Sick with terror, she turned and scrambled on hands and knees up the rocky sides of the crater until she stood upon the summit of the ridge. There was no sign of the Ring anywhere—only the scarred, spiked plain, with its white sepulchers of rock. Tears of self-pity burned in her eyes; but she could not wipe them away, and they drained down her cheeks and lips into her mouth. They would be looking for her - waiting for her! What agonies would her lover not be suffering, searching that dead, empty plain with his field-glasses for the shadow of the moving thing which meants so.
much to him!
She found herself panting, and tried to control her bosom in the belief that, by so doing, she could economize the breath of life. Fifty minutes had now been consumed since she had left the Ring. Perhaps it was only a short distance away—just there, or there—its beckoning tripod hidden from her feverish gaze by the moon’s curvature. Only ten minutes left of life! How should she spend them? In vain rushes for escape, like a dying bull? That would be fruitless. Better to remain where her friends might perchance see her through their glasses. The valve chirruped almost inaudibly. Only a few minutes more—eight—seven! She must signal, wave something—her handkerchief! Mechanically she felt for her pocket! Only the hard surface of the vacuum armor. She stood upon the block of burnt porphyritic rock and waved her arms wildly. These leprous cliffs, these whitened ridges were like a charnel-house of white bones—her graveyard! The pinnacles were waving back at her. She was dying! Was she already dead, perhaps? Had her soul escaped through the valve, and was it now
hovering over that grotesquely clad thing that had been she? The woman who died on the moon! The lady in the moon! Where had the lady come from? In a flying machine.
The valve gave a last flutter, and her vision clouded—brightened—glowed—until it almost blinded her. With a stifled cry, she found herself on her feet, staring at a dazzling trail of fire shooting into the black background of the sky. The Ring! It rose like a rocket just in front of her—its sides gleaming like molten metal toward and into the zenith—hesitated, hovered for a moment above her head, and dropped swiftly downward toward her. Hardly conscious of the action, she thrust the camera toward it and pressed the bulb—obtaining the only photograph showing the Ring in actual flight.
She had no recollection of taking the picture, and sometimes she is almost induced to believe that it was the result of some unearthly agency—a Selenite "control”—sending through her a natural demonstration and message to the inhabitants of the earth of conditions on the moon with proof, otherwise unobtainable, that the Ring had been there. For who shall say in what form the ultimate evolution of man shall appear? And is it not at least conceivable that the superman or supermind may dwell, a pure spirit, upon the moon—that there hovers among those colossal ruins of what was once a planet teeming with life a soul?
The camera dropped from her outstretched hands, and Rhoda staggered toward where the Ring would land. Slowly it descended to the ground—settling like a fiery bird to its nest—a lunar roc in Sinbad’s Valley of Bones—reducing the velocity of its fall by means of the counter-force of the ray which, driving down upon the porous plain, threw up great clouds and geysers of lava dust. These hurled high in air, dropped almost immediately again to the surface—a dead weight in a vacuum. But there was no sound—no wind. It might, for the absence of physical phenomena, have been an optical delusion. Yet, as Rhoda staggered, half fainting, toward that cloud of tumultuous matter, she knew that there alone could she support life, receive into her lungs once more that
essential of all human existence—oxygen.
Would she arrive in time? Already, there was a dreadful pressure upon her lungs, and she breathed, like an exhausted animal, in multitudinous little gasps. Fierce pains shot through her head, and there was a strange ringing in her ears and a contraction of the muscles in her throat. The frozen carbonic acid in the dregs of the liquid air was beginning to evaporated. The lunar landscape swam before her eyes like the rush of a moonlit river-then suddenly faded. She had entered the dust cloud raised by the Ring as it reached the surface. She reeled—the yellow detritus enveloping her like a sandstorm. She was like a fish swimming through a stratum of muddy water. Suddenly, the sabulous drift sank at her feet, and she found herself lying prone beside the Ring, with the steel ladder dangling from the landing-stage and an armored figure preparing to descend. She waved her arms feebly and shouted, and the figure waved in response to her gesture. A moment more, and Burke had leaped down beside her and placed his helmet against hers.
"Put your arms around my neck quick!” came vibrating through the telephonic metal and glass. "Where have you been?”
She heard, but could not answer. Burke put his arm around her and lifted her from the ground. How light she was! It gave him a shock. Could it be that a human being was inside, or was he holding the empty shell of the armor? Then, suddenly he felt her hand clutch his arm, and, remembering the diminished gravity on the moon, scrambled up the ladder with her clinging to his shoulders. It was not a moment too soon. For, as they closed the outer door of the air-lock, everything turned black and she lost consciousness. She came to, a few seconds later, as Bennie, having unscrewed her helmet, yanked it from her shoulders and dragged her inside the chart-room—pale, but still alive.
"I watched you from the top of the tripod,” explained Atterbury, as she handed back to him the whiskey-glass which she had emptied. "Saw you climb upon that peak. No harm in that! But then you disappeared, and I began to get nervous. So, as soon as we had finished our repairs, we decided to follow you. Lucky we did!”
"You were just in time. Another five minutes would have been too late,” she answered weakly. "But I had a great trip.”
"You see,” added Bennie, "we were afraid you might run out of air and get lost, so we thought if we made a short flight in the same general direction we should be nearer in case of accidents, and the Ring would guide you back to us. Anyhow, our tractor is running strong again, and we’re all ready to start for Medusa—as soon as we have had our breakfast.”
"Or dinner,” corrected Burke.
"Or supper,” added Atterbury.
Rhoda smiled faintly.
"Will someone please tell me what time it is up here?” she
asked plaintively.
Bennie shrugged his shoulders.
"The days and nights on the moon are each three hundred and fifty-four hours long—almost fifteen of our terrestrial days.”
"My!” whistled Atterbury. "What do you suppose a day’s pay amounts to? I’d hate to be a labor-leader on the moon working for shorter hours!”
"Yes—trying to get a two-hundred-and-ninety-nine-hour day!”
added Burke.
"I suppose the Selenites had lunch at half after one hundred and seventy-seven,” commented Rhoda, carrying on the joke,
"That would be midday,” assented Bennie. "But probably they had tea along about two hundred and forty-five and a late supper around three hundred and nineteen."
"Makes me hungry to think of it!” said Rhoda. "What’s the matter with tea now? I’m ravenous!”
She looked at her wrist-watch.
"Heavens—it’s nearly nine hours since we left Washington!” "And we’ve only come about two hundred and fifty thousand miles!” groaned Burke.
"And with Medusa scorching toward the earth at ninety miles a second, we ought to get busy!” ejaculated Bennie.
"But we surely can wait long enough for a cup of tea,” urged Rhoda. "Please, Mr. Atterbury, do hustle out the tea-things!” While the kettle was getting ready to boil, Rhoda and Bennie stood by the window and took a last look at the surface of the moon. But no longer did she regard its tumbled monoliths, its spires, crests, and craters either with interest or pleasure. On the contrary, her hand sought Bennie’s, and she shuddered as she gazed across that barren plain where no human thing of itself could live.