Lost on the Moon | Page 9

a semi-conscious condition. An instant later Mark slowly arose, and made his way to where Professor Henderson was rubbing his forehead in a dazed fashion.
"Are you hurt?" asked Mark, of his aged friend.
"I think not," answered Mr. Henderson slowly, "but I fear Mr. Roumann is. See to him; I'm all right."
"He's breathing," cried Jack, who had bent over the German. "He isn't dead, at any rate."
"But he may be, unless he gets attention," said Professor Henderson. "Get my medicine chest, Mark, and we'll see what we can do for him."
Jack had raised the head of the injured man on his arm, and was giving him some water from a glass. This partially revived the German, and he opened his eyes. He looked around, into the faces of his friends, as if scarcely comprehending what had happened, and then, as his gaze wandered toward the disabled Cardite motor, he exclaimed:
"Some enemy has done this! The motor was tampered with. The resistance block was loosened, and that caused the force of the Cardite to shoot out at the rear. We must watch out for the work of this enemy!"
"Don't distress yourself about that now," urged Mr. Henderson. "Are you badly hurt? Do you need a doctor?"
The German slowly drank the rest of the water which Jack gave him, and then gradually arose to a standing position.
"I am all right," he said faintly, "except that I feel a trifle dizzy. Something hit me on the head, and the fumes from the Cardite took away my breath for a moment. I think I shall be all right soon."
"Here is the medicine chest!" exclaimed Mark, coming back into the engine room. Mr. Henderson poured out some aromatic spirits of ammonia into a graduated glass, added a little water, and gave it to his fellow, inventor, who, after drinking it, declared that he felt much better. There was a cut on his forehead, where a piece of the broken motor had struck him, but, otherwise, he did not seem injured externally.
As for the boys, they were only stunned, nor was Mr. Henderson more than momentarily shocked. In a few minutes the German professor was almost himself again.
"We must try to discover who our enemy is," he said earnestly, as he looked over the disabled motor. "He might have blown up the whole projectile by tampering as he did with the machinery. Had I been testing the large, instead of the small motor, there would have been nothing left of the Annihilator, or us, either. Who could have done this? If that crazy machinist is around again----"
"I don't believe he could get here from Mars," interrupted Jack, with a smile.
"Hardly," added Mark.
"No, I guess he is still on the Red Planet, so it couldn't have been him," went on Mr. Roumann. "But it was some one."
Jack and Mark at once thought of the odd man who had sent Mark the note, and then had run away.
"Could it have been him?" suggested Jack.
"It's possible," remarked Professor Henderson. "We must be on our guard. I wonder if Washington----"
At that moment there sounded a violent pounding on the exterior of the projectile, and the voice of the colored man could be heard calling:
"Am anything de mattah? Andy Sudds an' I is out heah, an' we heard suffin goin' on in dere. Am anybody hurted?"
"It's all over now, Wash," replied Jack, for the two boys, and the two professors, had shut themselves up in the projectile while they conducted the experiment. Jack opened the door of the Annihilator and stepped out, being met by the colored man and the old hunter.
"You haven't seen any suspicious characters around, have you, Wash?" asked Mark. "Some one has been tampering with a motor, and it exploded."
"Nobody's been around since I've been here," announced Andy Sudds, with a significant glance at his gun.
"Maybe it's some ob dem moon-men, what don't laik de idea ob us goin' dere arter dere diamonds," volunteered the colored man.
"Perhaps," admitted Jack, with a smile. "But certainly some one has been around here who had no business to be, and we must find out who it was. Better take a look around, Wash."
"I'll help him," said Andy, and, with his rifle in readiness for any intruders, the old hunter followed the colored man outside the big shed.
Meanwhile Professor Roumann and Mr. Henderson were carefully examining the exploded motor.
"I should have looked at the breech plug before turning on the power," said the German, "but I had no reason to suspect that anything was wrong." He went on to explain that the explosion was something like that which occurs when the breech-block of a big navy gun is not properly in place. The force of the Cardite, instead of being directed against the piston-heads of the motor, shot out backward, and almost