by Jerry
In the center of this desolation we found the cause of it, Rickey’s mystery-stone.
Where it had fallen, in the slope of a little dip, or valley, was an ash-strewn pit, some twelve feet across, resembling those shell-craters which one sees in the war movies. Through the lower rim of it workmen with picks and spades had dug a deep trenchlike passage to the stone itself and then had undermined it so that it had toppled from its first position’ and lay along the trench.
At the bottom of the dip the ashes had been cleared away, and a brisk wood fire was burning, around which a number of men sat upon logs. These were part of the section gang which the railroad had sent up to help Rickey fight the fire. A strong aroma of coffee was grateful to our noses after their long struggle with smoke and soot.
A stockily built man of middle age detached himself from the group at the fire as we came over the edge of the dip. He approached Rickey, an Irish brogue issuing from his broad and exceedingly grimy countenance.
“The dinnymite will be here directly, Misther Moyer,” he said, removing his hat. “Shall we be afther crackin’ her tonight, sor?”
His voice was eager. His men around the fire strained forward to catch the reply.
“Not tonight, Conoway; we’ll do the job by daylight,” responded Rickey. “The old railroad can spare a few of you for another day, can’t it?”
“Yis—I suppose,” assented Mr. Conoway, evidently disappointed.
“You told your man to fetch drills?” pursued Rickey.
“Oh, yis, sor. Ye’re sthill daycided to bust her open wid pops, sor?”
“Yes. If there should happen to be anything inside worth looking at, we want to injure it as little as possible. Fetch up a torch of two, will you, Conoway? I want to exhibit our find to the ladies.”
We stepped around to the mouth of the passage and looked at the mystery. And I am afraid were not, at first sight, particularly impressed. At least, I was not, save by its size.
It was a monster of a stone, all of fifteen feet long, and at its middle, where its girth was greatest, as thick through as the height of a tall man. I didn’t wonder at the great hole it had torn in the earth when it struck, or the depth to which it had penetrated. The bottom of the socket from which it had been tipped was nearly on a level with the floor of the dip. The impact, I thought, must have jarred a considerable portion of the mountain.
AGAINST the newly turned earth of the excavation it contrasted darkly. Its surface must recently have been molten. I touched it with my fingers, and it still was warm. Small stones, gravel, and clods of scorched earth were encrusted in it like gipsy settings. The upper end of it as it lay, which had struck first was splayed out and blunted.
Three of Mr. Conoway’s men fetched pine-knot torches and flashed their light into the passage and the pit. I found the glamour of the thing grow upon me. Even a weak imagination was stirred to ponderings.
It lay in the trough of the trench with the wavering torchlight flickering over it, a dull-brown, somber, sullen, inert mass of stone. Yet it was not of our world. It was material evidence of other worlds beyond our ken. To me astronomy and kindred sciences had appealed as largely guess work. Here was evidence that the stars were more than mere watchlights set to brighten our dark ways. Whence had it come) this unearthly visitant? Next to our awe of time is our awe of distance. How many millions of miles had it fallen? The thought dizzied me.
“Isn’t it fortunate that it did not strike upon rock instead of earth?” said Carrie, pointing to its jammed and misshapen tip.
“Would have been one grand smash, and nothing left but flinders,” remarked Rickey. “I shouldn’t have cared to have been riding in it at the time.”
“Nonsense!” ejaculated Aunt Caroline, prodding at it with her toes. “What is there about it to give you such ideas? Why do you suppose that something may be inside of it?”
Count Natali took a torch from a laborer’s hand.
“But see, madame,” he urged, stepping into the trench to the head of the stone. “And do you come hither, too, carissima”—this to me—“and Mile. Andrews, and see.”
I followed until I could peer over his stooping shoulder. Aunt Caroline and Carrie squeezed in-on the other side. We stared where he pointed.
“I see nothing, except that it has been broken,” said Aunt Caroline, readjusting her slipping spectacles.
