Chapter IV: Part 4

But now the captured being was sitting quietly in a sort of resignation, merely looking at Robin with the same curiosity that Robin bestowed upon it. It was very much like a human being, perhaps some four feet tall. But its head was somewhat triangular in shape, having only one eye (Robin never found any Moon creatures with two), and was topped with a large yellow light bulb that extended a foot above.

Robin took the bit of meat, cut off a piece and held it out to the creature. The Moonman looked at it, then reached out a hand and took it. It smelled it, then tasted it, and, finding the taste to its liking, swiftly gobbled it down.

Robin ate some too, and this gesture seemed to reconcile the other. A fairly universal gesture, Robin thought. Only friends would share a meal. Probably would hold true anywhere in the universe.

Now Robin picked up the other's spear and examined it. Seeing this, the creature picked up one of Robin's sacks and also looked at it.

The sharp point of the spear was something that looked like glass but glistened far more, seemed sharper, harder, and heavier. Robin turned it over, and the realization struck him that this spearhead was a diamond, a single six-inch-long shard of diamond!

After the first shock of this discovery, Robin realized that he should have expected it. On such a volcanic world as the Moon had once been, there might well be lots of diamond in great masses. What could be easier to use for weapons and cutting edges than chunks broken from such masses. Such a chunk brought back to Earth might be worth an emperor's ransom--but who could think of such values here?

Getting the friendship of the Moonman proved to be easy after that first effort. For the creature made no further effort to escape, seemed itself to desire Robin's companionship. In fact, as it turned out, Robin would have had a hard time getting rid of it. It seemed anxious now to stay close to the Earthling, to share him with Cheeky.

The glass-skinned being had a language, for it soon began to jabber away at Robin in a high-pitched squeaky tongue. After a little experimentation, Robin was able to get it to repeat the name Robin, and in turn, he found out that the Glassie's own name was something nearly like Korree.

Korree was evidently a very primitive sort of savage in spite of his ability to speak. As Robin set out to re-cross this bubble and return to his own holdings, the creature wound in and out ahead of him, returning steadily to see if all was well. Korree had no clothes and no understanding of them. He had only his spear, which Robin had returned to him and he had apparently lost faith in that, the first time Robin used his bow and arrow on a yapping Moontiger.

The trip through the dark tunnels back to Robin's original bubble was comparatively easy, for no sooner did they get into the darkness than Korree's light organ began to glow brightly enough to render Robin's lantern dim. When they came to the cleft, Robin had to pick the Moonman up and jump with him, for Korree's muscles were built only for Moon gravity and that leap was beyond his normal ability.

Once back in what Robin now thought of as the safety of his original bubble, the two settled down to work together. Korree soon got the hang of the simple duties Robin gave him--feeding the rabbits, slaughtering, skinning, and tanning. They spent the time trying to learn each other's languages.

Robin carefully jotted down each new sound or word he could identify in the Glassie's speech and Korree in turn seemed anxious to imitate the English.

It took about four months before they had a working interchange of ideas. Robin found that the Glassie's language was quite limited in many ways, though having a great many variations of verb form--a typical characteristic of primitive tongues. Finally, however, Robin heard Korree's story.

His people lived many bubbles away, possibly many months of travel, though the Glassie idea of time was very vague and seemed hedged around by all sorts of untranslatable mystic conditions. There were maybe several hundred of them and they formed one big tribe or family.

There were many such tribes, usually one to a bubble-cavern. Korree indicated that somewhere--he pointed downward--were greater caverns where many tribes lived, tribes of great strength or magic or knowledge. Robin could not decide which was meant--probably all three. But Korree had never been there. These downward regions were taboo to his people.

Robin's suspicion was that the Glassies from Korree's group had been forced to live in the less desirable outer areas by the stronger and more advanced races who had seized the better regions.

Korree indicated that there were many bubbles that were not inhabited because of great terrors, either by heat or cold. Robin assumed he meant caverns of jungle and caverns more exposed to the surface temperatures.

Korree himself had broken some sort of tribal rule or magic and had been chased out of his home. He was a lonely outcast. That was why he had gone with Robin when Robin had given him food. This symbolized acceptance into Robin's tribe. And though Robin looked to him like a very strange sort of man indeed--a solid man, a "rock" man was the way Korree explained Robin's nontransparent flesh and his tremendous strength--Korree had been glad to find acceptance anywhere.

Carefully questioning Korree about the surface, Robin found that the Glassie had apparently no conception of what sort of a world the Moon really was. To him it was a place of many enclosed spaces. The surface he had neither seen nor even dreamed of. That there could be a place where the enclosures ended and the world "dropped off" into nothing, this was something he could not imagine.

Robin then asked questions about the upward regions. Korree indicated that these were less and less habitable, that his people strove always to go down, never up. Robin twisted his questions around, trying to determine if the Glassies had ever seen anything that might signify the surface. He described the sun and the Earth to Korree but the Glassie seemed unable to understand. But when he spoke of the sun as being a bright glowing thing so bright that it hurt the eyes to look at it, Korree seemed to remember something.

