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Contents

PHARAOH'S BROKER

Being The Very Remarkable Experiences In Another World Of Isidor Werner

(Written By Himself)

Edited, Arranged, And With An Introduction By Ellsworth Douglass

 

 

INTRODUCTION

Elusive Truth

It was the Chicago Tribune of June 13th, 189-, which contained this paragraph under the head-line: "Big Broker Missing!"

"The friends of Isidor Werner, a young man prominent in Board of Trade circles, are much concerned about him, as he has not been seen for several days. He made his last appearance in the wheat pit as a heavy buyer Tuesday forenoon. That afternoon he left his office at Room 87 Board of Trade, and has not been seen since, nor can his whereabouts be learned. He is six feet two inches high, of athletic build, with black hair and moustache, a regular nose, and an unpronounced Jewish appearance. His age is hardly more than twenty-seven, but he has often made himself felt as a market force on the Board of Trade, where he was well thought of."

But it was the Evening Post of the same date which prided itself on unearthing the real sensation. A scare-head across the top of a first page column read:

"A PLUNGER'S LAST PLUNGE!"

"The daring young broker who held the whole wheat market in his hands a few months ago, amassing an independent fortune in three days, but losing most of it gamely on subsequent changes in the market, has made his last plunge. This time he has gone into the cold, kind bosom of Lake Michigan. Isidor Werner evened up his trades in the wheat market last Tuesday forenoon, and then applied for his balance-sheet at a higher clearing house! No trace of him or clue to his whereabouts was found, until the Evening Post, on the principle of setting one mystery to solve another, sent its representative to examine a strange steel rocket, discovered half-buried in the sands of Lake Michigan, near Berrien Springs, two days ago. Our reporter investigated this bullet-shaped contrivance and found an opening into it, and within he discovered a scrap of paper on which were written the words: 'Farewell to Earth for ever!' Werner's friends, when interviewed by the Evening Post, all positively identified the handwriting of this scrap as his chirography. It is supposed that he took an excursion steamer to St. Joseph, Michigan, last Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon, and walking down the shore toward Berrien Springs, finally threw himself into the Lake. Neither Israel Werner, with whom the dead man lived on Indiana Avenue, nor Patrick Flynn, the chief clerk at his office, can give any reason for the suicide, or explain the exact connection of the infernal machine (if such it be) with the sad circumstance. But they both positively identify the handwriting on the scrap of paper. We have wired our representative to bring the mysterious machine to Chicago; and those who think they may be able to throw any light upon the case, are invited to call at the office of the Evening Post and examine it."

The Inter Ocean developed a theory that the suicide was only a pretended one for the purpose of fraudulently collecting life insurance policies. It was cited that Isidor Werner had insured his life for more than $100,000, and this in spite of the fact that he had no family, parents, brothers or sisters to provide for; but had taken the policies in favour of his uncle, Israel Werner, and in case of his prior death, in favour of a cousin, Ruth Werner. This theory gained but little currency among those who knew the man best, and although the insurance companies prepared to resist payment of the policies to the bitter end, yet, as time went on, no one attempted to prove his death, nor to claim the handsome sum which would result from it. Moreover, Israel Werner and his daughter Ruth, the beneficiaries under the policies, persisted in believing that their relative was yet alive, though they could give no good reasons for so believing, nor explain his disappearance.

In its issue of June 15th the Tribune scouted the idea of suicide altogether. It had a better and more plausible theory of the case. Isidor Werner had a large sum of money in the Corn Exchange Bank, drawing interest by the year. In case of either a premeditated or a pretended suicide he would most certainly have withdrawn, and made some disposition of, this money. In fact, he had, on the day of his disappearance, drawn out five thousand dollars of it in gold. For this coin the Tribune believed he had been murdered, and that they had a clue to the murderer. The vanished man had several times been seen in the company of a suspicious German, of intelligent but erratic appearance. This queer character lived in a hotbed of socialism on the West Side, and the young broker was supposed to be in his power. In fact, it was known for certain that the erratic German had secured a large sum of money from him, and that Werner had visited his rooms in the slums of the West Side more than once. Moreover, the two had made a secret railway journey together two days before the disappearance, and on the very day that Werner was last seen, the German had fled his lodgings without giving any explanation of his departure to his few acquaintances. When the Tribune reporter called at these lodgings, the landlord still had in his possession a gold eagle, with which the German had paid his rent, and in the grate of the deserted room were the charred remains of burnt papers. One of these was a rather firm, crisp cinder, and had been a blue-print of a drawing. As nearly as could be judged, from its shrivelled state, it appeared to be the plan of some infernal machine. The name of the fugitive was Anderwelt, and he called himself a doctor. Further investigations were being carried on by the Tribune, which promised to prove beyond a doubt that he was the murderer of Isidor Werner.

But the Evening Post still held the palm for sensations, and I copy verbatim from its columns of June 15th:

"It is rare that a newspaper, dealing strictly in facts, has to record anything so closely bordering on the supernatural and mysterious as that which we must now relate. The following facts, however, are vouched for by the entire editorial department of the Evening Post, and many of them by several hundred witnesses. We begin by apologising to the hundreds who have called at this office and have been unable to see the Werner infernal machine. We gave it that name in a thoughtless jest, but its subsequent actions have more than justified the title. Our reporter brought it from Berrien Springs, as directed, and deposited it in the court of the Evening Post building. As is quite generally known, this court is a central well in the building, affording ventilation and light to the interior offices, from every one of which can be seen what goes on in it. The well is spanned by a glass roof above the eighth storey. In this court, at eleven o'clock this morning, the entire editorial and a large part of the business staff of this paper, repaired, to examine the mysterious rocket-like thing. A little lid was opened, showing the recess where the tell-tale scrap of paper, written by Werner, had been found. Inside there seemed to be a pair of peculiar battery cells, whose exact nature was hidden by the outer shell. Outside there were several thumb-screws, which were turned both ways without any apparent effect. While making this examination the machine had been set up on its lower end, and when it was again laid down it refused to lie on its side, but persisted in standing erect of its own accord. This was the more wonderful because the lower end was not flat, so that it would afford a good base, but was pointed. More than a hundred people saw it stand up on this sharp tip, saw it lift up light weights which were placed upon it to hold it on its side, and saw it quickly right itself when it was placed vertically but wrong end down.

"Thinking this queer property had been contributed to it in some way by loosening the thumb-screws, they were next all set down as tightly as possible, to see if this tendency to erectness would be lost. Then, to the astonishment of every one in the court, and of several hundred people who were by this time watching from the interior windows, this infernal machine, without any explosion, burning of gases, or any apparent force acting upon it, slowly rose from the ground, and then, travelling more swiftly, shot through the roof of glass and vanished from sight! Nor has the most diligent search enabled us to recover it. Does it possess the secret of Isidor Werner's death?"

But the Chicago Herald had been working thoroughly and saying little until its issue of June 16th, when it claimed the credit of solving the whole mystery. Its long article lies before me as I write: There had been no suicide; there had been no murder; there had been no infernal machine. Doctor Anderwelt was a learned man, and the warm personal friend of Isidor Werner. Both men had shared the same fate; they might yet be alive, but they were certainly at the bottom of Lake Michigan together! They were imprisoned there in a sunken submarine boat, which was the invention of Doctor Anderwelt, and was built with funds furnished by the young broker. The foundryman who had constructed the big torpedo-shaped contrivance had been interviewed. He knew both men, and they were on the most friendly terms. In a moment of confidence Doctor Anderwelt had told him the machine was for submarine exploration; had explained the four-winged rudder, which would make it dive into the water, rise to the surface, or direct it to right or to left. Moreover, there were closed living compartments, around which were chambers containing a supply of air. He himself had pumped them full of compressed air, and it was so arranged that foul air could be let out when used and new air admitted. When all had been finished the foundryman had shipped the new invention, via the Michigan Southern Railway, to the shore of the Lake near Whiting, Indiana. Next the Herald had sought and found the conductor whose train had hauled it to Whiting. He remembered switching off the flat-car there, and he was surprised on his return trip next morning to see the heavy thing already unloaded and gone.

Undoubtedly, the two men had made an experiment with the diving boat under the surface of the water; and its failure to operate as hoped had resulted in its sinking to the bottom, with the two men imprisoned in it. On no other hypothesis could its disappearance, and that of the two men, be so plausibly accounted for. But as they had stores of air, and probably of food, there was a possibility that they were still alive inside the thing in the bottom of the Lake! Only three days had elapsed since it had been launched, and the Herald was willing to head a subscription to drag the Lake and send divers to search for and rescue the two unfortunate men!

All this serves to illustrate the untiring energy of newspaper investigation, as well as the remarkable fertility of journalistic imagination; for none of these clever theories hit at the real truth, or explained the correct bearing of the astonishing facts which the newspapers had so industriously unearthed.

And if the mystery of the disappearance of Isidor Werner was uncommonly deep and wonderful, the explanation and final solution of it is not less marvellous. After a delay of more than six years, it has just now come into my hands whole and perfect. It is in no less satisfactory form than a complete manuscript written by the very hand of Isidor Werner! I came strangely into possession of it, and it relates a story of interest and wonder, compared with which the mystery of his disappearance pales into insignificance. But the reader may judge for himself, for here follows the story exactly as he wrote it. Upon his manuscript I have bestowed hardly more than a proof-reader's technical revision.

ELLSWORTH DOUGLASS.

BOSTON, U.S.A., December 13th, 1898.

BOOK I

Secrets of Space

CHAPTER I

Dr. Hermann Anderwelt

I had been busy all day trying to swarm the bees and secure my honey. The previous day had been February 29th, a date which doesn't often happen, and which I had especial reason to remember, for it had been the most successful of my business career. I had made a long guess at the shaky condition of the great house of Slater, Bawker & Co., who had been heavy buyers of wheat. I had talked the market down, sold it down, hammered it down; and, true enough, what nobody else seemed to expect really happened. The big firm failed, the price of wheat went to smash in a panic of my mixing, and, as a result, I saw a profit of more than two hundred thousand dollars in the deal. But, in order to secure this snug sum, I still had to buy back the wheat I had sold at higher prices, and this I didn't find so easy. The crowd in the wheat pit had seen my hand, and were letting me play it alone against them all.

After the session I hurried to my office to get my overcoat and hat, having an engagement to lunch at the Club.

"If you please, Mr. Werner, there is a queer old gentleman in your private office who wishes to see you," said Flynn, my chief clerk.

"Ask him to call again to-morrow; I am in a great hurry to-day," I said, slipping on one sleeve of my overcoat as I started out.

"But he has been waiting in there since eleven o'clock, and said he very much wished to see you when you had plenty of time. He would not allow me to send on the floor for you during the session."

"Since eleven o'clock! Did he have his lunch and a novel sent up? Well, I can hardly run away from a man who has waited three and a half hours to see me;" and I entered my private office with my overcoat on.

Seated in my deep, leathern arm-chair was an elderly man, with rather long and bushy iron-grey hair, and an uneven grey beard. His head inclined forward, he breathed heavily, and was apparently fast asleep.

"You will pardon my awaking you, but I never do business asleep!" I ventured rather loudly.

Slowly the steel-blue eyes opened, and, without any start or discomposure, the old man answered,--

"And I--my most successful enterprises are developed in my dreams."

His features and his accent agreed in pronouncing him German. He arose calmly, buttoned the lowest button of his worn frock-coat, and, instead of extending his hand to me, he poked it inside his coat, letting it hang heavily on the single button. It was a lazy but characteristic attitude. It tended to make his coat pouch and his shoulders droop. I remembered having seen it somewhere before.

"Mr. Werner, I have a matter of the deepest and vastest importance to unfold to you," he began, rather mysteriously, "for which I desire five hours of your unemployed time----"

"Five hours!" I interrupted. "You do not know me! That much is hard to find without running into the middle of the night, or into the middle of the day--which is worse for a busy man. I have just five minutes to spare this afternoon, which will be quite time enough to tell me who you are and why you have sought me."

"You do not know me because you do not expect to see me on this hemisphere," he continued. "Nor did I expect to find you a potent force in the commercial world, only three years after a literary and linguistic preparation for a scholarly career. Why, the mädchens of Heidelberg have hardly had time to forget your tall, athletic figure, or ceased wondering if you were really a Hebrew----"

"You seem to be altogether familiar with my history," I put in with a little heat. "Kindly enlighten me equally well as to your own."

"I gave you the pleasure of an additional year of residence at the University of Heidelberg not long ago," he answered.

"I do not know how that can be, for to my uncle I owe my entire education there."

"Perhaps an unappreciated trifle of it you owe to your instructors and lecturers. Do you forget that I refused to pass your examinations in physics, and kept you there a year longer?"

"You are not Doctor Anderwelt, then?"

"Hermann Anderwelt, Ph.D., at your service, sir," he replied somewhat proudly.

"But when and why did you leave your chair at Heidelberg?"

"It is to answer this that I ask the five hours," he said slowly.

"Oh, come now, doctor, you used to tell me more in a two-hour lecture than I could remember in a week," I answered, taking off my overcoat, and touching an electric button at my desk. My office boy entered.

"Teddy, have I had lunch to-day?" This was my favourite question on a busy day, and Teddy always answered it seriously.

"No, sir, you have an engagement to lunch at the Standard Club," he replied.

"Telephone to Gus at the Club that I can't come up to-day. Also send over to the Grand Pacific for a good lunch for two. Have some beer in it--real Münchner, and in steins," I directed, and then I reclined on a long leather lounge, and motioned to the doctor to have a chair. He declined, however, and walked slowly back and forth before me as he talked, keeping his right hand inside his coat, and with the left he occasionally ploughed up his heavy hair, as if to ventilate his brain.

"A year ago I gave up theoretical physics for applied physics; I resigned my chair at Heidelberg, and came to this progressive city. I brought with me a working model of the greatest invention of this inventive age. Yet it was then neither perfect in design nor complete in detail. But now I have hit on the plan that makes it practicable and certain of success. I need only a little money to build it, and the world will open its eyes!"

"But you must pardon me if instead of opening mine I shut them," I interrupted, seeing the point quickly, and losing no time in dodging. "I have no money to invest in patent rights; but still, you must stay to lunch with me."

Just here the doctor seemed to find it necessary to diverge from the orderly course of his lecture as he had prepared it, and interject a few impromptu observations.

"Events are difficult to forecast, but the capabilities of a youth are harder to divine. One educates his son in all the fine arts, and he turns out a founder of pig iron. One's nephew is apprenticed to a watchmaker, and in a few years, behold, he is a great barrister. Your uncle educated you thoroughly in the old Hebrew and Chaldee of the rabbis, and, lo! you are now the ursa major of the wheat market.

"Just now you are in the centre of the kaleidoscope of success. Slater, Bawker & Co. were there a month ago, but now they are only bits of broken glass in the bottom of the heap! And you? you are really a twisted bit of coloured glass like the rest, but you chance to be thrown to the middle. The mirrors of public opinion multiply your importance half a dozen times, and behold you are reflected into the whole picture. But the kaleidoscope turns, and the pieces of glass are shifted. Other broken chips now at the bottom of the heap will soon be filling the centre!

"Permit me to change my figure of speech. You are sweeping back the waves of the sea while the tide is falling, and the wide-mouthed public looks on, and whispers about that your broom makes all the waves obey, and drives them back at will. Just when you begin to believe it yourself the tide may turn, and neither brooms nor all the powers on earth can then sweep it back.

"Isidor Werner, you believe yourself rich; but your wealth is like molasses in a sieve. If you do not dip in your finger and taste the sweet occasionally, you will have nothing to show for your pains in the end. I shall ask you for but a taste of the sweet now, so that I may preserve a little of it against that day which may come, when the sieve will be bright and clean and empty again!"

There was a knock at the door.

"Come in!" I shouted. "Nothing but this lunch can save me from your eloquence. You have already ruined me in three similes!"

The waiter arranged a bountiful and tempting luncheon on a writing table. I commenced on it at once, but the doctor, though repeatedly urged, persistently refused. He took a long draught at a stein of Munich beer, and continued:--

"My invention proposes to navigate the air and the ether beyond, as well as the interplanetary spaces," he said impressively.

"Flying machine, eh?" I sneered, between bites of planked whitefish.

"Indeed no!" he growled, as if he detested this name. "My invention is not a machine but a projectile. It is not self-propelling, because if it depended upon its own propelling apparatus, it could not in thousands of years navigate the interplanetary spaces. It is a gravity projectile, and will travel at a rate of speed almost incalculable. It does not fly, but its manner of travelling is more nearly like falling."

I gave the doctor a quick searching look to see if I could discover any signs of incipient insanity. I met a firm, steady gaze; an earnest, convincing look. Somehow, I felt there was something real and true and wonderful about to come from the great scholar before me, and that I must hear it and hear it all; that I must lend a serious and thoughtful attention. My eyes were rivetted upon the doctor's for fully a minute in silence.

"Go on," I said at last; "I am all attention."

CHAPTER II

The Gravity Projectile

Hermann Anderwelt had probably suffered many disappointments and waited long for a hearing. Now he seemed to feel that his opportunity had come, for he continued with growing enthusiasm:--

"Hitherto all attempts at space travelling have been too timid or puerile. We have experimented at aerial navigation, as if the brief span of air were a step in the mighty distance which separates us from our sister planets. As well might steamboats have been invented to cross narrow streams, and never have ventured on the mighty ocean! We have tried to imitate the bird, the kite, and the balloon, and our experiments have failed, and always must, so long as we do not look farther and think deeper. Every Icarus who attempts to overcome the force of gravity, which conquers planets, and propel himself through the air by any sort of apparatus, will always finish the trip with a wiser but badly bruised head."

