nd the magic that the white
men called "mirror."

He was still enthralled in his grotesque posturing when Diane looked
down from the floating ship.

"He'll be the Lord Chief Voodoo Man for the whole tribe," she said, and,
for the first time since they had stood at the fumerole, she managed to
smile. "And now," she asked, "are we off? What comes next?"

* * * * *

Chet's hand was on a metal ball in a crudely constructed cage of metal
bars. He looked at Harkness, and, at the other's almost imperceptible
nod, he moved the ball forward and up.

"We're off!" Harkness agreed. "Off for Earth--home! And it will look
good to us all. We will take up things where we left them when we were
interrupted: there's no Schwartzmann to fear now. We can show our ship
to the world--revolutionize all lines of transportation; and we can
plan--"

He failed to finish the sentence. To his reaching vision there were,
perhaps, more potentialities than he could compass in words.

And Chet Bullard, fingering the triple star on his blouse--the insignia
that had gone with him through all his hopes and despairs--looked out
into space and smiled.

Behind him a brilliant world went slowly dark; it became, after long
watching, a violet ring--then that was gone; the Dark Moon was lost in
the folds of enshrouding night. Ahead was an infinity of black space
where only the distant stars struck sparks of fire in the dark. And
still he smiled, as if, looking into the unplumbed depths, he, too, made
plans. But he moved the little ball within his hand and swung the bow
sights to bear upon a glorious globe--a brilliant, welcome beacon.

"Home it is!" he stated. "We're on our way!"

But there was needed the rising roar from astern that his words might
have meaning; it thundered sonorously its resounding hum in a crescendo
of power that brooked no denial, that threw them out and onward through
the velvet dark.

The End.

End of Project Gutenberg's Brood of the Dark Moon, by Charles Willard Diffin

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROOD OF THE DARK MOON ***

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