Maza of the Moon (12 page)

"Our people were unable to condense and hurl meteoric matter as the people of Lu Gong did, but they were not lacking in scientific knowledge, and the great P'an-ku who ruled them at the time set up great ray projectors clear around our world, several of which were constantly trained on the enemy planet. The purpose of these rays was to destroy the atmosphere of Lu Gong, dissipating it into interplanetary space, and eventually stifling all the inhabitants of that world.

"The worst drawback to this method of warfare was that it slowly vitiated our own atmosphere where the beams passed through it, and thus constituted a system of slow suicide.

"No quarter was asked, and there was none given on either side. Meanwhile our scientists, who had succeeded experimentally in slightly perturbing the motion of our world around the sun, asked permission of P'an-ku to construct a huge electro-magnetic power plant with which they might control the motion of Ma Gong at will, and thus dodge the huge missiles of Lu Gong which were daily wiping out our cities and decimating our population. He granted them permission, and they soon increased the number of their power units to such a degree that they were ready to try to control the orbit of Ma Gong.

"The units worked, and the plan was to move Ma Gong behind your world, where it would be shielded from the bombardment of meteoric clusters. This was accomplished, but when the proper place had been reached, the scientists came in contact with terrific magnetic forces on which they had not counted--their power units were incapacitated, and they found themselves not only bound to the Great Lord Sun, but to your world as well. Ma Gong's axial rotation was affected, so it eventually became as you now observe it. Its orbit, after it settled down, was much as it is today, so that it was now behind your world, now racing ahead on an outer curve, now lagging behind on an inner one, only to be caught up at a certain point and jerked forward once more to repeat the whole process.

"The bombardment from Lu Gong continued until both worlds were nearly without people to carry on the battle. P'anku, himself, was slain when the imperial city was destroyed by a meteoric cluster. The atmosphere of Ma Gong became so thin that the few people who remained alive did so because they retreated into the great inner caverns where what remained of the atmosphere had flown like water flows--toward the source of gravitational pull.

"The operators of the great ray projectors finally died at their posts for want of air. The bombardment from Lu Gong gradually waned as its inhabitants succumbed to the power of our ray projectors, until it ceased altogether.

"Only a few hundreds of our people were left alive in the great caverns, and there was not among them one scientist for the scientists had all died in defense of our world. So far as scientific knowledge went, the race was thus set back for thousands of years. The simple people who had fled to the caves-for the most part agriculturalists and tradesmen-knew not how to construct an interplanetary vehicle, a green ray projector, an atmosphere disintegrator, or any of the thousands of useful but intricate devices formerly made by this desire to live and, if possible, perpetuate his race and his imperial line."

"But what of the white race which now inhabits Ma Gong?" asked the professor. "Whence did they come?"

"About twelve hundred years after the great war," said Kwan Tsu Khan, "a party of our ancestors who were exploring the surface of our world, met a party of white people, descendants of the Lu Gong colonists they afterward learned, who had fled to the inner caverns during the great war. They, too, had invented heat proof, cold proof suits and concentrated air tanks which enabled them to travel on the crust of our world. A parley was started, but because of the great hatred between the two races, a quarrel quickly became a battle, and only a few of the explorers from either side returned to tell their stories to their respective countrymen.

"This started a war between the two races once more, and my people were conquered because, while the enemy had succeeded in manufacturing their red ray projectors, our scientists had been unable, thus far, to reproduce the green ray projectors of their ancestors. For hundreds of years thereafter the heirs of P'an-ku ruled only as viceroys for the emperors of the white race. This lasted until half a century ago, when our people were freed by a magnanimous and peace loving ruler of the white people named Mazo Khan. The languages of the two races were, meanwhile, fused into one, which is now the universal speech of Ma Gong.

"Our scientists had been quietly at work for centuries, endeavoring to regain the secret of the green ray, as well as to reconstruct interplanetary vehicles as efficient as those of their ancestors. When they were set free by the magnanimous Mazo Khan work went on with redoubled vigor and, as you see, we now have both.