Carefully the Glassie told Robin that he had heard of a tribe that lived somewhere in the upper regions, where in one part of their bubble there sometimes came a terrible white-hot light that hurt when one looked upon it. This light was not always there, but shone through the top of the cavern, which Korree explained was like the substance of his arm--that is, semi-transparent.

Robin became very excited when he heard this. It sounded to him as if somewhere up near the surface there must be an airtight cleft or bubble whose outer crust might be natural volcanic glass. Through this the sun might sometimes penetrate to produce the phenomenon Korree described.

Plainly then, this was the place Robin must find. It looked like the ideal place to begin his projected signaling to Earth. But whether it was or not, Robin would have to make a visit there to see.

Korree did not like the idea, but indicated he would be willing to go along. "Could you lead me there?" Robin asked.

"Much hard," Korree replied. "Can make do. You-me not like. Many-winter trip, many bubbles."

But Robin was determined. "We will go. First I must make a space suit. I may need it." Korree spread out a hand in acceptance.

It took about two months more to finish what Robin hoped would be a workable space suit. The helmet he finally managed to weld into something like a practical shape. It fitted over his head snugly, the little glass plate in front of his eyes. Its seams were closed as best as could be managed and sealed with melted animal fat. The bottom of the helmet fitted snugly over Robin's shoulders and would be attached to baggy leather arm-and-hand coverings. The bottom of Robin's body would be simply encased in several layers of clothing made as airtight as possible.

To carry a supply of air, Robin fashioned a large sack of Moonhound skins, which, when filled with air and brought to the surface of the Moon, would swell up like a huge balloon. He hoped that by breathing from this reserve he might be able to survive on the surface for perhaps twenty or thirty minutes. This would be all he would need, he estimated, to rush out, set up some sort of reflector or flare if he could contrive such, and dash back to safety. "Safety" would, of course, be some previously sealed dome extending to the surface, through which he could cut a space narrow enough to leave, and yet, one which would not be entirely exhausted of its inner gases by the time Robin got back to reseal it.

This was a long-chance project, yet it was the only hope Robin could think of. The matter could at least be examined at closer range if he could but find the cavern with the translucent roof. This would be an ideal base for his project.

Robin packed his equipment, liberated the last of his penned rabbits, and loaded as much food as he could in big sacks which he and Korree carried. Then, preceded again by Cheeky's monkey bounds, Robin turned his back on his "home" and headed back to the tunnel and the caverns beyond.

It had been over a year and a half since he had been cast away on the Moon, perhaps nearer two years. And now he was ready at long last to begin the long trek home.

_12. The Long Trek_

As they progressed, Robin queried Korree as best he could as to the exact location of this fabled place from which the sun could be seen. "I not know from here," the Glassie replied. "Go from home place, yes. We go Korree home place first."

Robin thought about that as they trudged along. He went easily and lightly in spite of his huge load--a collection of sacks and equipment tied together to make a bundle more than his own height. But bundle and all, Robin was lighter and stronger by far than he would be on Earth. "Won't they kill you if you go back?" he asked the Moonman.

Korree turned his head and Robin almost imagined he could see his brains whirl. Through the glassy skin, he could see the shadows of his skull structure and the pulsing of veins and arteries. "With Robin they not do so. You make them give us free way." Obviously he regarded the Earthling as an all-powerful being to whom things like tribal death sentences would be mere nothings.

Robin smiled uneasily. Without firearms and modern weapons he could still be overpowered if enough of the Moonmen attacked him at once. He would have to think about his approach to the tribe before he got there.

They reached the tunnel and made their way once more through its dark recesses to the jungle-bubble where he had encountered Korree. They passed through this without incident. The Glassie led the way to one of several cracks and tunnels at the far end. With Robin following and the monkey Cheeky perched on the huge pack, Korree entered this tunnel.

As before, it was dark and narrow and seemed to wind ahead. Several times they stepped around breaks in the floor, or ducked under low passages where the ceiling had dipped. They walked on, Korree's bobbing headlight casting a pale-yellowish glow a few feet ahead. Robin was watching the floor carefully, straining his attention to keep his footing safe. His ears registered the echo of their motions and the changing pitch as the tunnel widened or receded, but he paid less and less attention to this.

Suddenly he looked up. And saw not the one glow of Korree's light but a number of smaller ones around them, distant ones, bobbing slightly, one or two yellow, one small white one, and three verging on red. He started and stared but Korree had said nothing.

Finally he reached out and tapped the Glassie and whispered, "What are those lights?"

Korree said back in a normal tone, "Animals. White light is hunting eater. I watch it."

"Here? In this tunnel?" asked Robin, startled.

"Not in tunnel," said the Glassie. "In new bubble-place."

Robin looked around. Sure enough he had not noticed the echo of their feet in the last few minutes. The floor had changed from rock to sandy dirt and he realized that he had lost some of the enclosed-air feeling. It was indeed a new bubble-cavern--but a lightless one!

Now, as he looked carefully, he realized that there were many lights around. There were tiny ones bobbing on the ground that were probably Moonworms. The others were almost certainly those of various animals. He took his flashlight out, suddenly clicked it on, and swung it around.

