ared at the crest of the hill, two long, snaky,
waving things appeared above the crest, undulating, waving to and
fro, as though questing for something. They crouched low in the white
ashes at the base of the mountain, and waited, scarcely breathing.

CHAPTER XIII

_The Lunar Cubes_

For a long time Sarka and Jaska remained still, like sentinels,
listening to the strange discord which seemed to emanate from behind
the hill at whose base they crouched.

"Look!" said Sarka at last. "There against the sky, beyond and between
those two waving tentacles! Note that column of light, scarcely
lighter than the light which surrounds it everywhere? It looks like a
massive column just lighter than everything around it, yet so little
lighter that you have to watch closely to see it at all?"

Jaska stared for all of a minute, before she thought back her answer.

"I see it," she said.

"Note now whether it goes, as it reaches outward into Space!"

Jaska followed the mighty height of the thing, outward and outward,
and then gasped.

"Sarka," she said, "its end touches the Earth in the very heart of
that strange glow we spoke about!"

"Exactly! And people of Earth know nothing about it, because it is
invisible to them! It is only from Outside that the glow it makes
against the Earth is visible! If we can divert its direction, or
render it useless in any way, the Moon will no longer be thrust away
by its force!"

A pause of indecision, then Sarka thought again:

"Let us go, Jaska! Keep behind me, right on my heels!"

Slowly, fighting against something that seemed determined to pull, or
hurl, them outward from the surface of the Moon with each forward
movement they made, they essayed the side of the hill, pausing at the
end of what seemed like hours in a sort of hollow just large enough
to mask their bodies and stared over its edge into one of the craters
of the Moon. Out of the depths of that crater came the discordant
sounds, which now were almost deafening, and out of that crater too
came the almost invisibly bluish column whose outer tip touched the
Earth.

* * * * *

Right before them, so close that they all but rested in its shadow,
was one of those monster aircars, its tentacles moving to and fro as
though wafted into motion by some vagrant breeze. But since neither
Sarka nor Jaska could feel the breeze, Sarka knew that it was life
which caused the waving motion of those tentacle