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Updated: June 11, 2025
"Suppose you let me have a talk with Prince? I have some scientific knowledge myself about the powers of this catalyst. Prince's knowledge and mine we might be able to come to a calculation on the value of Grantline's treasure. You don't know. You are only assuming." I paused after this glib outburst. Whatever may have been in Miko's mind, I cannot say. But abruptly he stood up.
As we headed for the Grantline buildings, where still the rift in the wall had not quite broken, there came the final triumph. Miko had been aware of it, and knew he had lost. Grantline's searchlight leaped upward, swept the sky, caught its sought-for object a huge silver cylinder, bathed brightly in the white searchbeam glare. The police ship from Earth.
It was Grantline's command. I lay crouched, holding the inner tips of the flexible side shields. The bottom of the platform was covered with the insulated fabric. There were two side shields. They extended upward some two feet, flexible so that I could hold them out to see over them, or draw them up and in to cover us.
A tremendous necessity for mechanical equipment had burdened Grantline's small ship to capacity. The chemistry of manufactured air, the pressure equalizers, renewers, respirators, the lighting and temperature maintenance of a space-flyer was here. There was this main Grantline building, stretched low and rectangular along the front edge of the ledge.
The grimness of the Moon was eating into the courage of Grantline's men. An unreality here. A weirdness. These fantastic crags. The deadly silence. The nights, almost two weeks of Earth time in length, congealed by the deadly frigidity of space.
Our search light ray at the camp, answering Grantline's signal, shot down and bathed the enemy ship in a white glare, revealing it for our aim. Simultaneously the brigand bolts came up at us. I held my bomb out over the shield, calculating the angle to throw it down. The brigand rays flashed around me.
Grantline's party? Snap gripped me. "Grantline! We're safe, Gregg! Safe!" He took his bulb light from his helmet; we stood in a group while he waved it. A semaphore signal. "Grantline?" And the answer came, "Yes. You, Dean?" Their personal code. No doubt of this it was Grantline, who had seen the Planetara fall and had come to help us. I stood then with my hand holding Anita.
I went back to the lock entrance. Spare helmets and suits were here beside the keeper. He gazed at me inquiringly. "I'm going out, Franck. Just for a minute." It struck me that perhaps I was a meddlesome fool. Wilks, of all of Grantline's men, was, I knew, most in his commander's trust. The signal could have been some part of this night's ordinary routine, for all I knew.
It must be fairly close; for Grantline's telescope had revealed its identity as an outlaw flyer, unmarked by any of the standard code identification lights. It was doubtless too far away as yet to have located the whereabouts of Grantline's camp. The Martian brigands knew that we were in the vicinity of Archimedes, but no more than that.
As if to answer Grantline's question there came a chorus of shouts from the men at the corridor windows. "Commander! By God look!" A figure was outside, close to the building! Clothed in suit and helmet, it stood, bloated and gigantic. It had evidently been lurking at the port entrance, had ripped out the wires there.
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