There were even more scenic views of the planet. There were more cities like the first, seashore and mountain resorts, universities, mills, factories, mines, and the great plantations that lay on the other side of the mountain ranges. There was old Goraland of wastelands, arid deserts, swamps and jungles, wherein Dorr had found the bronze men subsisting miserably before he forced the Tabora to give up a portion of their own fertile, well-watered lands to the Gors who, once civilized, had become semi-barbarous under the conditions which were forced upon them.
There were more scenes, but now with each succeeding view, the screen was less clear, sometimes it blurred and grew indistinct. Then the screen became dark, and the lights of the hall were switched on again. The show was over. Ezra-weit and Ubca-tor had taxed their powers and could project no more. People rose in their seats and the acclaim was terrific. The names of the two were called loudly but they, having slipped behind the stage, refused to appear.
Richard Dorr took the platform to explain that the wonderful demonstration they had just been shown was the product of the minds of the two who had given it to them, and although the performance might seem miraculous to them, it was a daily occurrence upon Abrui!
CHAPTER VII
The Yodverl
THE following day Moura-weit’s mighty Ship of the Void, the Yodverl, was brought out of hiding and was docked upon the great airport atop the World Air Lines Building. First, a small party of scientists were taken aboard, then officials from over the world, and at last the general public was permitted entrance, but that soon became impossible. Hundreds of hundreds and thousands of thousands had come flocking to London to view the ship at first hand and to allow them all to visit it personally, would have necessitated the ship’s lying in dock for months to come. Thereupon all the world had to be satisfied with viewing it through the television.
Pictures are preserved for us today; and there are the accounts to be found in history books, but for fear that some detail has been forgotten we shall outline its features here. One thousand feet in length the Yodverl was, cigar shaped and snowy white, constructed of forty layers of that serviceable Abruian glass the shell was stronger and more rigid than the diamond. It had that unique quality, whereby those outside could not see within, but those in the ship at various vantage points could see outside as clearly as through ordinary plateglass.
At each of the conical ends of the cigar were set the great disks of the meteorite deflectors, machines that meant so much to the safety of the ship in Space. Under the port at the stern of the ship was set its airlock by which voyagers could leave the flyer without affecting the atmosphere within the ship when on an alien untried planet, but the main entrance, lay in one side of the machine, about fifty feet from the Yodverl’s nose. This doorway was circular, and fitted so carefully as to not be seen from the outside when closed, but opened upon invisible and intricate hinges revealing a corridor twenty-feet long, into which the door itself fitted perfectly when not in use. The anteroom that this door revealed was also the study and library of the flyer, containing thousands of Abruian and earthly books for the traveler as well as the ship’s log. Three doorways opened from this chamber, the first leading into the pilot room that took up the entire forepart of the ship being set directly in its nose. Here were the controls that directed the flyer through space, although the motors were located far aft. And here one had a clear, unobstructed view of the heavens above, and out in space, on either side and below.
On the floor forward, or rather in the curvature caused by the nose of the ship, was set a great stellar map that was highly interesting to the astronomer showing the solar system in miniature and a small area of the Universe round about in proper proportion as to size and distance. To one side of the controls was an odd arrangement of small round globes set in a circular tank filled with a heavy liquid. Again these represented the solar system, Sol, and the system of the ten planets known to Abrui with their satellites and a number of the largest asteroids. Intricate machineries controlled the movements of the globes, which showed at all tithes the exact position of each planet in its relation to their star even to the slightest deviation caused by the action of each planet upon another. This mechanism was invaluable to the interplanetary pilot, as were dozens of other instruments in the room, that would have been interesting only to the astronomer; chronometers that told solar and sidereal time on various worlds, instruments that felt out the dangers of space, instruments of all sorts and descriptions without which space-navigation would have been virtually impossible. Practically all the instruments to be seen were the inventions of Moura-weit who had willed to his people all his effects. And on studying his achievements, one has to concede that he was possibly one of the greatest men of all times.
The second door of the ante-room opened into the laboratory where one was to find more intricate and delicate instruments for various uses. Here was the Venerian telescope whose complicated lenses made it available for use within the twenty foot deep shell of the Yodverl, and there were more intricate and delicate instruments for various uses. Here the scientist had developed most of his works, his gravity nullifier, his meteorite repeller, the ship’s own gravitational field. Here he had accomplished the last steps of developing solids from the ether stream, and here were to be found three uncompleted machines that the inventor had not finished at the time of his death. One of these appeared to be a super-radio set, but was in truth the beginnings of the machine that is so useful to us of today, the Solid-Transformer, that sends solids from one locality to another by translating them into their atomic vibrations and reassembling them again into their specific forms at their destination. Luckily Moura-weit had left his notes so that his son Ezra could succeed in completing it for the use of the two worlds of Abrui and Earth.
