Chapter VIII

The girl was white-skinned and lovely, utterly different from the grotesque creatures who surrounded her. Larry was crouching near enough to see her faintly smiling eyes, and the curve of her red lips, and the dark hair that fell to her waist behind. Except for the grotesque metallic helmet on her head, and the fact that she wore no clothing except for a silver loin cloth, she might have been a girl of the sort to be seen along the elevated cross-walks of New York City.

"Do you see her too?" Ripon whispered.

"I do."

"We can't both be that crazy, so she must really be there. But how she breathes in that atmosphere, and how she avoids freezing to death, is more than I can tell you."

The ceremony had evidently some sort of a religious significance, for the Insect-men were clicking rhythmically and were bowing down before the dark-haired girl. Goddess of the Moon! The girl's head-dress was a grotesque representation of an insect, set with jewels. At the tops of the flexible antennae were a pair of giant rubies.

"Boy! Wouldn't I like to get my hands on those stones!" Colton whispered from where he crouched on Ripon's left.

Then Larry noticed something else! A group of perhaps a hundred of the Insect-men were moving swiftly forward between the ranks of their bowing comrades. This group carried shields as well as clubs, and they had the purposeful air of men with a grim and serious errand to perform. The girl was staring over the heads of the crowd with a distant and goddess-like manner, and did not notice the newcomers till they had almost reached her. Then her eyes widened in alarm. She leaped up from her throne and burst into a torrent of shrill clicking.

In an instant the crater was in a turmoil. The group of the heavily armed Insect-men charged straight for the mound in the center. Others flung themselves in their path, rallying to the defense of the Goddess. There was a wild flurry of swinging clubs. The spiked heads clanged on metal shields, or cracked sharply on the brittle brown shells of the Insect-men. The significance of the scene before him was still obscure to Larry, but it was evident that some kind of a revolt had broken out.

The rebels among the Insect-men were outnumbered, but their metal shields gave them a big advantage and they were better organized. Like a spear-point they drove straight through the confused mass of worshipers and surrounded the low knoll in the center. They brushed its defenders aside and swarmed up toward the dark-haired Goddess. Larry had already drawn his ray-gun, but Ripon was the first to leap to his feet.

"Come on, young feller!" he roared. "That girl is the first human thing we've seen on the Moon. We can't let her down. Let's show those many-legged devils how an Earth man can fight!"

Larry and Ripon went down the slope of the crater in a series of bounding leaps. The milling Insect-men opened before them, seeming to welcome these unexpected reinforcements. Some of the rebels had already forced the struggling girl to her knees and were lashing her hands behind her back. A solid rank of them faced about with their round shields locked and a tossing fringe of spiked clubs waving atop the metal wall.

* * * * *

The two Earthlings dove for the shield-wall with their guns flashing. Larry ducked as one of the Insect-men hurled a club which just missed his glass helmet, then pressed the trigger of his ray-gun. The murky beam of the rays stabbed into the shield, melted a hole through it in a fraction of a second, and struck down the man behind. The flashing ray-guns of the two adventurers ripped the shield-wall asunder. A wave of the loyal Insect-men poured in behind them.

Larry shifted his ray-gun to his left hand, and snatched up a fallen club with his right. It was heavier than he had expected, a well balanced and efficient weapon. The hard brown shells of the rebels cracked like china under the smashing blows of his Earthly muscles. Then he bounded up on the mound and struck down the pair of rebels who held the girl. Her wrists were now tied behind her.

Throwing an arm about the girl's shoulders, Larry hastily faced about. Ripon was a few yards away. A ring of his slain lay around him, but his weapons had been knocked from his hands and he was struggling in the grip of a pair of the Insect-men. A third of the creatures was swinging a club to strike a blow at the scientist's glass helmet. Larry instantly fired, the beam of the ray striking the arm that held the club and shearing it clean off at the shoulder. A viscous yellow liquid dripped out, and the creature dropped writhing on the rock while it clicked in pain. Then Colton and the two quartermasters came charging belatedly up, and the fight was over.

The crater was dotted with the still forms of dead Insect-men. Larry noticed that their hard shells gleamed dully in the dim light. The surviving rebels had fled off across the far rim of the crater, and the rest of the throng had gone chasing after them. No one remained in the crater except the strange girl and the party from the _Sky Maid_.

When Larry had freed the girl's hands, she turned to the five Earth-men and touched her forehead in a gesture of thanks. Then she stepped across to touch some hidden spring on the far side of the mound, and a trap door opened in what had apparently been solid rock. The girl led the way down a narrow flight of stairs, motioning for the last man down to pull the trap closed behind them.

They stood in a small chamber that had walls of roughly smoothed rock. It was evidently the work of men, for tool marks showed here and there. It was lighted by a green globe set in one wall. The globe appeared to be made of some kind of flexible glass, and it glowed with a faint greenish radiance that overcame the darkness enough to give the place a dim and eerie light. At one side of the room was an oval hole like a slanting well cut in the floor. Beside it stood a pile of low, flat carts. They were about two feet wide by four feet long, and they were supported on axles bearing small wheels the diameter of a man's hand.

The girl spoke to Larry twice, first in the clicking talk of the Insect-men and then in some soft and musical tongue that was unlike anything Larry had ever heard. Both times he shook his head. Motioning for them to follow her, she put one of the low carts down near the rim of the hole and sat on it. Then she gave a push with her hands--and vanished.

"Come on," Larry said, raking another of the carts. Colton stared at him.

"Down that hole?" he asked.

"Why not? We've got to find out what all this is about."

* * * * *

A second later Larry Gibson found himself shooting down into the interior of the Moon by means of a sloping tunnel cut in the rock. A series of the greenish globes were set in the ceiling at intervals to give the rocky shaft a dim light. The wheels of the cart ran in two grooves cut in the floor, and he shot swiftly downward with a dull humming sound.

Larry was trying to estimate the speed of his downward movement. It was not so terribly fast, probably not really as fast as the nearness of the walls made it appear while they flashed by on either hand. The slope was a gentle one. Although he had gathered considerable momentum, he had no feeling of the car being out of control.

As the minutes passed, Larry saw something else. The moisture that had been on the outside of his space suit from the air within the _Sky Maid_ had frozen into a white frost a few seconds after the breaking of the control room wall let the outer cold into the ship. Now the frost was melting! They were getting into warmer regions as they went down. Perhaps they were also running into a heavier atmosphere! Larry held his hand up before him, and had a distinct feeling of pressure against it from the rush of air sweeping up to meet him. A minute later he had tested the atmosphere with the portable oxygen-gauge carried in the equipment pocket of any space suit. Then he took off his helmet.

The air was quite warm, and though still very thin it was definitely breathable. Its clean, earthy odor was a pleasant contrast to the chemical product used over and over again inside the helmet of a space suit. A moment later he saw a brighter light ahead and realized that he had come to the bottom of the long shaft.

They were in a square room whose walls were of polished gray stone. As Larry got up from his cart and moved in aside from the landing platform, the girl gave him a friendly smile. She had already taken off her ornately jeweled head-dress and placed it in a metal cabinet fastened to the wall. Completely without embarrassment, she tied a strip of gayly colored silk across her bare breasts. Then she tossed her long hair back from her forehead and bound another strip of silk to keep it in place. "That was quite a ride," Larry said.

He had spoken in English, knowing that the girl would not understand but hoping the sound of the words would convey a generally friendly impression. She stared at him in startled surprise for a second.

"It is much pleasanter than the upward trip," she said at last.

"But--but you spoke in English!" Larry gasped.

"Why shouldn't I? My father is a man from Earth. I am Diana Staunton."