The Moon Destroyers
By MONROE K. RUCH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Wonder StoriesQuarterly Winter 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The tremendous speed of the dive brought them so closethat they could see the skeletons of wrecked ships piled up at the baseof the precipice.
MONROE K. RUCH
The moon is not only the most prominent object in our heavens, butalso an integral part of the earth. We are, so to speak, anastronomical unit, and we affect each other for better or forworse.
We know that the gravitational attraction of the moon causes ourtides, and tends to slow up the earth in her daily rotation. It hasalso been deemed responsible for earthquakes, causing untoldsuffering among earth's people.
But so far the effect of the moon has been rather an inhumanaffair. No man has gone to the moon to see just what conditions arethere, and to observe accurately the influence that the moon andearth exercise over each other. But when interplanetary travel doescome, when commerce between moon and earth may possibly assumeimportance in our lives, the influence of the moon upon us may bemore accurately determined. And when it is, the amazing series ofincidents, pictured in this story, may yet come true.
Professor Erickson, head of the International Seismographical Institute,sat with bowed head and pale face, watching the stylus of the instrumentbefore him trace its path on the slowly revolving drum. The laboratory,situated high in the Himalayas, trembled slightly as mid-winter stormsroared and whistled around it, but something quite different, andinfinitely more sinister, was causing the needle to wander from itsordinarily straight path.
Suddenly, with horrible certainty, it jumped, wavered back and forth,and then moved rapidly to the right, until its black ink no longertraced a line on the white paper.
"Holden," shouted Erickson to his assistant, "what does the directionand distance finder tell us? The stylus has run clear off the graph."
Young Jack Holden was working feverishly over the dials and levers ofthe panel before him. Slender yet strong, he looked like a long-bow ofstout old yew as he bent to the task. His steel gray eyes focusedintently on the verniers, taking the readings. The muscles in his tannedcheeks were tight as he turned toward his superior. For a moment thevery storm seemed to hush, awaiting the words. Then he spoke.
"It's the Laurentian fault!"
For a moment both men stared at each other, stunned and helpless.
"That means," Holden managed to say, "that New York is a mass of ruins."
Pictures were forming in his mind; he saw the huge steel and glasstowers of the city, tossed and torn by the convulsive writhings of theearth beneath. Great engineers had said that the city was safe, that notremors would ever disturb it, but they knew nothing of the terrificforce of such a shock as this. Those massive buildings, thousands offeet high, would now be mere heaps of twisted junk. Holden closed hiseyes to shut out the picture, but to no avail. His sister! God! She wasprobably one of the millions who now lay, crushed, bleeding and helpless