set with jewels. At the tops of the flexible antennae were a pair of giant rubies.

"Boy! Wouldn't I like to get my hands on those stones!" Colton whispered from where he crouched on Ripon's left.

Then Larry noticed something else! A group of perhaps a hundred of the Insect-men were moving swiftly forward between the ranks of their bowing comrades. This group carried shields as well as clubs, and they had the purposeful air of men with a grim and serious errand to perform. The girl was staring over the heads of the crowd with a distant and goddess-like manner, and did not notice the newcomers till they had almost reached her. Then her eyes widened in alarm. She leaped up from her throne and burst into a torrent of shrill clicking.

In an instant the crater was in a turmoil. The group of the heavily armed Insect-men charged straight for the mound in the center. Others flung themselves in their path, rallying to the defense of the Goddess. There was a wild flurry of swinging clubs. The spiked heads clanged on metal shields, or cracked sharply on the brittle brown shells of the Insect-men. The significance of the scene before him was still obscure to Larry, but it was evident that some kind of a revolt had broken out.

The rebels among the Insect-men were outnumbered, but their metal shields gave them a big advantage and they were better organized. Like a spear-point they drove straight through the confused mass of worshipers and surrounded the low knoll in the center. They brushed its defenders aside and swarmed up toward the dark-haired Goddess. Larry had already drawn his ray-gun, but Ripon was the first to leap to his feet.

"Come on, young feller!" he roared. "That girl is the first human thing we've seen on the Moon. We can't let her down. Let's show those many-legged devils how an Earth man can fight!"

Larry and Ripon went down the slope of the crater in a series of bounding leaps. The milling Insect-men opened before them, seeming to welcome these unexpected reinforcements. Some of the rebels had already forced the struggling girl to her knees and were lashing her hands behind her back. A solid rank of them faced about with their round shields locked and a tossing fringe of spiked clubs waving atop the metal wall.

* * * * *

The two Earthlings dove for the shield-wall with their guns flashing. Larry ducked as one of the Insect-men hurled a club which just missed his glass helmet, then pressed the trigger of his ray-gun. The murky beam of the rays stabbed into the shield, melted a hole through it in a fraction of a second, and struck down the man behind. The flashing ray-guns of the two adventurers ripped the shield-wall asunder. A wave of the loyal Insect-men poured in behind them.

Larry shifted his ray-gun to his left hand, and snatched up a fallen club with his right. It was heavier than he had expected, a well balanced and efficient weapon. The hard brown shells of the rebels cracked like china under the smashing blows of his Earthly muscles. Then he bounded up on the mound and struck down the pair of rebels who held the girl. Her wrists were now tied behind her.

Throwing an arm about the girl's shoulders, Larry hastily faced about. Ripon was a few yards away. A ring of his slain lay around him, but his weapons had been knocked from his hands and he was struggling in the grip of a pair of the Insect-men. A third of the creatures was swinging a club to strike a blow at the scientist's glass helmet. Larry instantly fired, the beam of the ray striking the arm that held the club and shearing it clean off at the shoulder. A viscous yellow liquid dripped out, and the creature dropped writhing on the rock while it clicked in pain. Then Colton and the two quartermasters came charging belatedly up, and the fight was over.

The crater was dotted with the still forms of dead Insect-men. Larry noticed that their hard shells gleamed dully in the dim light. The surviving rebels had fled off across the far rim of the crater, and the rest of the throng had gone chasing after them. No one remained in the crater except the strange girl and the party from the _Sky Maid_.

When Larry had freed the girl's hands, she turned to the five Earth-men and touched her forehead in a gesture of thanks. Then she stepped across to touch some hidden spring on the far side of the mound, and a trap door opened in what had apparently been solid rock. The girl led the way down a narrow flight of stairs, motioning for the last man down to pull the trap closed behind them.

They stood in a small chamber that had walls of roughly smoothed rock. It was evidently the work of men, for tool marks showed here and there. It was lighted by a green globe set in one wall. The globe appeared to be made of some kind of flexible glass, and it glowed with a faint greenish radiance that overcame the darkness enough to give the place a dim and eerie light. At one side of the room was an oval hole like a slanting well cut in the floor. Beside it stood a pile of low, flat carts. They were about two feet wide by four feet long, and they were supported on axles bearing small wheels the diameter of a man's hand.

The girl spoke to Larry twice, first in the clicking talk of the Insect-men and then in some soft and musical tongue that was unlike anything Larry had ever heard. Both times he shook his head. Motioning for them to follow her, she put one of the low carts down near the rim of the hole and sat on it. Then she gave a push with her hands--and vanished.

"Come on," Larry said, raking another of the carts. Colton stared at him.

"Down that hole?" he asked.

"Why not? We've got to find out what all this is about."