"Still, it has been freely predicted," I ventured, "that this century will not close without the invention of a successful air-travelling machine."

"And I alone have hit upon the right plan, because I have not attempted to struggle against gravity, but have made use of it only for propelling my projectile!" exclaimed the doctor triumphantly.

"But wait!" I interposed. "Gravity acts only in one direction, and that is exactly opposite to the one you propose to travel."

"That brings me to the very important discovery I made in physics two years ago, upon which the whole success of the projectile rests. You will remember that, according to the text-books, very little is known about gravity except the laws of its action. What it is, and how it can be controlled or modified, have never been known. Electricity was as much a mystery fifty years ago, but we know all its attributes. We can make it, store it, control it, and use it for almost every necessity of life. The era of electricity is in full bloom, but the era of gravitational force is just budding."

"Can it be that we have as much to learn from gravity as electricity has taught us in the last half-century?" I exclaimed, as my eyes began to open.

"I believe it will teach us far more wonderful things, because it will take us to unknown worlds, while electricity has been confined to Earth. Its realm is the wide universe. It will show us what life there is on the planets. It will make us at home with the stars.

"What!" he continued in a sort of ecstasy. "Do you think all great discoveries are over, all wonderful inventions made? As well might a trembling child, elated with the success of its first feeble steps alone, suppose it had exhausted all the possibilities of life. We are but spelling over the big letters on the title page of the primary book of knowledge. There be other pages and grander chapters further on. There be greater volumes, and sweeter, more expressive tongues which man may learn some day.

"Has a reasoning Divinity created the heavens and peopled the myriad stars with thinking, capable beings, who must be perpetually isolated? Or may they not know each other some time? But shall we attempt to sail the vast heavens with a paper kite, or try to fly God's distances with the wings of fluttering birds? Nay; we must use God's engine for such a task. Has He tied the planets to the sun, and knitted the suns and their systems into one great universe obedient to a single law, with no possibility that we may use that law for intercommunication? With what wings do the planets fly around the sun, and the suns move through the heavens? With the wings of gravity! The same force for minute satellite or mighty sun. It is God's omnipotence applied to matter. Let us fly with that!"

"But will you permit me to suggest that we are soaring before the projectile is built?" I put in.

"Quite right. Let us come back to Earth, and return to facts. My studies in physics led me to believe that all natural forces--gravity, centrifugal force, and even capillary attraction--are, like electricity and magnetism, both positive and negative in their action. If they do not normally alternate between a positive and negative current, as electricity does, they can be made to do so. Gravity and capillary attraction, as we know them, always act positively; that is, they always attract. On the other hand, centrifugal force always acts negatively; that is, it always repels. But each of these forces, I believe, can temporarily be made to act opposite to its usual manner. I know this to be the case with gravity, for I have caused its positive and negative currents to alternate; that is, I have made it repel and then attract, and so on, at will, by changing the polarity of the body which it acts upon."

"Now that I remember it," I added, "our original ideas of magnetism were that it simply attracted. We knew the lodestone drew the steel, but only on better acquaintance did we learn of its alternating currents, attractive and repellant."

"I have positively demonstrated with my working model that I can reverse the force of gravity acting upon the model, and make it sail away into space. I will show you this whenever you like. It is so arranged that the polarizing action ceases in three minutes, after which the positive current controls, and the model falls to the Earth again."

"But have you ever attempted a trip yet?" I inquired.

"Oh, no. The model was not built to carry me, but it has demonstrated all the important facts, and I now need ten thousand dollars to build one large enough to carry several persons, and to equip it with everything necessary to make a trip to one of the planets. With a man inside to control the currents, it will be far more easily managed than the experimental model has been."

"Suppose you had the projectile built, and everything was ready for a start," I said, "what would be the method of working it?"

"I should enter the forward compartment," began the doctor.

"But would you make the trial trip yourself?"

"I certainly would not trust the secret of operating the currents to any one else," he remarked, with emphasis. "And will you accompany me in the rear compartment?"

"No, indeed; unless you will promise to return in time for the following day's market," I replied.

"Then I shall engage some adventurous fellow as assistant. First, we must set the rudder, which is both horizontal and vertical, so that the projectile can be steered up, down, or to either side. Having fixed it so as to be directed a little upward, I begin with the currents. Suppose the projectile weighs a ton, I gradually neutralize the positive current, which we are acquainted with as gravity. When it is exactly neutralized, the projectile weighs nothing, and the pressure of the air is enough to make it rise more rapidly than a balloon. When I have created a negative current, the projectile acquires a buoyancy equal to its previous weight. That is, it will now fall up as rapidly as it would previously have fallen down. It will not do to put on the full negative current at once, for we should acquire a velocity that would simply burn us up by friction with the atmosphere. However, the air is soon passed; if in the ether beyond there is very little friction, or none at all, we shall go at full speed, which will be the constantly increasing velocity of a falling body.

"Somewhere between the Earth and the nearest planet," he continued, "there is a place where the attraction of one is just equal to the attraction of the other; and if a body is stopped in that fatal spot it will be anchored there for ever, by the equally matched forces tugging in opposite directions. There is such a dead line between all the planets, and our principal danger lies in falling into one of these, for we should remain there a twinkling star throughout eternity! We must trust to our momentum to carry us past this point, and into space where the gravitational attraction of the other planet is paramount. Then we must promptly change our current from negative to positive, so that the other planet will attract us to her. Otherwise, she would repel us back to the dead line.

"With a positive current we are now literally falling into the new planet. We need not land unless we wish, for as soon as we enter a resisting atmosphere we can steer a course lacking barely a quarter of being directly away from the planet, just as you can sail a boat three quarters against the wind."

"But suppose you experiment at making a landing on this new planet?" I suggested.

"Very well. Of course, as soon as we enter an atmosphere, it behoves us to travel slowly to avoid overheating. We can still safely travel several hundred miles an hour, however. We continue falling until rather near the planet; then, turning the rudder gently down, we can sail around and around the planet until we choose our landing place. Gently reversing currents, a mild negative one soon overcomes our momentum. Tempering our currents experimentally to the pressure of the air, we can, if we desire, float like a feather and be wafted with every breeze. Just a suspicion of a positive current brings us gently to the surface, and, when we have cooled, we unscrew the rear port-hole and crawl out to explore a new world."

I had mentally made the trip, and was not only intensely interested, but infinitely pleased. I was lost for some time with my imagination on the new sphere, but presently my mind returned to the practical side of the question, and I inquired,--

"Are you quite sure that ten thousand dollars will be sufficient to build and fully equip the projectile?"

"Yes, quite certain," he answered with decision. "It will be ample for that and for the expenses of forming a corporation to own my patents and exploit the invention. It is easy to see the projectile will be cheap of construction. No machinery is necessary; no strong building to withstand enormous shocks or anything of that kind. The principal expenditures will be for stores of food and for scientific and astronomical instruments. Of course, I wish to show you my working model and my plans for the practical projectile, and to explain to you many further details."

It was growing dark. I arose, turned on the electric light, and rang my bell. The office boy entered.

"Teddy, tell all the boys they may go, except Flynn. Ask him to wait, please."

I was quite used to making ten thousand dollar bargains in a few seconds of time and without the scratch of a pen. I had risked more money than that on the fact that Slater looked worried and Bawker was very cross when at his office, and it had won immensely. But here, what a prospect, what a far-reaching, all-encircling prospect it was! No time was to be lost; besides, there was pleasure to me in driving a good bargain and driving it quickly.

"And if I give you the ten thousand dollars, what do I get in return?" I asked, mentally placing my part at fifty-five per cent. of the shares at the lowest, so that I might control the company.

"You may organize the corporation yourself. The projectile must bear my name, and I must have the credit for all discoveries and inventions. Then you may give me such a part of the shares of the company as you think right," he replied.

On hearing this, I mentally advanced my portion to seventy-five per cent. Then I said,--

"When the projectile is built and proves successful, who is to manage the affairs of the company? Who is to finance it and raise further funds for exploiting its business?"

"I have no capacity for business," he declared. "I have no ambition to be a Pullman or an Edison. I would rather see myself a Franklin or a Fulton. You shall manage all the business affairs."

"Then I will undertake the whole matter, and give you my cheque for ten thousand dollars to-night, provided you allow me--ninety-five per cent. of the company's shares!" I said, simulating a burst of generosity.

Doctor Anderwelt ploughed his hair and harrowed his beard. He knew this was giving too much, but to have the projectile built, to sail away, to make all those grand new discoveries, to write books, and have future generations pronounce his name reverently along with Kepler and Newton! I did not believe he would have the courage to say no. While he meditated, my bell summoned Flynn.

"Please draw a cheque for ten thousand dollars to the order of Hermann Anderwelt," I said, watching the doctor as I spoke. There was indecision in his face.

"Suppose I allow you, say, ninety per cent.?" he said at last.

I was signing the cheque Flynn had brought me. "Done!" I cried, handing it over. He scanned it carefully, and after a long time said,--

"Mars is nearest to the Earth on the third day of next August. Fortunately Chicago is a good place to do things in a hurry. The projectile must be ready to start early in June, but its construction and its first trip must be kept a profound secret."

The doctor must have been hungry since noon. He began munching a chicken sandwich. The cold planked whitefish tasted quite as good as smoked herrings, perhaps, and strawberry short-cake in March was a luxury which he evidently appreciated.

CHAPTER III

Structure of the Projectile

A few weeks later I received a letter from Dr. Anderwelt asking me to call at his rooms on the West Side that afternoon, as soon as the market had closed. He desired to exhibit and explain the drawings of the new projectile and talk over the preparations for the trip. I had been so engrossed with every sort of worry that I had thought but little of the doctor and his grand schemes of late. But now I was anxious to know what progress he was making. Sometimes I felt that I had been foolish to put any money into the thing; but the doctor's idea of reversing gravity was so simple and so elemental, that I marvelled it had never occurred to scientists before.

After the market I hunted up the street and number the doctor had given me, and found a little, dingy boarding-house, lost among machine shops and implement factories, near the west side of the river. In a third-floor back room, with one small window looking out on dark, sooty buildings and belching chimneys, Dr. Anderwelt was thinking out all the incidental problems, and preparing for all the emergencies that might arise on a trip of some forty million miles, through unknown space, to a strange planet whose composition was unguessed.

The walls of the room were soiled and bare, except for blue-prints of drawings from which the projectile was being built in neighbouring foundries. There were but two plain, hard chairs in the room. The doctor sat on one with a pillow doubled up under him for a cushion. He was bending over a draughting board, which was propped up on the bed during the day and went under it at night.

Three flights of steep stairs had taken my breath, and I dropped into the other hard chair and exclaimed,--

"I say, Doctor, why didn't you take an office in the twelfth heaven of a modern office building over in town, where they have elevators? I have really forgotten how to climb stairs. Didn't I furnish you money enough to do this thing right?"

"Don't you think this is a good place?" he inquired in some surprise. "The rent is cheap, and it is convenient to the work. But speaking of elevators, we are going to revolutionize all that. No more hoisting or hydraulic lifts after we apply our ideas to the lifting of these elevator cages!"

"I am afraid this idea of negative gravity is apt to revolutionize everything, and generally upset the entire universe," I replied. "I have been wondering what would happen if you were to apply a negative current to this Earth of ours and send it whirling out of its orbit, an ostracised Pariah, repelled by all the celestial bodies!"

"Not the slightest danger of any such calamity," he answered. "The reversal of polarity can only be accomplished with comparatively small and insignificant masses. It would be impossible to impart a negative condition even to the smallest satellite. Our projectile will weigh but a few thousand pounds, compared to the millions of tons of the smallest celestial bodies. The Creator has looked out for the stability of the universe, never fear for that! And He has also given us a few hints of negative currents and repellant gravities in the form of meteorites and falling stars, which cannot be so well explained by any other theory. But what I want to talk to you about is the vital importance of providing against every possible emergency before starting on this trip through space. A trifling oversight in the preparations may mean death in the end, and things we put no value on here we might be willing to give a fortune for on Mars!"

"Well, let's hear how this thing is built," I said, rising and facing the larger blue-print. "So that's the shape of it, is it? Looks like a cigar!"

"Yes, the design resembles that of a torpedo considerably," replied the doctor, and referring to the sectional blue-print he began explaining the construction.

"This outer covering is a crust of graphite or black lead, inside which is a two-inch layer of asbestos. Both of these resist enormous heats, and they will prevent our burning by friction with atmospheres, and protect us against extremes of cold. Also, when we are ready, they will enable us to visit planets about whose cooled condition we are not certain. We might touch safely for a short time on a molten planet with this covering.

"Next comes the general outer framework of steel, just within which, and completely surrounding the living compartments, are the chambers for the storage of condensed air for use on the trip. These chambers are lined inside with another layer of asbestos. Now, air being a comparatively poor conductor of heat, and asbestos one of the best non-conductors we know of, this insures a stable temperature of the living compartments, regardless of the condition without, whether of extreme heat or extreme cold. Afterward comes the inner framework of steel, and lastly a wainscotting of hard wood to give the compartments a finish."

"How large are these living rooms?" I inquired.

"The rear one is four feet high and eight feet long. The forward one, designed for my own use, is longer, and must contain a good-size telescope and all my scientific instruments. The apparatus with which I produce the currents is built into the left wall, and it acts on the steel work of the projectile only. The rear compartment has a sideboard for preparing meals, which will have to be wholly of bread, biscuits, and various tinned vegetables and meats. We shall not attempt any cooking."

"But are there no windows for looking out?" I queried.

"Certainly, there are two of them, made of thick mica. One is directly in the front end, through which my telescope will look. The other is in the port-hole in the rear end. Each window is provided with an outer shutter of asbestos, which can be closed in case of great heat or cold. You will notice the two compartments can be separated by an air-tight plunger, fitting into the aperture between them. It will be necessary for both of us to occupy the same compartment while the air is being changed in the other. The foul air will be forced outside by a powerful pump until a partial vacuum is created. Then a certain measure of condensed air is emptied in, and expands until the barometer in that compartment indicates a proper pressure."

"The air will be made to order while you wait, then?" I put in.

"That is exactly what will be done in a more literal manner than you may suppose!" exclaimed the doctor. "This air problem is a most interesting one, for we must educate ourselves on the trip to use the sort of atmosphere we expect to find when we land. For instance, going to Mars we must use an atmosphere more and more rarefied each day, until gradually we become used to the thin air we expect to find there. Of course, there is an especially designed barometer and thermometer, capable of being read in the rear compartment, but exposed outside near the rudder. The barometer will give us the pressure of the earthly atmosphere as it becomes more and more rare with our ascent. It will show us what pressure there is of the ether, which may vary considerably, depending on our nearness to heavenly bodies. It will also immediately indicate to us when we are entering any new atmosphere. When we have arrived at Mars, we shall observe the exact pressure of the Martian air, and then manufacture one of the same pressure inside, and try breathing it before we venture out. The thermometer will give us the temperature of the ether, will indicate the loss of heat as we leave the sun, and will show us the Martian temperature before we venture into it."

"But you have said the condensed air will be used to resist the outer heat. This will certainly make it so hot it will be unfit to breathe," I interposed.

"Ah, but you forget that the quick expansion of a gaslike air produces cold. We shall regulate our temperature in that way. If it is becoming too warm inside, the new measure of condensed air will be quickly introduced into the partial vacuum, and its sudden expansion will produce great cold, and freeze ice for us if we wish it. On the other hand, if the compartments are already cold, we shall allow the condensed air to enter very gradually, and its slow expansion will produce but little cold. The question of heating the projectile is the most difficult one I have found. We cannot have any fires, for there is no way for the smoke to escape, and we cannot carry oxygen enough to keep them burning. I have decided that we must depend on the heat arising from outer friction and from absorption of the Sun's rays by our black surface. When we are in ether where friction is very little, the velocity will be all the greater, and I believe we shall always be warm enough. You must remember, we shall not have the slightest suspicion of a draught, and we must necessarily take along the warmest clothing for use on Mars. Even then we probably cannot safely visit any but his equatorial districts."

"This is the rudder, I suppose; but haven't you put it in wrong end first?" I asked. "It is just the opposite of a fish's tail. You have the widened end near the projectile and the narrow end extending."

"Yes, and with good reason. You will note that the rudder slides into the rear end of the projectile so that none of it extends out. This is a variable steering apparatus, adapted to every sort of atmosphere. Naturally, a rudder that would steer in the water, might not steer the same craft in the air. There is probably a vaster difference between air and ether than between water and air. It is necessary, therefore, to have a small rudder with but little extending surface in thick atmosphere; but when it becomes thinner the rudder must be pushed out, so that a greater surface will offer resistance. When we start, the smallest portion of this rudder moved but the sixteenth of an inch, up, down, or to either side, will quickly change our course correspondingly. When we have reached the ether, the full surface of the rudder pushed out and exposed broadside may not have much effect in changing our course. This is one of the things that we cannot possibly know till we try. However, if ether is anything at all but a name, if it is the thinnest, lightest conceivable gas, and we are rushing through it at a speed of a thousand miles a minute, our rudder certainly should have some effect."

"But suppose you cannot steer at all in the ether, what then?" I interposed, hunting all the trouble possible.

