Valley of the Moon-Kings

More about Valley of the Moon-Kings

I had the story from Colonel Arden Vale, who told it to me only after I had called him
a liar twice and a lunatic once, and who was less offended by my insults than by my
disbelief.

This was in the winter of 1938, when newspapers printed drawings of the lunar
projectile and learned men proved no such machine could leave the Earth. Vale had
returned thin, burned dark, and carrying a leather case which never left his hand.
When I pressed him about Professor March's expedition, he produced three
photographs, a packet of official cipher, and a black seed as long as my thumb joint.
The seed was warm.

“You wanted proof,” he said. “I wanted sleep. Neither of us is likely to get what he
wants.”

Then he told me of the Moon.

Vale and Eleanor March were the first to cross the western ridge above Mare
Imbrium. Their projectile lay six miles behind them upon the grey plain, a bright
needle in a wilderness of dust, while the Earth hung above the mountains so
magnificently that Vale had ceased looking at it; a man could not keep his mind upon
compass bearings while every sea and city he knew floated overhead.

For two days March had watched a green discoloration beyond the ridge. Vale said
lunar rock did not become greener at noon. March replied that lunar rock had never
been consulted on the matter, and at dawn they loaded oxygen, instruments,
provisions, and enough ammunition to shame a scientific expedition, then went to
settle the argument.

They found moss below the summit. Vale knelt beside it, unwilling to touch what his
eyes insisted upon seeing, while March scraped one gloved finger across the stone,
examined the smear through her lens.

“It's alive!” she exclaimed

The far slope dropped into mist, and within five hundred feet the pressure needle on
March's breast had lifted from the stop where it had lain useless since Earth. At eight
hundred they found pale ferns; at twelve hundred they heard running water. March
opened the valve at her throat, and before Vale could seize her wrist she broke the
seal of her helmet and drew one breath.

He expected her to die. Instead she shut her eyes, and when she opened them
again there were tears on her face.

“Flowers,” she said.

There was air upon the Moon; from that moment their expedition ceased to belong to
astronomy.

They left their helmets beneath a silver-barked tree and descended through a forest
that could never have grown under Earthly weight. Trunks rose eighty feet before
dividing into wheels of scarlet foliage; blue fronds hung from cliffs in curtains broad
enough to roof a house; translucent creatures sailed between branches upon
motionless wings. Something immense crashed away through the undergrowth, and
Vale raised his rifle, but March whispered, “Later,” as though the whole world had
become a collection she intended to finish.

Then they saw the road, black and straight through the jungle, paved with fitted
stone and cleared on both sides by recent cutting. Vale found repeating wheel-
grooves; March found fresh sap upon severed stems.

Someone maintained it.

No signal could reach the expedition through the ridge, and their orders required
them back before sunset. Vale reminded March of both facts, whereupon she asked
whether he proposed to cross a quarter of a million miles, discover a highway on the
Moon, and go home without learning where it led.

Vale followed her.

Toward evening the road entered a gorge carved into kings. The first crowned head
towered fifty feet above them, its stone eyes fixed westward. Beyond it came
another and another, each face different, each bearing the same crescent diadem.
Some had weathered nearly smooth; others retained tool marks sharp enough to cut
the fingers.

Vale counted nineteen before March stopped at the twentieth, where a bowl of
freshly cut white flowers rested at the king's feet.

At the next crest the valley opened beneath the enormous Earth. Forested terraces
descended toward a silver lake. White towers rose among the trees, joined by
bridges so slender they seemed spun rather than built. Domes caught the dying
sunlight, and along the shore lamps kindled one by one.

A horn sounded below, and a procession appeared upon the road: men and women
in bright garments, soldiers carrying curved spears, children beside wheeled litters,
riders upon long-legged beasts with plumed heads, and nobles beneath crescent
banners. At the center rode a man beneath a canopy of blue feathers, wearing the
crown of the carved kings.

March caught Vale's arm. “He's the twenty-first.”

The procession continued until the foremost riders were near enough for Vale to see
their faces. Then every man, woman, and child halted together and looked up at the
two strangers beneath the trees.

The crowned rider raised one hand. Vale expected a command, a challenge,
perhaps a spear.

Instead the stranger looked directly at Eleanor March and called, in perfect English:

“Professor March, you have kept us waiting.”