Page:Weird Tales Volume 23 Issue 5 (1934 05).djvu/26

 of which sat the worried Starr. Setting the apparatus into motion, Smith flung himself down beside his captain to listen.

"Meteor IV calling—Meteor IV calling," rumbled the instrument, then after a pause, "Hello, Smith. Listen! Great news! But wait—" The voice stopped an instant, then continued in the formal Legion routine words, "Meteor IV Commander John Starr reporting 'all safe'—"

"My God!" Starr leapt to his feet. His face grew ashen white; the hand that brushed his forehand trembled.

"My brother," he muttered faintly, "my brother—on that ship!" He sank, groaning, into the chair and gripped its arm-rests with a vise-like clutch.

Lieutenant Smith shut off the speaker and laid a sympathetic hand on the quivering shoulder of his commanding officer. For a period of deathly stillness, bowed head between his hands, Starr sat motionless. At last, with a visible effort, he pulled himself together. He raised his pale face, jaw set determinedly.

"Let's hear the message," he choked.

ITHOUT a word Smith threw the switch and the two men listened in strained silence to the rumbling, mechanical voice of the tape.

"—ere, I've got that old formula off my chest. Now I can talk like a human being. Say, listen, Smitty, old boy. Here's something you won't believe. There is a city here in the moon! Think of it! But listen, here's the way it happened.

"Dick—beg pardon!—Captain Richard Starr told me to send out a ship to try to locate the America VII. He didn't say for me not to go, so I just took command of the good old Meteor IV here, got Rusty Steele, Hal Bradley, and half a dozen others to come with me and set out.

"Now, I decided that practically the whole surface of the moon had already been searched to find the America VII and that other ship—the Thunderbolt, wasn't it?—you know, the one that vanished during the last Period. Well, as I say, although the surface had already been searched in vain efforts to locate these ships, no one had as yet cruised through any of the crater caverns. So that's where we went, and that's where we are now.

"We headed down that big crater just the other side of the Simonsburg group—the one we call the Punch Bowl—and nosed in and out among those giant bubble-like caves on its bottom.

"We found that one of the bubbles was an entrance to a regular honeycomb of natural passages and caves, leading right down towards the center of the moon. By Jupiter! it was intriguing to look out a forward port and see our guide-beam just sort of peter out without ever touching the end of the caves. It looked good to us, so down we cruised at half-speed, watching out for signs of either the America VII or the Thunderbolt.

"Venus, what caves! Rock and metal that—but you'll have to see for yourself. For an hour we cruised through that weird fairyland without ever once finding a cavern that led upward other than those behind us.

"Rusty got one of his crazy ideas and wanted to go outside without a suit. Said he read in a novel once where the hero walked around on the inside of the moon without a suit on account of the atmosphere growing denser towards the moon's center.

"We let him try it—a couple of fellows with oxygen-helmets stood by to grab him and pull him in just in case!—and blamed if there wasn't air out there! I know there's air up above where you are too, but this was real thick, breathable