"Even that will not be so very dreadful, provided we have taken a true course for Mars while coming through the Earth's atmosphere. There is no other planet or star nearer to us than Mars when in opposition. Therefore there will be nothing to attract us out of our correct course; and if we can manage to come anywhere near the true course, the gravitational attraction of Mars will draw us to him in a straight line. The Moon might give us some trouble, and we shall be obliged, either to avoid her entirely by starting so as to cross her orbit when she is on the opposite side of the Earth, or else go directly to the Moon, land there, and make a new start. But if the ether which surrounds the Moon (for she has no atmosphere so far as we know) has no resisting power whatever, we might have rather a difficult time there. The only thing we could do would be to land on the side toward the Earth, then disembark and carry the projectile on our shoulders around the Moon to the opposite side, making a new start from there!"

"What on earth do you mean?" I exclaimed, interrupting. "Land on a satellite which has no atmosphere, and carry this projectile, weighing over a ton, half-way around the globe?"

"But the point is, it isn't on the Earth, but on the Moon! Think it over a little, and see how easily we could do it now. In the first place, we shall always carry divers' suits and helmets, to use in going ashore on planets having no atmosphere. Air will be furnished through tubes from inside the compartments. In the second place, the projectile in its natural state will hardly weigh two hundred pounds on the Moon, since the mass of that satellite is so much less than the Earth's, and weight therefore proportionately less. But you must remember I can make the projectile weigh nothing at all, so one of us could run ahead and tow it, as a child would play with its toy balloon."

"I perceive you have already made this trip several times, and are quite familiar with everything. But in case the Moon's surface is not suitable for foot passengers, what then? I understand it to be rough, jagged, mountainous, and even crossed by immense, yawning, unbridged fissures."

"That is most likely true, and for that reason we must carry a jointed punt-pole, and take turns standing on the back, landing and punting along through space just above the surface. Do you remember how far you can send a slightly shrunk toy balloon with one light blow? And how it finally stops with the resistance of the air? Without any resisting atmosphere, how far and how easily could it be sent along?"

"I can quite imagine you, astride the rudder of this thing, with a punt-pole as long as a ship's mast and as light as a broom-straw, bumping and skipping along in the utter darkness on the other side of the Moon; scaling mountains, bridging yawning chasms, and skimming over sombre sea-beds!" I laughed, for it aroused my active sense of the ridiculous.

"And the Moon may be well worth the exploration," exclaimed the always serious doctor. "Who knows what treasure of gold and silver, or other metals, rare and precious here, may not be found there? Why was the Moon ever created without an atmosphere, and therefore probably without the possibility of ever being inhabited? Is it put there only to illume our nights? Remember, we do the same service for her fourteen times as well; and if she has inhabitants they may think the Earth exists only for that purpose. Is it not more reasonable to suppose that some vast treasures are there, which the Earth will some day be in pressing need of? That it is a great warehouse of earthly necessities, which will be discovered just as they are being exhausted here? And who knows but we may be the discoverers ourselves? If the satellite is uninhabited, it will belong to the first explorers. Its treasures may be ours! We shall at least have a monopoly on the only known method of getting there and bringing them away."

"Ah! now you tempt me to go with you," I said, in a mild excitement. "Now I see myself, erect on the rudder, a new Count of Monte Cristo, waving the long punt-pole majestically, and exclaiming, 'The Moon is mine!'"

CHAPTER IV

What is on Mars?

"I only wish you would come along with me," replied the doctor. "I have no idea what intelligent, educated person I can persuade to accompany me, unless he is given an interest in the discoveries. You are the person most interested in the enterprise, and you should go. If it is money-making that detains you here, you may rest assured that we shall find fortunes for both of us somewhere."

"I am a slave to the excitement of my business," I answered. "I could not possibly spend two or three months in a lonely cell, flying through space, without a ticker or a quotation of the market. Besides, there are people on the earth I should not care to leave, unless I was certain of getting back soon."

"You may be sure of excitement enough, and of a continuously novel kind. Besides, of what interest are the people of this earth, who are all alike, and whom we have known all our lives, compared with the rapture of finding a new and different race, of investigating another civilization, and exploring an entire new world?"

"I shall have to warn my friends about you and have myself watched, lest you persuade me and run away with me when the time comes. If your adventures are half as exciting and varied as your theories, I should hate to miss them. But tell me why you have chosen Mars for a first visit."

"Because of all the planets he is the one which most resembles the Earth in all the essential conditions of life. He is the Earth's little brother, situated next farther out in the path from the Sun. He has the same seasons, day and night of the same length, and zones of about the same extent. He possesses air, water, and sufficient heat to make habitation by us quite possible. Moreover, his gravity problem will not put earthly visitors at a disadvantage, as it would on the very large planets, but rather at a distinct advantage over the Martians."

"What do you expect to find on Mars?" I queried.

"That is a very comprehensive question, and any answer is the merest guess-work, guided by a few known facts," replied the doctor. "The principal controlling fact is the reduced gravitational attraction of Mars, which will make things weigh about one-third as much as on the Earth. The air will be far less dense than here. In the mineral kingdom the dense metals will be very rare. I doubt if platinum will be found at all; gold and silver very little; iron, lead, and copper will be comparatively scarce, while aluminium may be the common and useful metal. Gases should abound, and doubtless many entirely new to us will be there. It is not unlikely that many of these will serve as foods for the animals and intelligent beings. It is also quite possible that the heavier gases may run in channels, like rivers, and be alive with winged fish and chameleons."

"How about vegetation?" I suggested.

"The vegetable kingdom will certainly not be rank and luxurious, because there is not enough sunlight or heat for that; nor will it be gnarled and tough, but more likely spongy and cactus-like. The weak gravity will oppose but a mild resistance to the activity and climbing propensities of vegetable sap, however, which is likely to result in very tall, slender trees. The forces that lie hidden in an acorn should be able to build a most grandly towering oak on Mars. Among the animals the species of upright, two-legged things is apt to abound. There is no reason for four legs when the body weighs but little. On the Earth an extremely strong development of the lower limbs is necessary for upright things, as is shown in the cases of kangaroos and men. In order that a cow might go comfortably on two legs, she would have to be furnished with the hind-legs of an elephant; but not so on Mars. Creeping things would be very few, and it is possible that fish may fly in the water with a short pair of wings. What four-legged animals there are will very likely be large and monstrous; for an enormous animal could exist comfortably and move about easily without clumsiness. For instance, an earthly elephant transferred to Mars would weigh only one-third as much, and so there might well be elephants three times as large as ours, perfectly able to handle themselves with ease."

"By the same reasoning then, I suppose the intelligent beings, or what we call men, will be great giants twenty-five feet high?" I put in.

"Some have thought so, but I do not at all agree with them," replied the doctor. "I stick to the theory of small men for small planets, and large men for large planets. There is no possible reason for a large man on Mars, where muscular development is uncalled for and useless, and where the inhabitable space is small. If there are men on Jupiter, they must of necessity be enormously strong to hold themselves up and resist gravitation. If they walk upright (which I think unlikely), their legs must be very large and as solid as iron. The Martian legs are likely to be small and puny, and I believe the upper limbs will be much more strongly developed. In fact, on Mars the Creator had His one great opportunity of making a flying man, and I do not think He has overlooked it. With a rather small, tightly-knit frame, and the upper limbs developed into wings as long as the body, flying against the weak Martian gravitation would be perfectly easy, and a vast advantage over walking."

"Ah! then perhaps they will fly out to meet you!" I ejaculated.

"If they do, they will be stricken with fear to see that we fly without wings and so much more rapidly," he answered, and continued: "If a flying race has been created there, we shall probably find the atmosphere deeper and relatively (though not actually) denser than the Earth's. This would serve to add buoyancy and still further diminish weight, thus making flying quite natural and simple. I certainly do not believe that the Martians are subjected to the tedium of walking. If they do not fly, they will at least make long, swift, graceful hops or jumps of some ten or fifteen feet each. This would require a more hinged development of the lower limbs, like a bird's. It is also possible that the lower limbs may have the prehensile function, and do all the handling and working."

"But how about intelligence and intellectual development? That is the main thing, after all," said I.

"To answer that takes one into the realm of pure speculation. There are but few facts to guide one's guesses. But the trip yonder is worth making, if only to learn that. I do not incline to the opinion that their civilization is vastly older and more developed than ours. Granting the nebular theory of the origin of the universe (which is, after all, only a guess), it is not even then certain that Mars was thrown off the central sun before the Earth. It is much smaller, and may have been thrown off later and travelled farther for this reason. Another good reason for believing in a less advanced civilization is the length of the Martian year and consequent sluggishness of the seasons. He requires 687 of our days to complete his sun revolution, making his years nearly twice as long as ours. I believe his whole development is at a correspondingly slow rate of speed."

"Which do you think is the most advanced and enlightened planet, then?" I ventured.

"That one which finds a way to visit the others first," he answered, with a touch of pride.

"But there may be a tinge of personal conceit in that idea," I suggested.

"Possibly a mere tinge, but the essence of it is apparent truth," he declared. "That planet which has learned the most, made the greatest discoveries and the most useful inventions, is the best and fittest teacher of the others, and will be the sharpest and keenest to gather new information and formulate new science. It is eminently fit that representatives of such a planet should visit the others, and eminently unfit that any primitive civilization engaged in base wars and striving for mere conquest should be allowed that privilege. An all-wise Creator would not permit a huge, strong, ignorant race entirely to overrun and extinguish one weaker but more intelligent. He might permit a strong, intelligent, masterful race to rule and direct a weaker and dependent one, as a schoolmaster rules and guides a child."

"Then you think we are the wise and masterful race?"

"As no other race has yet discovered us; as they have all left the Space Problem unsolved, and as it has been uncovered to us, that is my irresistible conclusion."

"Still, you will not go with ideas of conquest, but to teach and to learn?"

"We shall take with us swords, shields, and fire-arms, for defence. Unless I mistake the nature of their metals, our steel will resist any weapon they can manufacture. But what explosives or what noxious gases they may have, all strange to us, it is impossible to conjecture. Therefore, we shall go with peace in our hands."

"What progress do you think they have made in inventions?" I suggested, as the doctor hesitated.

"If they are winged men, I should say they have never felt that urgent need of railroads, steam boats, telegraphs and telephones, which was the mother of their invention here. Flying or air-travelling machines will no more have occurred to them than a walking machine to us. They will have thoroughly explored every part of their planet, and it is possible that their cities will have been built on high plateaus, or even on mountain peaks. But they will not have builded greatly, for they will have been able to use the great architecture of nature in a way impossible to us."

"Have you heard the theory advanced by some humorous scientist not long ago, that the organs of locomotion and prehension would some day, or on some planet, be supplanted by machinery, and that digestive apparatus would give way for artificially prepared blood?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, that fanciful idea is novel, but irrational. It makes man only a fraction of a being. On every planet, no matter what the advancement of civilization, we shall find complete beings, not dependent on adventitious machinery for locomotion or labour, or on artificial or animal blood for nutriment. Think how helpless such a creature would be at the loss or rusting of his machinery, and at the exhaustion of just the right sort of nutritive fluid. Our digestive apparatus will convert a thousand different foods into blood. Suppose we could live only on buffalo meat? We should all have been dead long ago. We might as well imagine men as mere fungus brains, swimming in rivers of blood; or as beings beyond the necessity of personal thought, and living on brain sandwiches, cut from the thinking heads of others. Eating is not only a necessity, but a pleasure----"

"That is just what I was thinking," I interposed, looking at my watch, for it was growing late.

"Well, now I have told you how I would have peopled Mars had the order been sent to me here to do it," said the doctor, "will you go along with me, and see how nearly I am right?"

"I am afraid not," I replied; "my business ties forbid. However, I want to see you make the start and the moment you return!"

CHAPTER V

Final Preparations

On the tenth day of June, Dr. Anderwelt had written me as follows:

"Please catch the 7.25 train on the Lake Shore for Whiting this evening. I will take the same train, and we will walk from Whiting to a deserted railway siding two miles further on, where the projectile has been shipped. We will unload it from the flat car and take it into a grove of scrub oaks on the shore of Lake Michigan, near by. This will be enough to demonstrate to you our control of gravity. The experimental model is there also, and we will send it off on a trip if you like. Everything will be ready for the start to Mars to-morrow night."

I dined early and caught the train specified at Twenty-Second Street. The doctor was looking for me from the rear platform of a car. It was a local train, and crept slowly out through the smoky blackness of South Chicago, illuminated here and there by the flaming chimneys of her great iron furnaces, to the little city of pungent smells, of petroleum tanks and oil refineries, in Northern Indiana. The doctor was explaining the difficulties he had experienced in getting a companion for the trip.

"Men whom I could hire for mere wages are not intelligent enough to understand the workings of the projectile, or to comprehend the risks they may run. Besides, their companionship and assistance during the trip through space and on a new planet is worth nothing. On the other hand, I could not afford to go about explaining the workings of so important an invention miscellaneously to people capable of understanding it in an experimental search for a companion. I might not find one among twenty, and I would be tossing my secrets to the winds, and inviting all the daily papers to send their representatives to report the start. My reputation as a scientist, on the other side, is too dear to me to risk a public failure. If the projectile acts, as I am confident it must, on our return we shall take out letters patent and form our company to exploit the business features. But primarily, this is a test of the projectile and a journey of exploration and research. Business afterward."

Naturally on this point we had disagreed. My motto had always been "Business first!" and I had desired to have the patents secured immediately. But the doctor would not consent to the filing of the required specifications and claims, lest his secrets should be learned before success was demonstrated. As a compromise, the doctor had agreed to leave the necessary descriptions and data in a sealed envelope with me, which I was to be at liberty to open and place on record at any time during the doctor's absence that I might deem it necessary in order to protect our rights.

"Whom have you finally secured to go with you, then?" I asked.

"I will tell you that after we have finished to-night's work," said the doctor, and then abruptly changed the subject.

The walk from Whiting was inspiriting. It was a beautiful night. There was not a cloud in the sky and no Moon, which made the stars all the brighter. Everything was still, save the constant lapping of the great lake on the sandy shore, but a short way off.

"Yonder is the mustard seed planted in the heavens, which shall grow into a whole new world for us!" exclaimed the doctor, pointing out a particularly bright star. "That is Mars rushing on to opposition. In six weeks he will be nearest to the Earth; so for that time he will be flying to meet us. To-morrow is our last day on Earth; to-morrow night the ether! And in six weeks, diminutive but mighty man will have known two worlds!"

"There you go, soaring again!" I cried. "Let us keep on practical subjects. What have the foundry people who built this thing, and the railroad people who brought it down here, thought about its probable use? Have they not guessed something?"

"You may trust the popular mind not to guess flying unless it sees wings! They have imagined this is a new sort of torpedo, sent down here for a private trial in the lake. In fact, the conductor of the freight train, who switched the car off here, asked me in a confidential way if he should get teams and men and help me to launch her? I have fostered this idea, and really had the projectile sent here to carry out that impression."

A more fitting place for an unobserved start could not have been selected, however. All this part of the country is a sandy waste, with a sparse growth of scrub oaks and but little vegetation. There are no farms, and the nearest houses are at Whiting. No one could see our work, except, possibly, the passengers from occasional trains, which rushed by without stopping, and were infrequent at this time of day.

As we were arriving, I stood off at some distance to observe the black object on the open car. It was five feet through, and twenty feet long, not counting the rudder, which was now entirely drawn into the rear end.

"Looks exactly like a cigar," I said. "Sharp and pointed in front, slightly swelled in the middle, and cut squarely off behind. Only it is too thick for its length, of course."

But the doctor already had the rear port-hole open. This was two feet in diameter, and permitted a rather awkward entrance to the rear compartment. The interior was crowded with boxes, as yet unpacked, containing scientific instruments, tinned foods, biscuits, meat extracts, condensed milk and coffee, bottled fruits, vegetables, and the like. Over these the doctor worked his way to the forward compartment, while I followed him, anxious to explore the interior.

"I will unpack all these goods and put them in their places to-morrow forenoon," explained the doctor. "Here, in my compartment on the left, I have my gravity apparatus, battery cells and the like, and a small table for writing and other work. On the right is the bunk on which I sleep, and under it is the big telescope, neatly fitted and swinging up easily into place before the mica window."

"Has the compressed air been put in yet?" I inquired.

"Oh, yes, that had to be done in the city, where they have powerful air compressors. I would have preferred this purer air out here, but it was impossible. The air we put in only increased the weight of the projectile eighteen pounds, but it will be sufficient for two of us for six months. We were obliged to make the most careful and thorough tests for leaks in the air-chambers; for if there were any of these, our life would leak out with the air."

"And such airless satellites as the Moon will make the most desperate efforts to steal your atmosphere, too!" I added.

"Yes, but we will give them only our foul air as a small stock-in-trade with which they may begin business. But I see my batteries are commencing to work nicely. I think I can lift her now. You go outside and make a hitch with that rope you saw just forward of the middle of the projectile. Then, when I have neutralized her weight, you tow her over beyond that clump of trees you saw near the shore. That will be out of the view of trains."

"Must I concentrate my mind or keep my thoughts fixed on anything?" I asked quizzically.

"Rubbish! Concentrate it on this. If the projectile starts up, don't try to hold her with your little rope. Let go quickly, or you may get uncomfortable holding on!"

