Maza of the Moon by Otis Adelbert Kline Read Free Book Online Page B

above the skyscrapers of Chicago, their craft tossing and careening like a leaf in a gale, Roger took two parcels from beneath the seat, one of which he handed to the professor.
    "Folding parachutes," he said. "Bevans is wearing one. Watch how I strap mine on, and do likewise. We may need them."
    The wind swept them out over Lake Michigan--then they plunged into a swirling, blinding snowstorm, and everything below, even the powerful guide-lights of Chicago's great landing fields, vanished.
    With propeller and helicopter blades roaring, Bevans drove the plane higher and higher, until they at length emerged above the seething, moon-silvered clouds.
    "No green moonlight here," said the professor.
    "But look--look to the southeast!" exclaimed Roger.
    The professor looked, and saw a green band of light, wide at the bottom, but narrowing as it extended upward straight toward the gibbous moon.
    "The moon looks green from Washington," said the professor, "because the inhabitants had to look through the green lights to see it."
    Roger shouted an order through the speaking tube.
    "Hover."
    As the big plane, now riding in comparatively calm air, hung smoothly suspended by its helicopter blades, he turned a pair of powerful binoculars on the moon. He focused them, looked for a moment longer, then handed them to the professor.
    "It's coming from the ring-mountain, Copernicus," he said. "Looks as if a beam from an enormous green searchlight were coming directly from the center of the crater."
    "So it is," said the professor, after a careful scrutiny. "From the very center of the crater."
    Then, before he had lowered the glasses, the green light winked out. So sudden was the transformation, and so calm and natural did the moon appear, that it seemed to both observers that the thing had not really been--that it was a figment of their imaginations.
    Came a call from Bevans:
    "Three strange craft on the starboard quarter, sir. They seem to be coming this way."
    The professor trained the binoculars in the direction indicated.
    "My word, what odd looking craft," he exclaimed. "They are globular in form--globes, to each of which two whirling discs are attached."
    "An International Patrol Plane is coming from the port quarter," called Bevans. "It's signaling the three strange craft, but they do not respond. They are running without lights."
    "Ascend," called Roger, "and turn off all lights."
    There was an answering roar as the Blettendorf shot upward.
    "Too late for that," said the professor. "We must have been seen."
    As the two men watched the one sided aerial parley below, they saw two more Patrol Planes emerge from the upper cloud stratum and take places behind the first.
    "That makes the numbers even, at least," said Roger.
    The two squadrons drew together without sign or signal from the strange craft, until the two leaders were within two thousand feet of each other. Then a narrow green ray suddenly shot out from the foremost globe, striking the first patrol plane. For a moment the plane seemed to shrink-to draw together as if crushed in from all sides. Then it crumbled asunder, and the pieces fell into the swirling clouds beneath.
    The forward turret guns of the two remaining planes immediately went into action, concentrating their fire on the foremost globe, but with no apparent effect. Green rays shot out from the two other globes simultaneously, and the planes shared the fate of their leader.
    Then a green ray from the first globe sailed upward.
    "Jump!" shouted Roger. "It's our only chance. They'll find us in a minute."
    The professor tore the door open and jumped first. His parachute opened just as Roger leaped after him followed by Bevans.
    Roger could not see upward because of the parachute spread above him, but fragments of the shattered Blettendorf began falling around him before he had dropped far, and he was thankful that they had leaped in time.
    Looking downward to see how it fared with the professor, he saw to his horror that