by Garret Smith
I sank to the deck, unequal longer to the mere effort of standing upright. I was conscious that one of my companions had fallen near me and lay moaning feebly.
Then I heard the voice of Hunter calling my name as from a great distance. Raising my head, I dimly saw him staggering toward the motor cabin door, supporting himself by the cabin wall.
“Scribner!” he called again. “Go down and look after the queen while I turn the ship back. There is something wrong with the air up here. We can’t go on.”
Though it took all my remaining strength, I managed to crawl across the deck on hands and knees and into the motor cabin, where Hunter had again switched on the lights, and had thrown the power off the ship’s motor.
After several efforts I opened the door at the rear of the motor cabin that led back into the main cabin and the passage to the staterooms, in one of which the queen was confined.
As I threw up this door I was startled by a strong puff of air as though there had been a silent explosion within. I hesitated for an instant, but, coming to no harm, stumbled through the door, which fell shut behind me.
To my surprise breath at once came more freely. The pressure in my ears was relieved, and, though I was still weak and ill, I felt better immediately.
The queen was sulking on a rug in the corner of her stateroom, apparently in no way affected by the strange malady that had overcome the rest of us. She made no answer to my inquiry as to her condition, but when I hesitated before her for a moment to make sure that all was well with her, she leaped up and at me with the snarl of a savage young animal. I dodged back and slammed down the door just in time to escape the clutches of her small but efficient hands. My physical condition would have made me an easy victim of her rage.
Back in the motor cabin I found conditions improving, though breathing was still a little difficult. Hunter was too busy manipulating his machinery to give me more than a nod of relief, when I reported that his unruly prisoner was safe.
Worried as to the condition of our companions, whom we had left on the open deck, I ventured forth hesitatingly, but found at once that I now suffered little discomfort there. The rest, like myself, were, however, still evidently from their experience and greatly puzzled as to its cause. We ventured a variety of conjectures, but the consensus of opinion was that the air above the great layer of cloudy vapor, beyond which no man had ever before penetrated, was unfit for breathing, either due to lack of the accustomed vapor or to the presence in the upper region of some poisonous gas.
MEANWHILE the ship had been rushing back toward the surface of Venus with the same speed with which it had risen. The air that had beaten down upon us with hurricane velocity now rushed up around us with equal speed.
I stepped to the rail, where I found Weaver gazing fixedly over the side. A moment later we both shouted in alarm as the frozen ice field suddenly came within range of our lights immediately below.
Destruction seemed to stare us in the face. But again we reckoned without Hunter’s watchfulness, for as we turned with common instinct to warn him, the motor began to whir again. Our decent was checked so abruptly that we were nearly thrown from our feet.
Then we heard a rattle of tackle overhead, and, looking up, saw the great wings, that we had hitherto regarded as fantastic ornaments, unfold and spread out and begin to beat the air like those of a great bird. At once the ship began to glide forward at great speed parallel to the surface of the ice field, and presently, circling around two or three times, came to rest on the surface so gently that we felt hardly the slightest shock.
But when we sought our leader to congratulate him on the success of this first trial of his flying apparatus and to ask him eager questions as to its workings, we found him at the moment interested only in a series of jars that stood on the floor at one side of the cabin.
“I’ll explain the flying machinery later,” he said. “I’ll instruct you, Weaver, and your two sailing mates in its handling before we start again. Just now I must find out what was the matter with the air up there. I have a fear that we may not be able to sail to those worlds above, after all. I brought these air-containers with me to test the quality of the air in the zone of darkness, thinking I might learn the cause of its absence of light.
“Just now, when I discovered while we were rising that the air was changing in quality, I began sealing up samples of it in these jars at different heights. I must know their secret at once.”
As he spoke he gathered up the jars and disappeared in his laboratory. Having no invitation to follow him, we remained behind and fell to studying the mysterious mechanism that we had hitherto taken for granted as merely an improved but otherwise ordinary ship’s motor. Whether Hunter had taken his mechanics into the secret to any extent, I do not know, but Weaver and I, not being of mechanical minds and having no responsibility in the direction, had not bothered our heads about it.
Accordingly we made little headway with our study now. We were about to call in one of the mechanics to test his knowledge when Hunter returned from his laboratory, his face clouded with disappointment.
“We will have to give up trying to reach the worlds above at present,” he announced. “There is a space between us and them where there is no air to breathe.”
“What!” I exclaimed, unable to grasp so preposterous a thought as a place where air was not. “How can that be?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I can only tell you that it is so. We came very near rising into that absolutely empty region. The last jar I sealed up had almost no air in it. That is why we had such difficulty in breathing. And the pressure of the air in our bodies, not balanced by pressure without, nearly burst out our ears. That, too, explains why the queen suffered no harm. The air had not yet escaped from the closed body of the ship.”
“Must we, then, abandon the expedition?” asked Weaver in a tone unmistakably hopeful.