I went outside, untied the coil of rope and threw one end over. Meantime the doctor had opened the forward window, so that he might give directions, and I said to him,--

"I can't get the rope under her; she is lying flat on the car."

"Wait a moment and I will lift her for you," he replied. The railroad ties rose a little out of the sand, and there was a slight creaking of the woodwork of the car as the weight came off. Presently the forward end of the projectile rose slowly an inch, two inches!

"That's enough!" I cried, thrusting the rope under, and she settled back gently. Having made my knot, I went out to the other end of the rope, about thirty feet distant. Forgetting the doctor's injunction about not hanging on, I wrapped the rope around my body, worked my feet firmly into the sand, and finally cried out, "All ready!"

There was a faint creaking of the car again, and soon the doctor said, "Pull away!" I threw all my force into the effort and gave a tremendous heave, and tumbled over backwards. Had I not done so, the projectile must have hit me as it glided rapidly from the car, sinking very slowly to the sand about fifty feet away. I scrambled to my feet, went in front again, and easily dragged it along on the sand to an open place just beyond the trees. There the doctor allowed it to settle. It sank into the loose sand about eight inches, remaining steady in this position.

"She works beautifully!" I cried. "How I would like to see her turned loose for a real flight!"

"That will come to-morrow night," said the doctor, crawling out of the port-hole. "But if you will help me remove these boxes from the experimental model, you shall see it lost in the sky." We uncovered and dragged out a small steel thing, about the same shape as the projectile, but less than a foot thick and four feet long. It had a lid opening into its batteries from the top. The doctor entered his compartment to secure some chemicals.

"If you have no further use for this model," I suggested, "why not create a very strong current and let it sail off into indefinite space?"

"Very well; I don't wish to leave it behind me for some one to discover, and I can't take it along. We will send it off for a long trip, and if it falls back it will be into the lake."

"Wait a moment, then! Let's put a good-bye message in it;" and so saying I took an old envelope from my pocket and wrote on the back of it with a pencil in a bold hand: "Farewell to Earth for ever!" Laughing, I put this inside and closed the lid.

Then the doctor turned down a thumb-screw upon a little wire which connected the poles, and stepped back quickly. Presently the forward end began to rise slowly, until it stood upright, but there it hesitated. The doctor stepped forward and gave the thumb-screw a hard turn down, and the model lifted immediately, rising at first gradually, but soon shooting off with the whizz of a rocket over the lake. We watched it as long as we could distinguish its dark outline.

"It will go a long way," said the doctor. "I have never seen it make so good a start. It will lose itself in the lake far from here."

We fastened up the front window and the port-hole, and started back to Whiting, where the doctor was to remain all night, so as to begin work early in the morning. Presently, as we walked along, the doctor said,--

"Well, Isidor, now you have seen a practical demonstration of the elementary working of the projectile. You also have some idea of all there is to be discovered up yonder in the red planet. You are the most interested in making and profiting by those discoveries. I want you to consent to go along."

"Haven't you secured a companion, then?" I inquired.

"Yes, I have a friend, a countryman of mine here, who will go wherever I say. He appreciates neither the risks nor the opportunities of the trip, still he will take my word for everything. Yet if I ask him to go I take the responsibility of his life as well as my own. He is not a suitable man, however, and I have really relied on you to come," he insisted.

"My dear doctor, I have every faith in you and in the projectile, and I prophesy a most successful trip. I should like nothing better than the adventure; but you must not count on me; I could not leave my business. There's a fever in my blood that thirsts for it!"

"Your business, indeed! You will never really amount to much till you have left it. It's half a throw of dice and the other half a struggle of cut-throats!"

"That is what people say who know nothing at all about it," I retorted. "It occupies a large and important place in the world's commerce. Besides, I could not well leave Ruth and my uncle."

"Isn't it time you did something to make her proud of you, and to be worthy the education which he gave you? You have a chance now to be great. Isn't that worth ten chances to be rich? What would you have thought of Galileo if he hadn't had time to use the telescope after inventing it, but had devoted his time and talent to the maccaroni market? You are one man in ten million; you have an opportunity Columbus would have been proud of! Will you neglect it for mere gold-grubbing? Leave that to the rest of your race and to this money-mad Chicago. You come along with me. Let's make this work-a-day world of ours take time to stop and shake hands with her heavenly neighbours!"

"You tempt me to do it, Doctor! Can you wait two or three days for me?"

"I can, but Mars won't," he answered laconically. "Besides, you must not tell any one that you are going."

"If there are any two things I love, it's a secret and a hurry! I will be here to-morrow night," I exclaimed.

CHAPTER VI

Farewell to Earth

The next day I quietly bought in my wheat, and told Flynn I was thinking of taking a little vacation. I said I was worn out fighting the contrary market, and told him to run the office as if it were his own until I returned. At home I said nothing about the vacation, for I didn't care to have my stories agree very perfectly. I simply packed a few necessities for the trip in a dress-suit case. My uncle was used to seeing me carry my evening clothes to the Club in this manner, and I casually told him I should remain the night this time.

I could not leave without kissing cousin Ruth good-bye, but this excited no suspicion, as it was a thing I did on every pretext. Then I slipped out and took back streets till I was several blocks away from the house. Taking a closed carriage here, I was driven to the same station and took the same train for Whiting as on the previous evening. I found the doctor awaiting me with a lantern. As we walked down the tracks in the twilight I said to him,--

"I never made so quick a preparation, nor attempted so long a trip. I have left my friends a lot of guessing! Now, how soon shall we be off?"

"Within an hour," he answered. "Mars will not be directly overhead until midnight, but there is a little side trip I wish to make first, to test the projectile before we get too far above the Earth's surface."

The sky was densely cloudy, there was no Moon, and it was already growing very dark. As we began to have difficulty in finding the way, the doctor lighted his lantern. Peering up into the darkness, I said to him,--

"There is not a star visible. How are you to find your way in the heavens a night like this?"

"That is all perfectly easy. We shall soon rise far above those clouds, and then the stars will come out. Besides, I shall show you perfect daylight again before midnight."

"I don't see just how, but I will take your word for it, Doctor. I daresay you have thought it all out, and the whole trip will contain no surprises for you."

"I have tried to think it all out and prepare for everything. But I am certain I have forgotten something. I have a feeling amounting to a dreadful presentiment that I have overlooked something important. I wish you would see if you can think of anything I have omitted."

"The only really important thing I have remembered is half a dozen boxes of the best cigars," I replied.

"Leave them right here in Whiting," he said with emphasis. "We are carrying only a limited supply of pure air, and we cannot afford to contaminate it with tobacco smoke. No, sir, you can't smoke on this trip."

"Then I won't go! Imagine not smoking for two whole months! Do you think I have sworn off?"

"No, not yet. But you must. It pollutes the air, which we must keep clean and fresh as long as possible."

"Now, Doctor, you must let me have a good smoke once a day, just before pumping the air out of my compartment."

"No, not even that. It is impossible to pump all the air out, and what is left mixes back with what is in my compartment. Once contaminated with tobacco smoke, we could never get it perfectly pure again."

"Well, may I smoke on Mars, then? I will take them along for that. But, I warn you, I eat like a farm horse when I can't smoke."

"I have provided plenty to eat, but I know I have forgotten something. Mention something now, mention everything you can think of, so that I may see if it is provided for."

"Have you any money?" I asked. "I have changed some into gold, and have a fairly heavy bag here."

"Oh, yes, I have some gold and silver money, besides a lot of beads, trinkets, and gaudy tinsel things, such as earthly savages have been willing to barter valuable merchandise for."

"So you are going on a trading expedition, are you?" I asked.

"Not exactly. I leave all that to your superior abilities. But we may find these things valuable to give as presents. Many of them are of tin, and if they do not happen to have that useful metal on Mars, they will be of rare value there."

We had now reached the little grove where the projectile was hidden. I proceeded to open the rear port-hole, saying,--

"Let me look inside, and when I see what you have, some other necessary thing may suggest itself."

"Let me go in first, for I am afraid you will allow the menagerie to escape," he said, as he peered in by the light of the lantern. A diminutive fox terrier barked from the inside, and wagged his tail faster than a watch ticks, so glad he was to see us. The bright light also awakened a small white rabbit that had been asleep in the doctor's compartment.

"You are taking these along for companions, I suppose?"

"Yes, for that and for experiments. We may reach places where it will be necessary to determine whether living, breathing things can exist before we try it ourselves. Then we shall put one of these out and observe the effects."

"You may experiment on the rabbit all you please, but this little puppy and I are going to be fast friends, and we shall die together; shan't we, Two-spot?"

"Why do you call him Two-spot? There is only one spot on him, and his name is Himmelshundchen."

"Rubbish! The idea of such a long, heavy name for such a little puppy! I shall call him Two-spot because he is the smallest thing in the pack. Heavenly-puppy, indeed!"

The doctor had entered and lighted a small gas jet, supplied on the Pintsch system from compressed gas stored in one of the chambers. The rear compartment, which was to be mine, looked half an arsenal and half a pantry. On the right side a cupboard was filled with newly-cooked meats. I remember how plentiful the store looked at the time, but, alas! how soon it vanished and we were reduced to tinned and bottled foods! There was a cold joint of beef, a quarter of roast mutton, three boiled hams and four roast chickens.

On the left, folding up into the concavity of the wall, like the upper berth of a Pullman sleeping car, was my bunk. On the walls not thus occupied the arms were hung. There were two repeating rifles, each carrying seventeen cartridges; two large calibre hammerless revolvers; two long and heavy swords, designed for cleaving rather than for stabbing; two chain shirts, to be worn under the clothing to protect against arrows; and finally two large shields, made of overlapping steel plates and almost four feet high. The doctor explained to me that the idea was to rest the lower edge of these on the ground and crouch behind them. They were rather heavy and cumbersome to be carried far, and were grooved in three sections, so that they slipped together into an arc one-third of their circumference.

I examined everything closely and asked a hundred questions, but the doctor seemed to have provided for every necessity or contingency.

"Let us waste no more time," said I. "If we have forgotten anything, we must get along without it. All aboard! What is our first stop?"

"The planet Mars, only thirty-six million miles away, if we are successful in meeting him just as he comes into opposition on the third day of August. This is the most favourable opposition in which to meet him for the past quarter of a century. Back in the year 1877 he was only about thirty-five million miles away, and it was then that we learned most that we know of his physical features. But we shall not have a more favourable time than this for the next seventeen years."

"Still it seems like nonsense to talk about travelling such an incomprehensible distance, doesn't it?" I ventured.

"Not at all!" he replied positively. "If the Earth travels a million miles per day in her orbit, without any motion being apparent to her inhabitants, why should we not travel just as fast and just as unconsciously? We are driven by the same force. The same engine of the Creator's which drives all the universe, drives us. When we have left the atmosphere we shall rush through the void of space without knowing whether we are travelling at a thousand miles per minute or standing perfectly still. Our senses will have nothing to lay hold on to form a judgment of our rate of speed. But if we make an average of only five hundred miles per minute we shall accomplish the distance in about fifty days, and arrive soon after opposition."

"But have you given up stopping on the Moon?" I asked. "I had great hopes of making those rich discoveries there."

"We must leave all that until our return trip. I have chosen this starting time in the dark of the Moon in order to have the satellite on the other side of the Earth and out of the way. She would only impede our progress, as we wish to acquire a tremendous velocity just as soon as we leave the atmosphere. We must accelerate our speed as long as gravity will do it for us. When we can no longer gain speed, we shall at least continue to maintain our rapid pace.

"But if we stopped on the Moon, we should only have her weak gravity to repel us towards Mars, and we could make but little speed. On our return, the stop on the Moon will be a natural and easy one. We shall be near home and can afford to loiter."

While the doctor was saying this, he had been busy making tests of his apparatus. He now called me to see his buoyancy gauge, which was a half-spherical mass of steel weighing just ten pounds. It was pierced with a hole at right angles to its plane surface and strung upon a vertical copper wire. Small leaden weights, weighing from an ounce to four pounds each, were provided to be placed upon the plane surface of the steel. The doctor explained its action to me thus:--

"The polarizing action of the gravity apparatus affects only steel and iron, and has no effect upon lead. Therefore, when the current is conducted through the copper wire into the soft steel ball, it will immediately rise up the wire, by the repulsion of negative gravity. Now, if the leaden weights are piled upon the steel ball one by one, until it is just balanced half way up the wire, our buoyancy is thus measured or weighed. For instance, with the first two batteries turned in we have a buoyancy a little exceeding one pound. That means, we should rise with one-tenth the velocity that we should fall. Turning in two more batteries, you see the buoyancy is three pounds, or our flying speed will be three-tenths of our falling speed. With all the batteries acting upon the gauge, you see it will carry up more than ten pounds of lead, because the pressure of the air is against weight and in favour of buoyancy. So long as we are in atmospheres, then, it is possible to fall up more rapidly than to fall down; but, on account of friction and the resultant heat, it is not safe to do so."

"So we have been doing the hard thing, by falling all our lives, when flying would really have been easier!" I put in.

"We have been overlooking a very simple thing for a long time, just as our forefathers overlooked the usefulness of steam, being perfectly well acquainted with its expansive qualities. But let us be off. Close your port-hole, and screw it in tightly and permanently for the trip. Then let down your bunk and prepare for a night of awkward, cramped positions. We shall be more uncomfortable to-night than any other of the trip. You see, when we start, this thing will stand up on its rear end, and that end will continue to be the bottom until we begin to fall into Mars. Then the forward end will be the bottom. But after the first night our weight will have so diminished that we can sleep almost as well standing on our heads as any other way. Within fifteen hours you will have lost all idea which end of you should be right side up, and we will be quite as likely to float in the middle of the projectile as to rest upon anything."

My bed was hinged in the middle, and one end lifted up until it looked like a letter L, with the shorter part extending across the projectile and the longer part reaching up the side. I could sit in it in a half reclining posture. The doctor then pulled out a fan-like, extending lattice-work of steel slats, to form a sort of false floor over the port-hole. This was full of diamond-shaped openings between the slats, so that the view out of the rear window was not obstructed. Then he did the same to form a false floor for his compartment. Finally he said to me,--

"Now, if you are all ready, I will stand her on end;" and by applying the currents to the forward end only he caused her to rise slowly until she stood upright. The cupboard in my compartment and the desk in his end were each hung upon a central bolt, and they righted themselves as the projectile stood up, so that nothing in them was disarranged. I was sitting on the lower hinge of my bed, clutching tightly and watching everything, when the doctor called to me to turn the little wheel which operated a screw and served to push out the rudder.

"But the whole weight of the projectile is now on the rudder," I objected.

"You will have to make over all your ideas of weight," he said, with some impatience. "Run the rudder out. The gauge shows an ounce of buoyancy, which is nearly enough to counteract all the dead weight we have. You can lift the rest with the rudder-screw."

And, true enough, it was perfectly easy to whirl the little wheel around which made the rudder creep out. There was a steering wheel in the doctor's compartment and one in my own. He set it exactly amidships, and told me to prepare for the ascent. I turned out the gas in my compartment and crouched nervously over the port-hole window to watch the panorama of Earth fade away.

"Here go two batteries!" he cried. I held on frantically, expecting that we would leap into the heavens in one grand bound, as I had seen the model do. But we began to rise very slowly, a foot and a half the first second, three feet the next, and so on, as the doctor told me afterwards. It was all so slow and quiet that I was suddenly possessed with a fear that after all the projectile was a failure. Had a balloon started so slowly, it would never have risen far. This fear held me for only a minute, for when I looked down again, the landscape below was beginning to look like a dim map or a picture, instead of the reality. The doctor was steering to the northward, directly over the lake. I could see its great purple, restful surface below me, but more plainly could I discern the outline where its silvery edge bathed the white sands of the shore. Following this outline I could see a web of railroads, like ropes bent around the lower end of the lake. The night was too dark to see it long. The hundreds of huge oil tanks of Whiting had now disappeared, and I could see only the flaming tops of the iron furnaces of South Chicago. Suddenly they went out in an instant, as if a thick fog had smothered them, and there was a long minute of pale mist; and then suddenly a bright blue sky, the twinkling stars and a veil of grey shutting off all view of the Earth.

"We have passed through the clouds," said the doctor cheerily. "What does the barometer register?"

I looked, and was astonished to see the mercury down to fifteen. I asked him if he thought the barometer might be broken.

"No, that is quite right," he replied. "That is half the surface pressure, which shows that we are two and a half miles high. I have four batteries in, and we are going at a constantly increasing speed now."

I could easily believe it, for the wind howled around my compartment and whistled over the rudder aperture in a most dismal way. Whenever the rudder was changed, there was a new sound to the moaning. Still, as I looked back at the clouds, I saw that no wind was moving them. It was not wind, but only the air whistling as we rushed through it.

"Watch the barometer, and let me know the exact time when it registers seven and a half inches," said the doctor. "We shall be five miles high then, and we started at nine o'clock to a second."

I noted the rapidly sinking mercury and opened my watch. When it was just at seven and a half, I looked at the watch, and it said half a minute after nine. Knowing that could not be correct, I held it to my ear and discovered it was stopped. I attempted to wind it, but found it almost wound up.

"Something wrong with my watch, Doctor. You will have to look."

"Half a minute after nine, that can't be right!" he exclaimed. Then as the truth flashed upon him he added,--

"There is the first thing I have overlooked! Our watch springs are steel, and the magnetic currents affect them. It is strange I did not think of that, for I knew a mariner's compass would be of no use to us in steering on account of the currents. For that reason I have risen above the clouds so as to steer by the stars. I am making for the North Star yonder, now."

