by Jerry
I reflected for a moment. The Graphic would expect the story when I got back, but on the other hand I knew that unless I gave the desired promise, the Doctor wouldn’t talk.
“All right,” I assented, “I’ll promise.”
“Good!” he replied. “In that case, I’ll tell you all about it. No doubt you, like the rest of the world, think that I’m crazy?”
“Why, not at all,” I stammered. In point of fact, I had often harbored such a suspicion.
“Oh, that’s all right,” he went on cheerfully. “I am crazy, crazy as a loon, which, by the way, is a highly sensible bird with a well balanced mentality. There is no doubt that I am crazy, but my craziness is not of the usual type. Mine is the insanity of genius.”
HE looked at me sharply as he spoke, but long sessions at poker in the San Francisco Press Club had taught me how to control my facial muscles, and I never batted an eye. He seemed satisfied, and went on.
“From your college work you are familiar with the laws of magnetism,” he said. “Perhaps, considering just what your college career really was, I might better say that you are supposed to be familiar with them.”
I joined with him in his laughter.
“It won’t require a very deep knowledge to follow the thread of my argument,” he went on. “You know, of course, that the force of magnetic attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distances separating the magnet and the attracted particles, and also that each magnetized particle had two poles, a positive and a negative pole, or a north pole and a south pole, as they are usually called?”
I nodded.
“Consider for a moment that the laws of magnetism, insofar as concerns the relation between distance and power of attraction, are exactly matched by the laws of gravitation.”
“But there the similarity between the two forces ends,” I interrupted.
“But there the similarity does not end,” he said sharply. “That is the crux of the discovery which I have made: that magnetism and gravity are one and the same, or, rather, that the two are separate, but similar manifestations of one force. The parallel between the two grows closer with each succeeding experiment. You know, for example, that each magnetized particle has two poles. Similarly each gravitized particle, to coin a new word, had two poles, one positive and one negative. Every particle on the earth is so oriented that the negative poles point toward the positive center of the earth. This is what causes the commonly known phenomena of gravity or weight.”
“I can prove the fallacy of that in a moment,” I retorted.
“There are none so blind as those who will not see,” he quoted with an icy smile. “I can probably predict your puerile argument, but go ahead and present it.”
“IF two magnets are placed so that the north pole of one is in juxtaposition to the south pole of the other, they attract one another,” I said. “If the position of the magnets be reversed so that the two similar poles are opposite, they will repel. If your theory were correct, a man standing on his head would fall off the earth.”
“Exactly what I expected,” he replied. “Now let me ask you a question. Have you ever seen a small bar magnet placed within the field of attraction of a large electromagnet? Of course you have, and you have noticed that, when the north pole of the bar magnet was pointed toward the electromagnet, the bar was attracted. However, when the bar was reversed and the south pole pointed toward the electromagnet, the bar was still attracted. You doubtless remember that experiment.”
“But in that case the magnetism of the electromagnet was so large that the polarity of the small magnet was reversed!” I cried.
“Exactly, and the field of gravity of the earth is so great compared to the gravity of a man that when he stands on his head, his polarity is instantly reversed.”
I nodded. His explanation was too logical for me to pick a flaw in it.
“If that same bar magnet were held in the field of the electromagnet with its north pole pointed toward the magnet and then, by the action of some outside force of sufficient power, its polarity were reversed, the bar would be repelled. If the magnetism were neutralized and held exactly neutral, it would be neither repelled nor attracted, but would act only as the force of gravity impelled it. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly,” I assented.
“That, then, paves the way for what I have to tell you. I have developed an electrical method of neutralizing the gravity of a body while it is within the field of the earth, and also, by a slight extension, a method of entirely reversing its polarity.”
I NODDED calmly.
“Do you realize what this means?” he cried.
“No,” I replied, puzzled by his great excitement.
“Man alive,” he cried, “it means that the problem of aerial flight is entirely revolutionized, and that the era of interplanetary travel is at hand! Suppose that I construct an airship and then render it neutral to gravity. It would weigh nothing, absolutely nothing! The tiniest propeller would drive it at almost incalculable speed with a minimum consumption of power, for the only resistance to its motion would be the resistance of the air. If I were to reverse the polarity, it would be repelled from the earth with the same force with which it is now attracted, and it would rise with the same acceleration as a body falls toward the earth. It would travel to the moon in two hours and forty minutes.”
“Air resistance would—”
“There is no air a few miles from the earth. Of course, I do not mean that such a craft would take off from the earth and land on the moon three hours later. There are two things which would interfere with that. One is the fact that the propelling force, the gravity of the earth, would diminish as the square of the distance from the center of the earth, and the other is that when the band of neutral attraction, or rather repulsion, between the earth and the moon had been reached, it would be necessary to decelerate so as to avoid a smash on landing. I have been over the whole thing and I find that it would take twenty-nine hours and fifty-two minutes to make the whole trip. The entire thing is perfectly possible. In fact, I have asked you here to witness and report the first interplanetary trip to be made.”
