I have already spoken slightly of the experience of a weightless condition and its inconvenience in moving about the ship, but that was really the least of our troubles once we had learned to adapt ourselves to the change. We had our humorous moments, too, and I had to laugh every time I attempted to sit in a chair for it actually took physical force to draw oneself down to the seat’s level and hold oneself there.
All furniture was fastened to its place on the floor and thence straps were added so that once seated one could “stay put,” for unless this precaution were taken after a moment or so the “seatee” might find himself floating away to the center of the room, there to retain the same position of sitting with the difference of not having the support of the chair. In sleeping, the same thing was applicable. One had to be strapped to the couch or else awake to find the couch several feet below, if he had happened to move in his sleep. I do not think that anyone (not even Moura, Ubca or Urto) can ever become entirely accustomed to the vagaries of living in the completeness of a weightless condition. I can’t.
In the matter of controlling liquids, more difficulties arose. Liquids, as you know, take the form of a sphere when weightless, and are subject to their own forces of cohesion and surface tension and only striking a wetted surface will follow that and spread over it. For example, our weightless water in a partly filled bottle will not occupy the bottom but will leave the center empty as the liquid flows around the sides of the vessel. The most difficult thing, consequently, is to empty the bottle once it is filled. And naturally it is impossible to leave water in an open vessel for as more surface becomes wetted the water will spread out of its container, adhering to every new surface it encounters.
For this reason the water from the pool in the atol had been drawn off on leaving Earth’s gravity, and the floor and walls had been thoroughly dried. It was Urto’s business to look after this matter as well as to prepare our meals, and in this he was unusually ingenious. For instance, by using mechanical force, he was able to direct the water from the vats into rubber bladders that he kept for that purpose; then he would place the bladders in the refrigerator until the water was solid, so that it was possible to chip off the amount he needed, remelting it in smaller wide-necked rubber tubes or bottles. In cooking, he perforce used covered dishes entirely.
We, on the other hand, had to drink the water from these same rubber bottles by putting the mouth to our mouths and, by pushing or squeezing its end, force the liquid into our throats. If perchance the water escaped from the bottle, it would assume its spherical shape and to capture it again We had only to place a dish against it and allow it to spread over the dish; as else, we could walk up to it, grasp it with our lips and suck it into our mouths! Once it was in the mouth, we had to use the tongue to force it into the throat and there the mechanical action of the muscles of the throat, esophagus and stomach would do the rest.
In bathing ourselves, we had only to liberate a small sphere from one of the rubber bottles, dip our face and hands into it, then soap could be lathered on, more water added to rinse it and then all could be wiped away with a towel. The same was true in bathing the body, although we had to be careful to keep it from spreading to all parts of the room. For this we used a rubber bag that was fastened both to the floor and ceiling, and into which we enclosed both ourselves and the water. Only we had to be careful that the head did not become entirely submerged, else we would have drowned then and there!
So you can see that with all these difficulties we were gladdened over the prospect of descending upon the planet, Mercury, unenticing as it was!
MERCURY turns its axis once in each of its years and therefore presents one side to the sun at all times as it makes its single rotation about that star, a rotation of eighty-eight days. The surface facing the sun thereby attains a terrific degree of heat while its dark face equals the cold of eternal night, since its atmospheric blanket is too slight to carry any of the heat received on one side to the other. And in that portion of the globe where the light and dark meet is the one place where man can hope to put foot and survive. Here Ubca directed the ship.
Uncle Ezra was of the opinion he might find life here and he wanted to make his everlasting observations. Ubca discovered below us a fairly level piece of ground to which we made our way. Never have I seen a more gloomy, weird and gruesome landscape. The ground itself was lividly white in the glare of our lights, and here and there appeared small purplish growths of some sort. In that Uncle was right. He found life on Mercury, but only that simple specimen that was organic but hardly lifelike.
As we had drawn near we could feel the pull of Mercury’s gravity, slight though it was compared to that of Earth. Its mass was but 0.22 against the 1.00 of Earth while its surface gravity was 0.31 instead of 1.00. Thus a body belonging to Earth loses over two-thirds of its weight upon landing on the smaller planet, but that slight gravitational power was enough to hold water down to its level and we were to have the pleasure of seeing the pool fill up again. The water had more “buoyancy,” as we may term it, than on Earth. A drop flung into the air went higher and did not fall so rapidly.
As soon as the Yodverl was safely landed, we all donned bathing suits and headed for the pool. The Abruians are great swimmers, spending much of their time in their pools, as you know, and it was a great inconvenience to Moura, Ubca and Urto to be deprived of their swims while in space. Uncle Ezra was for going outdoors immediately, but Moura forbade that. He recommended that for the next twelve hours at least we all take a complete rest, and since our eyes and bodies were sore from the treatment we had had from old Sol, Moura’s suggestion was properly given. Even Uncle Ezra saw the wisdom of this and submitted gracefully, though all the while he was aching to be out exploring the gloomy terrain beyond the ship.
