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    Dark Moon
    Dark Moon
    Dark Moon
    Ebook99 pages1 hour

    Dark Moon

    By Charles Diffin

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    About this ebook

    Diffin was a clever man of various talents. Throughout his career as well as writing some thought provoking science fiction he was also an engineer (he graduated from the University of Buffalo with a degree in analytical chemistry) and, for a time, an airplane salesman. By common consent his early works were his best when he fused his scientific mind and creative thirsts together in a series of stories beginning with 'Spawn of the Stars' where Earth is invaded by amoeba-like Aliens. During the mid-30's the constant need to write quickly and deliver faster for the numerous magazines who devoured his work meant his stories became more obvious and routine. His appetite for the fantastic seemed dulled. He returned to his engineering roots and wrote the nonfiction The Magic Carpet; Adventures in Transportation on Land (1935) and Transportation: The Evolution of Travel by Land (1936). Charles Willard Duffin died in Bonita, San Diego on May 15th 1966.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopyright Group
    Release dateMar 10, 2015
    ISBN9781785432064
    Dark Moon

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      Book preview

      Dark Moon - Charles Diffin

      Dark Moon by Charles Willard Diffin

      Diffin was a clever man of various talents. Throughout his career as well as writing some thought provoking science fiction he was also an engineer (he graduated from the University of Buffalo with a degree in analytical chemistry) and, for a time, an airplane salesman.

      By common consent his early works were his best when he fused his scientific mind and creative thirsts together in a series of stories beginning with 'Spawn of the Stars' where Earth is invaded by amoeba-like Aliens.

      During the mid-30's the constant need to write quickly and deliver faster for the numerous magazines who devoured his work meant his stories became more obvious and routine. His appetite for the fantastic seemed dulled. He returned to his engineering roots and wrote the nonfiction The Magic Carpet; Adventures in Transportation on Land (1935) and Transportation: The Evolution of Travel by Land (1936).

      Charles Willard Duffin died in Bonita, San Diego on May 15th 1966.

      Index of Contents

      Chapter I - There Comes a New World

      Chapter II - Escape

      Chapter III - The Space Terror

      Chapter IV - The Rescue in Space

      Chapter V - The Dark Moon

      Chapter VI - Trapped

      Chapter VII - In the Labyrinth

      Chapter VIII - The Half-Men

      Chapter IX - The Throwers of Thunder

      Chapter X - But Awfully Dumb....

      Chapter XI - Nothing to Be Done

      CHAPTER I

      There Comes a New World

      The one hundred and fifty-ninth floor of the great Transportation Building allowed one standing at a window to look down upon the roofs of the countless buildings that were New York.

      Flat-decked, all of them; busy places of hangars and machine shops and strange aircraft, large and small, that rose vertically under the lift of flashing helicopters.

      The air was alive and vibrant with directed streams of stubby-winged shapes that drove swiftly on their way, with only a wisp of vapor from their funnel-shaped sterns to mark the continuous explosion that propelled them. Here and there were those that entered a shaft of pale-blue light that somehow outshone the sun. It marked an ascending area, and there ships canted swiftly, swung their blunt noses upward, and vanished, to the upper levels.

      A mile and more away, in a great shaft of green light from which all other craft kept clear, a tremendous shape was dropping. Her hull of silver was striped with a broad red band; her multiple helicopters were dazzling flashes in the sunlight. The countless dots that were portholes and the larger observation ports must have held numberless eager faces, for the Oriental Express served a cosmopolitan passenger list.

      But Walter Harkness, standing at the window, stared out from troubled, frowning eyes that saw nothing of the kaleidoscopic scene. His back was turned to the group of people in the room, and he had no thought of wonders that were prosaic, nor of passengers, eager or blase; his thoughts were only of freight and of the acres of flat roofs far in the distance where alternate flashes of color marked the descending area for fast freighters of the air. And in his mind he could see what his eyes could not discern, the markings on those roofs that were enormous landing fields: Harkness Terminals, New York.