They were in an open area, sandy with sparse clumps of mushroomlike vegetation growing here and there. He caught the scurrying flash of several translucent animal bodies dodging out of sight from the unexpected light of his flash. And when the beam was off, he noticed the headlights returning, augmented in number.

"There are many bubble-places without light?" asked Robin.

"Many," said Korree. "Glassies not live there, but many animals hunt there."

Robin wondered whether there might in fact be more bubbles without light than with. He realized that that was probably the case; it very likely explained the nearly complete lack of pigment in the flesh of the native animals, the presence of the light stalks on all of them. It had probably evolved originally in lightlessness, and the Glassies had moved into the caverns fortunate enough to have natural phosphorescence only after they had discovered them much later in their history. This possibly also accounted for the single eye of Moon creatures--the conditions for the use of two eyes to develop perspective and delicate differentiations of shading and coloring simply never existed.

"Are there animals here without eye or light?" asked Robin thoughtfully.

"Yes," Korree answered softly. "Big eaters, they--"

There was a sudden rush of sound ahead, a crashing of plants nearby, an instant winking out of all headlights, including Korree's, and then Robin felt himself thrown to the ground as something vast and huge and heavy seemed to envelop him.

He felt himself being smothered under a pulsing blanket of warm flesh, a veritable wall that covered him from head to foot, crushing out his strength. Robin recovered, ripped out with his hands, kicked with his feet. He felt his strong Terrestrial muscles tearing into the tissue of the creature, and swinging wildly, he got to his knees and then to his feet, veritably lifting the entire bulk of the creature.

He reached for his knife and as he got it open he felt the sharp edge of a jaw and the hot breath of a large mouth near his ear. He thrust out with the knife hard and furiously, cutting the mass to bits.

There was a sharp screech and he felt the blanket of flesh pull away and struggle to withdraw. He got his flashlight with his other hand, flicked it on to see his opponent better.

He saw a wall of gelatinous flesh rolling back before him. It rolled off the prostrate but unharmed body of Korree, gathered itself in a mass and rolled rapidly away, uttering loud screeches. The thing was a ball of flesh, several yards across. It had a wide, many-toothed mouth. It had several flat flanged spots which were probably ears, and it was lacking an eye, lacking any light organ.

It hardly needed them. Obviously the thing simply rolled around in the darkness of the cavern, guided by the sounds of moving animals, rolling over them, flattening out, and devouring them.

Korree got to his feet. He said nothing, seemed to take it for granted that the great Earthling would have bested this thing, of course, and started off again. Robin frowned, decided he'd have to watch himself lest the Glassie sometime really overestimate his capacities.

They traversed the rest of the lightless cavern without incident, this time Robin keeping his flashlight switching on and off regularly, long enough to sweep the moonscape sufficiently to gain warnings of future assaults. Once they saw the ball-like bulk of a Moonbowler, as Robin mentally named it, in the distance, and they both carefully stopped and held their breath until it rolled away.

At the far wall, Korree searched the various breaks until he found the one through which he had originally come.

They passed through another lightless cavern, this one less of a desert than the other, where giant mushrooms towered like great trees in the darkness and where little chittering Moonmice ran about their feet, tiny green lights sparkling.

The next cavern was a lighted one and this was now almost familiar to them. Beyond that was another lighted one through which a channel of water flowed only to disappear into a tiny crack in the far wall. This water, however, was yellowish and evil-smelling and made the entire cavern malodorous. Yet it too had its quota of strange vegetation.

A series of rather small bubbles, not more than a couple of dozen yards across, came next, and then they arrived at a wide, deep one. The spot in the wall which let out on it was near the roof of this bubble, and they made their way delicately along a series of faults and ledges. Looking down, Robin could see that a lake of some bubbling oily substance filled the lower level of the bubble. Along one side, tucked in a corner near a tunnel opening, many hundreds of feet down, he spotted something odd. He stopped. Korree turned back, made his way along the narrow ledge and looked down to where he pointed.

There was a small cleared space just before the opening, and there were several objects too far away to be seen clearly, but they looked for all the world like some sort of eggs. As they watched, Robin saw what seemed a shadowy figure move near one. Because of the curious glassy skins, that was probably an animal. Robin softly asked Korree what it was.

"Is Glassie like Korree," answered Korree quietly.

"A friend? One of your people? And what are they doing there?" asked Robin.

Korree shook his head violently. "Not Korree people. That one is from down place. Is mighty people from...." He pointed downward to the Moon's core. "They come here to take...." He pointed now at the curious chemical lake. "They bring back down with them," he finished.

Robin gasped. Here was evidence of his reasoning. The Glassies that lived near the core of the Moon were higher in civilization. Here evidently was a place where something usable could be gathered--the fluid of that lake. Possibly it might be fuel for burning, or substance usable as tar or cement. The beings down below came up for it, put it in tanks--the egg-shaped objects--and brought it back to their greater caverns.