Urto had retired directly to his kitchen and shortly thereafter came forth bearing a tray of food, grinning broadly, because at last things placed down stayed down. So after our plunge, we ate our first “Mercurian” meal, able to drink water property and not have to hold the food on our plates with the cutlery. A little later we all retired for the most refreshing and wholesome sleep we had had in a week. At Moura’s suggestion, I rubbed myself down with his healing salve, so that when I awoke, all the soreness of the sunburn was gone.
On awakening we went for another swim. This time I went into the kitchen to help Urto. In the days past I had learned all of his culinary art and taught him some Earthly tricks of cookery and thereafter I shared a great deal of the work of keeping the ship in order, for I could not sit quietly with hands folded. Neither Moura nor Ubca were averse to giving Urto aid in his tasks as he sometimes shared the piloting of the ship with them. And he was a handy man in Moura’s laboratory. In fact, except that he waited on us, there was never anything to show that he was the servant. The only way in which he actually differed from the others was that he knew scarcely a word of English, so it was difficult for me to converse with him, but as I had already taken up the study of Abruian for the want of something better to do, we were soon to overcome that handicap. All three Abruians were glad to teach me the words of their language.
At last, much to the relief of Uncle Ezra, Moura was ready to go with him to investigate the planet. I had no desire to go out into the desolate world nor had Ubca the inclination, but Urto elected to accompany the others. From the pilot room Ubca and I watched their progress through the twilight, where only their torch lights illuminated the way. The sun appeared as a great orange ball on the horizon, never seeming to change its position at all.
Going out to the airlock the three had donned the hermetically sealed suits that were used for outside wear and made them look all the world like deep sea divers. After dressing the air was pumped from the lock and a sample of Mercury’s atmosphere taken. It was found too poor for human consumption, containing a very small percent of oxygen. Mercury’s thin atmosphere is due to the fact that the little planet’s surface gravity is insufficient to retain a very extensive en
velope. Uncle Ezra was aware of this truth since he knew the albedo[4] of Mercury to be but 0.07, but he had wished to prove this for himself.
With this test completed, the outer door of the lock was opened and the three stepped upon the bleak world. We saw them go stumbling over the rough uneven ground, now and then stooping to study something on the ground. A stumble usually sent them flying several feet through the air before they landed ludicrously on some part of the anatomy not intended for such usage. But since their decreased weight sat so lightly upon them, they did not suffer a great deal from these falls. Moura and Urto were careful that the professor did not stumble overmuch, and when he did they managed to keep him on his feet.
THEY were gone more than two hours, disappearing almost completely into the darkness. When they returned, they were laden down with specimens they had collected, samples of rock and ores that proved rich in minerals. In the small area of no more than two miles circumference they had found iron, copper, tin, aluminum, platinum, uranium, not to mention commoner minerals such as those of sodium, calcium, magnesium and others. The next day they went farther and came back to report that Mercury was in truth a world rich in metal, a metallic world to be more exact. Moura predicted that in the future, men would come to Mercury for the sole purpose of gathering its wealth.
What proved the most interesting to the expedition, however, were the living specimens they had found. I have mentioned that on landing we had noted clumps of what seemed to be living matter. Uncle Ezra had examined this formation and in Moura’s laboratory a more extensive investigation was made. The thing looked like a mushroom at first with a purple head with soft frilled edges that withered at the touch. The oddest part of it was the underbody, which appeared to be a root but was instead more like a snake, or rather a worm. And even now, after it had been uprooted, it wiggled slowly, and tried to move out of the reach of prying fingers. I had cried out in horror when I saw that happen. “What is it?” I asked.
Uncle Ezra chuckled. “I am not enough of a naturalist to say for sure, Elsie, but I know I can make a guess. I think this thing is a zoophyte or in other words a plant-animal, a compound creature! You have read Darwin’s ‘Voyage of the Beagle’ and you may recall his mention of compound animals, corrallines, creatures with worm-like bodies and plant-like heads able to move about and produce eggs. See, here you can make out the deposits of eggs under these frills of the head, and if you look closely you will see some of the eggs that have developed into individual polyps, still adhering to the parent. They will do so until full grown. It’s a far cry from the Argentine swamp to Mercurian desert, and what is most strange about the organism is that it lives in a bed of metal ore in which there is neither food nor water!”
Moura bent closer to examine the weird thing that wiggled again at his touch. “Poor thing,” be observed. “How tenaciously it has clung to its little bit of life. This is possibly all that’s left of this dead world. But now we shall give it a name for so valiantly surviving the ages. Allow me to present the Rollinsphyte!” The last was said in a jocose strain, but I saw Uncle Ezra enjoyed the thought that he was the discoverer of a life that was to bear his name.
,We left him studying his find and went for a swim. We stayed on Mercury a week before he could be prevailed upon to leave and all the while his mind was upon his Rollinsphyte. “I can’t figure out,” he had said, “how it subsists on such a meagre fare, nor what the poor thing does at such periods when the sun shines on this portion of the globe. Such heat must surely kill it or, if it manages to survive, how does it live when the Outside Cold comes in?”
“Why uncle,” I exclaimed, “I thought Mercury does not make but a single revolution during the year.”
“Of course.”
