One Against the Moon (12 page)

Robin thought about that as they trudged along. He went easily and lightly in spite of his huge load—a collection of sacks and equipment tied together to make a bundle more than his own height. But bundle and all, Robin was lighter and stronger by far than he would be on Earth. "Won't they kill you if you go back?" he asked the Moonman.

Korree turned his head and Robin almost imagined he could see his brains whirl. Through the glassy skin, he could see the shadows of his skull structure and the pulsing of veins and arteries. "With Robin they not do so. You make them give us free way." Obviously he regarded the Earthling as an all-powerful being to whom things like tribal death sentences would be mere nothings.

Robin smiled uneasily. Without firearms and modern weapons he could still be overpowered if enough of the Moonmen attacked him at once. He would have to think about his approach to the tribe before he got there.

They reached the tunnel and made their way once more through its dark recesses to the jungle-bubble where he had encountered Korree. They passed through this without incident. The Glassie led the way to one of several cracks and tunnels at the far end. With Robin following and the monkey Cheeky perched on the huge pack, Korree entered this tunnel.

As before, it was dark and narrow and seemed to wind ahead. Several times they stepped around breaks in the floor, or ducked under low passages where the ceiling had dipped. They walked on, Korree's bobbing headlight casting a pale-yellowish glow a few feet ahead. Robin was watching the floor carefully, straining his attention to keep his footing safe. His ears registered the echo of their motions and the changing pitch as the tunnel widened or receded, but he paid less and less attention to this.

Suddenly he looked up. And saw not the one glow of Korree's light but a number of smaller ones around them, distant ones, bobbing slightly, one or two yellow, one small white one, and three verging on red. He started and stared but Korree had said nothing.

Finally he reached out and tapped the Glassie and whispered, "What are those lights?"

Korree said back in a normal tone, "Animals. White light is hunting eater. I watch it."

"Here? In this tunnel?" asked Robin, startled.

"Not in tunnel," said the Glassie. "In new bubble-place."

Robin looked around. Sure enough he had not noticed the echo of their feet in the last few minutes. The floor had changed from rock to sandy dirt and he realized that he had lost some of the enclosed-air feeling. It was indeed a new bubble-cavern—but a lightless one!

Now, as he looked carefully, he realized that there were many lights around. There were tiny ones bobbing on the ground that were probably Moonworms. The others were almost certainly those of various animals. He took his flashlight out, suddenly clicked it on, and swung it around.

They were in an open area, sandy with sparse clumps of mushroomlike vegetation growing here and there. He caught the scurrying flash of several translucent animal bodies dodging out of sight from the unexpected light of his flash. And when the beam was off, he noticed the headlights returning, augmented in number.

"There are many bubble-places without light?" asked Robin.

"Many," said Korree. "Glassies not live there, but many animals hunt there."

Robin wondered whether there might in fact be more bubbles without light than with. He realized that that was probably the case; it very likely explained the nearly complete lack of pigment in the flesh of the native animals, the presence of the light stalks on all of them. It had probably evolved originally in lightlessness, and the Glassies had moved into the caverns fortunate enough to have natural phosphorescence only after they had discovered them much later in their history. This possibly also accounted for the single eye of Moon creatures—the conditions for the use of two eyes to develop perspective and delicate differentiations of shading and coloring simply never existed.

"Are there animals here without eye or light?" asked Robin thoughtfully.

"Yes," Korree answered softly. "Big eaters, they—"

There was a sudden rush of sound ahead, a crashing of plants nearby, an instant winking out of all headlights, including Korree's, and then Robin felt himself thrown to the ground as something vast and huge and heavy seemed to envelop him.

He felt himself being smothered under a pulsing blanket of warm flesh, a veritable wall that covered him from head to foot, crushing out his strength. Robin recovered, ripped out with his hands, kicked with his feet. He felt his strong Terrestrial muscles tearing into the tissue of the creature, and swinging wildly, he got to his knees and then to his feet, veritably lifting the entire bulk of the creature.