THE third door leading from the anteroom opened to the living quarters of the ship. In fitting out his vessel, Moura-weit had copied the appointments of his own home as exactly as he could, so on entering, one found himself immediately within the confines of a typical Abruian home. The first chamber, the atol, was identical with the living room of the Earth home, for here the family gathered when the day’s work and fun was over. But the Abruian atol serves more purposes than the drawing room of our homes. It was also the recreation room, as well as the dining room, resembling the ancient Roman atrium in some respects. The room was thirty feet wide and forty long, and in its center was a small swimming pool in the middle of which a tiny fountain played. Potted flowers of Abrui grew around its edge and on the mosaic tile floor were arranged wide comfortable couches, and a number of Abruian metal three-legged chairs, far more comfortable than our own. The walls of the room were ten feet in height and were also tiled, depicting a typical Abruian landscape scene with a city on one hill and the two suns, Sol and Tradr, and the satellite, in the midday sky.
The ceiling of the chamber was the clear white glass of Abrui, the inner skin of the ship’s shell. And here we come across the strangest features of all of Abrui. Fire to them is of little use because of their great deposits of radium and radium also supplants electricity, Radium alone spells power upon Abrui. Thus by treating the glass roofs of their homes with a radium solution, the Abruians force their sup to do double duty for them. The radioactive quality of radium is such that during the day the sunlight is absorbed by it, and at night becoming flourescent it gives off the light thus received when the sun sets, just as phosphorus gives off light when darkness sets in. By imbedding tiny invisible wires through the glass, it is possible to switch off this light when required by arresting the action of the radium particles. So in the case of the Yodverl, its entire one thousand foot length with it twenty-foot shell, was in truth a great storage battery absorbing heat and light when in the sun’s glare, dispensing it with the coming of darkness.
The second room beyond the atol was called the dof, and was the inner private room of the family. The dof like the atol had tiled walls picturing a more intimate scene in a garden with the l
ife-like figures of men, women and children in their leisure moments. Flowers grew about the walls so that they appeared to blend into the picture itself, or rather it made the observer feel as though the painted figures would soon turn to speak to him.
Beside the two entrance doors at either end of the chamber, one from the anteroom, the other opening to a long corridor beyond, there were also six doorways on either side of the room, three on either side. These gave access to the sleeping chambers. Four of these rooms were of small size, plainly, though neatly furnished, with a wide sleeping couch, a chair, a chest of drawers and a full length mirror. The walls were of creamy tile, but it was the fifth room that proved most interesting. Here two of the smaller rooms had been sacrificed to the larger one, which was furnished in a wonderful fashion, as though for a queen. One who knew the story of the two lovers, understood immediately that Moura-weit, with loving hands, had fashioned that room for his wife Elsie Rollins, when she followed him into the Void.
From the dof a wide corridor ran for fifteen feet or so with doors lining the walls. The first two doors, one on either side of the hall, proved to be bath-rooms with everything installed for the comfort of the traveler, but the remainder of the doors were the entrances to large storerooms, a small placard on each door naming the articles contained therein in Abruian writing. At the end of the corridor a doorway opened into the ship’s galley and kitchen. Here again had been a surprise for the first earthlings who saw it, for in truth the kitchen was a revelation. Had the Abruians nothing more to offer than their unique cooking and refrigerating units they would have found a ready market on Earth, as indeed they did. No longer need the housewife of our planet cry out against the drudgery of the kitchen as of yore, she need only to drop the food in the neat radium-treated glass dish, and minutes thereafter see each individual portion cooked to a turn!
Yet one can imagine the wonder of the first to enter here to see the unkitchenlike appearance of the ship’s galley with nothing more than the plain, clean walls of a room no more than eight feet square in view, but which the twist of a little switch on one wall revealed in all its mechanical wonder. Its walls disappeared as if by magic with row after row of shelves appearing instead, on which were arranged dishes of all shapes and designs, all of glass, all snowy white. To one side stood the refrigerator, enclosed entirely in glass holding fruits and vegetables that had made the trip from Abrui as fresh as the day they had been picked, and yet without revealing any machinery, nothing to keep the viands in their excellent state of preservation. Again it was the radium that gave a “cold-control” as well as the heating devices. Frozen drinks, ice-cream, all could be produced as easily as the cookery was performed. Only the insides of the dishes were so treated as we know so that one could hold within the hand the dish as it cooked a toothsome dinner.
Beyond the kitchen of the Yodverl lay the small stable in which were housed the small herd of muti, Abruian cows, resembling somewhat our deer, that were always carried by the space-travelers to provide them with fresh milk, since no amount of refrigeration will keep the liquid fresh and its vitamines intact. To the Abruian, milk is as necessary to his diet as bread is to the Earthman. At the present time the Yodverl was carrying eleven of the pretty deer-like creatures. The bull of this particular herd was the descendent of the first mitu to have been born on Moura-weit’s first journey to Earth twenty years before.
Mitu have never grown familiar to Earth since we have sufficient bovines of our own breeding to meet our demands, and besides the Earthmen have never felt the need of having to introduce the talking beasts of Abrui to our world. As one knows, the Abruians had long since discovered the language of their domesticated cow as they have of most their beasts and therefore are able to converse with them to a small extent. However, as the mentality of the beasts is of a low degree, the language is very simple and very little informative.