* * * * *

A second later Larry Gibson found himself shooting down into the interior of the Moon by means of a sloping tunnel cut in the rock. A series of the greenish globes were set in the ceiling at intervals to give the rocky shaft a dim light. The wheels of the cart ran in two grooves cut in the floor, and he shot swiftly downward with a dull humming sound.

Larry was trying to estimate the speed of his downward movement. It was not so terribly fast, probably not really as fast as the nearness of the walls made it appear while they flashed by on either hand. The slope was a gentle one. Although he had gathered considerable momentum, he had no feeling of the car being out of control.

As the minutes passed, Larry saw something else. The moisture that had been on the outside of his space suit from the air within the _Sky Maid_ had frozen into a white frost a few seconds after the breaking of the control room wall let the outer cold into the ship. Now the frost was melting! They were getting into warmer regions as they went down. Perhaps they were also running into a heavier atmosphere! Larry held his hand up before him, and had a distinct feeling of pressure against it from the rush of air sweeping up to meet him. A minute later he had tested the atmosphere with the portable oxygen-gauge carried in the equipment pocket of any space suit. Then he took off his helmet.

The air was quite warm, and though still very thin it was definitely breathable. Its clean, earthy odor was a pleasant contrast to the chemical product used over and over again inside the helmet of a space suit. A moment later he saw a brighter light ahead and realized that he had come to the bottom of the long shaft.

They were in a square room whose walls were of polished gray stone. As Larry got up from his cart and moved in aside from the landing platform, the girl gave him a friendly smile. She had already taken off her ornately jeweled head-dress and placed it in a metal cabinet fastened to the wall. Completely without embarrassment, she tied a strip of gayly colored silk across her bare breasts. Then she tossed her long hair back from her forehead and bound another strip of silk to keep it in place. "That was quite a ride," Larry said.

He had spoken in English, knowing that the girl would not understand but hoping the sound of the words would convey a generally friendly impression. She stared at him in startled surprise for a second.

"It is much pleasanter than the upward trip," she said at last.

"But--but you spoke in English!" Larry gasped.

"Why shouldn't I? My father is a man from Earth. I am Diana Staunton."

IX

As the others came sliding down into the room, Larry gave each one a formal introduction to Diana. The glow in the girl's eyes showed that she enjoyed their utter amazement. For a girl who had been born on the Moon, even though of Earthly parents, Diana Staunton had a great deal of poise and self-possession.

"I am only a Goddess to the sluggish minds of the Insect-men," she explained in answer to Ripon's question. "To our own people of the Lost Caverns I am simply the daughter of one of the nobles."

"I knew your father thirty years ago," Ripon said.

"He has always told me that other men from Earth would come some day."

"Your father can tell me most of the things I want to know, but I am wondering how you managed to survive up there on the surface where there is little or no air and it is always so cold."

"I could not stay very long." From a fold in her loin cloth the girl drew out a tightly closed glass bottle that held some white tablets. "These contain oxygen mixed with some gases unknown on Earth, the whole very strongly compressed into solid form. Ten minutes after I swallow one, it is safe for me to go out on the surface. The effect lasts for about fifteen minutes."

"Pretty risky if anything delays you," Larry said. Diana shrugged, and her blue eyes grew somber.

"Someone has to do it. The loyalty of the Insect-men is our greatest protection against the evil Lords of Gral-Thala. This is the first time there has ever been anything like a revolt among the Insect-men. I do not know what lies behind it, but it probably means trouble for us of the Lost Caverns."

Colton was the last to come down the rocky shaft. Larry noticed that the second officer was ill at ease, disinclined to meet his eyes, and wondered if Colton was ashamed of either his late entry into the fight or his fear of coming down into the Moon's interior. Hardly likely! From what he knew of Gerald Colton, the man was not likely to be ashamed of anything he did.

They went through a maze of gray walled passages, still trending downward. Once or twice Larry thought he heard stealthy footsteps behind them, but there was no one in sight when he looked back. On several occasions they passed sentries wearing a makeshift armor, who saluted Diana with long bladed swords. Sometimes they spoke to her in English with a peculiar soft accent, sometimes in that strange tongue that Diana had first used.

Larry noticed that these Lunarians looked only slightly different from the peoples of Earth. They had larger eyes, and a greater delicacy of feature. The principle distinguishing feature was their very thin legs. Often they had wide shoulders and deep chests, but since they did not need strong supporting muscles in view of the Moon's slight gravity their legs were thin and narrow.

The sentries stared curiously at the Earth-men in their bulky space suits, but the fact that the newcomers were with Diana Staunton seemed to be sufficient passport. They began to pass a greater number of people in the corridors, and finally they stepped through a heavily guarded gate and came to a vast cavern.

