to the _Planetara_,
and off to the foot-crags of Archimedes, and a score of miles into the
flatness of the Mare Imbrium. There was no sign of the brigands. Yet
we knew they could be near here--it was so easy to hide amid the
tumbled crags, the ravines, the gullies, the numberless craters and
pit-holes: or underground in the vast honeycombed subterranean
recesses.

* * * * *

We had at first hoped that the brigands might have perished. But that
was soon dispelled! I went--about the third day--with the party that
was sent to the _Planetara_. We wanted to salvage such of its
equipment, its unbroken power units, as might be available. And Snap
and I had worked out an idea which we thought might be of service. We
needed some of the _Planetara's_ smaller gravity-plate sections. Those
in Grantline's wrecked little _Comet_ had stood so long that their
radiations had gone dead. But the _Planetara's_ were still
efficacious.

We secured the fragments of Newtonia.[2] But our hope that Miko might
have perished was dashed. He too had returned to the _Planetara_! The
evidence was clear before us. The vessel was stripped of all its power
units save those which were dead and useless. The last of the food and
water stores was taken. The weapons in the chart-room--the Benson
curve-lights, bullet projectors, and heat-rays--had vanished.

[Footnote 2: An allusion to the element Newtonia, named in memory of
the great founder of celestial mechanics, Sir Isaac Newton.
Artificially electronized, this metal element may be charged either
positively or negatively, thus to attract or repell other masses of
matter. The gravity plates of all space-ships were built of it.]

Other days passed. The Earth reached the full, and began waning. The
twenty-eight day Lunar night was in its last half. No rescue ship came
from Earth. We had ceased our efforts to signal, for we needed all our
power to maintain ourselves. The camp would be in a state of siege.
That was the best we could hope for. We had a few short-range weapons,
such as Bensons, heat-rays and rifles. A few hundred feet of effective
range was the most any of them could obtain. The heat-rays--in giant
form one of the most deadly weapons on Earth--were only slowly
efficacious on the airless Moon. Striking an intensely cold surface,
their warming radiations, without atmosphere to aid them, were slow
to act. Even in a blasting heat-beam a man in his Erentz helmet-s