“Then how—what do you meant?”
“My child,” began the professor in that slow drawling way he had of explaining his science to me, “surely you are aware that whatever Mercury’s period of rotation is, its rate of rotation must essentially be uniform. And since it moves in its orbit so as to fulfill the laws of areas, its motion of revolution is sometimes faster and sometimes slower than average. The result is that the same side is not always exactly facing the sun. Thus sometimes it is 23.7 degrees ahead of its mean position in its orbit and sometimes that much behind, so that at such times the sun shines 23.7 degrees beyond where it ordinarily should shine. That is how it happens that in these two portions of the planet wherein twilight usually lies the sun actually does shine during the libration period. Once yearly, therefore, this part of the globe receives direct sunlight, just as once again the dark and cold of Space come through.
“How then does this little creature survive those two intense periods? See, it is withering here in the light of the room!”
I shook my head, but Ubca-who had become an interested spectator, spoke up, “Perhaps, sir, that is the reason for the worm-like appendage which allows the fellow to migrate each season and so stay within the confines of the twilight!”
Uncle Ezra clapped his hands together in delight. “Of course, how stupid of me not to consider just such a possibility. And now, if you will be so good as to help me, we shall see by what process it absorbs its unusual fare. Here is a specimen I took from. . . .”
At that juncture I left them, not anxious to watch the ugly little zoophyte any longer.
I was glad when we left Mercury behind and headed for the lovely blue-white world of Venus. It lay but 31,200,000 miles away and traveling now at the rate of five hundred miles per second it took us a little more than seventeen hours to reach there. On the way we again encountered a shower of meteorites and although they could do little damage, Moura at the controls steered out of their way, though occasionally we heard the impact as the smaller ones struck our sides. In fact, as we moved onward, our vision almost became obstructed by the smaller particles that adhered to the ship.
Moura explained to me that, in moving through space, we created a small attraction for any matter smaller than ourselves, much the same way as the planets attracted us to them, and in this case, farther away from the sun, they clustered about us since our attraction was more immediate than was that of Sol. However, as soon as we came into physical contact with Venus, she in turn attracted them from us, the missiles dropping upon her own broad bosom, freeing us from the discomfiture they gave us. Then we sighted a small crack in the outer glass on our port side, but so sturdy is the glass of Abrui that little damage was done, and the small crack need not be mended until we landed. Moura believed the crack due to a flaw in the glass itself but he was not worried, since the crack could go no deeper than the six inches of its layer, and there were thirty-nine more layers below it. Even were one layer of glass peeled away, it would make no difference to the Yodverl.
CHAPTER IV
Power of the Mind
NOW we were slipping into the mists of Venus, those grey-white clouds that hide the face of the world from the peeping Toms of the Universe. For what seemed hours we slid on a thirty-degree angle toward the planet moving no faster than two hundred miles an hour, and we all but plunged into the green tumbling waters of the great ocean of Venus over which the cloud banks swirled before we realized its being. Ubca had taken the controls and only his quick action saved us from a bath in the sea. Then he brought the ship to a stationary position no more than fifty feet above the water, and stare as we did, our eyes could not pierce the mist to tell what lay beyond. They rose from the water in long feathery tentacles and made the scene one of an eery ghostlike beauty. Above us we could see the gleam of the sun among the clouds painting them in a variety of wild colors, the clouds acting as a multitude of prisms and diffraction elements on the sunlight broke it up into the seven hues of our sunsets. Not thirty yards away the sun had found a rift through which it shone down upon the water turning it into a sheet of gold.
It was here for the first time that I learned something of the full power of the Abruian mind. Staring about us into that partly illuminated world, I g
rew impatient to see land or at least something more tangible than clouds, sun and water, and I wondered at the sudden lethargy that had come over the three men in the pilot room.
Ubca had brought the ship to a standstill and now sat quietly in one of the metal chairs, half reclining without saying a word, his eyes fastened upon the single beam of sunlight as if he had not a care in the world. Uncle Ezra paid no heed to anyone, his eyes darting here and there, making his endless observations. Soon he would have something to tell us about the phenomenon of the ever present clouds of Venus. Never, on the whole trip, had he questioned anything he saw or had he grown impatient when time grew heavy. He was a child, with mouth agape, waiting for each new wonder to present itself for him to put down in his notebooks. Him I could look to for explanations of natural phenomenon, but he would never have bothered to inquire into the vagaries of the human mind. But it was Moura-weit’s attitude that struck me as being the strangest of all.
One would have thought this a time for action, but instead he was standing in the forepart of the room, hands dropped listlessly at his side, eyes turned toward the water without seeing it. He might have been considering everything but the matter at hand. Yet for all his passiveness, and that of Ubca’s too, I felt a tension in the air. I wanted to laugh, to scream, to wring my hands. But for what? What was the matter with both of them? Was this the way Venus treated men? Enfolding them in a state of suspended animation, sapping them of all desire for movement? Why, then, was I not affected so? I even looked about fearfully, afraid that some ghouls might be approaching to take control of the ship. Then, after what had seemed hours, Moura-weit spoke.
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