"The present ruler of the white race, who still calls herself 'Maza of Ma Gong,' the hereditary title of the supreme ruler of Ma Gong, is the granddaughter of the man who set us free, and even though she may desire to once more enslave us, she cannot do so because we now have the green ray and the interplanetary vehicles.

"We, on our part, could enslave her and her people only the scientists. They were forced to begin with simpler things and gradually build a new civilization and a new school of scientists.

"Even the libraries, which would have been of inestimable value to them, were on the airless surface of Ma Gong where they could not be reached, and most of these had been destroyed by the meteoric clusters projected from Lu Gong. The others succumbed to age and the incessant battering of planetesimal particles which followed the destruction of our atmosphere, before they could be reached.

"The eldest son of P'an-ku, who became P'an-ku at the death of his father, had been commander in chief of our interplanetary war fleets, and had been taken prisoner by the ruler of Lu Gong. He had left a wife with child, and she fled with the few hundreds who were the progenitors of our present race into the great caverns of our world. There a male child was born to her, and as he was the eldest son of that P'an-ku who never came back to us, he was the hereditary ruler of my people, and his descendants have directed their destinies ever since.

"Nearly a thousand years after the great war, our ancestors, who bad multiplied in numbers and increased in knowledge, were able to construct suits in which they could explore the surface of our world, breathing air which was concentrated in tanks they carried with them. While searching the ruins of the ancient capital of P'an-ku, they came upon a metal cylinder which contained a message left there by his eldest son a thousand years before. It stated that he had escaped from Lu Gong, as there were none left alive there to detain him, and had come to Ma Gong in his one man space flyer, only to find his world destitute of people and untenable because of its lack of atmosphere.

"He stated that he was leaving for Du Gong--that world inhabited, in those days, by strange monsters and savage peoples, and that he would never have deserted Ma Gong had he found but a single one of his subjects alive, but that he could no longer stay in a dead world when there was a chance that he might find life and an empire in a live one. In closing, he implored the Great Lord Sun to pardon him for by a terrific loss of life on both sides, so we prefer to leave her unmolested as long as she does not bother us, and extend our conquests along lines of less resistance for the present. Of course we must conquer her people eventually, for there cannot be two rulers of Ma Gong, but the time is not yet ripe.

"The arrested motion of the vehicle tells me that we are now at our destination, so I must leave the globe for a while. If you will give me your word that you will not attempt to escape I will permit you the freedom of my ship."

"Where are we?" asked the professor.

"We are in the capital city of the descendants of that P'anku who visited your world many thousands of years ago. I am to meet some of his descendants in conference."

"I will give you my word not to try to escape," said the professor.

"Very well. So long as you stay on the ship you will be unmolested."

He pressed a button in the wall behind him, and Lin Ching instantly opened the door.

"You will permit the wise Khan, Am-Er-I, the freedom of the ship, Lin Ching," he said, "but you will see that he is either recaptured or killed if he attempts to leave it."

"Lin Ching hears, and Lin Ching obeys," replied that individual, bowing the professor out of the room.

The professor strolled around the ship, examining its interior with considerable interest. Then he opened one of the diamond-shaped doors, and stepped out onto the bridge-instantly recognizing a section of Peiping with which he was familiar. He saw that the other two flying globes hovered near the one he was on and that several Lunites were descending each of the swaying ladders which hung down from the interplanetary vehicles.

He was gazing idly down at the crowd which milled in the street below him, when he suddenly spied a familiar face looking curiously up at him. A smile of recognition crossed the face of the Chinaman in the crowd beneath, but the professor instantly made a gesture of caution and then indicated that he wanted his friend to wait below him.

Hastily jerking pencil and notebook from his pocket, the professor quickly wrote a short note in Chinese characters. It was addressed to General Fu Yen, its contents as follows:

"I am a prisoner on a lunar globe, and have given my word of honor that I will not try to escape while here. I have not, however, made any promise that I will not write notes to my friends.