"We will have to get back to the same primitive methods of measuring time," I put in. "Neither weight clocks nor spring clocks would have been of any account. And an hour glass would tell a different tale just as gravity varied. We will have to rely on the Moon and stars, and it may be rather awkward." But I did not then appreciate how awkward it would be when even the markings of day and night would be taken away from us.

"We can count our pulse or go by our stomachs," said the doctor, who was really disappointed at having forgotten anything. But he was destined to get used to that. Presently he inquired,--

"What is the barometer now? Perhaps we are high enough for the present."

"There is scarcely two inches of mercury in the tube!" I cried out.

He hesitated for a moment as if calculating, and then said,--

"That makes us ten miles high. Work the rudder gradually very much farther out for this thinner atmosphere, and we will try falling awhile, with a long slant to northward."

And so saying, the doctor detached all the polarizing batteries, and I could hear the monotonous howling of the wind die down; and the whistling ceased altogether as the feeble resistance of the rarefied air slowly but surely overcame our momentum. As we began to fall, the doctor turned the rudder hard down, in order to give us a long sailing slant. This modified the position of the projectile so that it lay almost flat again, with a dip of the forward end downward.

"Lie down and have a nap while she is in this comfortable position," he said to me. "When you waken, I shall have a surprise for you."

CHAPTER VII

The Terrors of Light

I was weary from the trials of the day on Earth, and fell asleep easily. It was the red sunlight streaming in at the port-hole that awakened me. I thought I had slept but a very short time, but the night was evidently over. As soon as the doctor heard me moving, he cried out to me,--

"Here is the daylight I promised you. Did you ever see it at midnight before?"

"How do you know it is midnight? It looks more like a red sunset to me," I said, for the sun was just in the horizon.

"The sun has just set, and is now rising. It did not go out of sight, but gradually turned about and began to mount again. That is how I know it is midnight."

"Sunset presses so closely upon sunrise that night is crowded out altogether. Then this must be the land of the midnight sun that I have read about?"

"Yes, we are very near the Earth again, and this is far inside the arctic polar circle, where the sun never goes down during summer, but sets for a long night in the winter. I have kept far to the westward to avoid the magnetic pole, which might play havoc with my apparatus."

"Then your little side-trip is----"

"To the North Pole, of course!" he cried triumphantly.

How simple this vexed problem had become, after all! It had worsted the most daring travellers of all countries for centuries. Thousands upon thousands spent in sending expeditions to find the Pole had only called for other thousands to fit out relief expeditions. Ship after ship had been crashed, life after life had been clutched in its icy hand! But now it had become an after-thought, a side-trip, a little excursion to be made while waiting for midnight! And it is often that such a simple solution of the most baffling difficulties is found at last.

The doctor had been observing his quadrant, and was now busy making calculations. He called me up to his compartment.

"Longitude, 144 degrees and 45 minutes west; Latitude, 89 degrees 59 minutes and 30 seconds north. That is the way it figures out. We were half a mile from the Pole when I took my observation. We must have just crossed over it since then."

"Go down a little nearer, so we may see what it looks like!" I said excitedly.

"I dare not go too close to all that ice, or we may freeze the mercury in our thermometer and barometer. We must keep well in the sunlight, but I will lower a little."

What mountains of crusted snow! What crags and peaks of solid ice! It was impossible to tell whether it was land or sea underneath. Judging by the general level it must have been a sea, but no water was visible in any direction. The great floes of ice were piled high upon each other. A million sharp, glittering edges formed ramparts in every direction to keep off the invader by land. How impotent and powerless man would be to scale these jagged walls or climb these towering mountains! How absolutely impossible to reach by land, how simple and easy to reach through the air! The North Pole and Aerial Navigation had been cousin problems that baffled man for so long, and their solution had come together.

"Empty a biscuit tin to contain this record, and we will toss it out upon this world of ice, so that if any adventurer ever gets this far north he may find that we have already been here," said the doctor, bringing down a freshly-written page for me to sign. It read as follows:--

"Aboard Anderwelt's Gravity Projectile, 12.25 a.m., June 12th, 1892. The undersigned, having left the vicinity of Chicago at nine o'clock on the evening of June 11th, took bearings here, showing that they passed over the North Pole soon after midnight. Then they took up their course to the planet Mars.

"(Signed) HERMANN ANDERWELT. ISIDOR WERNER."

This was duly enclosed in the biscuit tin, which I bent and crimped a little around the top so that the cover would stay on tightly. Then I learned how such things were conveyed outside the projectile. A cylindrical, hollow plunger fitting tightly into the rear wall was pulled as far into the projectile as it would come. A closely fitting lid on the top of the cylinder was lifted, and the tin deposited within. The lid was then fitted down again, and the plunger was pushed out and turned over until the weight of the lid caused it to fall open and the contents to drop out. The tin sailed down, struck a tall crag, bounded off, and fell upon a comparatively level plateau. The cylinder was then turned farther over, causing the lid to close, and the plunger was pulled in again. I remember how crisply cold was that one cubic foot of air that came back with the cylinder. My teeth had been chattering ever since I wakened, and I had been too excited to put on a heavier coat.

"What is the thermometer?" asked the doctor. It was a Fahrenheit instrument we were carrying.

"Thirty-eight degrees below zero, and still falling!" I told him.

"Then we must be off at once, and at a good speed, to warm up. Now say a long good-bye to Earth, for it may be nothing more than a pale star to us hereafter."

The doctor steered to westward as he rose steadily to a height of about ten miles. Then he fell with a long slant to the south-west. He was working back into the darkness of night again. We had lost the sun long before we started to rise again.

"We are now well above the Pacific Ocean, about fifteen hundred miles north-west of San Francisco," said the doctor, consulting his large globe.

"It seems to me you cross continents with remarkable ease and swiftness. From Chicago to San Francisco alone is almost three thousand miles," I ventured.

"But we have been gone four hours, and if we had simply stood still above the Earth for four hours it would have travelled under us about four thousand miles, so that San Francisco would already have passed the place where we started."

"Then one only needs to get off somewhere and remain still in order to make a trip around the World!" I exclaimed.

"You are quite right, and travelling upon the Earth's surface is the most awkward method, because it is impossible to take advantage of the Earth's own rapid motion. Around the World in eighty days was once considered a remarkable feat, but if we were to travel steadily westward we should make the circuit in very much less than twenty-four hours. The motion of the Earth upon its axis is such an immense advantage that if we were only going from Chicago to London, the trip could be more easily and quickly made by going to the westward some twenty-one thousand miles, rather than going directly eastward less than four thousand miles. For going eastward we should have to travel a thousand miles an hour in order to keep up with the Earth. It is questionable whether we could make that speed tacking up and slanting down."

"Then we shall have to follow the course of Empire, always westward!" I laughed.

While we were talking thus, the whizzing and whistling of the wind, which had been at first very loud and hissing, had gradually died down. I looked at the barometer, and reported that there was scarcely three-eighths of an inch of mercury in the tube.

"We are practically above the atmosphere, then," said the doctor, turning in all the batteries. He tried the rudder in the ether, and found it turned her when fully extended and turned rather hard over.

"I tried to sleep this morning at Whiting to prepare for to-night's work," said the doctor presently; "but I find I am getting uncontrollably drowsy. Come up, and I will show you the course we most keep, and then I will lie down to get a little rest."

I mounted to his compartment and gazed through the telescope at Mars, looking like a little, red baby-moon, floating in one side of the blue circle.

"Keep him always in view, but in the edge of the field like that," said the doctor. "We must always steer a little to the right of him--that is, a little behind him."

"But he travels around the sun in the same direction the Earth does," I objected. "I should think we ought to aim a little ahead of him, or to the left, to allow for his motion forward in his orbit."

"That looks reasonable at first sight, doesn't it?" said the doctor. "But a little learning is a dangerous thing. I will explain to you why we must steer a little behind him after I have had my nap. I am too sleepy now;" and he finished with a yawn.

He soon fell asleep, and I was left alone to think over the events of the day and the still more strange happenings of the night. It hurt my eyes to look long through the telescope, so I closed them and gave free rein to my thoughts.

How soon will it be morning? How shall I know when it is morning? That term "morning" applies only to the surface of revolving planets. I had just seen the morning come at midnight, and then the darkness of night fall again directly after morning. After all, what are night and morning? The one is a passing into the shadow of the Earth, and the other is simply the emerging into the light. They depend on a rotation, and we shall know no more of them until we land on a revolving planet again. But which shall we have on the trip, night or daylight? Naturally we would very soon emerge from the little shadow cast by the Earth. It had taken us but an hour or two to travel out of it into the daylight and then back into the darkness again. Even if we did not leave it, the Earth would move on and leave us.

And what then? Nothing but uninterrupted, untempered, unhindered daylight! Eternal, dazzling, direct sunlight, unrelieved by any night, unstrained through any clouds! This deep blue of the starry night would be succeeded by the hot, white light of a scorching, gleaming Sun. And then (the thought chilled my bones as it fell upon me!), then how would we see Mars? How would we see any star, or perchance the Moon? Even the Earth might be drowned in that sea of everlasting, all-engulfing brilliancy! Nothing in all the Universe would be visible but the beaming Sun, and he too blindingly bright to look upon.

As the truth of all this took hold of me, it filled me with a growing terror. At any moment we might emerge from this grateful shadow of the Earth, and then we would be lost, drowned, engulfed in a blinding, sight-suffocating light! In desperate terror I looked around toward the doctor, as if for assistance. He was sleeping peacefully. He had never thought of it! This was the great thing he had overlooked! Even at starting he had a dreadful presentiment of it.

He was a great man, and his discovery a wonderful one; but here was the trouble with it. He had solved the question of navigating space, but the sunlight! the dazzling, burning, terrible sunlight! how was he to navigate that? It was simply impossible! We would have to turn back before we emerged into it. We would have to retrace our path while we were still in the grateful shadow. Ah, the blessedness of night after all!

Then slowly and cautiously, so that I might not waken him, I crept down to the rear window to see how far away the Earth was. We were at so great a distance that I could see the whole outline of it, as a great dull globe filling all the view behind us. And as I looked again I started and uttered a cry! A thin sickle of bright, white light glimmered over the whole eastern edge of it, like the first glimpse of the new Moon, but a hundred times larger! It was the sunlight! It must be creeping around the eastern edge, and would soon engulf us.

The doctor had been aroused by my cry. Not seeing me in his compartment, he had gone at once to the telescope.

"What is the matter?" he said. "You have lost the course a little." And as I peered out of my port-hole I saw that narrow sickle of light grow thinner and thinner, and finally go out. Had I imagined it all? No, I had seen it.

"Ah, Doctor, I am so glad you have wakened. I am frightened, terrified, by the light!"

CHAPTER VIII

The Valley of the Shadow

"Light! Where have you seen any light?"

"I saw the Earth begin to shine like a New Moon on the eastern edge, but----"

"Ah, that was a danger signal. I am glad you awakened me. But you are actually pale and trembling! There is no danger if you keep the course. You see, that rim of light has faded and disappeared since I corrected the course."

"Yes, but you cannot keep in this little Earthly shadow much longer; and what can we possibly do when we emerge into the fathomless, trackless effulgence of eternal sunshine? Let us turn back before we plunge into it," I pleaded.

"So that is what terrified you! Well, you have hit upon one of the greatest difficulties of the trip; but it is far from insurmountable. We will not turn back yet, especially as we have started in the most opportune time. You have mentioned this 'little shadow.' It is eight thousand miles wide at the surface of the Earth, and gradually, very gradually, tapers down to nothing far out in space. Have you ever calculated how far it reaches?"

"No," I answered. "But we moved out of it and back into it at the surface very easily, and besides, as the Earth moves forward in its orbit, the shadow will leave us."

"This little shadow is eight hundred and fifty-six thousand miles long, and we will never leave it as long as it lasts!" exclaimed the doctor. "Just at this time it points like a long arrow out in the direction of Mars. It is moving gradually as the Earth moves and hourly correcting its aim. At opposition time it will point directly and unerringly at Mars. Therefore it is a way prepared, surveyed, and marked for us through the all-enveloping sunlight, which otherwise would be dreadful enough."

"But how can we be sure of keeping in it? It is rapidly narrowing as it reaches farther out."

"I see I should have explained that to you before I went to sleep, and saved you this fright. The shadow now points behind Mars, as it is many days yet before it overtakes that planet in opposition. That is why I told you to steer always a little behind the planet. But you went a little out of the course, and immediately something warned us. That rim of light on the east of the Earth was notice to us that we were not in the centre of the shadow, but bearing too far to the left. We must keep absolutely in the dark of the Earth, with no light visible on either side of it. If a thin rim should appear on one side, we must turn toward the other until it is all dark again."

"Grant that this shadow is so enormously long, yet it is only scarcely one-fortieth of the distance to Mars," I objected. "After we emerge from it, what then?"

"With the aid of my telescope we shall probably be able to see the Earth as an orb, half or quarter as large as the Moon usually appears to us, and to observe its phases until we are several million miles from it. We must continue to keep the rim of light, which will then surround it, equal on all sides."

"Ah, but I am afraid," I interrupted, "that as soon as we pass out of this shadow the sunlight will be so bright that we cannot see any planets, not even the Earth. You know we cannot see the Moon only a quarter of a million miles away when the sun shines."

"In that case we must move the telescope to your window, put on a darkened lens, and steer so as to keep the Earth as a spot in the middle of the Sun. It must appear to us as Venus does to the Earth when she is making a transit across the face of the sun. But by our continual shifting we prevent the Earth from making a transit, and hold it as a steady spot in the centre of the Sun. This we can do for many, many million miles, continuing until we have reached the vicinity of Mars.

"And you must also remember," continued the doctor, "that the brighter the light the darker will be the shadow. Now, this projectile is a perfectly black, non-reflecting object five feet wide. It will cast a shadow in front of it five hundred feet long. When we are comparatively near Mars my telescope, situated in the miniature night cast by the projectile, will find the planet, and we can then steer directly for him. If we should chance within eighty thousand miles of him, he would attract us to him in a straight line. But we shall not rely upon chance. Moreover, when we are as near to him as that, the light and heat of the Sun's rays will have decreased sixty or seventy per cent. When Mars is farthest from the Sun, he receives only one-third as much light as the Earth does. But he is now almost at his nearest point to the Sun, and receives half as much light."

"Well, you certainly have a pretty clear idea of how to steer the course all the way, Doctor. And I was hasty enough to think you had overlooked this entire phase of the subject!" I ejaculated.

"Indeed, I have thought of it very much. And we should not enjoy all these advantages if we had not started just before opposition. At any other time the Earth's shadow would not point toward Mars, nor would the transit of the Earth over the Sun be of any use to us."

"All this reassures me greatly," I replied; "but I shall keep a close watch from my rear window for danger lights on the Earth."

"It must be time for breakfast," put in the doctor. "Will you see how tempting a meal you can prepare?"

There was one reservoir built inside the compartments, from which we drew cool water, and another built next to the outer steel framework, from which we could draw boiling water. As this tank was connected with the discharge pipe of the air-pump, and thus with the exterior, I was disgusted to find that, although the water boiled furiously, and was rapidly wasting away in steam, it did not become hot enough to make good beef tea. The heat escaped with the steam at a comparatively low temperature, so that I was compelled to boil water over my gas jet for the meat extract, which we drank instead of coffee. I also prepared some sandwiches of roast beef and cold ham, and with great relish we began our diet of ready cooked foods, which was to continue for so long.

After this meal I felt quite sleepy, for I had enjoyed but three hours' rest. The doctor saw my yawns and told me to turn out the gas and have a long doze, and I was glad enough to do so.

I must have slept soundly for an hour or two, and then I remember dozing and rolling lazily in my bed, as I usually did at home on Sunday mornings. During my previous nap the bunk had seemed hard and cramped, and I had privately grumbled at the doctor for overlooking personal comforts; but now I felt that luxurious sensation of sleeping on soft mattresses and yielding springs, though of course I had neither. I do not know how soon I should have thoroughly awakened had I not lifted my hand to rub my eye, and unwittingly dealt myself a stinging blow in the face. This roused me.

But what was the matter with that arm? It was as it had once been in a nightmare, when it felt detached from its place, and moved lightly and without effort, like a bough in the wind. I pinched it with my other hand, and it was quite sensible to the pain. In fact, the other arm was now acting in the same queer way. I arose in bed quickly to see what was the matter, and the upper part of my body bent violently over and struck against my knees. Then my effort to take an upright position threw me on my back again. Evidently my muscles were not working as they were when I went to bed. They must be over-excited and over-active. I immediately thought of my heart as the principal and controlling muscle, and in my eagerness to feel its beating my hand dealt me a slap in the chest. These blows, though rapid, did not seem to hurt as much as they ought, after the first stinging sensation. I found my heart was beating regularly enough.

"Doctor!" I cried out presently, more to test my voice than for anything else. It sounded perfectly natural, and my vocal chords were not over-stimulated or abnormal.

He came half way down from his compartment soon after hearing me, and rested his elbow against one side of the aperture between the compartments, leaning against the other side easily. He had a scale made of heavy coiled spring in his hand.

"I wish to calculate our distance from the Earth," he said. "Do you mind weighing yourself on these scales?" and he held the spiral down toward me.