“Yes, madame; a fragment has been chipped away by a hammer-blow. Now watch closely.”
He moved one of his slender fingers along the fresh scar, tracing a zigzag pattern. Looking closely, we could then see a darker line in the substance of the rock.
“It looks like an irregular seam—a suture,” remarked Carrie, who won honors in physiology.
“It may be only a vein in the rock,” suggested Aunt Caroline; but her skepticism was shaky.
.“Too regular, aunty,” countered Rickey. “It’s a joint, and a devilish clever one, and it’s closed with some kind of cement that is harder than adamant. What do you say, Conoway?”
“The same as I did at first, sor,” the Irishman answered. “There’s something inside of that there that somewan put there for to stay, sor. Unless the bodies up yon are gunnin’ for us down here, an’ their projacktul didn’t go off.” Conoway pointed toward the stars.
“No, I don’t think it’s a heavenly ‘dud,’ ” laughed Rickey; and added soberly, “but just the same someone up there may have fired it.”
“I am going home and going to bed,” announced Aunt Caroline, backing out of the trench.
“Joe will drive you girls back,” said Rickey.
“What are you going to do?” asked aunt.
“Sleep by it.” Rickey tumbled his blankets into the trench. “Some of these chaps here have it in their heads that this stone is a kind of wandering treasure chest full of diamonds and gold, and that they’ve only to crack it to see ’em come pouring out. I’m going to guard against anything premature.”
“All right,” Aunt Caroline assented. “Don’t you dare to open that thing, Richard, until I am here in the morning. I shall get up at half-past eight.”
“Right-o, aunty. If anyone tries to dynamite it before you get on the job he’ll have to blow me to glory along with it.”
“In which case you might find out where it came from and why,” said Carrie. On the way back to the bungalow she asked, “What did Mr. Conoway mean by ‘pops,’ I wonder?”
“It is that they will drill the stone full of small holes, mademoiselle,” explained Count Natali, “and explode the dynamite in light charges, chipping away the stone a fraction at a time.”
CHAPTER III
WHAT THE STONE CONTAINED
LESS prepossessing, but more mysteryladen, was the big stone by the light of next morning’s sun. We arrived at the scene of operations shortly after nine o’clock, Aunt Caroline having made the concession of rising earlier than she had promised. The preparations for blasting were in full swing.
Three power-drills had been lugged up the mountainside in the night, and six swarthy workmen were busy along the trench, attacking the surface of the stone with an uproar which must have resembled a continuous volley of machine guns. A dozen others were waiting to spell them. The balance of the fire-fighting force, much against their inclinations, had been herded down the mountain by Mr. Conoway to less interesting employment.
I noticed that all of the laborers, with the exception of the Irishman, treated Count Natali with an obsequious deference, rather strange to an American, until one reflected that most of them probably were Italians, and the others from lands where counts count for more than they do here.
Viewed by daylight, the irregular line in the substance of the stone which had been disclosed by the hammer-blow, and which Carrie had dubbed a suture, was even more noticeable than it had been under the torches.
Count Natali found us a position near the rim of the little amphitheater, from where we could watch the proceedings safely, and where we could talk undisturbed b
y the clattering, popping drills, which made conversation in their immediate vicinity an impossibility.
Presently came Rickey, dirtier and more elated than ever, to announce:
“We’ll be blasting in another half hour. We’ve been at her since sun-up.”
Aunt Caroline, who had once more inspected the odd, jointlike appearance of the stone, was disposed to argue.
“Isn’t it quite possible, Richard, that it is something let fall from an airplane?” she asked. “These aviators are becoming as careless as motorists.”
From the corners of her eyes she glanced in the direction of Count Natali.
“Considering that it must weigh all of twenty tons, I’m afraid that your suggestion is hardly tenable, aunty,” replied Rickey, his eyes twinkling. “Aviators don’t carry such pebbles around for ballast.”