"My captors are now negotiating with your government for the purpose of finally signing the agreement which will make your people the subjects of a round-bodied monarch who calls himself P'an-ku, and rules a race which inhabits the moon.

"Your people have fought and bled for freedom and a voice in their government. Are they going to renounce all this now? You, and you only, my friend, can save them. Act quickly if you would not be too late.

"Sincerely, GEO. EDERSON."

Crumpling the note into a ball, the professor called softly to the man below, who instantly took off his large helmet and held it upside down. Into this wide, inverted bowl, the professor dropped the note.

"For Fu Yen," he called, softly.

The Chinaman nodded, pocketed the note, replaced his hat on his head, and moved away, a part of the crowd.

Then, with unexpected suddenness, vise-like fingers closed on the neck of the professor, and he was shaken like a rat.

"Worm," grated a voice in his ear. "Tell me what you tossed to that person in the crowd, or by the Great Lord Sun, you shall not live to say aught else."

AWAKENED WITH each of his arms pinned to the ground by an armored warrior and the sword of a third who knelt on his chest menacing his throat, Ted blinked dazedly and wondered if he was indeed awake, or only dreaming.

Then he heard the voice of Maza utter a sharp command.

The three warriors instantly released him and stood at attention as he rose unsteadily to his feet. Evidently these were her own soldiers who had mistaken him for an enemy. Their white skins and non-Mongoloid features showed that they were not of the race of P'an-ku.

At a second command from the girl the men filed down to the water's edge, where a long, low craft constructed of white metal, was moored. It was fashioned in the shape of a flying dragon like the one he had seen the girl riding some time before, the metallic wings held upward with edges closing at the top to make a fantastic roof for the cabin. As it was without rudder, oars or paddles, Ted was puzzled as to its means of locomotion.

Beckoning him to follow, the girl leaped lightly aboard. As the earth man stepped in after her, one of the warriors pushed off and another, seated in the prow before a small keyboard, pressed several buttons with his fingers. There was a roar from the rear of the craft and it shot backward into midstream. The helmsman pressed another row of buttons and the boat started down stream with a louder roar and a terrific burst of speed.

Making his way astern, Ted saw that the boat was both propelled and steered by two sets of three jointed pipes each, which extended from the back of the boat under water. Something, either highly compressed air or some other gas, rushed out of each pipe as the correct button was touched by the operator, and the wake, as a result, was a mass of seething bubbles. To turn right or left the helmsman had only to shut off the set of pipes on the side toward which he wished to go. To reverse the boat, he but needed to press buttons which bent the flexible jointed ends of the pipes downward and toward the front, thus reversing the direction of the pressure.

Going forward once more, Ted crouched by the side of the girl and watched the queer lunar scenery hurtle past them. The boat, he judged, must be making at least a hundred miles an hour, so his glimpses of the queer, subterranean flora and fauna were but cursory. The phosphorescent vegetation with its eerie luminosity persisted as league after league of the winding stream was left behind them. Gigantic flying reptiles sometimes darted downward at the boat, but invariably underestimated its great speed, striking the water from one to two hundred feet behind it, then rising to flap lazily and disgustedly away in search of other less elusive quarry.

After they had traveled in this manner for nearly six hours the helmsman suddenly reversed his power, bringing the craft to a stop before two huge, heavily barred gates which extended from the bottom of the stream to the surface of a great arch of masonry that marked the beginning of a tunnel.

A warrior in the stern then struck a gong three times, and the gates slowly swung back, whereupon the boat entered the tunnel, which was lighted from above by a soft, phosphorescent radiance that emanated from hemispherical dome lights placed at regular intervals. Armored guards with long spears in their hands, and swords and ray projectors strapped to their belts, stood on each side of the gateway before small block houses. Ted noticed that they reversed their spears and bent the knee as the boat passed--evidently the military obeisance to their ruler.