On the front cover:
Professor Hooker watches the Earth rise as he stands on the Moon!
On the back cover: The destruction of the asteroid; Medusa!
These are just two of the many memorable scenes of fantastic adventure in this thrilling classic of science fiction.
A masterpiece of suspense as a giant asteroid hurtles thru space towards Earth, and man must make his first trip into space to save his planet!
The MOON MAKER
ARTHUR TRAIN
and
ROBERT W. WOOD Illustrated by Frank D. McSherry, Jr.
1958
KRUEGER HAMBURG, NEW YORK
Contents
11 - THE WANDERING ASTEROID
25 - THE FLYING RING
39 - THE FLIGHT OF THE RING
54 - ON THE MOON
66 - THE ATTACK ON THE ASTEROID
When the world-war was at its height, wireless messages signed with the name "Pax" had been received at the Naval Observatory at Washington, in which the sender declared him - self capable of controlling the forces of nature. These mysterious messages were followed by the occurrence of extraordinary natural phenomena such as violent seismic shocks and an unprecedented display of the aurora borealis. Coincidently, there appeared in the heavens a terrible air-craft, the Flying Ring, which, by means of a powerful lavendar ray, disrupted the mountains in northern Africa and flooded the Desert of Sahara. The warring nations were informed that if they did not conclude a permanent peace, Pax would shift the axis of the earth and compel the termination of hostilities by turning central Europe into an arctic waste. The nations, convinced at last that, unless they acceded to his demands, human life upon the globe would come to an end, entered into negotiations for peace. At about the same time, Professor Benjamin Hooker, attached to the Department of Applied Physics at Harvard University, determined, by independent research, that the mysterious force had its origin in the wilds of Labrador, and resolved to go there himself to see what he could find out about Pax and his schemes. After much hardship, he discovered the location of the Ring, arriving there at the moment when Pax was about to carry out his threat to deflect the axis of the globe; but, owing to an accident to the machinery generating the lavendar ray, an explosion occurred in which Pax and his associates were destroyed. The Flying Ring, however, remained intact, and Hooker, with his friend, the famous aviator Burke, succeeded in mastering its mechanism and starting in it for the United States.
PART I
THE WANDERING ASTEROID
I
"Now," said Bentham T. Tassifer, with an air of defiance, "we’ll see!" He was a bandy-legged little man, whose abdominal structure suggested a concealed melon.
Red-faced and perspiring, he arose from where he had been teeing up his ball for the fifth hole, flourished his driver aggressively, and, adjusting his knobby calves at a carefully calculated angle, went through a variety of extraordinary contortions with his wrists and forearms. Outwardly, he was the personification of pugnacious assurance. He had every appearance of being absolutely certain of his ability to swat that small white sphere to a distance of not less than three hundred yards and plumb onto the next green. Inwardly, however, Bentham had no confidence in himself at all. He knew that the chances were just nineteen out of twenty that he would slice into the bushes at about sixty yards and lose a brand new "baby bramble."
But, as befitted a deputy assistant solicitor at the Department of Justice, he allowed no hint of nervousness to betray itself, looked sternly at Judson, his lank opponent, and remarked again, "Now we’ll see!"
Nobody but Mrs. Tassifer knew what a sucking dove Bentham really was in his inmost soul. The world at large regarded him as a rather terrible squatty person who had a chip on each shoulder, for he made almost as much noise insisting on his rights as a native Briton. In point of fact, he thought he looked like Stephen A. Douglas or, in lieu of that, like Robert G. Ingersoll possibly. But that was all on the exterior. And now, as he addressed the ball, he kept inwardly repeating to himself: "Eye on the ball - head steady - follow through. Eye on the ball -head steady - follow through." Then, summoning all his resources, he swung his driver over his shoulder and was about to bring it down with the impetus of a Travis, when he thought he saw a black gnat dancing in front of his eyes.
"Tush!” he exclaimed, waving with his left hand. "These flies!”
"Aren't any flies,” retorted his friend Judson, from the Department of Agriculture, "in October.”
"Well, I thought there was," said Bentham, dressing at the ball once more. "There it is again!” he added, suddenly striking at something. Then he fastened his eyes on the horizon. "You're right! It isn't here - it’s there! See it?” And he pointed out into the blue of space with his driver.
"Flying machine,” announced Judson. "Watch it go!” The black speck was coming swiftly toward them and growing larger every instant.
"It’s like a doughnut - round with a hole in the middle!” cried Bentham. "I believe that fellow intends to land here. What impudence!”
By this time, both of them could see plainly the details of the machine which, constructed apparently of polished steel, flashed dizzily in the sunlight as it shot over the golf-course. It was evidently a hollow cylinder shaped like an anchor-ring or life-preserver, about seventy-five feet in diameter, with a tripod superstructure carrying, at its apex, a thimble-shaped device,
the open mouth of which pointed downward through the middle of the machine. A faint yellow glare - a sort of luminous vapor -hovered below this gigantic car, which sailed through the air with a deep humming sound.
"It’s coming down!” shouted Bentham indignantly. "We’d better beat it! This is an outrage!”
From overhead came a series of crackling vibrations, accompanied by a muffled roar like escaping steam. The car had ceased to move forward and was slowly descending. Strange creakings and snappings echoed like rifle-shots all about them, and a Niagara of what looked like hot steam shot through with a pale-yellow, phosphorescent light, drove down through the cen-
ter of the ring and tore away the surface of the fair green, fill-ing the air with a geyser of earth and grass. The two men, al-most blinded by the rain of mud, sand, and small stones, ran like rabbits to the shelter of the nearest bunker.
"Outrageous! Inexcusable!" sputtered Mr. Tassifer, as he cowered on the other side of it. "Fellow must be simply mad! Private property!"
Then, after a couple of minutes, hearing no further sounds and the sand-storm having subsided, they raised their heads and peeked over the top of the bunker. Between the fourth and fifth holes, the turf on the fair green had been torn up in a circular patch of about a hundred feet in diameter, and in the shallow crater thus excavated, and surrounded by an irregular ring of divots, sand, and debris, rested a gigantic flying machine surmounted by a superstructure not unlike the fighting-mast of a battle-ship. The whole affair, embedded thus in the golf-course, had an air of permanency that irritated Mr. Tassifer, and, even as he gazed at the trespasser, a circular manhole opened in the side, a jointed steel ladder was lowered to the ground, and a short man in a strange kind of helmet climbed out and began to descend.
Then it was that Mr. Tassifer rose to the occasion.
"Here, you," he shouted, hurrying threateningly toward the newcomer; "this is private property! You can't land here! Take yourself off!"
The man from the machine leaped to earth and turned a circular glass face, like a small aquarium, to the enraged golfer. From outside, his countenance had a horrible grotesque appearance, like that of a man-eating shark. Lowering his head, he charged like an infuriated bull at Mr. Tassifer, who ignomin-iously took to his heels and did not look round until he had gained the shelter of the clubhouse piazza, Mr. Judson had arrived there before him.