Beyond the stable which was kept as neatly as the rest of the ship, another corridor continued on through more storerooms to the air-lock and into the motor-room, where the small radium motors were locked away.
CHAPTER VIII
The Results of the Great Conference
AFTER the preliminaries with the introduction of the Abruians and their ship were gone through, the greatest conference the earth had ever known was held, and before the week was up, arrangements for a commercial line to ply between earth and Abrui had been completed. Once the Earth people had recovered from their excitement and wonder, the business went swiftly. What held up the signing of the articles for the new commission was the refusal at first of the Abruians to agree to sell to Earth a single one of their interplanetary machines. However, it was Dorr who brought peace to the conference by signing a treaty that was agreeable to both parties.
It was agreed, therefore, that a committee made up of both Earthling and Abruian ambassadors were to have complete control over the building of the machines, allowing but a limited number of the flyers to be built at any time, and thus make it certain that neither world could commandeer a single machine for its own purpose. To the World Court of Earth the plans and blueprints of the machines were to be submitted, to be kept under lock and key, so that if ever the Abruians were to break their contract, the people of Earth would have the means of protecting their own planet. Men of both worlds were to share in building the machines, and as improvements were incorporated in the ships themselves, these changes were to be recorded on the blue-prints held by Earth. Furthermore, five ambassadors from Earth were to take up residence with their families on Abrui while the same numbers of Abruians were to do likewise on Earth, thereby knitting the two worlds more closely together.
In later years, when bitter arbitration was to arise between the two planets over their trade monopolies, the wisdom of Dorr’s treaty was to prove itself, but that, of course, does not concern the present history. We do realize the benefits of this inter-exchange between the two worlds today, and we ought to be thankful to the far-sighted vision of that great statesman who made it all possible. With affairs as they are, with the slow assimilation of the various races of both Earth and Abrui, we can see the day when the two great worlds will be true brothers under the skin. Ezra-weit, son of the Abruian, Moura-weit and of the woman of Earth, Elsie Rollins, is a fair example of what the two great races of each world have to offer. It may take many hundreds, even thousands of years, but in the meantime we see the increasing flow of tourists from both worlds, the migrations and emigrations from one planet to the other, the firm establishments of Earthmen on Abrui and Abruians on Earth.
There are no people more affable and deserving of friendship than the Abruians, no people more kindly and more courageous or inventive. Looking about us, and seeing all the improvements in our own everyday life brought to us from Abrui, we can only be thankful to the greatest scientist of all, Professor Ezra Rollins, who made this possible when he dispatched Dana Gleason and Richard Dorr out into the Void!
But to return to the day we all recall. Twenty years before this the advent of the Graf Zeppelin piloted by Doctor Hugo Eckener had created a furor throughout the world, but it could not compare in any way to the excitement when the Yodverl left the World Air Lines Port to return homeward with the good news of the affiliation between Earth and that distant world, Abrui!
It was a bright summer’s day when the great ship rose into the blue sky with the ohs and ahs of the multitudes below accompanying it; its great length seeming to fill the heavens as it reflected the bright glare of the sun on the upturned faces. There were to be greater ships in the service between the planets, many times larger than the Yodverl which was to be their model. In fact, the first ships of the fleet, two thousand feet in length, are now dwarfed by the gigantic leviathans that cross the Void weekly, but to those watching the Yodverl rising into the skies, it was thought great enough.
Never before had there been such a celebration as that. The Yodverl was carrying a number of the latest in radio instruments and for seven hours after lea
ving the Earth’s atmospheric blanket, the Abruians were enabled to listen to the program broadcast in its honor. Today, when radio transmission is carried across the intervening 3,557,000,000 miles of space, the seven-hour program appears to us a poor feat, but to the Earth people it was then a fine tribute to their science and taught that sound could travel through space, despite all correctly worked-out theories to the contrary, and so lead to the ultimate success in that field.
Part II
THE LOVE OF MOURA-WEIT
CHAPTER I
IT was some weeks later on the island of Ora on the planet Abrui that there was a gathering of familiar faces. There was Dana Gleason and Richard Dorr, formerly of Earth, but now heart and soul of Abrui, Elsie Rollins-weiti, also of Earth and her son, Ezra-weit. And there was Walter Kington, late of Earth, that planet’s first ambassador to Abrui. Ubca-tor was there also, but he kept himself far back in the deepening shadows.
They were all seated in the lovely gardens of Dana Gleason and Richard Dorr’s home on the island continent.
Tradr, the satellite sun, had just then sunk below the horizon in a burst of glory, but old Sol gave a silvery radiance to the scene. Neither Mercury, Venus nor Earth could be picked out of the firmament. Because of their proximity to the sun, they were rarely ever seen from Abrui, and then only pin points of light. Here the planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were more in prominence. Great Jupiter glowed like a tiny half-moon in the distance, Saturn with his rings was brighter, but of them all the great green planet of Neptune lay like a monster sickle but a degree away from Sol.
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