Epworth jockeyed his glider close to his sister.
“According to the maps of the earth astronomers,” he explained, “that mountain is the Crater Agrippa. I’ve got a hunch that our crickets dwell inside of that crater. It is deep down, over five miles, to the bottom, and if my reasoning is sound the air in the bottom of the crater is heavier than on the surface of the moon. It would, it seems, make an ideal place for Things like these crickets to live. They are thin of body, elongated in form, spread out broadly, light in weight but strongly muscled, and the gravity of the moon would about fit their physical shapes.”
“Granting all your science, what are you going to do?”
“Go to the bottom of that crater. If we find nothing there we will search among these innumerable small pits that we see everywhere.”
“Go into the darkness of all these holes?”
“Certainly—if we fail to find our friend above the hollows that we know are inside of the moon.”
“Hollows inside of the moon?” She dropped her eyes. She was startled, made afraid. The idea of crawling around on her hands and knees hunting for lunar crickets in dark holes was terrifying. “And—and—we must crawl in——?”
“I am more cheerful. These crickets were led by pigmy men. It is not likely that the pigmies live in holes, although, I am free to confess that I would naturally expect the crickets to be crawling around in dark places.”
With a slight shrug of her shoulders, Joan turned her glider toward the peak that Epworth had declared was the Crater Agrippa. In two minutes Epworth was in the lead. They were both determined, but their hearts were beating furiously.
What dangers would they meet deep in the bowels of the moon? What kind of life could they expect to find? Was Billy alive or dead? Had they taken him to join Toplinsky or would they have to make separate hunts for the two men?
To gain the summit of the high peak they had to go up in running jumps. They would run several steps, then jump into the air, and pedal to gain height. In this way they finally got to a point where they could look down into a deep crater.
Down, down—on into a pit of bottomless depth, circling slowly, cautiously, and nosing steadily. Now they could look upward, and see the stars shining out of a black sky, as if they were in a deep well; and still they descended past steep cliffs of white rock, walls as smooth as a rifle bore; then into a region of jagged walls, and stone of volcanic ore; past innumerable dark holes that pierced gloomily into dreadful, mysterious places under the ground; whirling all the time within the grasp of a crater ten miles in diameter.