CHAPTER V

LUNAR RENDEZVOUS

Long crater shadows were crawling across the dead seas of Luna. In the very edge of those long shadows which moved so slowly, tiny phosphorescent wrigglers, the only form of life on the satellite, kept pace with the strange twilight of this slow dusk.

A cold, frigid world was the moon, passing into the dusk of existence, even as the month-old day was passing from the dead seas.

From out of space something moved, a silver dart that came twisting out of the reflected sunlight and levelled out in a long gravitational glide over the dead Sea of Serenity.

At last it swooped down, landed on a high ledge that was almost obscured by jetty walls that went ever higher and higher, to end brokenly where the last lingering rays of moonset made crowns of foamy refraction.

A man in a fat, grubby spacesuit of metallin came from a porte, gazed around, and having sighted a dim glow of light, went warily toward where the black wall was indented with a deep grotto. He stepped on the threshold, saw an atomic lantern glowing in the hand of a waiting figure, also clad in spacetogs.

"Rufus!" called the newcomer excitedly. "That you, Rufus?"

"Yes, Dr. Haliburton," returned Rufus Thallin. "Where's Marshall? Wouldn't he come?"

"Oh, yes," replied Dr. Haliburton, who was having the dickens of a time keeping his gold-rimmed spectacles on inside of his helmet. "He came all right. But he wanted me to make certain you were here."

"Go bring him," said Rufus Thallin. "I trust you, Dr. Haliburton, but I'm not so certain about Keith Randolph Marshall. Did he come prepared to complete the--bargain?"

The space-clad man turned. He saw the academic features of the physician but dimly.

"He came with a property deed to every space-ship he has," said Dr. Haliburton. "I think you'll find that Marshall is a man who always keeps his word, no matter how the bargain is made."

Rufus Thallin made no answer but stood holding the atomic lantern until two space-clad figures walked from the space-flyer and came toward him. The faceplate of the larger helmet was turned into the lantern's glow and he made out the massive, aquiline countenance of Keith Randolph Marshall, glaring at him.

"You remember our bargain?" he asked curtly through the space-phones.

Marshall shook a leathern pack of documents in his metal-gloved hand.

"I remember," he muttered hoarsely. "And if Alyce is completely recovered, as you say she is, I will sign every space-liner I own over to you."

"Very well," said Rufus Thallin. "Follow me."

He led them down a curving corridor carved from solid volcanic rock, and at length emerged into a gigantic cavern. The floor of the cavern ended abruptly in a ledge that fell sheer into black depths. Perched on the brink of the black abyss was Rufus Thallin's space-flyer. No hint as to how it had been transported here could be gained from the black unfathomable shadows that girded it around.

Alyce was waiting inside. She was beautiful in that happy moment of reunion, vastly more beautiful than mere words could have told, and her blue eyes were radiant with expectant joy. The tall space-clad man ran ahead eagerly and clambered through the aperture of an airlock.

Rufus felt Dr. Haliburton's gauntleted hand on his arm.

"Perhaps they'd rather be left alone," he said. "Remember, they'll be like strangers almost, meeting for the first time." Through a port they could see the big man, now without the upper portion of his space suiting, and the girl sobbing on his shoulder.

"You have done a wonderful thing," said Dr. Haliburton enviously. "Alyce is completely transformed. Rufus, there is some magical quality about the outer rays of cosmic space. If we could pin it down, we'd make enormous strides in preserving eternal health for the human body."

The young giant was looking up into black vaults. When he spoke his eyes were dreamy.

"I can see them now," he whispered. "Big cruisers, done over with the new radiotron drive, whisking across the gulfs as though they were nothing. The Thallin Starways will blaze an eternal trail across interplanetary space. Dad would have liked it that way."

Dr. Haliburton sighed. "If only you'd think more of science, and not of--"

Rufus Thallin was no longer listening. He had whirled around and was peering into the indigo blackness of the cavern from which they had come.

"My nerves," he said at length. "I guess I'm jumpy. Let's go in now. I want a talk with Keith Randolph Marshall."

He waited for the slighter figure of the doctor to enter the airlock, waited until the inner sigh of atmosphere told he was inside. All of the while, Rufus stood tense, peering into a blackness that was so thick it was like a cushion. Then he, too, went through the airlock.

His metal arms moved swiftly, unfastening the middle of his space togging. Keith Randolph Marshall was signing a bunch of papers against a berylumin strut.

"Here," he grunted, screwing up his fountain pen and returning it to his coat pocket, "They're yours, every space scuttler! The Marshall lines are yours, lock, stock and barrel."

"I told you father would keep his bargain," said Alyce Marshall, clinging to the arm of the erstwhile dictator of the spacelanes. "I only hope he never regrets it."

"He won't," said Rufus drily. "He won't, because I'll never get hold of them."