"You can't support my weight!" I exclaimed, and springing up from the bed I bumped my head against the partition between the compartments, eight feet above my floor. I grasped the lower ring of the scale he held down and lifted up my feet. It seemed as if something were still supporting me from below, for scarcely one-tenth my weight had fallen upon my hands.

"You weigh twenty and a half pounds," he said, and then inquired, "What did you weigh on Earth?"

"One hundred and eighty-five pounds," I answered, just beginning to understand that our greatly increased distance from the Earth had much reduced her attraction for us.

"That is disappointing," he answered, "for we are only eight thousand miles from home; but our velocity is still constantly increasing."

"I would like to buy things here and sell them at the surface," I exclaimed.

"You wouldn't make anything by it if you used the ordinary balance scales," replied the doctor.

Try as hard as I would, I could not accustom my muscles to these new conditions. They were too gross and clumsy for the fine and delicate efforts which were now necessary. I was constantly hitting and slapping myself, though these blows scarcely hurt, and never resulted in bruises. I attempted a thorough re-training of my muscles, which was to all intents an utter failure, for weight continued diminishing much more rapidly than my stubborn muscles could appreciate. After another eight thousand miles, which were quickly made, we had but one twenty-fifth our usual weight, which reduced me to seven pounds. And for most of the trip we weighed practically nothing, suffering many inconveniences on that account.

CHAPTER IX

Tricks of Refraction

The doctor figured out that we should be quite insensible to any weight when we were seventy-five thousand miles from the Earth. At fifty thousand miles I would still weigh a pound, and when we had finished the first million miles, the entire projectile, with its two occupants and all its dead weight, would weigh considerably less than an ounce. That was a mere start on the enormous trip ahead of us; but when that distance was reached, we could no longer count upon terrestrial gravity for accelerating our speed. We must travel with our accumulated momentum, unless by that time the Sun should have taken the place of the Earth, and with his vaster forces continue to repel us Marsward.

As we sat talking the doctor grew weary, and soon unconsciously dropped asleep. I left him to enjoy his rest, and, tossing a scrap of ham bone to Two-spot, I went up to take my place at the telescope.

Mars seemed to be exactly in the right part of the field. I surveyed the starry stretches ahead with a feeling a little akin to fear. I was queerly affected by the vast expanse of loneliness outside, and by the deathly quiet prevailing both without and within. There was not the slightest whizzing or whistling now. We might be hanging perfectly motionless in space for all I knew. The batteries made no sound either. I could hear only the low, regular breathing of the doctor as he slept, and the slight crunching of Two-spot on his bone. Presently I thought of looking for the danger lights, but I looked through the telescope instead, and saw the little red planet in his proper place.

What a vast distance we were from any planet! If anything were to happen to us, no one on Earth or in the heavens would ever know of it. I had never been homesick, but a very little would have made me Earthsick just then. I did not like the upper end of the projectile because I could not look back at the home planet. I wondered if it was all dark back that way, or if those warning lights had begun to appear. That idea seemed to haunt me. I touched the steering wheel just a little while I kept my eyes on Mars. He moved slightly in the field at once. Then I turned the wheel back until he took his former place. It was reassuring to know how easily the projectile minded her great rudder, which was now fully extended like an enormous wing. This made me feel that we were masters of the situation, that all this vast space was as nothing to us, that any planet in the heavens must mind us, and that though Earth was driving us away, she must draw us back if we willed it. More than that, she would warn us of all dangers. Perhaps she was sending that warning now. I had promised to look out for it. I felt that I must go down. I crept softly past the doctor and stooped over the port-hole. My eyes had scarcely found the Earth in the darkness when I drew back quickly and clapped my hand over my mouth to prevent a cry escaping me. Then I looked again more closely. There was no small illuminated portion of the surface this time, but a great smear of light just outside the edge of the Earth. It was of a dull red colour, with rainbow tints around the edges, and was much the shape of a great umbrella held just above one quarter of her surface to westward.

I gave the steering wheel in my compartment a sharp turn in the direction which should cause the light to disappear. Then I crouched and looked again, but instead of being reduced in size the light broadened and swelled. It was as if one edge of the umbrella were left against the Earth's surface, and then the umbrella was being turned gradually around until it faced me and formed an enormous disc, apparently a third as big as the Earth. Then, as it slowly moved outward, its edge seemed to cleave to the Earth's, as two drops of water do when about to separate. Finally, it detached itself entirely, and stood as a great muddy red orb a little to the west of and above the Earth. It filled me with dismay to see all this happen after I had turned the rudder in the direction which should have corrected our course. In desperation I gave the wheel an additional hard turn and looked again. At last the great red patch was shrinking; slowly it diminished, and finally disappeared. But just as I was breathing a sigh of relief, I noticed the white sickle of light on the east side that I had seen before; only it was increasing most threateningly now. Yes, it was assuming the same umbrella shape and detaching itself a little from the eastern edge of the Earth. There was still a narrow rim of bright white light on the Earth, and this dimmer umbrella shape was faintly separated from its edge. Its outlines were marked by flashes of rainbow colours, as had been the case on the other side. I sprang to the wheel and gave it several frantic turns back the other way. Then I ran up to the telescope for a hurried view, and Mars was nowhere to be seen! I hastened back to the wheel and gave it a vicious additional turn. I was determined to prevent this umbrella from opening at me! And true enough it ceased enlarging, and gradually shrank and settled back upon the surface of the Earth. Then slowly it faded and disappeared, as it had done before when the doctor had corrected the course. I eased back the wheel and went to look for Mars again, but he was not in the field. As I returned I brushed unconsciously against the doctor in my excitement. He roused himself, sat up, and watched me peering out of the port-hole. I was gazing at a new appearance.

"There it is again!" I cried, for below the Earth and to westward a pale white disc came into view all at once, not gradually, as if emerging from behind the Earth, but springing out complete and detached.

"Doctor!" I said, catching him by the arm and pulling him down to the port-hole, "what is that?"

"That? That is the Moon, my boy. Has it excited you so much?"

"Yes; I have been trying to dodge it. But you had better look to the wheel," I cried.

He ran up to the telescope, and I heard him exclaim, "Donnerwetter!" half under his breath. But with a few careful turns of the wheel he found the planet again, and moved him to the right part of the field. Meanwhile the Full Moon shone on us with its pale glimmer. But a thin rim of it next to the Earth gleamed brightly with rich silver light.

"I thought you said we had started in the dark of the Moon. I thought it was behind the Earth," I interposed.

"That is the New Moon just emerging. It will probably not be seen on the Earth until to-morrow night, but as we are at a greater distance we see it first," replied the doctor.

"But that is not a New Moon, it is a Full Moon, which should not be seen for fourteen days yet," I objected.

"Pardon me, it is a New Moon," he insisted. "That inner rim of brightness is all the sunlight she reflects. The paler glimmer is Earth-light, which she reflects. When she is really a Full Moon, she will be perfectly dark to us."

Then I explained to him the first umbrella appearance, and its gradual swelling and final disappearance.

"Rainbow colours around the edge and a gradual changing of the shape, you say? That means refraction. The Earth's atmosphere has been playing tricks on you. The umbrella of dull red light was a refracted view of the Moon before she really came into sight. Rays of light from the hidden Moon were bent around to you. Then, as she gradually moved from behind the Earth, her appearance was magnified by the convex lens formed by the atmosphere, bent over that planet. Presently it diminished and went out altogether, you say?"

"Yes, but that was because I steered away from her," I replied.

"No; you could hardly lose her so easily," he answered. "Did you ever try holding an object behind a water-bottle or a gold-fish jar? There is a place near the edge of the jar where a thing cannot be seen, though the glass and water are perfectly transparent. The rays of light from the object are bent around, through the glass and water, away from the eyes of the observer. It was like that with the Moon when she disappeared. She was really drawing out from the Earth all the time. Finally, when her light passed beyond the atmosphere altogether, she became suddenly visible in a different place and shining with another colour. What we see now is the real Moon in her true place. The other appearances were all tricks of refraction."

"But when I had turned away," I explained, "there came a thin rim of bright light on the other side of the Earth, and a gradually appearing umbrella shape there too."

"Ah, then you steered far enough out of your course to see part of the illuminated surface of the Earth. That was the real danger light. And if it began to assume the umbrella shape, detached from the Earth, that was due to atmospheric refraction of sunlight. This great shadow we are travelling in has an illuminated core, which we shall encounter when we have proceeded a little further. I tell you of it now, so it may not give you another shock. Have you ever noticed the small bright spot which illuminates the centre of the shadow cast by a glass of water? That is partly the same as the core of light which exists in the heart of this shadow. Rays from the sun, passing on all sides of the Earth, are refracted through the atmosphere and bent inward. You must have steered over into some of these rays just now, and then turned back from them. Somewhat farther on all these refracted rays will meet at a common centre, which they will illuminate, and we shall have an oasis of rainbow-tinged sunlight in this great desert of shadow. The sun will then appear to us to be an enormous circle of dull light entirely surrounding the Earth."

"I don't fancy running into that at all," said I. "Can't we avoid it by steering out?"

"Avoid it!" exclaimed the doctor. "We must investigate it, and photograph the peculiar appearance of the sun. Light seems to have more terrors for you than anything else just now. You must get over your rush-and-do tendency; you must stifle your emotions and impulses, and learn to think of things in a more calm and scientific manner."

"But that is not so easy for me, Doctor. Whenever I am left alone, a feeling of dread possesses me. I am used to having many people, bustling noises, and confused movement all about me. The silence of Space stifles me, and the loneliness of the ether oppresses and overcomes me strangely."

"I prescribe a change of air for you," answered the doctor. "You will do better in a rarer atmosphere. Let us send what we have been breathing back to Whiting, and make a new one to suit ourselves."

CHAPTER X

The Twilight of Space

"Shall I come up into your compartment for the operation?" I asked.

"No; for this first time we will pump out my compartment, as I wish to observe from the rear port-hole the action of the air which we set free."

The bulkhead, with its bevelled edge, was therefore fitted into the opening between the compartments, and I took the first turn at the lever handle of the air-pump, while the doctor observed from the window. I had given the handle less than a dozen vigorous strokes when the doctor suddenly exclaimed,--

"Stop! Wait a moment;" and he began pulling at the bulkhead, which was already rather tightly wedged in by the air pressure. "I have left the rabbit inside," he said, when he found breath to speak. And poor little bunny's heart was beginning to beat fast when he was rescued.

Then we began again. The doctor watched the escaping air for some time, evidently forgetting that I was at all interested in it.

"All quite as I expected," he said at last. "Only I had forgotten about the snow."

"Nothing will ever be very new or interesting to you," I put in; "but pray remember I am here, and rapidly getting empty of breath and full of curiosity."

Then he relieved me at the pump handle, and this is what I saw from the port-hole: The air escaping from the discharge pipe of the air-pump was visible, and looked like dull, grey steam. Immediately on being set free it swelled and expanded greatly, and sank away from us slowly. But at the instant of its expansion the cold thus produced froze the moisture of the air into a fine fleecy snow, which lasted but a second as it sank away from us and melted in the heat, which the thermometer showed to be close upon ninety-five degrees. This miniature snowstorm was seen for an instant only after each down motion of the pump handle.

"Where is this air going?" I inquired. "The little clouds of it seem to drop away from us like lead; but that must be because of our speed."

"It is falling back to the Earth, to join the outer layer of rare atmosphere there. If we had a positive current instead of a negative one, the air would not leave us, but we should gradually be surrounded by an atmosphere of our own, which we should retain until some planet, whose gravitational attraction is vastly stronger than ours, stole it from us. When we begin to fall into Mars, we shall acquire such an enveloping atmosphere; and we can draw upon it and re-compress it if our inner supply should become exhausted."

"If this air is falling home to earth," said I, "we could send messages back in that manner."

"We can drop them back at any time, regardless of the air," he answered, and then added suddenly, "but it will make a beautiful experiment to drop out a bottle now."

He ceased pumping, and opening a bottle of asparagus tips, he placed them in a bowl, and prepared to drop out the bottle. I took my pencil and wrote this message to go inside,--"Behold, I have decreed a judgment upon the Earth; for it shall rain pickle bottles and biscuit tins for the period of forty days, because of the wickedness of the world, unless she repent!" And I pictured to myself the perplexity of the poor devil who should see this message come straight down from heaven!

In order to make his experiment more successful, the doctor put in half a dozen bullets from one of the rifles, to make the weight more perceptible. Then he put the bottle into the discharging cylinder, and preparing to push it out he stooped over the port-hole. At a signal from him I gave the pump handle several quick, successive motions, and at the same instant he let drop the bottle. At once he cried out,--

"Beautiful! and just as I thought."

"But I didn't see it!" I protested. "What was it?"

"The instant the bottle was released the discharged air was immediately attracted toward it, and gradually surrounded it entirely. It was like a little planet with an atmosphere of its own, as they fell back to the Earth together."

"But I couldn't see it; I had to pump," I complained. "We must do it again."

"We shall soon have our bottled things all emptied out on plates to dry up and spoil," he objected. So I emptied a biscuit tin this time, and delaying for no message, I put it in the discharging cylinder. Then I bent over the port-hole and gave the signal for the pumping. As I thrust out the tin I was astonished to see the lid pop off the first thing. The quick expansion of the air inside it did that. This air, as well as the air from the discharge pipe, seemed to flee from it instead of surrounding it, as the doctor had said. I continued watching so long that he finally said,--

"Hasn't it fallen out of sight yet?"

"No; it is not falling away swiftly as the air does. It is following the projectile! It is not gathering any air about it as you said it would. It does not quite keep up with us; but considering our speed, it is doing remarkably well!"

The doctor was not inclined to believe me until he had looked for himself. He watched and pondered for a minute or two. Then his surprise ceased, and he spoke in that assured way which always irritated me.

"Quite natural, after all," he said. "That biscuit can is made of thin sheet-iron with a surface coating of tin. The iron has become magnetized by induction, and the Earth repels the can just as it repels us. It will follow us to the dead-line, and probably on to Mars, unless the sheet-iron loses its polarization. If we had cast out a thing of solid iron, it would rush ahead of us, instead of falling a little behind, as this does, for it would have no dead weight to carry. But we could not put such a thing out of the rear end, for no force would make it fall that way. If we put it out of the forward port-hole, it would beat us in the race toward Mars."

I remarked to the doctor that the air-pump seemed to be incorrectly built, for its action was strangely difficult in the reverse manner that it should have been. The down strokes went by themselves with a quick snap, but the up strokes were as if against pressure, and the moment the handle was released it flew down again. He had not tested the pump at the surface, as it was of a well-known make, but it certainly seemed to work backwards. Moreover, the more nearly we had a compartment emptied of air, the more difficult the pumping should become, but here again the reverse seemed to be the case, for the longer we worked the easier the up strokes became.

The temperature of the projectile was still fairly comfortable, and the doctor allowed the condensed air to issue very slowly into the partial vacuum in his compartment until it produced a barometric pressure of twenty-seven. Then we pulled back the bulkhead, and when the new atmosphere had mixed with the old in my compartment, a pressure of twenty-eight resulted.

"That is about the way the barometer stands during tempests at sea," remarked the doctor. I could not notice much difference from the air we had previously had. Possibly it was fresher and slightly more exhilarating.

The effort at the pump had made us both hungry again, and I prepared from meat extracts a warm and rather thick gravy to put over the asparagus tips. I attempted to pour it, but it was so light that its sticky consistency prevented it from running. We had a hundred such examples daily of the changes which lack of weight caused in the simplest operations. With sandwiches made of biscuits and condensed meat, we eked out a luncheon. This must have been about noon, for when it was over I remember noticing that we no longer needed the gas in the compartment, for there was a gradually increasing mellow light outside.

"Are we already emerging from the shadow?" I inquired eagerly.

"No, not yet," replied the doctor. "But we are now entering its illuminated core. I must prepare to photograph the strange appearance of the Sun that we shall see presently."

I hastened to the port-hole, and did not leave until it was all over. What I then saw was one of the most beautiful things of the whole trip. The light outside was not bright, but soft and dreamy, like the first twilight after a rich day of summer. The great corona all around the outer edge of the Earth was the most magnificent appearance I have ever seen. It was not at all dazzling, but had the melting shades, first of a sunrise and then of a gorgeous sunset. We had missed the gradual appearance of the phenomenon, but we had a good view of its highest splendour. The colours were continually but slowly changing, and finally the darker hues gradually suffused and dyed the pinks and crimsons.

The Earth was now about three times the diameter of a rising Full Moon, and the corona was about a quarter her width, and looked as if twenty shell-pink suns were set one against the other and overlapping all about the edge of the dark orb.

"How do you know that is not really the extending edge of the Sun?" I asked the doctor. "Perhaps we are already far enough away to see it all about the Earth like that."

"If that were really the Sun, the light from his extending edge would illuminate the surface of the Earth towards us. The planet's outline would be irregular and partly glowing, but you see it is quite dull and dark, and the outline is most plainly visible."

In rapt attention I watched the delicate shell-pink change to a deeper hue of orange, and then our twilight waned a little and turned a sombre grey. Presently the corona glowed a rich maroon, gradually dying to a luminous purple, which slowly deepened and darkened, and finally melted into the general blackness. And lo! we were in the shadow again, and the dreamily beautiful panorama was over.

"It must have lasted nearly an hour," said the doctor. "I am sorry we did not notice the beginning, but it must have commenced with the same dull shades we saw at the end, and gradually changed to brighter colours. I secured three negatives when the glow was most intense."