“Some time ago I read in the newspapers that attempts were to be made to signal to Mars at about this time. Mightn’t it be that this is some sort of a Jules Verne projectile, which has been fired from earth, and fallen back?”
This was from Carrie. Aunt Caroline gave her an approving look.
Rickey smiled and went down among the workmen. What a big, capable fellow he was! Mr. Conoway, who cared nothing for counts, was, in his Irish way, as deferential to Rickey sis were the others to the nobleman.
SOON after the expiration of the hall hour the clamor of the drills ceased They had pecked a neat double row of holes along the upper side of the stone. One by one the holes were charged with dynamite, and the explosive set off from a hand battery. They cracked like big firecrackers. At each explosion a shower of fragments flew up from the surface of the stone and fell around the lower part of the dip.
When the first row of holes had been blown out, Count Natali went down to inspect the work. From where we sat we could see that the stone was beginning to present a gnawed and ill-used appearance “Nothing at all,” was the count’s report as he came back.
An explosion of greater violence than any of the others followed.
After the crash there sounded a hissing like that of escaping steam. The laborers below ran toward the-trench shouting.
Rickey thrust his arm recklessly into the opening. Then he called for a drill-rod, which Mr. Conoway handed to him, and I saw its slender length disappear in the stone, and heard the clink of it as he groped around in the inside.
“Does he expect to find a rabbit?” Aunt Caroline murmured.
“It is that there is a cavity, and another stone is within,” reported Count Natali. “It is very strange. It has the appearance of a sarcophagus.” His fingers trembled as he stroked the place where his mustache had been. “I believe that it is a find.”
“A mummy! That’s not so bad!” exclaimed Aunt Caroline triumphantly. She had caught at the word sarcophagus. “I knew someone must have dropped the thing. They must have been hurrying it
to some museum. Probably it will be advertised.”
“How interesting if it is the mummy of a Martian,” put in Carrie, not without malice, and drew it quick “Nonsense!” from aunt.
A number of blasts followed in rapid succession. The great stone seemed to leap and crumble in its bed. I shrieked; for several objects like coiled serpents flew into the air whirling, and one of them nearly fell on my foot.
Count Natali stooped down and picked it up.
It was a powerful metal spring!
Only a glance we bestowed upon it, and then stared, down the hillside.
Where had been the long brown mass of stone was a heap of debris and earth fallen from the trench. Partly buried in the pile was a cylinder, more slender and shapely than its husk had been. Its surface was polished, and it reflected the light of the sun in a greenish sheen.
We arose and went down to it.
It was like a great coffin hewn for a giant. Whether it was of stone or metal we could not tell. In one spot a fragment had been chipped away by the blasts, and the fracture was scintillant with tiny particles which refracted the light vividly. At intervals the entire surface was pitted with sockets, for the springs which had maintained it centered in the interior vacuum of its shell. There had been many springs, nearly two hundred.
Mr. Conoway’s workmen gathered about the trench, shouting, chattering and gesticulating. They were inclined to crowd us, until at a stern word from Count Natali they drew to one side.
I laid a hand upon the cylinder and shivered. It was chill as ice with an unearthly cold.
Aunt Caroline stared down at it and shuddered from other motives.
“What a godlike way to be buried,” soliloquized Carrie. “To be hurled out through uncounted millions of miles of space and rest at last upon an unknown world!”
Aunt Caroline’s “Nonsense!” was notably weak.
“Why do you folkses all take it so for granted that there’s a dead one in here?’ asked Rickey, clapping a hand on the cylinder and drawing it hastily away.
“Rickey!” I cried. “You don’t mean to suggest that there may be something alive in there!”
“Well, and why not? Those chaps who were clever enough to shoot it across should know some way to preserve life for the few months necessary for the transit. I shall not be surprised to find the traveler in good condition and famously ready for his breakfast.”
Months! Yes, Rickey was right about that. I hadn’t reflected that it might take nearly a year for an object to fall from Mars to the earth, if this thing was from Mars.
