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Updated: June 7, 2025
If Anita and I were forced to escape that way, I wondered how we could manage a hundred foot jump to the rocks, and land safely. Even with the slight gravity of the Moon, it would be a dangerous fall. "You are Gregg Haljan?" I stared as one of the brigands, coming up behind, addressed me. "Yes." "Commander Potan tells me you were chief navigator of the Planetara?" "Yes."
But it was instinct to try and get on deck, as though here below we were rats caught in a trap. The men tore away from us and ran. Their shouts of panic resounded through the dim, blue lit corridors. Coniston came lurching from the control room. "I say falling! Haljan, my God, look!" Hahn was sprawled at the gravity plate switchboard. Sprawled, head down. Dead. Killed? Or a suicide?
Stay where you are, Haljan. In good time Miko will trust you with your liberty. You'll be rich like all of us. Never fear." She swaggered out upon the deck, waved at the brigand, and banged my cubby door in my face. I sat upon my bunk. Waiting. Would she come back? Would she be successful? She came. I suppose it was no more than an hour: It seemed an eternity of apprehension.
Bring them here to man the pumps." He dashed away. Snap called after him, "Kill them if they argue!" Miko's voice sounded from the turret call grid: "Falling! Haljan, you can see it now! Check us!" Desperate moments. Or was it an hour? Coniston brought the men. He stood over them with menacing weapon. We had all the pumps going. The pressure rose a little in the tanks. Enough to shift a bow plate.
The Moon disc moved visibly as the Planetara lurched. The vault of the heavens was slowly swinging. Miko ripped out a heavy oath. "Haljan! What is this?" The heavens turned with a giant swoop. The Moon was over us. It swung in a dizzying arc. Overhead, then back past our stern; under us, then appearing over our bow. The Planetara had turned over. Upending. Rotating, end over end.
Coniston shouted, "Haljan!" I did not answer. I wonder if he would dare approach to see if I had been hit. A minute passed. Then another. I thought I heard Miko's voice on the deck outside. But it was an aerial, microscopic whisper close beside me. "We see you, Haljan. You must yield!" Their eavesdropping vibrations, with audible projection, were upon me. I retorted loudly, "Come and get me!
Or had the skulking Martian outside broken this lock as he had broken the other? The questions surged on Grantline. His men crowded around him. The news spread. The camp was a prison! No one could get out! And outside, the skulking Martian had disappeared. But Wilks and Haljan were still fighting. Grantline could see the two figures up on the observatory platform.
And in a month or so, when we are perfectly safe and finished with our adventure, a police ship no doubt will rescue them." "And then, from the asteroid," I suggested, "we are going " "To the Moon, Haljan. What a clever guesser you are! Coniston and Hahn are calculating our course. But I have no great confidence in them. And so I want you." "You have me." "Yes. I have you.
He laughed when I told him that we had dared to invade the Grantline camp, had smashed its exit ports, had even gotten up to have a look where the treasure was piled. "Well done, Haljan. You're a fellow to my liking!" But his gaze was on Anita. "You dress like a man or a charming boy." She still wore the dark clothes of her brother. She said, "I am used to action. Man's garb pleases me.
"And take another quarter day of time?" Miko sneered. "Flash on your zed-ray; help him hook it up, Haljan." I moved to the lens box of the spectroheliograph. It seemed that Snap was very strangely reluctant. Was it because he knew that the Grantline camp lay concealed on the north inner wall of Tycho's giant ring? I thought so. But Snap flashed a queer look at Anita. She did not see it, but I did.
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