“By no means,” Hunter snapped. “I still believe we can cross the region of darkness and find light lands beyond that are connected with this by at least breathable air. Now that our flying apparatus works we can try it, anyhow.”
“In that case,” replied our admirable sailing master with a shrug, “the sooner I learn to fly the better.”
YOU may be sure that Hunter’s explanation of the flying properties of his craft, though intended primarily for Weaver, his two sailing-mates, and the mechanics who had direct charge of the motors, was a matter of keen interest to us all. We crowded in and around the motor cabin and listened in awe to his account of this most marvelous invention in the annals of Venus. It was a contrivance that to our minds marked our leader as a veritable wizard of science, though he continued to maintain that he had merely exercised a little ingenuity in adapting discoveries made by men dead before his time.
I know I, for one, had been not a little piqued at his proceeding on this voyage without first explaining the details of apparatus by which he had hoped to make comparatively simple an expedition that had appeared well-nigh hopeless to us who were uninformed. I wondered, too, that he had not made use of this obvious means of escape when we were first beset by the savages.
I reflected bitterly that we might then have avoided the incubus of our rebellious female passenger. My very recent escape from a mauling at the hands of that lady served in no way to lighten my grievance.
But Hunter’s explanation when it came was, like all his mental processes, so fair and reasonable that I was ashamed of my pettishness.
“The means by which the ship rises from the ground are absurdly simple, once explained,” he began modestly. “Had the need for flying ever before arisen, almost anyone would have hit upon this obvious device. I have simply made use of a large quantity of lifting stone, such as you have doubtless all played with as boys.”
The nub of the mystery immediately became clear, though the details remained to be explained. The lifting stone was a mineral, comparatively rare in Venus, but of little value from lack of practical use. It was
, nevertheless, well known on account of its peculiar property.
Left alone, it seemed no different from an ordinary piece of granite. But subjected to friction it developed immediately the property of neutralizing gravity. The greater the mass of the mineral and the more vigorous the friction applied to its surface, the more powerful became its force of repulsion.
I remember as a boy having a toy bird whose body was made of this mineral. To make it fly one had only to stroke its back a few times with a bit of cloth and release it. After the energy of this momentary friction was spent, it would come fluttering gently back on the wings of cloth that were held distended by tiny frames from its sides.
I well remember my childish grief when I rubbed the thing too hard and it disappeared in a flash, never to be found again, though I spent several sleeps hunting the neighborhood for it.
Hunter had simply made of his ship a toy flying-bird on a huge scale. Between the roof and ceiling of the cabins he had installed a big amalgam cylinder made of bits of this flying stone. Around this cylinder was a revolving metal jacket, its interior lined with steel brushes in contact with the cylinder. This jacket was attached to the ship’s motor and when made to revolve the resulting friction started the stone to lifting with rapidly increasing power.
The great wings, when spread flat, suffered the ship to glide down gently, or, when worked up and down-in imitation of real bird’s wings, drove the vessel forward rapidly at any height to which the stone cylinder held it.
“I was forced to do all my experimenting in my laboratory with small models,” the inventor went on. “I knew that if I tried flying a large vessel in the open I would be deemed more crazy than ever and that probably none of you would risk your lives with me. I did not wish, moreover, to raise false hopes by trying to explain the device till I had proved it. Moreover,” he added naively, “I enjoyed giving you the novelty of surprise.
“You are probably wondering why I didn’t use it to escape the savages in the first place. I intended and hoped to do so up to the moment when Weaver and Scribner dragged me away from the ship as our blind foes were about to board it. The motor had become jammed in our tussle with the ice, however, and I was not able to get it clear in time.”
Again our confidence in our leader was renewed, and when he put it to vote as to whether we should continue across the zone of darkness or turn back toward home, not a voice was raised against going on with our enterprise. I noted with satisfaction that our erstwhile grumbling sailing-master led the chorus of endorsement. The bluff sailor had been taught a new trick, the art of flying, and he was all eagerness to try his knowledge.
So as soon as Hunter and his mechanics had made certain that the motor and flying tackle were properly tuned, we rose again from the ice, no longer fearing closed channels, ice-mountains, or obstructing bodies of land.
The lifting cylinder was now regulated so that we remained at a safe distance from the surface and still kept it within range of our lights so that we could study the nature of the country as we proceeded. The great wings drove us forward at a surprising pace, we soon became accustomed to this new sensation of flying, and before the first sleep of our renewed journey had ended, we were as much at home in the air as we had been on the surface of the sea.
Aside from the novelty of flight, however, our voyage had become most monotonous. The unvarying white of the surface below us, broken in contour only by an occasional low ridge of hills, was even more unchanging than the surface of the Land of Light. We saw no more signs of human habitation, the only life in evidence being an occasional shaggy beast like the one we had seen slain by the savages, or now and then a flock of wild birds. Twice we passed through brief storms, but the weather was mainly calm and misty.
We had merely exchanged one Land of Never Change for another.
Our spirits were buoyed up, however, by the momentary expectation of coming to an end of this phase, and finding still further adventure in the beyond.