"Then we have had a waxing and a waning twilight coming together in the middle of our night. And the corona was like a sunrise, followed immediately by a sunset," I exclaimed.

"And why shouldn't it appear so?" said the matter-of-fact doctor. "Twilight is the commonest phenomenon of refraction with which we are acquainted, and sunrise and sunset are merely a mixture of refraction and reflection. There is nothing new about it."

"Now, Doctor, we must remain friends, but you shall not continually tarnish my poetry with your accursed science! I thank my Creator that He made me ignorant enough to admire the beauties of nature. You are continually peeping behind the scenes, and pointing out the grease paints, the lime-lights and the sham effects. Let me enjoy the beauty of the tableau, no matter how it is produced. I would give all of your pat knowledge for that feeling of profound awe which rises in the untutored breast at beholding the magnificent grandeur of unfamiliar nature."

"When your ecstasy has quite passed, I shall appreciate a little cold mutton and biscuits, and then we must pump out again," he replied.

CHAPTER XI

Telling the Time by Geography

After supper I went up into his compartment, and having arranged the bulkhead, began the tedious operation at the pump handle. It was a matter of pure muscular strength, as the effort had to be made to lift the handle, which snapped back sharply when released. I was working vigorously when I was suddenly struck dumb at seeing the handle break off just at the point of leverage, so that it was quite impossible to operate it. The doctor heard the handle fall, and looked around in great vexation.

"That means asphyxiation within twenty-four hours!" he exclaimed.

"Which is plenty of time to think it over," I answered.

After all, why was this pumping necessary? If a way could be devised to open a valve, all the air would rush out of my compartment as easily as beer runs out of a bung-hole. In fact, it did rush out a little at a time, which is what made the handle go down of itself. But any such new valve would have to be automatically closed, as it would be manifestly impossible to enter and shut it. I kept on thinking, and finally began examining the partition between the compartments. There seemed to be several long screws that went quite through it.

"Doctor, did you ever hear of those wise people who, after every freshet, shipped the surplus water down the river in boats? Well, it strikes me this air-pumping is just about as useless labour. Help me pull in the bulkhead and I will show you something."

I went at once to the cylinder we used for discharging things from the projectile. With a pair of pliers I chipped off a small piece of the edge of the closing lid in two places, one near each end. This made two little irregular holes into the cylinder about eight inches apart. Then I pushed it half way out, so that one hole was outside and the other inside. Of course the air rushed through the inner hole into the cylinder, and thence through the outer hole to the exterior.

"Shut that thing!" cried the doctor, when he saw what I had done. "Do you wish to suffocate us? That will let the air out perfectly, but how are you going to close it to admit the condensed air?"

"People unskilled in these matters are so hasty!" I said rather sarcastically. "Wait until I have finished and you will see."

I found he had a screw-driver, and I loosened one of the long screws and enlarged the half of its hole toward my compartment. Then I whittled a block of soft wood, so that it would slide smoothly into this half of the hole. Driving the screw home again, I just allowed its tip to enter the end of the block. Then I fastened a piece of stout twine to the cylinder and the other end to the block of wood, which was almost opposite it. Pushing the cylinder half way out, I made the twine taut, and hastening into the doctor's compartment, I thrust in the bulkhead. The air was rapidly escaping. Waiting long enough for all of it to have leaked out, I then unscrewed the long screw, which gradually drew in the block of wood and the twine, and thus pulled the cylinder into the projectile so that there was no connection with the exterior. Then the doctor let in the condensed air to a barometric pressure of twenty-six, and the whole operation was over in a few minutes. My compartment must have been almost a complete vacuum. When it was over, I cried rather triumphantly to the doctor,--

"There, you see, one doesn't need a steam pump to make the water run over Niagara! At this distance from the surface, nature abhors a gas and prefers a vacuum!" He was inclined to be rather sulky at first, but he really did not like pumping any better than I did.

I should say it was about five hours later that we noticed it was growing gradually lighter outside. Mars lost his ruddiness and grew pale in a grey field. Our view of the Earth was also becoming more and more misty.

"We are emerging from the black core of the shadow into the semi-illuminated penumbra," said the doctor. Then he altered his course experimentally, and found a slightly darker path, but it soon began changing again to grey.

"There is no use trying to keep in the umbra any longer. It is growing too narrow. The penumbra will last quite a long time yet, but it will gradually get fainter and fainter. We shall not plunge at once into the dreadful light you fear so much. Keep your eyes glued to the Earth. I can scarcely see Mars any longer. The whole field is getting blank and white."

The rear vista was also growing a pale white, and I could distinguish the form of the Earth as a darker object slightly larger than a full moon when risen. But it was all growing dimmer and dimmer as the penumbra faded toward the perfect light.

"Mars is completely gone now," said the doctor. "The field of the telescope is one pale curtain of light. I have steered to the left to go ahead of him now, as there is no longer any reason for going behind him."

I heard him working at the telescope as if loosening it from its fastenings, but I dared not take my eyes from the Earth to see what he was doing. Presently he called out to me,--

"Make room down there. I must bring the instrument down and observe the Earth now. Be careful you don't lose sight of her." But the instant he removed the telescope from its bearings and uncovered his forward window, I lost all view of the Earth. The new light now entering by his window, from behind me, made it impossible to see so far.

"Too late!" I cried; "I have lost her! We are alone in limitless space, without even the company of the planets!"

But while the doctor was carefully lowering the telescope, my eyes were still searching, and presently I perceived a thin crescent of faintly brighter light, growing gradually wider. It was like a new moon dimly seen in a clear part of the sky when the afternoon sun is cloud-hidden. The doctor stopped to look where I pointed it out to him, and then changed the wheel a little.

"That is a thin slice of the illuminated part of the Earth," he said. "We can no longer see the dark side which has been visible to us while in the shadow. Fortunately our new course a little ahead of Mars will give us a constant view of this thin crescent."

We now stood the instrument on end over the port-hole window, which brought the small end near the aperture between the compartments. When the doctor had secured a focus, he called me to look. The crescent was greatly magnified, but the outline of the sphere on the other side could not be seen, nor could anything be distinguished in the centre. Both the outer and inner edges of the crescent were ragged and irregular in places, and there were faint darker spots on its surface. I called the doctor's attention to the fact that the ragged appearance was always in the form of extending teeth on the outer side of the crescent, and in the form of notches eaten into its inner edge. He studied all these appearances carefully and finally said,--

"This crescent is that part of Earth which is just coming into morning. It is gradually shifting from east to west with the Earth's rotation of course. What we see now, however, is land almost from pole to pole. There is a small sea just above the middle, which might be the Mediterranean. Moreover, it must be mountainous land to cause the ragged edges and the shadows inside."

Then he turned away to get his globe, and I took the place at the instrument. He was slowly turning the globe and examining it thoughtfully as he said to himself,--

"The only continuous land from pole to pole with one interrupting sea must be over the two Americas or over Europe and Africa. The American mountain ranges run from north to south, while through Europe and Africa they are scarce, and almost uniformly run from east to west. Besides, the sand of Sahara would be sure to show as a large, bright, regular spot. A section from longitude 70 to 80 west would include the Green Mountains and the Alleghanies of North America and the Andes of South America, and in that case the darker spot in the centre would be the Caribbean Sea."

"Look here!" I cried. "Toward the lower end the inner outline is growing darker but more regular, and faint streaks or shadows reach through the brighter light toward the dark greenish regular surface which looks like water."

He observed closely and said,--

"Those shadows must be cast to westward by the enormous peaks of the Andes, and the dark greenish surface they reach toward must be the Pacific Ocean."

Then he consulted his globe while I looked. "The first two to come into view," he said, "would be the two great peaks in Bolivia, over twenty-one thousand feet high."

"There are two of them together," I said, "and now others are rapidly coming into view. There are five more scattered unequally, and then, lower down, three near together."

"Then there is not the slightest doubt that we see the Lower Andes," he said. "These last you mention are scattered just as you say along the border between Chili and Argentina, and the group of three are near Valparaiso, the peak of Aconcagua being the tallest. But watch now for the group in Ecuador, about midway between the top and bottom of the crescent. There are four very large peaks and numerous smaller ones."

"The middle all looks bright yet, like land, with no shadows or greenish spots. But a queer thing is happening lower down, where the shadows have ceased lengthening and are now fading. There are several fine points of light just beyond the outer edge of the crescent. They are mere bright specks, but gradually they join with the surface, making a rough toothed edge."

"Ah, that phenomenon has been observed upon the Moon," said he. "That is the sun shining on the snow-capped peaks first, and then, when the diminutive outline of the mountain comes into view, it looks like a tooth."

"The same is happening all down the coast," I reported. "Now I see it on the lower group of three."

"Give me the instrument," demanded the doctor. "That can be nothing but the west coast of South America, and if that be the case, the whole thing will be repeated for the tall group in Ecuador, dominated by Chimborazo."

As I surrendered the telescope to him, the whole lower part of the crescent was dark, but with regular edges. Only in the middle, which should have been about the Equator, and in the upper part, was there the bright lustre of land reflection. He watched for fully half an hour before observing anything remarkable. At last he exclaimed,--

"Now they are beginning! Five streaks near together and just at the Equator. They are almost equidistant from each other, and the next to the lowest one is the longest. Now the top one begins to fade! Yes, and a point of light has appeared detached from the outer edge, and now another and another! They are growing inward toward the surface. Now they are all connected like five saw teeth; the bottom one is the shortest, and that next very high one is old Chimborazo."

"Then it is morning at Quito and also at Pittsburg!" I said, tracing up the 80th meridian.

"Yes, and we have been one complete day and about five hours more travelling the nine hundred thousand miles that lie between this and Earth," replied he.

"That makes us one full meal behind time," I said; "but we have discovered a way to make the Andes call us for breakfast. When the Pacific Ocean has passed from view, Japan and Australia shall strike noon for us, and we will have supper and call it night when the Indian Ocean is gone and darkest Africa has come into view!"

CHAPTER XII

Space Fever

We counted seven successive returns of the peaks of the Andes, and being by that time certainly six million miles from the Earth, we could distinguish them no longer. Then followed what I remember as a very long and unspeakably monotonous period, without any adequate method of marking the time. Our days became a full week long, for the only way we could guess at the time was by the quarterings of the Moon. We could still see her about the size of a marble in the telescope, and as her crescent began to wane, and finally her light entirely disappeared, we knew she was then just between us and the Earth, and shining upon that planet as a Full Moon. This was due to occur fifteen days after our departure. Then we watched her grow from a thin crescent to a bright quarter, and we knew another week had elapsed.

"We shall soon be able to determine one date with absolute certainty," I said to the doctor, when we must have been some twenty days out. "I have been reading up your almanack, and I find there is a total eclipse of the Sun by the Moon on June 29th."

"You might as well try to eclipse him with a straw-hat, as far as we are concerned," he replied. "The Moon will necessarily be on the further side of the Earth when that occurs, and the eclipse will barely reach the Earth. It will fall short of us by a matter of some thirty million miles!"

It was soon after this that we gave up observing the Earth as a planet, put on our darkened lens, and proceeded to hold her as a spot in the Sun a little to the left of his centre. The Moon remained a tiny spot of light outside for a few days; but finally she entered the Sun also, and was seen as a faint spot travelling toward the Earth-spot.

Although the dazzling quality of the light, into which we had emerged after the second day, was finally beginning to wane and pale a little, Mars was still invisible. In fact, no stars or planets were visible; only the gleaming Sun with the Earth-spot upon it. Our thermometer was poorly placed in the glare of the Sun at the rear; but it showed the heat was decreasing, and from a temperature of thirty-five degrees, observed at the end of the second day, it had now fallen to twelve, and was diminishing regularly about two degrees daily as nearly as we could reckon.

Our appetites were steadily failing, and for two very good reasons: the unsuitable foods and the impossibility of getting any exercise. There was no such thing as getting any healthy actions of the body. Nothing had any weight, and such a thing as physical labour was impossible on the face of it. I attempted to go through regular courses of gymnastics at frequent intervals; but as my body and its members weighed nothing, my muscles found nothing whatever to expend their force upon. I thought myself worse than Prometheus bound upon his rock, for he could at least struggle with the birds of prey and pull upon his chains! I might as well have been utterly paralyzed, and I actually began to fear that I should lose all my strength, and that my muscles would forget their cunning.

And our foods could not have been more unsuitable. The light vegetable diet which this lack of exercise called for was impossible. We had never had any fresh vegetables or fruits, and our tinned and canned supplies of these had been rapidly exhausted. We had plenty of solid, meaty foods and beef essences; but our systems did not require these, and at last absolutely refused to have them. I lived for days at a time upon beer and biscuits, and looked longingly at my cigars. I believed I could have existed comfortably and luxuriously upon smoke alone. My dreams were filled with visions of ripe, luscious fruits and fresh, crisp vegetables. When I awoke, I loathed the only foods we had.

I believe I should finally have given up eating, had I not hit upon a method of exercise at last. It was a sort of rowing or pulling machine, which I rigged up by running a bar through one end of the doctor's spring scales, and fastening the other end to the foot of my bed. I pulled vigorously against this spring for hours at a time, and was delighted to find that my strength had not left me, and that I could easily lift as much as these scales had been made to weigh. I remember the returned appetite with which I enjoyed potted meat and a tinned pudding, after the first hour of as vigorous exercise as our rarefied air would permit.

The Moon-spot had disappeared and gone to her eclipse behind the Earth, when an incident occurred to vary the monotony of our existence a little, and to suggest to me a diversion that had been hitherto forbidden. Our supply of water in the outer tank had long ago boiled away, and I had lighted the gas to heat water for the doctor's coffee. I had taken the cup up to him and remained chatting with him, when presently I smelled something burning from the compartment below. I descended quickly, and saw that my light bedclothes, which now weighed less than a feather, and often floated from their place, had been drawn into the flame by the draft of the burning gas. They were floating about the compartment now, all aflame and threatening to set fire to everything. We had not a drop of water to spare; but for once I thought of the right thing to do without hesitation. I pushed out the ventilating cylinder, hurried back to the doctor's compartment and thrust in the bulkhead. Within two minutes all the air had escaped from my room, and the fire had died for lack of oxygen. I waited a few minutes longer for the smoke to escape, and then we admitted condensed air, but only to the remarkably low pressure of eighteen. Within five minutes the compartment was ready again, and there was not a trace of smoke or smell of fire to be perceived.

"I congratulate you on your quick perception and prompt action," said the doctor when it was over.

"Quick rubbish!" I exclaimed. "I have been a dundering fool for four weeks by the Moon! I might just as well have been smoking ever since I contrived this self-ventilating arrangement. The compartment becomes a perfectly clean vacuum at each operation, yet I had to wait for this bed clothing to catch fire before I could think of so simple a thing!"

It was at the meal time just preceding the next changing of air that I opened the last tin of canned peas, as a sort of treat for the doctor to offset my expected revel in fragrant tobacco. I prepared half the quantity for him, but left my portion in the tin until I should be hungrier. With the prospects of a good smoke before me, I had no appetite for food. I put in the bulkhead to prevent the smoke from entering his compartment and lighted my Havana. Then I took Two-spot on my lap and stretched myself for a reverie. On Earth, smoking time had been my period for reflection. And far back on that distant planet, what were they doing now? In that one busy corner that had known me, they had probably wondered at my disappearance for a day or two; but after the month that had passed I was certainly forgotten. There were few back there whom I cared for, and not many had much reason to remember me. My interests, my desires, my hopes were all ahead of me on a new planet. And what was waiting for me on Mars? Discovery, riches perhaps, and a measure of fame when I returned. Then I thought of the numberless problems that the next few weeks must solve for us. Would there be intelligent inhabitants on Mars? Would they be in the forms of men or beasts? Would they be civilized or savage? Would they speak a language, and how could we learn to communicate with them? Would they have foods suitable to us; indeed, would the very air they breathed be fit to sustain our lives? Should we find them peaceable, or, if warlike, should we be able to cope with them?

These thoughts were interrupted by the doctor, who called feebly to me to come up. "Don't eat any of the peas," he said weakly. "There was a queer taste about them, and they have made me deathly sick."

He was very wretched, and grew rapidly worse. I immediately saw that it was a severe case of poisoning, and I did everything I could to relieve him, but he groaned in agony for several hours. Finally he fell asleep, but his rest was disturbed by fits of delirium, in which he raved wildly in German mixed with English. As he slept I had time to think the matter over carefully. After all, it was a thing which required only simple remedies, and I had administered them. It was only a question of a little nursing and a careful diet, and he would be well again.

But his fever increased and his delirium became more frequent, and I began to appreciate that the derangement incident to the poisoning had prepared the way for a more serious illness. During his ravings I caught a glimpse of the struggling and ambitious side of his nature, which he always so carefully repressed.

Once I heard him mumble this to himself in German: "Kepler perceived a little, he saw dimly; Newton comprehended the easy half; but Anderwelt, Anderwelt of Heidelberg, grasped the hidden meaning!"

In spite of all my attentions (I did not then understand the nature of Space Fever, of course), he was growing steadily worse, and I was becoming desperate. I could not afford to have him ill long. The currents would probably continue to work fairly well until it became necessary to reverse them, and that time was not far off. Unless they were reversed exactly at the right moment, we might fall into the neutral spot and be held there for ever. Even if I managed to stop the negative current, and succeeded in falling towards Mars, I could not regulate the positive current so as to temper our fall and make a safe landing. It was equally dangerous to remain fixed in space, or to fall headlong upon a planet and be smashed, or be buried miles deep if the projectile did not collapse.