Someday this would have to be investigated. If he ever returned to Earth, this would have to be explored. But now--were these unknowns dangerous to him? He asked Korree, who shrugged. In his halting fashion he conveyed to the Earthling that if the Glassies of the upper crust left those lower down alone, they were not bothered. The implication however was that Korree's people were only too willing to stay out of the way of the powerful underlords.

After several more caverns--the trip had already taken over a week--including one marvelous one in which several flaming gas jets made amazing patterns in an otherwise lightless world, Korree finally led the way into a large lighted cavern many miles wide, stopped and announced, "Korree home."

Robin looked around, adjusted his pack and called to Cheeky to return. The monkey, which had scampered on ahead, obediently dashed back and to safety on the pack. This was an important moment to Robin. He mustered his plans, and stepped out after Korree who had started out again holding his spear high in the air in some sort of native signal.

For a short while they walked without seeing anyone. They were in a forest of ball-trees when suddenly they found themselves quietly surrounded by Glassies. Evidently they had been trailed since entering the cavern and at a sufficient distance from the tunnel mouth the Glassies had popped out of concealment.

There were about twenty or so, all armed with the diamond spears and they effectively encircled the travelers. Korree had apparently expected this, for he showed no surprise, but Robin stopped short and Cheeky started jumping up and down on the huge pack and shrieking at the pack of beings.

It was odd seeing a mass of Glassies. Robin could see that they differed from each other as individuals. Some were larger, some smaller, and the shadings within their bodies gave rather clear evidence of fatness, of recent eating, and such. Like Korree they wore no garments at all.

One of the Glassies said something sharply to Korree, who answered promptly. The spokesman had a black circle painted on his chest--this was obviously a symbol of some sort of tribal authority. Robin stepped forward, walked up to this Glassie, who promptly withdrew, uneasy in the presence of this unknown.

From his pocket Robin took his pack of matches, the one that had been with him all the way from Earth. There were still three matches left, saved for just some occasion as this, carefully conserved by the use of Robin's flint and steel. Robin walked up to a small ball-tree nearby, held the match aloft, then struck it, and rapidly held it to the stalklike trunk. After a second the plant caught fire and was a blazing mass.

While the Glassies were gazing in amazement at this unexpected display, Robin drew in his breath, set his pack down, and gave a leap straight upward with all his strength.

He soared some thirty feet high and then gently floated down to the ground again. This was a feat that anyone with Earth muscles could do, but it was something that Lunar muscles had never been developed for. When the Glassies tore their eyes away from the burning tree it was to find Robin apparently vanished. Looking around, one of them discovered him in the air, floating gently back to the ground.

With one accord the Glassies shrieked and ran away. When Robin hit the ground, he was alone with Korree--who looked as nearly smug as it was possible for his unearthly features to look.

The Earthling picked up his sack, whistled to Cheeky to come to him, and started off again. In a few minutes, Korree led him to the tribal center, the "village" of his people.

There were no houses or tents or any structures with roofs. Each family group apparently fenced off their section of ground with a barrier of low, pointed sticks, their points diagonally outward. Within this barrier, the family squatted with their few possessions. There was no such thing as privacy among this primitive group. The females of the tribe apparently stayed within their family plots, with the young, the extra spears and hunting sticks, the leftover supplies of food, and a pile in the center of each circle of what must have been some sort of blankets, apparently woven crudely from vegetable fibers. Robin assumed that during the cold periods, these were used.

The males of the tribe were gathered before a central circle, watching their visitors approach. Korree went to them, stopped, and spoke at length. Robin could not understand him, but he knew what he must be saying. His Glassie friend was obviously first boasting of his friendship with the magical stranger, then warning them of terrible consequences if they failed to obey and honor the stranger, doubtless inserting a demand for his own full pardon of whatever tribal offense had brought about his own banishment, and demanding the aid of the tribal leaders in assisting them on their way.

When he had finished, Robin walked straight up to the Glassie with the chest marking, reached out and extracted from the tip of his quivering light-organ stalk a copper cent which Robin had first palmed in his hand. To the astonished native, he presented this token--one of the coins Robin had had in his pocket on his unexpected trip from New Mexico.

The Glassie took it, stared at it. The face on the coppery-yellow coin seemed to hypnotize him. No one had ever seen such a thing--a bit of bright rock with a face on it! But this additional evidence of Robin's magic clinched the argument.

Robin and Korree stayed in that cavern for about three days. In that time Korree managed to obtain fairly specific directions from one old-timer as to the cavern they sought. He had also evidently repaired his tribal fences, for Robin could not fail to notice that Korree was always accompanied by a group of anxious and placating Glassies. He imagined that when Korree returned to stay, it would be as a chieftain.

The nature of the tribe's culture remained much of a mystery. They were very primitive, yet they seemed to have a complicated series of taboos and ceremonies. There was clearly a very definite code of marriage and family relations, though its limitations were puzzling.

