s pay, and I as his sister, will help to convince them."

This daring scheme! If we could join the ship, we might be able to
persuade its leader that Miko's distant signals were merely a ruse of
Grantline to lure the brigands in that direction. A long range
projector from the ship would kill Miko and his men as they came
forward to join it! And then we would falsely direct the brigands,
lead them away from Grantline and the treasure.

"Gregg, we must try it."

Heaven help me, I yielded to her persuasion!

We turned at right angles and ran toward where the distant frowning
walls of Archimedes loomed against the starlit sky.

XXVIII

The broken, shaggy ramparts of the giant crater rose above us. We
toiled upward, out of the foothills, clinging now to the crags and
pitted terraces of the main ascent. An hour had passed since we turned
from the borders of Mare Imbrium. Or was it two hours? I could not
tell. I only know that we ran with desperate, frantic haste.

Anita would not admit that she was tired. She was more skillful than I
in this leaping over the broken rock masses. Yet I felt that her
slight strength must give out. It seemed miles up the undulating
slopes of the foothills with the black and white ramparts of the
crater close before us.

And then the main ascent. There were places where, like smooth black
frozen ice, the walls rose sheer. We avoided them, toiling aside,
plunging into gullies, crossing pits where sometimes, perforce, we
went downwards, and then up again. Or sometimes we stood, hot and
breathless, upon ledges, recovering our strength, selecting the best
route upward.

In tumbled mass of rock, honeycombed everywhere with caves and
passages leading into impenetrable darkness, there were pits into
which we might so easily have fallen; ravines to span, sometimes with
a leap, sometimes by a long and arduous detour.

Endless climb. We came to the ledge with the plains of the Mare
Imbrium stretching out beneath us. We might have been upon this main
ascent for an hour; the plains were far down, the broken surface down
there smoothed now by the perspective of height. And yet still above
us the brooding circular wall went up into the sky. Ten thousand feet
above us.

"You're tired, Anita. We'd better stay here."

"No. If we could only get to the top--the ship may land on the other
side--they would see us."

There was as yet no sign of the brigand ship. With every stop for
rest we sea