“Have you constructed such a device?” I cried.
“My space ship is finished and ready for your inspection,” he replied. “If you will come with me, I will show it to you.”
HARDLY knowing what to believe, I followed him from the house and to a huge barnlike structure, over a hundred feet high, which stood nearby. He opened the door and switched on a light, and there before me stood what looked at first glance to be a huge artillery shell, but of a size larger than any ever made. It was constructed of sheet steel, and while the lower part was solid, the upper sections had huge glass windows set in them. On the point was a mushroom shaped protuberance. It measured perhaps fifty feet in diameter and was one hundred and forty feet high, the Doctor informed me. A ladder led from the floor to a door about fifty feet from the ground.
I followed the Doctor up the ladder and into the space flier. The door led us into a comfortable living room through a double door arrangement.
“The whole hull beneath us,” explained the Doctor, “is filled with batteries and machinery except for a space in the center, where a shaft leads to a glass window in the bottom so that I can see behind me, so to speak. The space above is filled with storerooms and the air purifying apparatus. On this level is my bedroom, kitchen, and other living rooms, together with a laboratory and an observatory. There is a central control room located on an upper level, but it need seldom be entered, for the craft can be controlled by a system of relays from this room or from any other room in the ship. I suppose that you are more or less familiar with imaginative stories of interplanetary travel?”
I NODDED an assent.
“In that case there is no use in going over the details of the air purifying and such matters,” he said. “The story writers have worked out all that sort of thing in great detail, and there is nothing novel in my arrangement
s. I carry food and water for six months and air enough for two months by constant renovating. Have you any question you wish to ask?”
“One objection I have seen frequently raised to the idea of interplanetary travel is that the human body could not stand the rapid acceleration which would be necessary to attain speed enough to ever get anywhere. How do you overcome this?”
“My dear boy, who knows what the human body can stand? When the locomotive was first invented learned scientists predicted that the limit of speed was thirty miles an hour, as the human body could not stand a higher speed. To-day the human body stands a speed of three hundred and sixty miles an hour without ill effects. At any rate, on my first trip I intend to take no chances. We know that the body can stand an acceleration of thirty-two feet per second without trouble. That is the rate of acceleration due to gravity and is the rate at which a body increases speed when it falls. This is the acceleration which I will use.
“Remember that the space traveled by a falling body in a vacuum is equal to one half the acceleration multiplied by the square of the elapsed time. The moon, to which I intend to make my first trip, is only 280,000 miles, or 1,478,400,000 feet, from us. With an acceleration of thirty-two feet per second, I would pass the moon two hours and forty minutes after leaving the earth. If I later take another trip, say to Mars, I will have to find a means of increasing my acceleration, possibly by the use of the rocket principle. Then will be time enough to worry about what my body will stand.”
A short calculation verified the figures the Doctor had given me, and I stood convinced.
“Are you really going?” I asked.
“Most decidedly. To repeat, I would have started yesterday, had you arrived. As it is, I am ready to start at once. We will go back to the house for a few minutes while I show you the location of an excellent telescope through which you may watch my progress, and instruct you in the use of an ultra-short-wave receiver which I am confident will pierce the Heaviside layer. With this I will keep in communication with you, although I have made no arrangements for you to send messages to me on this trip. I intend to go to the moon and land. I will take atmosphere samples through an air port and, if there is an atmosphere which will support life, I will step out on the surface. If there is not, I will return to the earth.”
A FEW minutes was enough for me to grasp the simple manipulations which I would have to perform, and I followed him again to the space flier.
“How are you going to get it out?” I asked.
“Watch,” he said.
He worked some levers and the roof of the barn folded back, leaving the way clear for the departure of the huge projectile. I followed him inside and he climbed the ladder.
“When I shut the door, go back to the house and test the radio,” he directed.
The door clanged shut and I hastened into the house. His voice came plainly enough. I went back to the flier and waved him a final farewell, which he acknowledged through a window; then I returned to the receiver. A loud hum filled the air, and suddenly the projectile rose and flew out through the open roof, gaining speed rapidly until it was a mere speck in the sky. It vanished. I had no trouble in picking him up with the telescope. In fact, I could see the Doctor through one of the windows.
“I have passed beyond the range of the atmosphere, Tom,” came his voice over the receiver, “and I find that everything is going exactly as it should. I feel no discomfort, and my only regret is that I did not install a transmitter in the house so that you could talk to me; but there is no real necessity for it. I am going to make some observations now, but I will call you again with a report of progress in half-an-hour.”
FOR the rest of the afternoon and all of that night I received his messages regularly, but with the coming of daylight they began to fade. By nine o’clock I could get only a word here and there. By noon I could hear nothing. I went to sleep hoping that the night would bring better reception, nor was I disappointed. About eight o’clock I received a message, rather faintly, but none the less distinctly.
