hell with that!" Snap burst out. "Get it meshed in your mind,
Molo, that we're in no mood for talk like that. How far is it?"

"On Earth you would call it ten miles."

"In these mountains?"

"He told us it was," said Anita. "Underground."

"Do you know where your ship is?" I persisted.

He told us that it was some thirty miles in another direction, not in
the mountains, but in the outskirts of a city like Wor. It was
equipped and ready for flight, all but the assembling of its crew.

And now we had weapons! Molo was carrying several of the gravity
projectors; two small searchlight beams, little hand torches; and
three electronic ray-guns of short-range size.

Hope filled us. The storm was abating. We could creep upon the single
small control room of the gravity station, where usually but two
operators were stationed. The delicate mechanisms there could be
wrecked.

And then we would seize the _Star-Streak_. No one would be on the
lookout for us. The fact that Molo's prisoners had escaped was as yet
unknown; he and Wyk had not dared tell it. Meka was back there
waiting. Our absence from the globe dwelling might have been
discovered; but Meka would say that we were with Molo. She was waiting
there, hoping that her brother and Wyk would recapture us. All this we
dragged piecemeal from Molo.

Snap and I shared the gravity projectors and the small electronic
guns. "Let's get started, Gregg. The storm seems over."

It was. We found the purple-red starry night again outside. The river
was lashed white with waves, but they were spent. There was only a
mild warm breeze remaining.

Molo's legs were free, but his wrists were lashed behind him. I hooked
an arm under his, holding him like a huge, but light, oblong bundle.
Snap called, "Ready, Gregg?"

"Yes."

Snap flashed on his gravity ray and mounted, with the girls clinging
to his ankles. Then I followed with Molo. By great arching swoops, we
swung up into the frowning, tumbled mountains.

15

"This will be the place to land, Gregg Haljan."

We were drifting down upon a barren region of naked crags, dark,
frowning rock-masses, broken and tumbled, as though by some great
cataclysm of nature. Mountains upon the Moon could not be more
desolate of aspect.

We landed on the rocks. The heights here had a purple-red sheen from
the starlight. We had seen frequent evidence of the storm; and it
showed here. Rocks were abnormally piled in drifts; smooth areas