Robin discovered something about them, however. One of the circular enclosures was apparently a tribal storehouse, or temple, or arsenal, or magic circle--exactly what he could not tell--save that no family lived within and there were little piles of oddities carefully placed inside its magic circle. The penny Robin had "pulled from the chief's head" reposed therein on a raised mound. The burnt match stick lay beside it. The rest of the contents seemed to be curiously shaped stones, odd bits of animal skin, a skeleton of something big and round which might perhaps have been that of a Moonbowler slain by the hero of the tribe. Several diamond spearheads were there, including some that had fractured in use. And something that glistened like metal.

Robin saw this latter, and, stepping boldly inside the magic circle, picked this object up and examined it. It was a knife blade!

It was nothing of Terrestrial manufacture. It was about nine inches long and a couple of inches wide at the hilt, tapering down to a point. It was edged on one side, and bore the marks of having been hammered down and shaped by a hand mallet rather than ever having felt the heat of a forge. Engraved in its rather soft white metal were a series of odd hooks and lines that looked like writing of a sort. The hilt end was jagged as if the blade had been snapped off in careless usage.

Robin called to Korree and asked him about the object. Korree consulted with the chief and returned. "Sharp thing, it come from down-there people," he said, pointing to the regions below. "Glassie of those die in break of tunnel. We find, take this."

Well, Robin thought, this adds to the evidence. There is some sort of higher civilization below. Not yet at the fire-building stage, but advancing at the dawn of the Iron Age. I wonder if this is really writing or just a design? And I wonder what metal this is? Not iron surely.

He thought a while, then deciding that as a creature of magic he could get away with it, informed Korree that he would take the knife blade away with him. The Glassies seemed unconcerned. It was evident that Robin was far outside their taboos.

The question of time among the Glassies was an odd one. The Earthling had surmised as much in his observations of Korree. There seemed to be no effort to divide the periods into rest and work. Some hunted and worked when they felt like it, others slept at the same time.

When the time came, Robin and Korree made their way out of the cavern upward along a ledge on one side of the bubble wall, through a fault higher up and began to climb a sloping tunnel.

For several more days they traveled, always working upward, passing through bubbles of gradually diminishing diameter and sparser vegetation. At one point they waded through a shallow pond, at another they choked in a sulfury cloud of gas that hung about. They squeezed through ever tighter cracks, and the air began to get distinctly thinner and harder to breathe. They were both getting exhausted quite easily; Robin knew they were nearing the surface and the spongy mass of the Moon's interior was tightening.

Then at last they stood in a tiny spherical bubble and gazed at a pool of brackish water at one end. There were no cracks in this little cave, no further tunnel or means of progress. "What now?" asked Robin, turning to his companion. Had they taken the wrong turn and come to a dead end?

Korree went over to the water pool. He gestured at it, made motions of holding his breath. "We go down in here, move under and come up ... out." He waved a hand in a down-and-under gesture. Robin looked into the water. Maybe the Glassie was right. It was possible that the water at the bottom passed into a fault and led into another cavern. But could he risk it?

Korree nodded and without another word, suddenly jumped into the water, spear and all, and vanished. Robin waited. In a little while Korree's head appeared again and the Glassie climbed out. "Tunnel over there," he said, waving beyond the wall of the bubble. "Go up sharp."

Well, there was nothing to do but to try it. Robin set down his pack and thought a moment. Cheeky the monkey was scampering around the floor of the small bubble. Robin took off his jacket and shoes, took out of his pocket anything that might be damaged by water, and leaped into the pool.

It was an eerie sensation. The water was as dense as on Earth but its weight was so much less. It seemed almost to lack substance as Robin pushed through it, dived deep, and let himself come up again as far as possible.

He broke water in total darkness. He was outside the cavern, but exactly where he could not tell. Korree with his light organ had known and that was sufficient. Robin reached for a bank, felt a sloping wall. He grabbed it, pulled himself up in the darkness. That much was right. There was a tunnel here running steeply upward. He sniffed the air. It was strange--breathable, but strange. This part of the Moon enclosure was certainly cut off from the other sections, that was certain.

Robin let himself back into the water, swam for the cavern, and came up in it. He got hold of Cheeky, opened his pack, and extracted his homemade space helmet. He stuffed the monkey into it, closed end upward, and got into the water again. Moving swiftly under water, the terrified animal clutching the inside of the helmet, Robin transferred him to the other side, found a small level section by probing around, and deposited the helmet. He returned for the rest of his pack by this method, and finally everything was complete again in the new passage. By the light of Korree's head, he saw that they were in a narrow tunnel angling steeply upward. Robin's clothes and the pack had dried with great speed in the thin air and the low gravity. They made their way up this passage with difficulty and at last found themselves facing a lighted opening.

They emerged into a new cavern, but one quite different from those that had gone before. It was long, perhaps two or three miles long, but narrow, not more than a hundred feet or so at the widest. Looking upward, the steep perpendicular walls seemed to come together and closed up tightly about a quarter of a mile high.

A faint phosphorescence dimly lighted the new area. As they walked on, Robin became aware that there was no vegetation here, that his feet were moving through light dust. He let it run through his fingers. It felt chalky as pumice.

