A WEEK elapsed, after the departure of the young inventor, with no word from Ted. During this time, Roger, busy with the duties of the chief executive, ate and slept in the office of his employer.
Professor Ederson had meanwhile tried nightly to get into communication with the Lunites, but without success.
It was on this, the seventh night, that a terrific storm struck Chicago. Unable to sleep because of the howling wind and terrific peals of thunder, Roger switched on the lights and was about to step to the window when his name was called from the disc of the radiovisiphone.
“Mr. Sanders.”
He hurried to the instrument and saw the face of the night operator.
“Yes.”
“The President of the United States is calling Mr. Dustin. What shall I do?”
“Mr. Dustin is not in,” said Roger, who had shared the secret of his employer’s absence only with Professor Ederson. “Let me talk to him.”
In an instant the face of President Whitmore appeared on the disc. To his intense surprise, Roger noticed that he wore a fur cap and a great fur coat with the collar turned up. That he was in an intensely cold place was indicated by the visibility of his breath as he spoke and exhaled.
“Where is Mr. Dustin?” were his first words on seeing Roger instead of the man he had called.
“He is not here,” replied Roger. “As his assistant, can I be of service to you?”
“You have not answered my question,” persisted the President. “Where is Mr. Dustin?”
“I—I promised not to tell,” answered Roger. “He left here a week ago in the interests of our country and our allies.”
The President frowned.
“You forget, Mr. Sanders,” he said, “that this is a war emergency, that the country is on a military basis, and that I am Mr. Dustin’s superior officer as well as yours. I demand to know where he is.”
Roger was nonplussed. He had told everyone that Ted had gone away on business for the country, leaving them to assume what they pleased in the matter. People had, of course, assumed that he had gone to some other city, and would be back shortly. But the President was within his. rights in demanding to know where he was. Ted, himself, would not have had the right to refuse this demand.
“He left for the moon a week ago,” said Roger, “and I have heard nothing from him since.”
“What!”
The President appeared dumfounded.
“How did he go? Who went with him?”
“He went alone in a small interplanetary vehicle of his own invention, knowing that the war would be in full swing before his larger vehicle could be completed.
“Well I’ll be damned!” exploded the President. “This is a pretty how d’ye do. Gone just when we need him most.”
“I’m sorry,” answered Roger, “but he hoped to be able to stop the war by this trip. If there’s anything I can do—”
“Maybe there is,” said the President, with forced calmness. “Perhaps you can explain some things that I had hoped he could explain. For instance, what is the cause of this intensely cold weather in the middle of the summer, and why does the moonlight appear green?”
“We can’t see the moon from here,” replied Roger, “and it’s not cold. There is a terrific storm raging, plenty of lightning rain and wind, but no cold.”
“A devastating cold wave has spread over this part of the country, affecting Washington and Baltimore, and extending as far south as Richmond,” said the President. “The Potomac is frozen solid, and although we have our heating plants going to the utmost capacity, it is impossible to keep warm. Thousands of people, caught unexpectedly, have perished from the intense cold. My thermometer here in the White House registers 10 degrees above zero. Outside, I am told the thermometers have dropped under 60 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit.”
“And you say the moon looks green?”
“As green as grass. The country is bathed in a weird, green light at this moment.”
“Must be some connection,” mused Roger, “I mean between the green light and the intense cold localized around Washington. Wish Mr. Dustin were here.”
“But he isn’t,” snapped the President, “so see what you can find out, and report back, either by radiovisiphone or in person at your earliest convenience. Off!”
As the face of the President disappeared from the disc, Roger slumped down in his chair and lighted a cigarette. What should he do? What could he do?
There was a tap at the door.
“Come in,” he said, listlessly.
Professor Ederson entered.
“No use to try to use the radio tonight,” he said. “With the unknown interference we have been getting lately and this storm, it would be useless to try to communicate with the moon. I had our operator notify all stations that we wouldn’t attempt it tonight.”
“Hear about the cold snap in the east?” asked Roger.
“Yes. Got it on the small set just before I came down. Terrible thing, isn’t it?”
“And about the green moonlight?”
“Yes. Some new wrinkle of the Lunites, I fancy. They are clever and resourceful and, for all we know, a thousand years ahead of us in scientific knowledge.”
“What do you suppose it is?”
“I don’t know. An observation might be made from here, seeing that this part of the country is unaffected, if it were not for the raging storm. But it would be suicidal to go up in an electroplane just now.”
“If I thought there were anything to be learned, I’d go up,” said Roger, “danger or no danger.”