He reached for his knife and as he got it open he felt the sharp edge of a jaw and the hot breath of a large mouth near his ear. He thrust out with the knife hard and furiously, cutting the mass to bits.

There was a sharp screech and he felt the blanket of flesh pull away and struggle to withdraw. He got his flashlight with his other hand, flicked it on to see his opponent better.

He saw a wall of gelatinous flesh rolling back before him. It rolled off the prostrate but unharmed body of Korree, gathered itself in a mass and rolled rapidly away, uttering loud screeches. The thing was a ball of flesh, several yards across. It had a wide, many-toothed mouth. It had several flat flanged spots which were probably ears, and it was lacking an eye, lacking any light organ.

It hardly needed them. Obviously the thing simply rolled around in the darkness of the cavern, guided by the sounds of moving animals, rolling over them, flattening out, and devouring them.

Korree got to his feet. He said nothing, seemed to take it for granted that the great Earthling would have bested this thing, of course, and started off again. Robin frowned, decided he'd have to watch himself lest the Glassie sometime really overestimate his capacities.

They traversed the rest of the lightless cavern without incident, this time Robin keeping his flashlight switching on and off regularly, long enough to sweep the moonscape sufficiently to gain warnings of future assaults. Once they saw the ball-like bulk of a Moonbowler, as Robin mentally named it, in the distance, and they both carefully stopped and held their breath until it rolled away.

At the far wall, Korree searched the various breaks until he found the one through which he had originally come.

They passed through another lightless cavern, this one less of a desert than the other, where giant mushrooms towered like great trees in the darkness and where little chittering Moonmice ran about their feet, tiny green lights sparkling.

The next cavern was a lighted one and this was now almost familiar to them. Beyond that was another lighted one through which a channel of water flowed only to disappear into a tiny crack in the far wall. This water, however, was yellowish and evil-smelling and made the entire cavern malodorous. Yet it too had its quota of strange vegetation.

A series of rather small bubbles, not more than a couple of dozen yards across, came next, and then they arrived at a wide, deep one. The spot in the wall which let out on it was near the roof of this bubble, and they made their way delicately along a series of faults and ledges. Looking down, Robin could see that a lake of some bubbling oily substance filled the lower level of the bubble. Along one side, tucked in a corner near a tunnel opening, many hundreds of feet down, he spotted something odd. He stopped. Korree turned back, made his way along the narrow ledge and looked down to where he pointed.

There was a small cleared space just before the opening, and there were several objects too far away to be seen clearly, but they looked for all the world like some sort of eggs. As they watched, Robin saw what seemed a shadowy figure move near one. Because of the curious glassy skins, that was probably an animal. Robin softly asked Korree what it was.

"Is Glassie like Korree," answered Korree quietly.

"A friend? One of your people? And what are they doing there?" asked Robin.

Korree shook his head violently. "Not Korree people. That one is from down place. Is mighty people from...." He pointed downward to the Moon's core. "They come here to take...." He pointed now at the curious chemical lake. "They bring back down with them," he finished.

Robin gasped. Here was evidence of his reasoning. The Glassies that lived near the core of the Moon were higher in civilization. Here evidently was a place where something usable could be gathered—the fluid of that lake. Possibly it might be fuel for burning, or substance usable as tar or cement. The beings down below came up for it, put it in tanks—the egg-shaped objects—and brought it back to their greater caverns.

Someday this would have to be investigated. If he ever returned to Earth, this would have to be explored. But now—were these unknowns dangerous to him? He asked Korree, who shrugged. In his halting fashion he conveyed to the Earthling that if the Glassies of the upper crust left those lower down alone, they were not bothered. The implication however was that Korree's people were only too willing to stay out of the way of the powerful underlords.

After several more caverns—the trip had already taken over a week—including one marvelous one in which several flaming gas jets made amazing patterns in an otherwise lightless world, Korree finally led the way into a large lighted cavern many miles wide, stopped and announced, "Korree home."