The place was huge, extending for a good mile ahead of them and with a lofty roof lost in the shadows overhead. Some of the gigantic columns that supported the roof were made of heavy stone blocks. Others were natural rock that had been smoothed and polished. All over the floor of the cavern were narrow streets, and small cottages built of some queer composition that came in a rainbow of different colors, and little patches of some sort of green grass. A golden and rather misty light pervaded the whole cavern. Square shafts of a brighter radiance darted down from above at irregular intervals, and wherever one of them struck the floor of the cavern there was a small patch of cultivated ground with long-leafed plants.

"Agriculture by chemical control!" Ripon whispered in Larry's ear. Diana glanced back at them over her shoulder.

"This is Chotan, largest of the Lost Caverns," she said. "The Council of Elders is now in session, and it will be best that we go direct to them."

"Why do you call these the Lost Caverns?" Larry asked.

"Because we who live here are outlaws, and the location of these vast caves is not known to the Lords of Gral-Thala who rule the other side of the Moon."

"Apparently not all the inhabitants of the Moon are so friendly," Ripon said.

"If you came into the hands of the Lords of Gral-Thala," she said grimly, "they would tear the skin from your bodies and use it to lace their scented golden boots!"

Large-eyed Lunarians stared curiously at the Earth-men as they hurried through the streets of the underground village. Diana led them direct to a broad-beamed, red-roofed building that stood by itself in the center of the cavern. A dozen elderly men sat behind a long table of carved wood that was black and cracked with age. It was, Larry realized, the first wooden thing he had seen since he landed on the Moon. At either side of the chamber stood a squad of armored warriors.

Larry was staring at a curious device that was carved in the center of the table, and carried on a banner hung above the heads of the council, and inlaid in a white metal on the bluish steel shields of the guards. And then he recognized it! It was the crescent Earth, the profile of the mother planet as seen from the Moon when the Americas were still in sunlight and the shadows of night were creeping across the Atlantic. The sight of it made him home-sick. The crescent moon had been a religious symbol to many of the ancient races of Earth, and it was fitting that the crescent earth should hold a similar place on this isolated satellite.

It seemed to Larry that Diana was a trifle nervous over something. She had entered the council chamber with an air of confidence, lifting one arm in a stately gesture of greeting and asking the Elders to accept the men from Earth as friends and guests, but he sensed a degree of uncertainty behind her manner. In hasty phrases she told the council of the revolt of part of the Insect-men, and of the timely arrival of the strangers from the mother planet.

"And so I request that you accept these men into the Brotherhood of the Caverns!" she finished. The graybeards behind the long table nodded gravely, but before they could speak another voice rang but in a sharp challenge.

"And I, O Elders of Chotan, demand that these interlopers be put to death in accordance with the ancient law of the Caverns concerning unwanted strangers!"

X

The speaker was a fair-haired young man in a green cloak. He looked more like an Earthling than a Lunarian, with his sturdy legs and small eyes. He pointed an accusing finger straight at Larry in a dramatic gesture, and Diana wheeled to face him with anger in her voice.

"You talk very loudly of the ancient laws, Xylon, for a newcomer only recently taken into the Brotherhood because you fled as an outlaw from the Lords of Gral-Thala!"

"I did not make the laws!" Xylon retorted.

"The death penalty for strangers has not been strictly enforced for many years--or _you_ would not now be alive! It is up to the decision of the Elders!"

The council chamber was in an uproar, with shouted phrases flung back and forth. Larry laid a hand on the butt of his ray-gun. A keen-eyed officer of the guards caught the gesture, and instantly Larry found a pair of rifles directed at his chest. At least, they looked like some sort of compressed air rifles. They had fiber stocks, and long barrels, and a cylindrical magazine beneath the barrel. Then a deep voice dominated the tumult as a red-haired man in full armor forced his way through to the forefront of the crowd.

"The girl is right, O Elders and members of the Brotherhood!" he boomed. "Xylon talks like a fool. I, Pyatt of Kagan, urge that the strangers from Earth be accepted. Let Xylon remain among us for a little while longer before he attempts to dominate our councils!"

Larry could sense the swing of sentiment in their favor, could feel the lessening of the tension. The man called Xylon shrugged and turned away. Then the council took a formal vote, waving the ancient death penalty and allowing the strangers the freedom of the Caverns. One of the Elders near the end of the table rose to his feet. He wore the typical black robes of the Council, but as Larry looked closely at the man's lined face he saw the resemblance to Diana and knew that he was looking at Lester Staunton.

"Since these men are from what was once my own land," Staunton said, "I will make them comfortable in my house for the duration of their stay here."

As the crowd began to stream out of the council-chamber, the red-headed man pushed his way through to Ripon and Larry. He was unusually burly and big-thewed for a Lunarian, and though his face was marred by a pair of old scars he had a wide and cheerful smile.

"Welcome to the Cavern of Chotan!" he boomed. "I am Pyatt of Kagan, military commander of all the armed forces of the Caverns. Later I will want to talk to you about that revolt of the Insect-men, which is something that has not happened before. Also, we will drink a goblet of wine together."

