Page:Weird Tales v33n05 (1939-05).djvu/15

everything out here where the drag of earth and moon are approaching equilibrium, and accordingly neither one a governing force. . . .

Out of five passengers, Le Noir has predicted that one or two of us will die. He has made captures such as this before. The mystery of the Mary S., the schooner whose crew disappeared with dinner cooking on the galley, is not a mystery to him. He has hinted at a fate which makes me pray, almost, for death for all of us.

But the suffering. I am going under once more. My nose bleeds, my stomach and heart are bursting; pressure is kept constant in the ship, but the pull from outside of things that are bigger than this little world of ours, things that shift and hurtle by unseen in the dark, too small to be seen as shooting stars from earth, and too lightless, but large enough to tear us in pieces like bullets which need not enter the body to do their deadly work—spears of gravity-pull that invade us and are gone}}....}}

I can write no more. Perhaps never another line. . . .

Thank God, whatever happens, we are definitely within the governance of the moon's gravitational field now, and able to think and reason, even if all we can do is to face things bravely.

Le Noir states coolly things I, having heard much, have heard of: but things few people have heard stated or formulated—things about our solar system, so pleasantly and safely lifeless in space around our teeming earth. Le Noir makes it seem to me very silly that the real minds of Earth unite in believing our planet likely to be the only one inhabited in the universe; not that I ever thought that a very sensible idea, if only because of averages. What has happened once, is likely, in the course of a million million million million chances, to happen more than once; and since more than those millions of stars inhabit space, and among them are certainly at least some planets—and we know nothing about these stars, or planets, or the ability of life to adapt itself—well, it does seem quite possible that somewhere besides on Earth, something, or some things, live.

Some things live on the moon, according to Le Noir. He himself lives there, when business does not take him to Earth—or to Saturn, home of disintegrating souls. But the moon is our present concern. I perhaps am loath to write of the moon—after listening to Le Noir.

The Things which inhabit the moon do not live on it, says Le Noir. Not, at least, to any great extent. His kingdom is not on the moon. Astronomers are not right in saying nothing ever moves on the light or dark faces of the moon; but they approach the truth more nearly in saying that, than when they put it that the moon is uninhabited.

There is a ghastly kingdom inside of the moon!

You (who read, or never read) have read vampire stories? Then you have heard mild stories meant for children. Vampires, you know, inhabit dark places; the dirt in which they are buried; they live by the blood of the living; they walk abroad only in the night.

But on Earth, there is always their enemy, the Sun. Men dwell on the Earth, and Earth's heavy atmosphere diffuses the sun's rays even into the deepest shadows on the sunward side. But even on the hemisphere of the moon's surface lit glaringly by the sun, there are utterly black shadows: inky crater-shadows into whose black depths no heavy air conveys the diffused sun-rays which are death to vampires; and you see that, day or night, there is no place on or in the moon where vampires may not find easy refuge. Now—consider those unlit caverns within the