      Only twenty-four, Walt Harkness, owner now of Harkness, Incorporated. Dark hair that curled slightly as it left his forehead; eyes that were taking on the intent, straightforward look that had been his father's and that went straight to the heart of a business proposal with disconcerting directness. But the lips were not set in the hard lines that had marked Harkness Senior; they could still curve into boyish pleasure to mark the enthusiasm that was his.

      He was not typically the man of business in his dress. His broad shoulders seemed slender in the loose blouse of blue silk; a narrow scarf of brilliant color was loosely tied; the close, full-length cream-colored trousers were supported by a belt of woven metal, while his shoes were of the coarse-mesh fabric that the latest mode demanded.

      He turned now at the sound of Warrington's voice. E. B. Warrington, Counsellor at Law, was the name that glowed softly on the door of this spacious office, and Warrington's gray head was nodding as he dated and indexed a document.

      June twentieth, nineteen seventy-three, he repeated; a lucky day for you, Walter. Inside of ten years this land will be worth double the fifty million you are paying, and it is worth more than that to you.

      He turned and handed a document to a heavy-bodied man across from him. Here is your copy, Herr Schwartzmann, he said. The man pocketed the paper with a smile of satisfaction thinly concealed on his dark face.

      Harkness did not reply. He found little pleasure in the look on Schwartzmann's face, and his glance passed on to a fourth man who sat quietly at one side of the room.

      Young, his tanned face made bronze by contrast with his close-curling blond hair, there was no need of the emblem on his blouse to mark him as of the flying service. Beside the spread wings was the triple star of a master pilot of the world; it carried Chet Bullard past all earth's air patrols and gave him the freedom of every level.

      Beside him a girl was seated. She rose quickly now and came toward Harkness with outstretched hand. And Harkness found time in the instant of her coming to admire her grace of movement, and the carriage that was almost stately.

      The mannish attire of a woman of business seemed almost a discordant note; he did not realize that the hard simplicity of her costume had been saved by the soft warmth of its color, and by an indefinable, flowing line in the jacket above the rippling folds of an undergarment that gathered smoothly at her knees. He knew only that she made a lovely picture, surprisingly appealing, and that her smile was a compensation for the less pleasing visage of her companion, Schwartzmann.

      Mademoiselle Vernier, Herr Schwartzmann had introduced her when they came. And he had used her given name as he added: Mademoiselle Diane is somewhat interested in our projects.

      She was echoing Warrington's words as she took Harkness' hand in a friendly grasp. I hope, indeed, that it is the lucky day for you, Monsieur. Our modern transportation, it is so marvelous, and I know so little of it. But I am learning. I shall think of you as developing your so-splendid properties wonderfully.

      Only when she and Schwartzmann were gone did Harkness answer his counsellor's remark. The steady Harkness eyes were again wrinkled about with puckering lines; the shoulders seemed not so square as usual.

      Lucky? he said. "I hope you're right. You were Father's attorney for twenty years, your judgment ought to be good; and mine is not entirely worthless.

      Yes, it is a good deal we have made, of course it is! it bears every analysis. We need that land if we are to expand as we must, and the banks will carry me for the twenty million I can't swing. But, confound it, Warrington, I've had a hunch, and I've gone against it. Schwartzmann has tied me up for ready cash, and he represents the biggest competitors we have. They're planning something, but we need the land.... Oh, well, I've signed up; the property is mine; but....

      The counsellor laughed. You need a change, he said; I never knew you to worry before. Why don't you jump on the China Mail this afternoon; it connects with a good line out of Shanghai. You can be tramping around the Himalayas to-morrow. A day or two there will fix you up.

      Too busy, said Harkness. Our experimental ship is about ready, so I'll go and play with that. We'll be shooting at the moon one of these days.

      The moon! the other snorted. Crazy dreams! McInness tried it, and you know what happened. He came back out of control, couldn't check his speed against the repelling area, shot through and stripped his helicopters off against the heavy air. And that other fellow, Haldgren.

      Yes, said Harkness quietly, Haldgren, he didn't fall back. He went on into space.

      Impossible! the counsellor objected. "He must have fallen unobserved. No, no, Walter; be reasonable. I do not claim to know much about those things, I leave them to the Stratosphere Control Board, but I do know this much: that the lifting effect above the repelling area, what used to be known as the heaviside

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