Gun On The Moon

By Alarra Keyalee

High in the skies rode a moon of terror and death, for, every four hours came another titanic shellfrom the Martian gun. And hope for the world lay in the minds of two men and a girl, lost on the moon!

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: AlarraFiction Publishing
• Release date: Aug 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215079232

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High in the skies rode a moon of terror and death, for, every four hours came another titanic shellfrom the Martian gun. And hope for the world lay in the minds of two men and a girl, lost on the moon!

CHAPTER I

SPACE EXPEDITION

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THE thunderous roar from the crowd was suddenly silenced as Halliday closed the ports of the spaceship, effectively sealing the crew of the Flame from the outer world. Jeers, epithets of ridicule, and great rousing cheers that had been flung through the port were alike shut out from metal walls of this human prison, as the first spaceship prepared to ascend into the great void.

Halliday, lean, serious-faced, but of a commanding presence, turned to face the anxious little group of passengers who were to share this great adventure. Parker, Benedict, Perkins, Clayton, Morse, Landay; he counted them off. Then suddenly he looked about .

Where’s Vincent? he asked quickly.

Gone to the pump room to look over the apparatus, Morse, the little ship’s cook, replied timidly.

Very well, take your posts.

At Halliday’s words, the six men silently strapped themselves into the deep-cushioned hammocks that lined the walls of the control room. Halliday, his face puckered into a frown, tested the gauges of the massive control board, glancing nervously at the electro-chronometer above his head.

Eight minutes more, he grunted. Moving nervously to the porthole, and removing one of the quartz windows, he peered into the dusk across the great field, to where massed thousands stood waiting for the Flame to go roaring heavenward.

The labor, the turmoil, the anxiety of the building and testing of the ship was over, only to have the great gamble with cosmic forces begin. The chances were dead against them.

Even though they survived the terrors of space and landed on the moon, there was the moon menace to face... but he preferred not to think about that now.

He wondered what those hordes of people were thinking about him and his crew. The world had poured enough ridicule onto the expedition to fill an ocean. Fools, they would laugh! They would have laughed harder had they known why the eight men of the Flame were risking death or worse in this stupendous journey. It was for their sake, the sake of the laughing fools, that all this had come about.

Impatiently he closed the port to shut out the vision of the sea of human forms. Screwing the port tight, he turned again to face the members of the crew who were watching him intently from their hammocks.

Their lives were in his hands now. Once the journey started, the least twitch of a lever, a momentary in attention, his failure to retard the ship’s plunge through space, any one of a dozen things, might mean the end of them all.

Turning away from their penetrating looks, he consulted his charts for the last time, and then took up a phone near his unoccupied hammock. Plugging in, he heard an answering muffled voice.

Vincent speaking.

Halliday, Vincent. Aren’t you coming back here, man? We’ve got to get started.

Start then, came Vincent’s laconic answer. I’ll use the emergency bunk here and see you when we get into space.

Halliday mumbled a reply, and opening the straps of his hammock, slid himself into its cushioned depths. Tightening the straps, he tested his position and the freedom of his arms to reach the gleaming brassy dials and levers at his side.

Adjusting the vision of the periscope before him that was to give him view of the earth, Halliday drew a deep breath and settled back.

The moment of the start was at hand, the labor of years was poised on this instant, as he narrowly watched the chronometer. And precisely as its single hand registered the hour of eight-thirty, Halliday unhesitatingly drew back the starting lever to the first notch.

As though catapulted from a great gun, he felt himself, his fellow passengers, his whole ship blown up into emptiness. With an unseen weight pressing on his chest, he threw the lever into the second notch . . . then the third . . . the fourth . . . relentlessly shooting into the giant rocket tubes at the ship’s tail, the gasses of combustion that were severing the earth’s grip on them.

Hardly breathing now, from the unbearable weight on his body, conscious of the muffled groans and sobs of his crew, Halliday grimly pulled the lever to the final notch, throwing into the gamble with the earth’s pull, the maximum of his available power.

The dials above his head that registered the velocity of escape from the earth, still fell short of the thin red mark that meant success. Either the red mark must be covered, or slowly, surely the earth’s pull would draw them back . . . back until they crashed, a lifeless wreck on the earth’s surface. With a painful effort, summoning every ounce of his strength, he thrust the lever home, until the arrow of the dial crept doggedly to the red line and hung there.

Exhausted, bathed in a cold sweat, Halliday sank back into the hammock. Spots danced before his eyes —red, and vividly green; the cabin swirled and gyrated; crazy figures filled his brain, and at last with a grim smile of satisfaction he drifted off into a deep cool oblivion.

***

AS HALLIDAY, and his comrades, lay wrapped in