“I regret more than ever that I did not install a transmitter so that I could learn from you whether you are receiving my messages,” his voice said faintly. “I have no idea of whether you can hear me or not, but I will keep on repeating this message every hour while my battery holds out. It is now thirty hours since I left the earth and I should be on the moon, according to my calculations. But I am not, and never will be. I am caught at the neutral point where the gravity of the earth and the moon are exactly equal.
“I had relied on my momentum to carry me over this point. Once over it, I expected to reverse my polarity and fall on the moon. My momentum did not do so. If I keep my polarity as it was when left the earth, both the earth and the moon repel me. If I reverse it, they both attract me, and again I cannot move. If I had equipped my space flier with a rocket so that I could move a few miles, or even a few feet, from the dead line, I could proceed, but I did not do so, and I cannot move forward or back. Apparently I am doomed to stay here until my air gives out. Then my body, entombed in my space ship, will endlessly circle the earth as a satellite until the end of time. There is no hope for me, for long before a duplicate of my device equipped with rockets could be constructed and come to my rescue, my air would be exhausted. Good-by, Tom. You may write your story as soon as you wish. I will repeat my message in one hour. Good-by!”
At nine and at ten o’clock the message was repeated. At eleven it started again but after a few sentences the sound suddenly ceased and the receiver went dead. I thought that the fault was with the receiver and I toiled feverishly the rest of the night, but without result. I learned later that the messages heard all over the world ceased at the same hour.
The next morning Professor Montescue announced his discovery of the world’s new satellite.
THE WORLD OF A HUNDRED MEN
Walter Kateley
THE recent activities of scientists at the Barringer Crater in Arizona show that interest in this mysterious phenomena is by no means dead. Efforts to determine the nature and the cause of that great hole in the earth has existed for some time. Since there have been found in this gigantic crater parts of meteors, theories have been advanced attributing the hole to the fall of a tremendous meteor some time in the past.
In his “The Stellar Missile,” Ed Earl Repp advanced one theory as to the probable cause of the Barringer Crater. In the present story, Mr. Kateley also gives an explanation which is based upon the most excellent science. While we cannot state with certainty that the eventual solution of the mystery will prove to be similar to Mr. Kateley’s explanation, yet there is no doubt that Mr. Kateley has used all the available facts to the utmost and has exacted a most convincing story. This is an interplanetary story par excellence.
IN view of the important results of our Expedition, it seems fitting that I should chronicle it somewhat more fully than was practical in the official report that I prepared for those who were the financial backers or scientific advisers.
I think I may say advisedly that our experience is entirely unique in scientific research. But there is so much of purely human interest in our discoveries that I am going to try to tell of them in simple language, that they may be understood and appreciated by the layman as well as by the scientist.
I am, and have been for a number of years, an examiner in the patent office. About two years ago, I received a letter from Mr. W. Kingston.
(Lest you might not recognize the name, I will say that this is the Mr. Kingston who first invented the process of altering the proportion of electrons and protons in the atom; and who was the originator of the process, now becoming so common in industrial laboratories, of altering the, nature of certain basic materials.)
The letter was only a note, saying:
“My dear Explorer: I have plans for discovering the great meteor in Diablo Canyon, and I most cordially invite you to accompany me, and finance the expedition.”
I replied; “My dear Mr. Kingston: I a
m profoundly grateful for the honor you have conferred upon me, and I assure you that I am very much interested in your project. But in regard to the financing, I regret to have to advise you that, not knowing of this splendid opportunity, I used my available funds to pay the first instalment on an encyclopedia. However, I will call at your home next week, and possibly we can discover some way in which I can be of service.”
Of course he was well aware that I was not a man of means, being only an employee of the patent office. There was a note of humor, too, in his calling me an explorer; because the eventful trip I once took, starting from his laboratory, was entirely involuntary and unpremeditated. (This was the strange trip to the “Fourteenth Earth,” the account of which was made public last year.) But what about this strange meteor business?
I knew that a great deal had been written from time to time about this great hole in the earth, supposedly made by a meteor. But I didn’t know how much of it had been fanciful, and how much based on hard facts. So I repaired to the scientific reference room of the patent office, and made a systematic search for data on the subject.
For the benefit of those interested, I will say there is a very good description, and some good photographs of the crater in the book entitled “Meteors,” by P. Olivier, Associate Professor of Astronomy at the University of Virginia, and Astronomer at the Leander McCormick Observatory.
I also found three articles in the Engineering and Mining Journal Press for Dec. 6, 1924, Feb. 7, 1925, and Nov. 20, 1926, respectively.
From these eminently authentic sources, I learned that this crater is in the vicinity of Canyon Diablo, not far from Flagstaff, Arizona. It is on a large plateau, sometimes called Coon Butte, and sometimes alluded to as Meteor Mountain; and is quite a number of miles from any traces of volcanic activity. The crater is about three-quarters of a mile in diameter, 3,900 feet, to be exact, and six hundred feet deep, encircled by a rim of debris 160 feet high. This rim is composed largely of flour-sand and huge blocks of limestone, some as big as a church.