He looked around them again and then he realized that he had at last reached the surface of the Moon. He was walking through the bottom of a long crack in the surface, a cleft that had somehow closed up again to preserve a cache of air. But this dust, this was the surface dust of Luna, fallen to the bottom of the cleft!

As they walked, the dimness seemed to diminish. A whitish glow began to envelop them. Robin blinked at the strange light. Things began to take on strange colorations that he had not noticed before. He looked upward and saw that the ceiling of the cleft no longer was bathed in blackness. Instead there seemed a break there, a glassy glimmer through which poured a dazzling white light.

Somewhere up there the crack had been sealed by volcanic action into grayish natural glass. Somewhere outside the sun was shining down upon the Moon. Its rays were bathing the surface above the concealed cleft and some were finding their way down. For the first time in many long and difficult months Robin felt warmth and light together. He had reached the sunlight!

_13. The Sun and the Trap_

There had been a distinct chill in the strange surface canyon, but from the moment that the white sunlight began to stream in, there was a definite warming effect. The rays were diffused by the substance above which sealed the cleft, yet the sun was strong while it lasted. Robin felt good as he bathed in its rays. He looked at himself, at Korree, in wonder.

For the clear white light was the first normal lighting he had seen in all the time he had been marooned below. Now he received the first true color visualization of himself and his companion. He saw from his hands that he had become very pale-skinned; all his normal tan had been lost in the cavern worlds. He unpacked the bright, gleaming space helmet and used it as a makeshift mirror. His hair had faded to a light blond, and there were several white hairs now visible, the result presumably of his period of exposure to the unshielded rays of the sun during his passage through space.

In the clear light Korree seemed even more transparent than ever, and indeed Robin could make out the shadowy, pulsating shapes of his internal organs quite clearly--his skeleton standing out sharply. He realized how dim and abnormal the phosphorescence of the caverns had really been.

Reshouldering his pack, they continued up the deep canyon. In a little while, the gray ashy surface gave way to sandy soil and there was a dampness in the air that indicated the presence of one of the deposits of water. Now the familiar Lunar vegetation was making its presence known and before long they were wandering through a very dense thicket of huge ball-trees and plants.

Robin had never seen such a dense jungle growth on the Moon before and he attributed it to the occasional bath of sunlight this one cavern received. It was like a hothouse, a natural one, more or less sealed with a high dampness, natural warmth augmented by screened sunlight.

Soon the two found themselves forcing their way single file through the growth, while Cheeky swung into the tops and made his own way, happy in the sort of thick, warm forest his monkey nature demanded. Robin pushed his way through first, with Korree following in the path the Earthling cleared.

Robin went on through the jungle, struggling in spite of his powerful Earth muscles to push his pack along. After a while he stopped to rest, looked back. He saw behind him only the bruised and broken stalks of the ball-trees he'd passed through. There was no sign of Korree.

Robin stared, but the forest was too thick to allow much vision. He set the pack down, called, "Korree!"

There was no answer. Somewhere in the distance a stalk snapped. Robin called again. Still no answer. He started back a few steps, retracing his path, but there was still no sign of his Glassie friend.

He suddenly felt uneasy. What was going on here? How had his companion vanished? He went back to where he had left his pack, waited, again calling his friend's name. But still there was no answer. There were more crackling noises somewhere in the thick vegetation. Perhaps Korree was in trouble there?

Robin turned in that direction, started to push through the barrier of tree stalks. Suddenly there was a rushing noise, a chorus of shrieks all around, and something heavy fell around him.

He whirled, but something sticky and tight was encircling his body. He caught glimpses of glasslike, one-eyed faces jumping around him, hiding in the branches, shrieking. He struggled again to free himself but the encircling Glassies threw more of the sticky ropes around him, more things like barrel staves that fell and tied him up.

He struggled to use his full strength against them but his arms were pinned to his sides, he was tight amid the stalks and he could not brace himself. Fight as he might, he was caught, and he saw that there were stalk-ropes attached to those that had trapped him and these were being further secured by the creatures around him.

He stopped struggling, quieted. It was obviously no use to waste his strength. Let's see what they intend to do next, he thought.

For a while they did nothing. Then his Glassie captors--he still could see little of them so thick was the jungle--seemed to be working their way together so that all their attached ropes were soon leading off in the same direction. Then they started to pull.

Had Robin chosen to resist it might have become a fruitless tug of war, but he did not. He had decided that his best course was to go along with them. Doubtless they would lead him to their village or at least to an open space where his great Earth strength might then come into better play.

For a while, therefore, he allowed himself to be led through the Moontree forest, dragging himself enough to give his captors a workout. Robin had cagily decided that the more tired they were when they finally arrived, the better for him.

After a time the thicket of plants came to an end and Robin found himself, as he had presumed, at the native settlement. Unlike the ones he had seen in Korree's home cavern, these Glassies were cavemen. They evidently made their homes in a section of this narrow surface-cleft where one of the walls was greatly pocked with holes and openings. The cliff walls were apparently quite like pumice here. Under the circumstances and because of the limited width of the area, it was quite logical that the inhabitants should have made use of these holes.

