'But it's ridiculous, preposterous! After thousands of years. ... There might be a possibility of suspended animation for a short time, but this . ..'
'Why should it be impossible for an indefinite length of time? The fact that we don't know how to do it doesn't prove its impossibility. Those coffins were air-tight; they may have been full of preserving gas, for all we know. We couldn't notice that while we were wearing space-suits.'
'But―'
'Oh, all right,' I said. 'I'm only offering a theory. Can you think of a better one?'
Robson turned to contemplate the cliff.
'But why?' he murmured. 'Why?'
'Why do men put up memorials?' I asked. 'It's a habit, an instinct to perpetuate. I should say these people had just the same instinct. Their world was dying; the race was dying. Perhaps they thought that it was only a phase and that the Moon would become fertile once more. Anyway, on the face of it, it looks as though they decided to take a chance and try to save some of their race for whatever future there might be.'
'But how can they live?' asked someone. 'There's hardly any air.'
'But remember the enormous lung capacity,' suggested Robson.
Chapter Four
BESIEGED BY THE MOON-MEN
With the suggestion of a rational explanation, the fears of the party grew less intense. Some of the more adventurous even volunteered to undertake a further investigation. They could go prepared and well armed.
Robson vetoed the idea at once. He pointed out that there were over four hundred Lunarians ready to over-run them faster than they could fire.
'But we don't mean them any harm.'
'Nor did the others, but they got theirs. It doesn't seem to have occurred to you that they must have food. There was nothing to eat in the vault.'
We looked at one another. This implication of the immediate capture of our men had not struck us before. It did so now, unpleasantly. ...
Robson summoned Captain Toft. This was a danger which concerned the whole ship, not merely our scientific group.
The Captain's incredulity was easily beaten down by our massed conviction. He was all for action and rescue, until he realised that the space-suits had been slit and that the men were past all help. Robson pressed for the immediate removal of the Scintilla from the Mare Serenitatis to a less dangerous resting-place in some crater; but Toft shook his head.
'The engines are down for repairs. Even by forcing work to the limit, it'll take another ten hours.' Our faces looked anxious enough to make him add: 'I'll do my best, gentlemen, you may depend on that, but I can't promise a minute less than ten hours.'
Robson thought for a while. At last he spoke.
'We must keep them penned up as long as we can. I want two men to go outside and take rifles. Every man or woman who tries to get out of that vault must be shot.'
Two volunteers were immediately forthcoming. They hurried into space-suits, and were on their way to the lock when a shout from a watcher at the window stopped them.
'Too late,' he called. 'They're out!'
A knot of a dozen or more Moonmen had just emerged. They halted a few paces from the cliff and stood on the grey sand, shielding their eyes with their hands from the glare of our searchlight, and looking about them.
Now that they were erect, their differences from Earth-men appeared more pronounced. The large ears developed for catching sounds in the thin air seemed to dwarf their heads, and the huge bulging chests were so disproportionate as to render all the limbs skinny and spindly by contrast. They looked bewildered by the barrenness of the world they now faced. Not only did it fail to fulfil their expectations, but it was obviously different from their last view of it.
One man raised his arm and pointed to a distinctively distorted crag, as though it were a recognisable landmark. The rest nodded and let their eyes wander, searching for other familiar sights. More of their kind came out of the vault and joined them. After a short conference, they seemed to reach a decision and the whole group turned towards the Scintilla.
The doctor, standing next to me, was watching them with close attention.
'They're not doing too well,' he murmured. 'Even those great lungs are labouring a bit. The atmosphere must have been a great deal denser when they went in. I wonder just how long ago―?'
Robson's voice cut him short. He was addressing the two in space-suits.
'They mean mischief. You two get up into the control-dome and take your rifles. We'll evacuate the dome, and then you can open the windows and pick them off, if necessary.'
The two men left the room, and we heard them clattering up the metal ladders. Robson was right. The Moonmen and women did mean mischief. It was in their gleaming eyes and bared teeth as they approached.
They had resumed the trappings that we had pilfered. Each wore the broad worked belt of Luna, and about their necks and ankles glittered metal bangles. Black hair, held back from their faces by ornate circlets, depended in a lank mane upon their shoulders and down their backs.
One man, slightly taller than the rest, appeared to be the leader. As they drew close, he turned to incite the rest. A moment later, a volley of rocks and stones clattered futilely against the Scintilla's metal sides.
We took heart. The primitive simplicity of such an attack encouraged us. Half a minute later, two Moon-men dropped inert. Our men in the dome had gone into action. The attackers, by now a hundred strong, were thrown into momentary confusion. But the wavering was brief, and in a few seconds, they were running towards us. They had seen in a flash that once beneath the ship's overhanging sides, they would be safe from the marksmen above.
A well-placed rock put the searchlight out of action and plunged the cliff-face into intense shadow. It became impossible for the riflemen to pick off the reinforcements which would pour from the tomb. They would be all but invisible until the line of sunlight was reached—and that line was crawling slowly closer to us with the sinking of the Sun.
Another searchlight was switched on, but it, too, was swiftly obscured. The main body of the attackers was now out of view from our windows, though a large number of stragglers continued to dart from the shadow towards the ship. Of these, a number fell to the guns, but a larger number won through unharmed.
From down the corridor came the sudden clanging of an attack upon our outer door. We looked at one another and smiled. There was precious little to be feared from that direction. Nor were the Moon-men long in realising that the steel would defy their utmost efforts. In a very short time, they came clustering around the window, hungrily gloating and excitedly jostling one another as they peered in.
The leader picked up a prodigious rock which could not have been stirred by one man on Earth. He flung it with a mighty heave against the fused pane. The pane was unharmed, but Robson looked serious.
'I don't know how much of that sort of thing it will stand,' he said doubtfully. 'If they try two or three of those rocks simultaneously―?'
The same idea had occurred to the Moon-men. We saw them collecting the largest rocks they could handle. There was a leering look of triumph on the face of the leader as he regarded us through his slant eyes.
Robson rushed back and opened the door. 'Quick, out of this!' he shouted.
We left in a headlong rush, and as the last of us came through, we heard the crash of the shattered window. The door snapped to behind us automatically as the air pressure fell.
Within a couple of minutes, a furious battering began towards the stern. Half a dozen of us raced down the ship. As we clattered through the engine-room, the chief engineer looked up, spanner in hand. He was working all he knew. The grime on his face was trickled with sweat and his hair lay damp and flat.