"Then you have wines on the Moon?" Ripon asked, visibly brightening.

"Aye, wines of many sorts. Though my own taste runs more to the strong-waters that fire the blood and set a man's head to spinning."

"I can see that you and I have a lot in common!" Ripon grinned.

* * * * *

Just before they left, Xylon came up to shake hands with Larry.

"No hard feelings, Earthling!" he said. "It is just that the safety and liberties of the Caverns are very precious to one like myself, who has so recently become an outlaw, and I did not think that we should take any chances."

"That's all right," Larry said shortly. Now that he saw Xylon at really close range, he realized that the man was older than he had thought. His appearance of youth vanished when you saw the many fine wrinkles in his face and the weariness around his eyes. He had a dissolute appearance. Xylon might be sincere in his bid for friendship, but Larry felt that there was something serpentine and evil about the man.

With Diana and her father and a few others, they walked along one of the many winding paths of Chotan. Larry noticed that the chemically grown plants had no scent at all. The motionless, warm air was suffused with a misty and golden light. Small, neat houses built in various bright colors stood amid their plots of grass. It was a strange scene to Earthly eyes, that cavern far below the Moon's chill surface, but it was a pleasant spot in its way.

The women they passed along the walks were dressed like Diana, in a gayly colored loin-cloth with a narrow band across the breasts. Most of the men wore a loose, colored cloak in addition to the single garment. Only a few were armed.

Larry had taken off the right mitten of his space suit to shake hands with Pyatt and Xylon in the council chamber. Several times he had started to replace the mitten, but something had always distracted him and he was still carrying it in his left hand. Now, as he happened to give the mitten a shake, a small insect of a blood-red color fell out and landed on the walk. It looked something like a miniature scorpion. Larry had only a hasty glimpse before Pyatt of Kagan leaped forward and crushed the crawling thing with the heavy sole of his sandal.

"That was a _spanto_!" he said. "Their bite means death within ten seconds. I wonder how it came to be in your glove!"

"I wonder myself!" Larry said grimly, looking across the field at the green-cloaked figure of Xylon, who had turned off on another of the branching walks. It would not have been hard for Xylon to have dropped the insect in his glove! As if in answer to his thought, Diana spoke quietly:

"I do not trust Xylon any farther than I can see him, friend Larry! There is something unclean in his eyes when he looks at me."

"If he looks at you too much while I'm here I'll break his jaw!" Larry said. The girl looked up at him with a sudden smile that was also a challenge.

"I begin to understand why my father has always said that I would like the men from Earth better than the Lunarians!"

XI

They sat in Professor Staunton's laboratory, a square chamber where Earthly equipment taken from the wreck of his space-ship was mingled with typically Lunarian furniture and equipment. The walls were light blue, of that polished composition resembling bakelite that was used for building in the Caverns. The walls were about ten feet high, and they ended in an ornamental cornice without any ceiling or roof at all. Overhead there was a glow of misty light, and far above the rocky top of the cavern.

"Why should we need roofs?" Diana said in reply to Larry's surprised comment. "Here in these Caverns there is neither rain nor snow nor wind, nor any change in temperature at all. The walls give privacy, and there is no need for anything else."

Ripon was bending over a table on which Staunton had spread a large map of the Moon. The cavern of Chotan was indicated by a red dot, and Larry saw that there were a dozen others scattered around within a radius of a few hundred miles.

"Our space-cruiser was wrecked near one of the entrances to this cavern when we landed here thirty years ago," Staunton said. "As you have guessed, it was the inability to land safely with rockets, in a practically airless atmosphere where helicopters were useless, that smashed us. As you did, we had fortunately put on space suits before trying to land. Our ship was too badly wrecked for any chance of return."

"But how have you succeeded in getting all these people to learn English?" Ripon asked.

"They knew that language before I came! But it is best that I give you a hasty outline of Lunarian history. The simple-minded but husky Insect-men were the aboriginal inhabitants of the Moon. Long æons ago, while most of the people of Earth were living crudely in caves and using chipped stones for tools and weapons, an isolated people developed a high civilization in what I have roughly identified as the region of the Himalayas. A series of great earthquakes destroyed their civilization, but a large number of them escaped and came to the Moon in some kind of a space-ship. Here they found, in those days, a small planetary body that had a thin but breathable air. They founded a civilization on the other side of the Moon where it is always sunny, and called it Gral-Thala. Those were pleasant days, if the old legends are to be believed, the Golden Age of Lunarian civilization."

For a moment Staunton paused. All those in the room, including the Lunarians who had been familiar with this tale since childhood, hung intently on his words. The broad face of Pyatt of Kagan was somber and moody as he sat bent forward with the scabbard of his sword resting across his armored knees.