“I mentioned it only as a possibility,” replied the professor. “The probability is, that if you did learn anything, it would be of no material value, even if you were to be so extremely fortunate as to get back alive with it”
“Nevertheless,” replied Roger, “I’m going up, just on the strength of that possibility.”
“Don’t be an utter fool,” warned the professor, but Roger was already calling Bevans.
“Have the Blettendorf 800 ready in five minutes,” he said. “I’ll be up in a jiffy.”
He dressed rapidly while the professor remonstrated with him.
“No use,” said Roger, “I’m going.”
“Very well,” replied the professor. “If you must go I’ll go with you. Perhaps the two of us can bring back some information of value—if we get back.”
They took the elevator to the top, stepped out on the roof, and battled their way through the driving rain, in which there was beginning to be a hint of sleet, to the electroplane. Eight men held it, just outside the hangar, while Bevans, in the pilot’s seat, tested the motor.
The two men entered and took their seats. Then Roger gave the order to ascend. Came a roar from the helicopter blades, and they were off.
As they rose above the skyscrapers of Chicago, their craft tossing and careening like a leaf in a gale, Roger took two parcels from beneath the seat, one of which he handed to the professor.
“Folding parachutes,” he said. “Bevans is wearing one. Watch how I strap mine on, and do likewise. We may need them.”
The wind swept them out over Lake Michigan—then they plunged into a swirling, blinding snowstorm, and everything below, even the powerful guide-lights of Chicago’s great landing fields, vanished.
With propeller and helicopter blades roaring, Bevans drove the plane higher and higher, until they at length emerged above the seething, moon-silvered clouds.
“No green moonlight here,” said the professor.
“But look—look to the southeast!” exclaimed Roger.
The professor looked, and saw a green band of light, wide at the bottom, but narrowing as it extended upward straight toward the gibbous moon.
“The moon looks green from Washington,” said the professor, “because the inhabitants had to look through the green lights to see it.”
Roger shouted an order through the speaking tube.
“Hover.”
As the big plane, now riding in comparatively calm air, hung smoothly suspended by its helicopter blades, he turned a pair of powerful binoculars on the moon. He focused them, looked for a moment longer, then handed them to the professor.
“It’s coming from the ring-mountain, Copernicus,” he said. “Looks as if a beam from an enormous green searchlight were coming directly from the center of the crater.”
“So it is,” said the professor, after a careful scrutiny. “From the very center of the crater.”
Then, before he had lowered the glasses, the green light winked out. So sudden was the transformation, and so calm and natural did the moon appear, that it seemed to both observers that the thing had not really been—that it was a figment of their imaginations.
Came a call from Bevans:
“Three strange craft on the starboard quarter, sir. They seem to be coming this way.”
The professor trained the binoculars in the direction indicated.
“My word, what odd looking craft,” he exclaimed. “They are globular in form—globes, to each of which two whirling discs are attached.”
“An International Patrol Plane is coming from the port quarter,” called Bevans. “It’s signaling the three strange craft, but they do not respond. They are running without lights.”
“Ascend,” called Roger, “and turn off all lights.”
There was an answering roar as the Blettendorf shot upward.
“Too late for that,” said the professor. “We must have been seen.”
As the two men watched the one sided aerial parley below, they saw two more Patrol Planes emerge from the upper cloud stratum and take places behind the first.
“That makes the numbers even, at least,” said Roger.
The two squadrons drew together without sign or signal from the strange craft, until the two leaders were within two thousand feet of each other. Then a narrow green ray suddenly shot out from the foremost globe, striking the first patrol plane. For a moment the plane seemed to shrink-to draw together as if crushed in from all sides. Then it crumbled asunder, and the pieces fell into the swirling clouds beneath.
The forward turret guns of the two remaining planes immediately went into action, concentrating their fire on the foremost globe, but with no apparent effect. Green rays shot out from the two other globes simultaneously, and the planes shared the fate of their leader.
Then a green ray from the first globe sailed upward.
“Jump!” shouted Roger. “It’s our only chance. They’ll find us in a minute.”
The professor tore the door open and jumped first. His parachute opened just as Roger leaped after him followed by Bevans.
Roger could not see upward because of the parachute spread above him, but fragments of the shattered Blettendorf began falling around him before he had dropped far, and he was thankful that they had leaped in time.
Looking downward to see how it fared with the professor, he saw to his horror that the linguist was falling directly onto one of the globes.
Then he shot past the same globe himself, heard the hum of its rapidly whirling discs, and dropped into the enveloping grayness of the raging storm clouds beneath.