Another helmet fastening came loose and the slender upper body of Dr. Haliburton appeared. He adjusted his glasses hurriedly and glared at Rufus Thallin. A strange smile of triumph lingered on the heavy lips of Keith Randolph Marshall.

"Don't mind him, Alyce," said Marshall. "I've kept my bargain. Next week, after you've rested, I'm going to stage a coming out party for you. He has the papers, hasn't he? Come on. Let's get out."

"Wait a minute!" cried Rufus sharply. "Yes, I have the papers. But they'd never let me file them, not with charges of kidnaping against me. And once convicted, a thing your lawyers could see to, it would be illegal for me to own any property in space! Isn't that true, Marshall?"

The space commerce king shrugged his shoulders.

"Its truth does not concern our bargain," he began evasively.

"Nor do the space police who followed you," went on Rufus calmly.

"What's that?" demanded Dr. Haliburton. "I assure you, we came in utmost secrecy, and that--" He stopped, having seen the plain guilt on the face of Keith Randolph Marshall.

"Oh, damn the man!" stormed Marshall angrily. "What if I did? I'm a man of my word, and he's a man of his. Yes, your jig is up! You might as well give yourself up quietly, Rufus."

Marshall's hand came up from the lower part of his space suiting, holding a flame-gun that was pointed at Rufus Thallin, but that young man was no longer there. Leaping with all of his strength, he dove clear across the room. His shoulders struck the metal suiting and the gun flew from Marshall's hand.

One balled fist came up to a defensive position, kept on going. Rufus followed it with another, a straight punch that carried his full weight behind it. Keith Randolph Marshall went down. He wasn't out, but when he looked into the face of the man standing over him, he stayed down.

"Get out!" snorted Rufus furiously. "Get your spacetogs on and get out before I really do commit murder. Go out to your precious, skulking space coppers. And just let them try to take me--alive!"

He picked up the flame-gun where Marshall had dropped it and watched the three of them as they fastened space toggings about their bodies. Marshall was the first to go through the airlock. Dr. Haliburton, looking slightly dazed, went next. There was only room for one of them at a time.

Alyce Marshall stood hesitant, waiting for the hiss of escaping gas that would be the signal for her turn. As she did Rufus Thallin stalked to her side, wrenched loose the upper fastening of her spacetogs. When her face came free he brushed back her tangled hair and kissed the exposed lips savagely.

"That wasn't in the bargain either!" he ground out furiously, and spun on his heel.

She was gone. He sat at the controls and waited. She would be going from the outer door of the lock now, and the space police would be creeping nearer. Perhaps Alyce would tell them how he had gained entrance to the cavern, but by that time, it would be too late.

His hand flickered over the controls. A low thunder shook the space-flyer. On the outside a seething cushion of flames would be supporting it. Through the glassite he glimpsed retreating figures, saw the cavern abruptly become as light as day.

The space-flyer floated out over the edge of the abyss and dropped. It descended straight for three miles, then followed the curl of the titanic crevice toward the horizontal. Ancient civilized men had shaped the upper cavern, men of a lost generation, but this titanic lower abyss was a fault created by nature herself.

Rocket flames cast a weird illumination on the monstrous grotto, sent grotesque shadows leaping far ahead. The volcanic walls fell away from either side and were gone. Overhead he glimpsed crusty stars that twinkled like diamonds. On all sides were high black walls. The space-flyer had emerged in the giant crater called Copernicus.

The down-lash of flames became more furious, lifted the spacer high. Prow jets spat additional flames and sent the nose of the space-flyer angling vertically toward the dim, dark regions of outer space.

It held poised on the maelstrom of unleashed flame for an instant like a living thing of metal. He reached down, snapped on the radiation propulsion beam. Instantly the space-flyer began to accelerate.

The dark side of the moon was cleft asunder by a puff of high flame that lingered for a moment and then was gone. Only a thin column of shimmering light rose, slim and tall and straight. On its peak a space-flyer was hurtling on its way.

Rufus Thallin leaned back in his leathern pilot seat and relaxed. He felt very, very tired. A clicking sound aroused him. He turned to see a space-clad figure emerging from the airlock.

The helmet came away and she emerged from the spacesuit like a butterfly from a cocoon.

"You--you didn't give me time," said Alyce Marshall, evading his eyes.

"Look here!" snorted Rufus Thallin. "There was plenty of time to get out of the lock. What were you doing in there all of that time?"

"Thinking," answered Alyce, folding the spacesuit neatly and putting it into place on a nearby rack. "And it was your own fault, Rufus Thallin. It was on account of what you did just before--before--

"Anyway, I was thinking that you had deliberately made me hate you all along. But you overdid it, Rufus. Did anyone ever tell you how closely related are the emotions of extreme hate and the emotions of extreme--"

"Extreme what?" demanded Rufus Thallin in incredulous amazement.

"We can pull through anything, Rufus, if we hold out--together."

"Together, Alyce?" he whispered. "You mean it that way? Why, together we could lick the universe."