I had no way of telling how much time passed, but it seemed to me a very long period, and he grew steadily worse as we approached the neutral point. I tried to rouse him from his delirium. I addressed him jocularly, then commandingly, then beseechingly. And he answered me always with reflections from that other side of his nature which one rarely saw when he was well.

"Hast thou seen red ants crawling upon a cherry? Such are the mere circumnavigators of a globe! What! Hath not the world forgotten a Columbus? How long, then, will it remember---- Hast thou no cooler water? This is tepid and bitter!"

Ever since the last quarter of the Moon, which must have been ten days ago, there had not been the slightest perceptible evidence of movement. The standards by which we judge motion on the Earth had failed ever since we left the atmosphere. There was no rushing or whizzing; we passed nothing; all the ordinary evidences of speed were absent. When you lie in the state-room of a smoothly moving steamer, no forward motion is perceptible. If you see another ship pass near by, you get a sudden surprising idea of the speed. If you watch the receding water, you appear to be going forward slowly; and if you watch the spray at the bow or the wake astern, you appreciate the movement more fully. But if the waves or the tide happen to be running with the ship, she has apparently almost stopped, when really her speed has been somewhat accelerated. If you watch the distant stars, you can scarcely perceive any motion at all; and if the clouds should be moving in the same direction as the ship, her motion appears reversed.

We had none of these things by which to judge, and we appeared to be hanging perfectly still in space, though the doctor had assured me we were travelling at least five hundred miles a minute. This was rational, as it agreed with the diminishing size of the Earth; but it required an effort of faith on my part to believe that we had been moving at all.

But suppose we should gradually lose our speed and stop in a neutral point, how should I know it? The Earth now was, and had been for ten days, a mere spot on the Sun. While Mars had been visible, he had never increased in size in the telescope, and he was now invisible. The only way I could tell would be to wait until after many days had elapsed, and if Mars did not finally come into view, I should know something was wrong. But it would be too late then; there would be no winds or tides, no weight or buoyancy, nothing to move us out of that dreadful calm where even gravity does not exist. That must be avoided at every cost! But might we not be very near it now? Weight had been practically nothing for a month, within an hour it might be positively nothing, and----

The doctor's mutterings interrupted these thoughts. "The power with which to travel was so simple and so vast! It all lay hidden in that elementary law of magnetism, like poles repel and unlike poles attract. But the road to travel and the problems by the way, those were the hard things!"

He was putting them all in the past tense, as if he had already solved them! But what was that law of magnetism he mentioned? Perhaps he would reveal his secrets to me in his ravings! I must mark every word he said; for it was clear I must solve the problem, he would not be well in time. I must brush the cobwebs from my meagre science and struggle with his invention.

"Unlike poles attract," he had said. Then Earth and matter must normally have unlike poles, and to make Earth repel matter it would only be necessary to change the polarization of the matter. Yes, he had told me it was all accomplished by polarizing the steel and iron of the projectile! When they were made the same pole as the Earth, then she repelled them. But if the whole thing were so simple, why had it never been discovered before? Ah, that is the strong shield behind which incredulity always takes refuge!

I ventured near the gravity apparatus and examined it carefully. There was a small thing which looked like the switchboard of a telegraph office. The perforations in it were all in a row, and the ten holes were now filled with little brass pegs, which were suspended from above on small spiral springs. These were evidently the points of communication of the negative current to the framework of the projectile. It certainly would do no harm to pull out one of these pegs, as that would only slightly diminish the current. At least I would risk it. My fingers had scarcely closed upon the brass, when I was given such a violent shock as to be thrown powerfully across the compartment; and had my body weighed anything, my bones would certainly have been broken by the concussion. My arm and shoulder did not recover from the stinging and deadening sensation for some time. I noted the little peg I had pulled out hanging by its spiral spring just above the hole it had filled. It would be worth my life to remove the other nine in the same way.

Besides, how would I know when the time came to remove them? My eyes fell upon the two large leaden balls suspended from short copper chains. I had seen these before, but now I thought I understood them. They would swing whichever way gravity attracted. They hung down toward my compartment now, and if we ever passed the dead line, they would hang forward toward Mars. But in the neutral point what would they do? When the gravity of planets neutralized each other, the steel of the projectile would repel these balls towards its centre, which would tend to put them both in the same spot and thus bring them together. Moreover, they would slightly attract each other. Yes, it was quite certain that these had been devised as a Gravity Indicator, and they would tell me when we were approaching a dead line, when we were in it, and when it was safely passed. But all that would do me but little good unless I could manage the currents.

I sat thinking this over a long time, when it suddenly occurred to me that the doctor would recognise, even in his delirium, the importance of action when these two balls came together. As soon as they had approached each other, I must lift him up and show them to him. The brain that had made them would know their meaning, and know how to act even in illness! Perhaps I was like a drowning man clutching at a straw; but from the moment I thought of this I believed firmly that the solution of the whole problem would come in this manner. My hopes were ready to hang on the slightest peg. It consoled me to remember some instances where men temporarily insane had been brought to consciousness by impending danger, or by the sight of what last weighed upon their mind.

When I glanced at the balls next, I saw that their chains lacked an inch of being parallel. They were already moving slowly inward toward each other. I noted that the chains, which ran through the balls and were connected with a small copper plate on the bottom of each, were just long enough to allow the bottom edges to touch, if they were drawn as far toward each other as possible.

The doctor's fever was at its very worst, but that did not dampen my hopes. The balls were gradually drawing nearer together. I wished them to be quite close before I made the supreme trial which was to liberate us or leave us prisoners in space for ever! Presently I loosened the knotted sheets which held him to his bed, and lifted the feverish man, as I might have carried a doll, and brought him in full view of the approaching balls.

"Doctor, listen now and look," I said firmly and commandingly.

"Always stubborn and unbelieving!" he raved. "I must take it to a new country, to America, where they invent things themselves, and are willing to listen, and anxious to try!"

"Doctor, don't you know me? It is I, Werner, who helped you. This is a crisis for us! Do you see those approaching balls? You know what they mean! You must save us."

"Thou'rt too busy, like all the rest! Why, then, remember that to-morrow will despise those who are so busy with to-day! Opportunity has knocked and listened for thee and thou hast bade her begone!"

"Listen, Doctor. I am he who heard you and gave you the pink cheque. I am he who refused three times to go with you and then came at last. I am he who was afraid of the light, who dodged the Moon, and chaffed you about the pump. Do you not remember it all? Come, you are no longer ill. There is work to do. Have you forgotten the leaden balls? See! they are touching each other now, and we are in the dead-line, the neutral spot, the one danger of the trip which you acknowledged."

But it was useless. He remembered nothing, his eyes were dim and vacant, and the great brain that had planned all this was overthrown by fever. The experiment had failed and we were lost!

I tied him gently back on his bed and turned in desperation to the apparatus, deciding to risk my life to pull out those nine pegs with my hands, one after another.

My God! they were already out! Every one of them was hanging by its spiral spring, just above the hole it had filled. The switchboard had opened a little and released them. It was all automatic! The contact of the copper surface of the balls had completed a short circuit which cut the negative current. He had thought of it all, even to this emergency, and the machine could take care of itself!

And in the wave of thankfulness and rejoicing which swept over me, I sank on my knees and kissed the forehead of the feverish old man again and again!

CHAPTER XIII

The Mystery of a Minus Weight

It was the doctor himself who gave the name Space Fever (now so generally adopted) to the peculiar malady from which he suffered in that long period when weight was very slight or nothing at all. A little reflection on the physiological bearings of the conditions we were passing through, will serve to explain the illness.

For the period of a month, owing to the impossibility of effort, there was scarcely any wasting of our bodily tissues, and very little need for oxydization of the blood. The limbs, which the heart really works hardest to serve, did scarcely any labour and needed very little blood. But the heart had its stubborn habits the same as the other muscles. It is a high-pressure engine, and there is no way of slowing it down materially. It kept up its vigorous pumping and driving just as if the great muscles of the limbs had wasted and needed building up, and just as if it had the task of forcing the blood through those parts of the body usually compressed by its weight or strained by the effort of carrying it. The result was much the same as if your heart now should suddenly begin to beat much too fast, the blood was heated into a state of fever, which naturally increased as we lost weight, culminated at the dead-line and began decreasing as soon as we commenced having a weight toward Mars. It was only my fortunate invention of a method of exercise, and my religious adherence to it, which saved me from a similar attack.

But many things happened before the doctor recovered consciousness. The Moon had re-appeared on the other side of the Earth-spot, the light about us had grown less dazzling than sunlight on Earth, and the temperature had fallen to four degrees. It was perhaps two days after passing the dead-line that, as I was gazing carefully out of the forward window, I saw far to the right of us a large circular patch of faintly redder light in the general curtain of white. Its size quite startled me, for it was rather larger than a full moon, and I had expected Mars to re-appear as a very bright star before we could distinguish any disc with the naked eye. This misapprehension probably arose from the fact that I had thought the dead-line about half way between the two planets, which upon reflection I saw to be impossible, as it must be much nearer the smaller planet.

The outline of the planet was not clearly visible yet, but I could not have missed seeing that red glow long before, had it been more directly in front of us. Evidently we were steering much ahead of the planet, which indicated that we were arriving before opposition. I immediately changed our course so as to go more nearly toward it, but yet to keep a little ahead. Then I hastily brought the telescope back to the forward compartment, which was now the bottom of the projectile. The lenses easily pierced the curtain of light that seemed to be hung in front of the new planet, and I could distinguish the outline of the greatly magnified orb very clearly.

Judging from appearances, it could not be farther from us than twice the distance of the Moon from the Earth. I resorted to the scales at once, and found that weight was beginning slowly to return, for I weighed a little less than an ounce. From a rule the doctor had explained to me, I calculated that this indicated a distance from the planet of about four hundred thousand miles, if it really was Mars. But I had some doubts about its really being that planet; for a clear white, irregular-shaped spot upon it, which I had noticed as soon as the telescope was focussed, did not appear to move at all, as it should have done had it been upon a rotating planet. Upon closer observation, I detected a dull, greenish spot, just coming upon the lower edge. But when I looked again a bright white and perfectly circular spot had appeared in the same place and covered it up. But this new white spot travelled much more rapidly, and soon uncovered the greenish spot, which seemed to move in the same path, but much more slowly. This was something I could not understand. The white circle was too bright and regular to be a cloud, yet if they were both on the surface how could one travel faster over the same path?

Very soon the white circle passed entirely across the greater orb, and then I was surprised to see it detach itself from the planet and remain for a few moments as a separate small orb in the sky! Could this be another freak of refraction? But before I could determine, the little orb disappeared behind the greater disc and was gone. The greenish spot, which I judged to be truly on the surface and caused by an ocean or great sea, was about three times as long in crossing the disc. I next turned my attention to the immovable and irregular white spot, and discovered that its edges seemed to be revolving slowly around its centre. Then it occurred to me that this spot must be located at one of the poles and be caused by polar ice and snows. The doctor had expected such on Mars, and I no longer doubted that this was our objective planet.

It was like a great holiday for me when the doctor regained consciousness. Almost as soon as his fever abated he was well enough to perform his customary duties. His illness had not made him appreciably weak, because as yet scarcely any effort was required to move about. He was quite as anxious to hear all my experiences as I was eager to relate them. I gave him a full account of my struggle passing the dead-line, of my discovery of Mars, and the various spots I had noted.

"From the time it took the greenish spot to cross, I should judge a Martian day to be about fifty hours long," I said.

"Then you must have been very lonely," he replied. "For a Martian day is just forty-one minutes longer than an Earthly day, unless a great number of our scientists have continually made the same mistake in observing him."

"When we arrive, we shall be able to determine the point exactly if our watches commence running again," I answered. "But I think I know one reason why I have misjudged the time. Ever since you have been ill I have slept very little. I have hardly felt the need of rest since I lost my weight. I have been growing more and more wakeful, and I rarely sleep more than an hour at a time. That seems quite sufficient to refresh me."

"As we regain our weight we shall feel the need of sleep again," he said. "But on Mars we may need but one-third as much as we had on Earth, unless we exert ourselves proportionately more."

Then I told him about the circular spot which had seemed to slip off the upper edge of Mars, and asked his explanation of it.

"That must have been Phobos, one of the moons of Mars," he said.

"One of his moons!" I exclaimed; "I didn't know he had any."

"You are an American, and say that!" he answered in surprise. "It is one of the astronomical glories of your people that they discovered the two moons of Mars, during the favourable opposition of 1877."

"This is the first case I remember where we have left it to a foreigner to tell us how great we have been!" I laughed.

"These two moons of Mars also furnish a most interesting example of how fiction may forestall and pre-figure actual scientific discovery. Dr. Swift made Gulliver, in his wonderful travels, discover two moons of Mars, revolving at a speed which he must have thought ridiculously fast. Many years afterward the American telescopes really found two moons, but actually revolving more rapidly than Dr. Swift had dared to boast! If your white circle was really Phobos, you have seen the freak among satellites. She is the smallest, swiftest moon ever discovered, and travels so much more swiftly than the revolution of her primary that she appears to go opposite to everything else in the Martian sky, rising where the Sun sets and crossing the heavens from west to east!"

"What I saw did travel in the same direction as the rotation of the planet, and much more rapidly," I exclaimed.

"Then it was Phobos without a doubt, and she is due to appear again in the west in three hours and fifty minutes after she sets in the east. We must watch closely, for I wish to land upon her and make a flying trip all around Mars with her. Do you realize what a glorious view we shall have of the great planet, sailing around him on this satellite in a period of a little over seven and a half hours, and at a distance of only about four thousand miles? There will be no night, for if one side of the little moon is heavier than the other, the heavier side will always be turned toward Mars. Therefore, when the Sun does not shine on Phobos, Mars will do so, and keep her continually illuminated, except for the brief period of the regular eclipse during each revolution. And one-fourth of the entire heavens, as seen from Phobos, will be filled with the glowing orb of Mars! The great planet will exhibit to us at a near range all the configurations of his surface, his oceans and his clouds. We will survey and photograph him to our hearts' content."

The doctor was justly enthusiastic on this subject, and I felt that such a landing would, in some measure, compensate for my disappointment in not being able to visit the Moon.

As I watched carefully, the satellite finally came into view, but very much more distant from Mars than before. Also, it moved very slowly now, and seemed to grow larger as it approached the disc. I pointed it out to the doctor, and remarked that it was acting quite differently. Just as it entered upon the orb of Mars, another moon, somewhat smaller, mounted hurriedly from the under side of the planet and began hastily ploughing her way over the ruddy disc.

"That last one is the one I saw before, that is my Phobos!" I cried excitedly.

"Then the other slow one is Deimos, the outer moon. She appears the larger to us now, because her greater distance from Mars makes her nearer to us, but she appears to the Martians as the smaller. We must observe closely, and we may discover some new and lesser satellites which Earthly telescopes have never found."

"Time enough for that when we land on Mars," I answered. "If we get in past these two without being hit, I shall be satisfied. You dare not venture in front of that Phobos, and I don't see how you can ever overtake her if you approach from behind."

"That reminds me to slacken speed, for we must be getting very near," he said. "Please weigh yourself every few minutes and note your increasing weight. You should weigh seventy-two pounds on Mars, and eight pounds at the distance of Phobos."

He immediately reversed currents, and when I reported that I weighed almost a pound, it frightened him, and he turned in the full power of the negative currents to overcome our momentum. And it proved that the repelling power of Mars at the distance of 15,000 miles, which this indicated, was not at all strong against the great velocity we had been daily acquiring. I hung upon the scales every few minutes, and reported a steadily increasing weight up to three pounds.

"That shows a distance of eight thousand miles," he figured. "Almost exactly in the orbit of Deimos, but she has safely passed, and will not return for thirty hours. We must turn the rudder hard over to the right, and sail around the planet in a circle until Phobos overtakes us; then, if we approach her travelling in the same direction at almost the same rate of speed, her gravitational attraction will pick us up and draw us safely ashore."

Mars was already an enormous orb ahead of us, and many of his features, such as oceans, ice-caps, and continents, could easily be distinguished; but we paid little attention to them, being occupied with making a safe landing on Phobos, and expecting to make a systematic study of him from there.

"We must not attempt a landing on the outer side of the satellite," the doctor reflected, "for we should have no way of getting around to the inner side to make our observations. We must go within her orbit, and then as she comes past allow her attraction to draw us gently toward her."

We had quickly overtaken and passed Deimos, far within her orbit. I was keeping a close watch for Phobos out of the rear window as we circled about Mars at a distance which we calculated, from my weight on the scales, must be within the path of the satellite. We were circling in the same direction that the great planet was rotating, and yet we passed by things on his surface, which proved that we were travelling faster than his rotation. The doctor noticed, with his telescope, a brilliant snow-capped peak of a great mountain towering up from a small island. The contrast of the snow peak, with the darkish green waters all around it, was the most pronounced thing visible on the great planet, and he decided this must be the white spot detached from the polar ice which our astronomers have frequently observed at about twenty-five degrees south latitude, and to which they have given the name Hall's Island.

"I am afraid we have not appreciated the speed at which we have been travelling," remarked the doctor. "Phobos is very slow in overtaking us;" and he was just beginning to slacken speed still more, when he suddenly cried out,--