There were several dozen such cave entrances and Robin could see a fair number of Glassies around them, including women and young ones. His captors, he now saw, numbered about fifteen, all male hunters like Korree. They hustled him along to a central cave, whose entrance was decorated with blue circles, clearly the designation of their chief.

Korree was already there, tied, as was Robin. He looked relieved to see the Earthling, and also a little puzzled at seeing that Robin too was a prisoner.

"They catch me when Robin not looking," he said, explaining the obvious. "I not like these Glassies' ways. I think they mean kill."

Robin looked around at them. "We'll see. Back in my land, we have a saying, 'There's many a slip between the cup and the lip.' I think we will get away. Wait and watch."

Korree immediately showed relief. He had a profound faith in Robin's magical abilities. To him, therefore, Robin's lack of fright was enough evidence that all was really well.

The band gathered before the chief's cave was waiting. Presently a voice came from the cave darkness. It questioned one of the captors, who turned and repeated the query to Korree. Korree answered at length, and his answer in turn was repeated into the cave.

At Robin's query, Korree said that he had just informed the hidden chief that Robin was a great man-beast who would destroy them all if he was not immediately released and placated.

More cave talk and interchange. There was a delay for a while and Robin could faintly hear voices within the cave, as if the chief were discussing the matter with someone else. Then a command was issued. The captors pulled on the ropes and urged Korree and Robin to the door of another cave. They pushed them into this and rolled a large boulder in front of the cave mouth to block their exit.

It was dark inside the cave but not so dark that they could not see that it was about twenty feet long and that there were a number of piles of stuff around, food possibly, or remnants of things. Korree and Robin eased themselves down on the hard floor.

Robin studied the vegetable cords that bound him. He twisted his hands and pulled until he got his elbow up where he could exert pressure. Then he strained against one of the bonds. In a few seconds it parted and broke. In this way he snapped bond after bond until he was free. He was sticky from them, for the stalks had been soaked in some sort of adhesive substance which had made them so effective. But the strength of Earth muscles was more than they had ever held before.

Next Robin went to work on Korree's bonds and broke them off one by one. The two silently stretched their cramped bodies. Korree glanced back at the dark end of the cave and his headlight organ glowed brightly for a moment. Something among the bundles was stirring slightly. Korree said quietly, "Another prisoner or a listener?"

Robin looked. Yes, there was something over there, apparently tied up also. It might be a Glassie prisoner, or it might be some one of his captors trying to spy on them. He shrugged. Let them try. They couldn't understand English.

The two sat down near the entrance, conversed quietly. Korree was of the opinion that the Glassies would eventually kill them in some sort of ceremony. Robin never had found out how different tribes of Glassies acted toward each other. Evidently they did not make war, but neither did they have much contact or exchange. In general, they treated each other like suspicious strangers, avoiding contact whenever possible. But it seemed now that when strangers did force their way into unwelcome tribal caverns, death was the result. This was fairly typical of the most primitive savages on Earth and it was evidently a rule for that level of culture anywhere in the universe.

For a while then they sat silently, thinking about their plight. Robin, somehow, was not too worried. He had become so used to the superiority of his muscles that he felt that he could eventually manage his escape when the time came. The question was, where could he escape to? This particular region was not actually a part of the honeycomb of Luna's interior--it was a cleft sealed in by a trick of volcanic fate on the very surface. Probably it had no other exit than the one which led into it.

Again, escape though he might, could he save Korree too? He thought about it in silence. Korree broke the meditations. "Have hunger. Is food here?"

"There must be some around," said Robin, glancing back at the things in the rear of their prison-cave. The figure back there stirred a bit. And then there was a mumbling sound and a voice said something. The voice was deep and strong, unlike the sound of a Glassie's tongue. But Robin could not understand it. Korree too looked and listened.

"Did you understand him?" Robin asked his companion.

Korree shook his head. Now at the sound of Robin's words occurred the most astonishing surprise that Robin had yet encountered. The unseen speaker spoke again:

"Who is that? Is there someone here who speaks English?"

It was a human voice! It spoke Robin's language, though the intonation and accent were not quite right. Robin and Korree hastened back to the rear of their cave to the reclining figure of the speaker. In the light of Korree's head-stalk, it was indeed a man, an Earth man!

He was lying, tied hand and foot, on a pile of scraps, but he was raising his head, staring at them eagerly. He was a young man, evidently not much older than Robin. His blue eyes looked at them with relief and he smiled widely.

"You are a human! I thought I was dreaming when I heard a voice I could understand. You must be an American ... then the Americans must have beaten us here after all!"

Robin knelt down by the man, worked at his bonds. They were tight, real cord of nylon or some Earth-made substance. It took the combined strength of the two of them to finally open the knots and free the man.

"Who are you?" Robin asked, as he worked. "Do you have a rocket on the surface?"

The man got to his feet, rubbed his muscles. He was dressed in a simple blue one-piece flyer's coverall. He was taller and slimmer than Robin, and his hair was tousled and reddish.