“When is the opening scheduled to be?” Carrie inquired. “I am anxious to meet the gentleman; and he can’t be very comfortable in that box.”
“I should think that he, or it—if anything living was sealed in there—would be frozen,” I said, thinking of the intense cold I had felt.
Count Natali in turn stooped and laid a hand on the sarcophagus.
“But that was the purpose of the vacuum space, carissima mia,” he explained, oblivious of the stares which this endearment drew from his countrymen; “to provide an intervening coldness, so that what was within might not be destroyed by the heat which fused the surface of the stone. It is like a monster thermos bottle.”
Aunt Caroline glanced from one to another of us in bewilderment.
CHAPTER IV
THE CRYSTAL CASKET
OUR dark-skinned laborers were waiting with unconcealed impatience to attack the job. Not for them were fanciful spectulations as to where the strange object might have come from. To them it was a treasure trove, in which they possibly might share. At an order from Mr. Conoway they swarmed into the trench, and loose earth and stones began to fly. Rickey seized an extra spade, and his two great bronzed arms did double the work of the best of them.
Count Natali fetched the blankets down the slope and fixed another seat for us.
Before the trench was more than partially cleared we could see that a clearly marked line of junction extended lengthwise around the sarcophagus. Cover had been joined to body with great exactness, and only the thinnest of red lines indicated the presence of a cement. At intervals along the sides of the sarcophagus some manner of sockets, larger than those in which the spring had been fitted, had been sunk on the juncture line, and these too were filled with the reddish substance.
Rickey dug at one of them with the nail-file in his penknife.
“Hello; this stuff isn’t so hard,” he said. “Fetch some chisels, somebody, and well clear these places out.”
Buried in the cement of each socket was a bent metal bar, or L-shaped handle, similar to those upon kitchen water-taps. Some of them were turned upwards and others down, but all were at right angles to the cement-filled line.
As the sarcophagus lay somewhat askew in the trench, crowbars were applied until is rested squarely upon its bottom. Then Rickey tightened a wrench upon one of the sunken handles and held it while Mr. Conoway struck it a smart tap with a hammer. It turned, slowly at first, and then more easily, until it stopped on a line with the cemented joint of the sarcophagus.
A shout went up as the stubborn lid was seen to be yielding and rising. At just the right instant Rickey thrust a crowbar into the widening interstice, and pried with all bis-broad-shouldered might.
Lubricated by the soft cement, the huge lid moved almost without noise, balanced, swayed, toppled, and subsided with a thunk on the earth of the trench.
We three sprang up and rubbed elbows with the crowding men. But this, as was remarked by Mr. Conoway, was a particularly well-packed parcel. Nothing of its contents was to be seen save a mass of grayish, woolly-appearing stuff, so tightly wadded and compressed that it retained the imprint of the inside of the lid as though it had been modeling clay.
Only Mr. Conoway’s bellows of restrain prevented the laborers from stampeding and making short work of this, to such pitch had risen their eagerness to lay bare the treasure.
“This is your package, boss,” he said to Rickey.
Rickey nodded, stuck his hands into the stuff and pulled out no great amount.
“Gee, it’s rammed in tight enough!” he grunted, and attacked it again.
Curiosity moved Count Natali to take a wisp of the wadding, step back a few paces, and touch a lighted match to it. It refused to burn, or so much as scorch.
“Huh! The beggars know asbestos,” commented Rickey, who had watched the operation. “Let your gang tackle this stuff, Conoway, if they’re so blamed anxious.”
“Aye, sor.”
But they had understood, and did not wait for the Irishman’s order. A score of muscular brown hands, reaching from both sides of the sarcophagus, seized the asbestos packing and tore it out. Among them was one pair of slender woman’s hands, wrinkled and tremulous. Aunt Caroline, her habitual dignity for the moment in abeyance, was laboring to vindicate her theory, and took her pound of asbestos with the rest of them. The stuff came out in wads and layers. There seemed to be no end of it. Dust flew from it and choked us.