"What was it?" demanded Cargraves, Ross, and Art.

"Quiet... please!" Then, to the mike, "Yes, I hear you.

"Who is this? What? Say that again?... This is the Space Ship Galileo, Arthur Mueller transmitting. Hold on a minute."

Art flipped a switch on the front of the panel. "Now go ahead. Repeat who you are."

A heavy, bass voice came out of the transmitter: "This is Lunar Expedition Number One," the voice said. "Will you be pleased to wait one minute while I summon our leader?"

"Wait a minute," yelled Art. "Don't go away!" But the speaker did not answer.

Ross started whistling to himself. "Stop that whistling," Art demanded.

"Sorry," Ross paused, then added, "I suppose you know what this means?"

"Huh? I don't know what anything means!"

"It means that we are too late for the senior prizes. Somebody has beaten us to it."

"Huh? How do you figure that?"

"Well, it's not certain, but it's likely."

"I'll bet we landed first."

"We'll see. Listen!" It was the speaker again, this time a different voice, lighter in timbre, with a trace of Oxford accent. "Are you there? This is Captain James Brown of the First Lunar Expedition. Is this the Rocket Ship Galileo?"

Cargraves leaned over to the mike. "Rocket Ship Galileo, Captain Cargraves speaking. Where are you?"

"Some distance away, old chap. But don't worry. We are locating you. Keep sending, please."

"Let us know where we are in reference to you."

"Do not worry about that. We will come to you. Just remain where you are and keep sending."

"What is your lunar latitude and longitude?"

The voice seemed to hesitate, then went on, "We have you located now. We can exchange details later. Good-by."

Thereafter Art shouted "hello" until he was hoarse, but there was no answer. "Better stay on the air, Art," Cargraves decided. "Ross and I will go back to the ship. That's what they will see. I don't know, though. They might not show up for a week." He mused. "This presents a lot of new problems."

"Somebody ought to go to the ship," Morrie pointed out, "without waiting. They may be just coming in for a landing. They may show up any time."

"I don't think it was ship transmission," said Art, then turned back to his microphone.

Nevertheless it was decided that Cargraves and Ross would go back to the ship. They donned their suits and crawled through the air lock, and had no more than started down the steep and rocky slope when Ross saw the rocket.

He did not hear it, naturally, but he had glanced back to see if Cargraves was behind him. "Look!" he called into his helmet mike, and pointed.

The ship approached them from the west, flying low and rather slowly. The pilot was riding her on her jet, for the blast shot more downward than to the stern. "We had better hurry!" Ross shouted, and went bounding ahead.

But the rocket did not come in for a landing. It nosed down, forward jets driving hard against the fall, directly toward the Galileo. At an altitude of not more than five hundred feet the pilot kicked her around, belly first, and drove away on his tail jet.

Where the Galileo lay, there was a flash, an utterly silent explosion, and a cloud of dust which cleared rapidly away in the vacuum. The sound reached them through their feet, after a long time—it seemed to them.

The Galileo lay on her side, a great gaping hole in her plates. The wound stretched from shattered view port to midships.

Cargraves stood perfectly still, staring at the unbelievable. Ross found his voice first. "They gave us no chance," he said, shaking both fists at the sky. "No chance at all!"

Chapter 15 - WHAT POSSIBLE REASON?

HE TURNED AND STUMBLED back up the slope to where Cargraves still stood forlorn and motionless. "Did you see that, Doc?" he demanded. "Did you see that? The dirty rats bombed us—they bombed us. Why? Why, Doc? Why would they do such a thing?"

Tears were streaming down his face. Cargraves patted him clumsily. "I don't know," he said slowly. "I don't know," he repeated, still trying to readjust himself to the shock.

"Oh, I want to kill somebody!"

"So do I." Cargraves turned away suddenly. "Maybe we will. Come on—we've got to tell the others." He started up the slope.

But Art and Morrie were already crawling out of the lock when they reached it. "What happened?" Morrie demanded. "We felt a quake."

Cargraves did not answer directly. "Art, did you turn off your transmitter?"

"Yes, but what happened?"

"Don't turn it on again. It will lead them to us here." He waved a hand out at the floor of the crater. "Look!"

It took a minute or two for what they saw to sink in. Then Art turned helplessly to Cargraves. "But, Uncle," he pleaded, "what happened? Why did the ship blow up?"

"They blitzed us," Cargraves said savagely. "They bombed us out. If we had been aboard they would have killed us. That's what they meant to do."

"But why?"

"No possible reason. They didn't want us here." He refrained from saying what he felt to be true: that their unknown enemy had failed only temporarily in his intent to kill. A quick death by high explosive would probably be a blessing compared with what he felt was in store for them marooned... on a dead and airless planet.

How long would they last? A month? Two months? Better by far if the bomb had hit them.

Morrie turned suddenly back toward the lock. "What are you doing, Morrie?"

"Going to get the guns!"

"Guns are no good to us."

But Morrie had not heard him. His antenna was already shielded by the metal drum.

Ross said, "I'm not sure that guns are no good, Doc."

"Huh? How do you figure?"

"Well, what are they going to do next? Won't they want to see what they've done? They didn't even see the bomb hit; they were jetting away."

"If they land we'll hijack their ship!"

Art came up closer. "Huh? Hey, Ross, that's tellin' ‘em! We'll get them! We'll show them! Murderers!" His words tumbled over one another, squeaking and squawking in their radios.

"We'll try!" Cargraves decided suddenly. "We'll try. If they land we won't go down without a fight. We can't be any worse off than we are." He was suddenly unworried; the prospect of a gun fight, something new to his experience, did not upset him further. It cheered him. "Where do you think we ought to hide, Ross? In the Galileo?"

"If we have to—There they come!" The rocket had suddenly appeared over the far rim.

"Where's Morrie?"

"Here." He came up from behind them, burdened with the two rifles and the revolver. "Here, Ross, you take... hey!" He had caught sight of the strangers' rocket. "We've got to hurry," he said.

But the rocket did not land. It came down low, dipping below the level of the crater's rim, then scooted on its tail across near the wreckage of the Galileo, up, out, and away.

"And we didn't even get a crack at them," Morrie said bitterly.

"Not yet," Ross answered, "but I think they'll be back. This was a second bombing run, sure as anything, in case they missed the first time. They'll still come back to see what they've done. How about it, Doc?"

"I think they will," Cargraves decided. "They will want to look over our ship and to kill us off if they missed any of us. But we don't go to the Galileo."

"Why not?"

"We haven't time. They will probably turn as fast as they can check themselves, come back and land. We might be caught out in the open."

"That's a chance we'll have to take."

It was decided for them. The rocket appeared again from the direction it had gone. This time it was plainly a landing trajectory. "Come on!" shouted Cargraves, and went careening madly down the slope.

The rocket landed about halfway between the Galileo and the shadows, now close to the foot of the hills, for the sun had climbed four ‘days' higher in the sky. The ship was noticeably smaller than the Galileo even at that distance.