Brigands of the Moon | Page 4

and oppressed.
As though prying eyes were upon me. We walked for a time in silence, each of us busy
with memory of what had transpired at Halsey's office.
Suddenly Snap gripped me. "What's that?"
"Where?" I whispered.
We stopped at a corner. An entryway was here. Snap pulled me into it. I could feel him
quivering with excitement.
"What is it?" I demanded in a whisper.
"We're being followed. Did you hear anything?"
"No!" Yet I thought now that I could hear something. Vague footfalls. A rustling. And a
microscopic whine, as though some device were within range of us.
Snap was fumbling in his pocket. "Wait! I've got a pair of low-scale detectors."
He put the little grids against his ears. I could hear the sharp intake of his breath. Then he
seized me, pulled me down to the metal floor of the entryway.
"Back, Gregg! Get back!" I could barely hear his whisper. We crouched as far back into
the doorway as we could get. I was armed. My official permit for the carrying of the
pencil heat ray allowed me always to have it with me. I drew it now. But there was

nothing to shoot at. I felt Snap clamping the grids on my ears. And now I heard
something! An intensification of the vague footsteps I had thought I heard before.
There was something following us! Something out in the corridor there now! The
corridor was dim, but plainly visible, and as far as I could see it was empty. But there was
something there. Something invisible! I could hear it moving. Creeping toward us. I
pulled the grids off my ears.
Snap murmured, "You've got a local phone?"
"Yes. I'll get them to give us the street glare!"
I pressed the danger signal, giving our location to the operator. In a second we got the
light. The street in all this neighborhood burst into a brilliant actinic glare. The thing
menacing us was revealed! A figure in a black cloak, crouching thirty feet away across
the corridor.
Snap was unarmed but he flung his hands out menacingly. The figure, which may
perhaps not have been aware of our city safeguard, was taken wholly by surprise. A
human figure, seven feet tall at the least, and therefore, I judged, a Martian man. The
black cloak covered his head. He took a step toward us, hesitated, and then turned in
confusion.
Snap's shrill voice was bringing help. The whine of a street guard's alarm whistle nearby
sounded. The figure was making off! My pencil ray was in my hand and I pressed its
switch. The tiny heat ray stabbed through the air, but I missed. The figure stumbled but
did not fall. I saw a bare gray arm come from the cloak, flung up to maintain its balance.
Or perhaps my pencil ray had seared his arm. The gray-skinned arm of a Martian.
Snap was shouting, "Give him another!" But the figure passed beyond the actinic glare
and vanished.
We were detained in the turmoil of the corridor for ten minutes or more with official
explanations. Then a message from Halsey released us. The Martian who had been
following us in his invisible cloak was never caught.
We escaped from the crowd at last and made our way back to the Planetara, where the
passengers were already assembling for the outward Martian voyage.

II
I stood on the turret balcony of the Planetara with Captain Carter and Dr. Frank, the ship
surgeon, watching the arriving passengers. It was close to the zero hour; the level of the
stage was a turmoil of confusion. The escalators, with the last of the freight aboard, were
folded back. But the stage was jammed with incoming passenger luggage, the
interplanetary customs and tax officials with their x-ray and zed-ray paraphernalia and

the passengers themselves, lined up for the export inspection.
At this height, the city lights lay spread in a glare of blue and yellow beneath us. The
individual local planes came dropping like birds to our stage. Thirty-eight passengers to
Mars for this voyage, but that accursed desire of every friend and relative to speed the
departing voyager brought a hundred or more extra people to crowd our girders and add
to everybody's troubles.
Carter was too absorbed in his duties to stay with us long. But here in the turret Dr. Frank
and I found ourselves at the moment with nothing much to do but watch.
Dr. Frank was a thin, dark, rather smallish man of fifty, trim in his blue and white
uniform. I knew him well: we had made several flights together. An American--I fancy of
Jewish ancestry. A likable man, and a skillful doctor and surgeon. He and I had always
been good friends.
"Crowded,"