Only, one thing marred the satisfaction of our leader, as he confided to me during the second sleep. That was the unbroken obduracy of the queen. She continued to sulk in confinement, refusing food, and offering to attack anyone who attempted to approach her.
For my part, her state of mind troubled me little so long as she was in safe-keeping. But to Hunter, I could see, it was a personal matter over which he brooded deeply.
On the third sleep he determined, much against the judgment of the rest of us, to try giving her the freedom of the ship. I had as soon have contemplated the approach of another collision with an ice-mountain.
But the test proved how little we could count on the vagaries of this new type of woman. After explaining carefully to her through the closed door that she was to have her freedom and that no harm would come to her, Hunter, accompanied by Weaver and myself, threw open her stateroom.
We were prepared for a scrimmage, and Hunter was armed for it with an anesthetic sprayer. But we might have spared our apprehensions. With head erect and face cold with disdain, she walked out, and passed us with a high assumption of queenliness. Without a glance at us, she passed through the cabin up to the deck.
WE followed in time to see her reach the ship’s rail and make as if to leap over. We rushed forward, all three, with a united cry of warning. But it was not needed. For a moment she leaned over the barrier in horrid fascination at the unexpected sight of our vessel gliding forward in midair. Whether it was a resurgence of her civilized, ancestral blood, or whether she had become so inured to the unexpected marvels within the power of her new-found cousin that she could no longer feel an acute shock of surprise, I do not know. But when at last she turned around, her face was as calm and expressionless as though carved from her native ice.
“Now you may bring me food,” she said quietly. It was not an appeal nor even a request. It was unmistakably a command. The truth seemed to have dawned on her that among male mortals with two normal eyes each, she had no need of physical force or display of barbaric rage to enforce her will.
If anyone resented her tone, he did not betray the fact. Her command was obeyed as, I blush to confess, were all subsequent mandates of hers.
Hunter remained head of the expedition. Weaver continued to direct the handling of the ship. But from that moment forth the queen ruled us all, such was the sheer power of her beauty and the fascination of her strange personality.
We all marveled greatly at her ready adaptability to her new surroundings, once she had made up her mind to accept them as inevitable. Gifted with native gracefulness, as who could fail to be, having Hunter blood, she began quickly to drop the uncouthness acquired during her savage up-bringing. She had a natural passion for personal cleanliness, and once granted the facilities for gratifying it, she pursued it to the point of fastidiousness. She soon demanded civilized garb.
Our food at first did not appeal to her untrained taste, but she readily acquired a most healthy appetite for it and by sedulous imitation learned to use our unfamiliar eating utensils most gracefully. The tones of her voice, even, became less harsh, and she began after a little to lose her guttural accent.
And with all these new accomplishments she grew steadily more dangerous.
The dominant trait of her character reminded me strongly, by sharp contrast, of the First Lady of the South. Never were two women more unusual, more revolutionary in their views as to woman’s place in society, nor were there ever two more diametrically opposed to each other in those views.
The lady’s cardinal principle was that woman’s place was in the home and with its duties, that she should be subservient to man, and at the same time supported and protected by him. The queen held that woman was the ruler, the leader in public affairs, and that man was destined to do the menial work of life under her direction.
The one was clinging, persuasive; the other dominant, driving.
These tendencies of the queen, acquired from her lifelong habit of ruling her subservient, blind serfs, manifested themse
lves in a hundred little instances. She blandly ignored the obligation the rest of us felt to keep our own staterooms clean and orderly and to do our share in preparing meals, but saw to it that those items were scrupulously attended to for her by the rest of us. On the other hand, she was tireless in mastering the details of managing the ship and was forever in the way of Hunter and Weaver.
I spoke to Hunter once of this sharp contrast between the two women, who occupied such momentous places in his life. He answered me rather shortly, though good-naturedly enough, with the manner of one who would appear to make light of that which secretly lay heavy on his mind. Watching his face afterward I satisfied myself that he was by no means blind to the weight of my observation.
It turned out that the queen was the first to announce our approach to what appeared to be the long-looked-for goal of our hazardous voyage.
It was toward the close of the twentieth sleep of our monotonous flight. Hunter had the watch at the time, and the queen, as usual, persisted in actively sharing it with him. In this case, it seemed to me, she was taking a more active interest than he in the ship’s run. He had become moody and distraught of late and now for moments at a time seemed lost in his brooding thoughts.
The queen, on the contrary, was all alertness, now noting the working of the machinery, now scanning the landscape below us and keeping up a running fire of comment on such scant features as it presented, and now standing in the look-out-box in the prow, her keen eyes piercing the darkness ahead as it dissolved under our powerful lights.
“Stop! Stop!” she called out suddenly from the lookout-box. “There’s something ahead!”
The man beside her, who had been properly stationed as lookout, stared at her in surprise. He had seen nothing. Hunter, who rushed forward at the cry, was equally mystified and evidently irritated. From my position amidship I could of course, make out nothing.