"My name is Piotr Ivanovitch Kareff," he said, bowing with a European gracefulness. "I regret to tell you that my rocket is indeed on the surface--but there it will stay forever. We crashed. But I am so glad to see you. You do not know how glad."

Robin shook hands. "I hate to disappoint you, but I must tell you that we are in the same predicament. I have no rocket here. I was hoping when I heard your voice that you might have one we could go back in."

The other looked confused, shook his head. "No rocket? Oh, that is too bad. Very bad."

The Glassie, who had been watching them without understanding too much of the rapid-fire quality of normal speech, suddenly said, "Have hunger much. Is food here."

He turned his back on the two men, pawed through the scraps on the cave floor, coming up with some of the provisions that Robin had packed with him.

"I'm hungry, also," said the Russian. "They have not fed me since they threw me in here. Is this stuff good to eat?"

"Try it," said Robin and the three sat down and ate. Robin sat munching and stared at the other man. The first human he had seen in almost two years. A real live man! But where did he come from? How did he get here? And how was it he was a prisoner?

For a while after they had finished, they looked at each other. The Russian spoke. "You must have a story to tell me, Robin Carew. How did you say you got here?"

Robin briefly outlined what had happened to him, the other listening attentively. When Robin had finished, he asked, "Now I want to know about you? It's your turn."

"Yes," said Piotr, "I shall tell you."

_14. The Man From Lake Baikal_

"I was an orphan of World War II," said Piotr Ivanovitch Kareff in a quiet voice, speaking precise English with a fair fluency. "My family were all vanished, I know not what happened to them. I was brought back to Russia by our soldiers and sent to a state school in the Urals set up to take care of such as myself.

"There I was a good scholar and I made myself good marks. When I was old enough, I qualified for study at a higher institute and was sent to a college for engineers. I was always interested in astronomy and rocket aviation and I was therefore trained along those lines.

"When I was eighteen, I was allowed to continue my engineering education as a part of my military duty. I was in the army, yet still studying, only this time I was stationed at one of the big experimental centers we have deep in Siberia. You probably do not know about them. They are very secret.

"The one I was at was located near the shores of Lake Baikal, the big inland sea in Central Asia near Mongolia. This was the biggest center for the study of liquid-fuel rockets. While I learned the theory, I also worked on the actual projects and helped fire many of our big rockets. These were designed after the German V-_2, the same designs you Americans are also building on. We, too, had captured German scientists who had worked on these. They had much to show us, and one of the smartest of these men was the Captain Von Borck who even became a member of the party or so he said.

"I am not a political man, I am really interested in rockets, so I did not pay too much attention to these things. Von Borck may be truly believing what he desires, I do not know, but I think he is just what you call an opportunity seeker.

"After my army service, I chose to remain at the Lake Baikal station as a regular engineer. I worked on the thousand-mile rockets, and finally on the satellite rockets, and I helped get them up there. It was a nice race with you Americans. We knew a little of your plans--those you publish in the papers--and we always were urged to beat you. Sometimes we did. Sometimes you beat us.

"At our centers we made a game of this. It was serious to our country, but to us, men of science, all discoveries by human beings are great things. We liked to think of our work as a great game of mental chess with you Americans--with the pieces on the board carefully hidden from sight and reported only through guesswork and bad witnesses.

"When the satellites were up and flying their orbits around the Earth, yours and ours, the next game was obviously to race for the Moon. Should we plant the Red flag there, or you the Stars and Stripes? So we worked at that. We did not this time know what you were doing. Maybe you had different ideas.

"So Van Borck discovered a means of using atomic explosions in a steady rocket stream and explained the principle. We worked on this motor a while and finally the Ministry ordered the building of one rocket which could fly to the Moon with this super-powerful engine. At first our commander at the base said it should be a robot-piloted model, but Moscow did not want that. They wanted that men should go on that first trip. They wanted that a Soviet man should be first to reach the Moon.

"They did not know about you, Robin, and your stowaway trip! Ha! But even the Americans do not apparently know about you, alas for both of us!"

Piotr stopped a moment, got to his feet, went to the door of the cave and listened. He came back. "No one there watching us. I go on," he said.

"So finally was built a big rocket with the first atomic explosive engine. Von Borck himself was going to go in it as its engineer. But Von Borck was not really a Soviet man, and I do not think Moscow was happy about it. So they allowed for the ship to have a three-man crew. I was selected, because I am young and quick and have a good record, and also maybe because I have no family to be sorry I not come back maybe. Arkady Pavlovitch Zverin was the third, who was also an orphan.

"Came a day when the big rocket was complete and ready. We said good-by to our friends and at the right time we went up the ladder and into our big rocket. That day, which seems to me so long ago, must have been not even a week ago yet!

"We took off perfectly, we blasted for ten minutes--I thought my head would burst--and we were on our way. Von Borck piloted it, but there was really little to do. When it came time to reverse the rockets and make our landing, we had trouble. Our gyroscope control was stuck and we had to fight with it by hand to move it. This made a delay and when we did get our jets reversed and working, our timing was off. Von Borck struggled to slow us up and come to a real stop, but we were a little too fast. We came down blasting away, and we hit very hard.