Robin looked around, adjusted his pack and called to Cheeky to return. The monkey, which had scampered on ahead, obediently dashed back and to safety on the pack. This was an important moment to Robin. He mustered his plans, and stepped out after Korree who had started out again holding his spear high in the air in some sort of native signal.

For a short while they walked without seeing anyone. They were in a forest of ball-trees when suddenly they found themselves quietly surrounded by Glassies. Evidently they had been trailed since entering the cavern and at a sufficient distance from the tunnel mouth the Glassies had popped out of concealment.

There were about twenty or so, all armed with the diamond spears and they effectively encircled the travelers. Korree had apparently expected this, for he showed no surprise, but Robin stopped short and Cheeky started jumping up and down on the huge pack and shrieking at the pack of beings.

It was odd seeing a mass of Glassies. Robin could see that they differed from each other as individuals. Some were larger, some smaller, and the shadings within their bodies gave rather clear evidence of fatness, of recent eating, and such. Like Korree they wore no garments at all.

One of the Glassies said something sharply to Korree, who answered promptly. The spokesman had a black circle painted on his chest—this was obviously a symbol of some sort of tribal authority. Robin stepped forward, walked up to this Glassie, who promptly withdrew, uneasy in the presence of this unknown.

From his pocket Robin took his pack of matches, the one that had been with him all the way from Earth. There were still three matches left, saved for just some occasion as this, carefully conserved by the use of Robin's flint and steel. Robin walked up to a small ball-tree nearby, held the match aloft, then struck it, and rapidly held it to the stalklike trunk. After a second the plant caught fire and was a blazing mass.

While the Glassies were gazing in amazement at this unexpected display, Robin drew in his breath, set his pack down, and gave a leap straight upward with all his strength.

He soared some thirty feet high and then gently floated down to the ground again. This was a feat that anyone with Earth muscles could do, but it was something that Lunar muscles had never been developed for. When the Glassies tore their eyes away from the burning tree it was to find Robin apparently vanished. Looking around, one of them discovered him in the air, floating gently back to the ground.

With one accord the Glassies shrieked and ran away. When Robin hit the ground, he was alone with Korree—who looked as nearly smug as it was possible for his unearthly features to look.

The Earthling picked up his sack, whistled to Cheeky to come to him, and started off again. In a few minutes, Korree led him to the tribal center, the "village" of his people.

There were no houses or tents or any structures with roofs. Each family group apparently fenced off their section of ground with a barrier of low, pointed sticks, their points diagonally outward. Within this barrier, the family squatted with their few possessions. There was no such thing as privacy among this primitive group. The females of the tribe apparently stayed within their family plots, with the young, the extra spears and hunting sticks, the leftover supplies of food, and a pile in the center of each circle of what must have been some sort of blankets, apparently woven crudely from vegetable fibers. Robin assumed that during the cold periods, these were used.

The males of the tribe were gathered before a central circle, watching their visitors approach. Korree went to them, stopped, and spoke at length. Robin could not understand him, but he knew what he must be saying. His Glassie friend was obviously first boasting of his friendship with the magical stranger, then warning them of terrible consequences if they failed to obey and honor the stranger, doubtless inserting a demand for his own full pardon of whatever tribal offense had brought about his own banishment, and demanding the aid of the tribal leaders in assisting them on their way.

When he had finished, Robin walked straight up to the Glassie with the chest marking, reached out and extracted from the tip of his quivering light-organ stalk a copper cent which Robin had first palmed in his hand. To the astonished native, he presented this token—one of the coins Robin had had in his pocket on his unexpected trip from New Mexico.

The Glassie took it, stared at it. The face on the coppery-yellow coin seemed to hypnotize him. No one had ever seen such a thing—a bit of bright rock with a face on it! But this additional evidence of Robin's magic clinched the argument.

Robin and Korree stayed in that cavern for about three days. In that time Korree managed to obtain fairly specific directions from one old-timer as to the cavern they sought. He had also evidently repaired his tribal fences, for Robin could not fail to notice that Korree was always accompanied by a group of anxious and placating Glassies. He imagined that when Korree returned to stay, it would be as a chieftain.