The Torture

Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930, by Astounding Stories is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. Brigands of the Moon: Chapter XIII.

Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930: Brigands of the Moon - CHAPTER XIII. The Torture

“HALJAN! Yield or I’ll fire! Moa, give me the smaller one. This cursed––”

He had in his hand too large a projector. Its ray would kill me. If he wanted to take me alive, he would not fire. I chanced it.

“No!”

I tried to draw myself beneath the window. An automatic bullet projector was on the floor where Carter had dropped it. I pulled myself down. Miko did not fire. I reached the revolver. The dead bodies of the captain and purser had drifted together on the floor in the center of the room.

I hitched myself back to the window. With upraised weapon I gazed cautiously out. Miko had disappeared. The deck within my line of vision was empty.

But was it? Something told me to beware. I clung to the casement, ready upon the instant to shove myself down. There was a movement in a shadow along the deck. Then a figure rose up.

“Don’t fire, Haljan!”

The sharp command, half appeal, stopped the pressure of my finger on the trigger of the automatic. It was the tall lanky Englishman, Sir Arthur Coniston, as he called himself. So he too was one of Miko’s band! The light through a dome-window fell full on him.

“If you fire,  As early as 1910 it was discovered that an object magnetized under certain conditions was subject to a loss of weight, its gravity partially nullified. The Martel discovery undoubtedly followed that method.

“United States of the World,” which came into being in 2057 upon the centenary of the Yellow War.

Trinight Hour, i.e., 3 A. M.

Pressure sickness. Caused by the difficulty of maintaining a constantly normal air pressure within the vessel owing to the sudden, extreme changes from heat to cold.

“Set and Setta,” the Martian equivalent of Mr. and Miss.

A Venus form of jocular, intimate greeting.

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