For a while then they sat silently, thinking about their plight. Robin,
somehow, was not too worried. He had become so used to the superiority
of his muscles that he felt that he could eventually manage his escape
when the time came. The question was, where could he escape to? This
particular region was not actually a part of the honeycomb of Luna's
interior--it was a cleft sealed in by a trick of volcanic fate on the
very surface. Probably it had no other exit than the one which led into
it.
Again, escape though he might, could he save Korree too? He thought
about it in silence. Korree broke the meditations. "Have hunger. Is
food here?"
"There must be some around," said Robin, glancing back at the things in
the rear of their prison-cave. The figure back there stirred a bit. And
then there was a mumbling sound and a voice said something. The voice
was deep and strong, unlike the sound of a Glassie's tongue. But Robin
could not understand it. Korree too looked and listened.
"Did you understand him?" Robin asked his companion.
Korree shook his head. Now at the sound of Robin's words occurred the
most astonishing surprise that Robin had yet encountered. The unseen
speaker spoke again:
"Who is that? Is there someone here who speaks English?"
It was a human voice! It spoke Robin's language, though the intonation
and accent were not quite right. Robin and Korree hastened back to
the rear of their cave to the reclining figure of the speaker. In the
light of Korree's head-stalk, it was indeed a man, an Earth man!
He was lying, tied hand and foot, on a pile of scraps, but he was
raising his head, staring at them eagerly. He was a young man,
evidently not much older than Robin. His blue eyes looked at them with
relief and he smiled widely.
"You are a human! I thought I was dreaming when I heard a voice I could
understand. You must be an American ... then the Americans must have
beaten us here after all!"
Robin knelt down by the man, worked at his bonds. They were tight,
real cord of nylon or some Earth-made substance. It took the combined
strength of the two of them to finally open the knots and free the man.
"Who are you?" Robin asked, as he worked. "Do you have a rocket on the
surface?"
The man got to his feet, rubbed his muscles. He was dressed in a simple
blue one-piece flyer's coverall. He was taller and slimmer than Robin,
and his hair was tousled and reddish.
"My name is Piotr Ivanovitch Kareff," he said, bowing with a European
gracefulness. "I regret to tell you that my rocket is indeed on the
surface--but there it will stay forever. We crashed. But I am so glad
to see you. You do not know how glad."
Robin shook hands. "I hate to disappoint you, but I must tell you that
we are in the same predicament. I have no rocket here. I was hoping
when I heard your voice that you might have one we could go back in."
The other looked confused, shook his head. "No rocket? Oh, that is too
bad. Very bad."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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