by Garret Smith
What amazed me most, however, was an ingenious chemical apparatus, which was designed to consume the vitiated air of our breaths, and give forth again a pure, breatheable gas. It was, I confess, a bit of a shock to learn that the mysterious substance which I had always vaguely thought of as the very breath of the Over Spirit could be thus juggled with by mere mortals.
At any rate, when we lifted from the waters of the Southern Islands, our vessel was a miniature world within itself, stored with condensed, preserved food enough to last our little company of fifty for half a lifetime, and with countless other supplies which Hunter conceived might be important to us in case of landing in a savage or perhaps unpopulated world.
Keeping safely in sight of the surface of Venus, we shaped our course directly back into the Land of Night. For Hunter had in mind to locate again the region over which we had seen shining those myriad points, which he conceived to be worlds of light. It was his purpose to steer his course toward that single one which had so far outshone the others as to suggest that it was nearer than they.
For my part, I could not yet grasp the reasoning by which he came to believe these lights to be other than they seemed—merely particles of radiance in a black roof over-cupping the floating sphere on which we lived. But I reasoned that if they were such, they could not be at any great distance, and the truth would be quickly learned. Moreover, if they were lights set in a solid roof, as they seemed to me, there might quite possibly be on that roof the new world we sought.
“The matter of steering our course to this new world troubles me most,” Hunter confided to Weaver and myself. “Once we leave the air of Venus, our wings will be useless for controlling direction. Therefore, our only recourse is to start from a position directly under the world we seek. Our vessel, when the lifting power is applied, will fly straight up. We must depend on its keeping to that straight course.”
“And if we miss our aim,” Weaver pronounced grimly, “we may fly on forever, lost between the worlds.”
“That may be,” Hunter conceded.
So you may imagine that our first elation at getting safely away from Venus cooled somewhat as we contemplated the perplexities and uncertainties before us. It was, after all, I confess, with somewhat the same feeling of desperation that we had experienced before under like circumstances that we again watched the light of our world fading away, and the chill twilight of the mysterious Land of Light swiftly closing around us.
In our newly enclosed decks, artificially heated, we had no need this time for the heavy garments with which we had sought before with poor success to fend off the bitter cold of the eternal darkness. We rode in safety far above “the hazards of ice-mountains, savage beasts, and more savage human beings that had hitherto beset us.
Indeed, we saw nothing of the wild, eyeless denizens of the region, nor of the ice city over which our captive queen had formerly ruled; for no sooner were we well within the Zone of Night, or Hemisphere of Night, as Hunter reminded us our new knowledge should dub it, than Weaver drove the ship upward, and presently we emerged from the envelope of haze that shrouds our planet, and once more saw above us the brilliant galaxy of the black, spark-studded heavens.
ALL of us not needed below decks in the management of the machinery stood out under the glass roof windows, our straining eyes searching the great dome from horizon to zenith to locate once more that brightest of these heavenly worlds that had before beckoned to our leader.
Again and again some point stood out brighter than those near it, and led us to think we had at last found our objective. But each time, no sooner had Hunter bent our course to take up a position under it, than someone would sight another light of equal magnitude, and we knew we had again been misled.
Hunter and Weaver soon became greatly puzzled at this. Though the readings of their nautical instruments showed that we were approximately over the same spot from which we had before sighted our particular world, we cruised about there for an entire sleep without again bringing it into view.
At length they concluded they had made some mistake in their calculations, and decided, therefore, to cruise around this region in continually widening circles until, if need be, they had scoured the entire hemisphere. At the same time they drove the ship still higher, thinking thereby to get a closer view of these worlds above.
How futile this minute elevation was in comparison with the appalling distances of space we could not know at any time, of course. I think my own impression of them, as far as I had any definite one, was that our voyage from Venus to this world above could at the most be little greater than the distance from East Venus to South Venus.
However, what we did not know could not dismay us, and we continued our spiral cruise for three full sleeps quite unrewarded.
But at length, as we were about despairing, and Hunter was debating if we had not better drive for one of the myriad lesser lights, there arose above the horizon a, clear, steady gleam, so different from the twinkling sparks about it as to be unmistakable. I was reminded, as I sighted it, of the description the queen had given of it when she first told us of the “light above” she had seen as a child during the great wind, “a light as of a torch a long way off.”
So we headed our ship in the direction of this peerless gleam, and made toward it at all possible speed. And it rose steadily in the heavens as we advanced until it had mounted the zenith, and shone directly down upon us.
At almost the same moment we noted down on the horizon from which this desired world had arisen the same white gleam of dawn we had seen once before on emerging from the Land of Night. We had sailed almost across the dark hemisphere in search of our world!
“Strange!” Hunter muttered. “Can it be that these worlds move about in space? It is certain that we saw this world over our heads before when we were at the very center of the Land of Night.”
“If it be true that this world moves, we may make a sorry chase of it,” suggested Weaver. “If we aim at the spot where it is now, it may be far from there when we reach that spot. Once started, we cannot change our course.”
“We must count on making such speed that it cannot be far away when we arrive,” Hunter declared. “Then, too, I reason that if Venus draws all things toward it by a great attraction, as we know it does, yonder world will exercise a like power. For were not both created by the same Great Over Spirit? And we cannot think He builds capriciously or establishes his law by whim. Be that as it may, we are committed to our course, and it is too late for turning back.”
Taking a sighting instrument and making it fast to the deck in an exact perpendicular, he held his eye to it until Weaver had maneuvered the ship so that it hung exactly under the light at which we aimed. He shouted to Weaver, and instantly the lifting motor began whirring at full speed. We all stirred uneasily. Then, as we felt the ship leap under us, we held our breaths. Some of us, I think, offered a prayer.
At last we were off on our long-planned voyage between worlds.
WE stood staring upward through the roof windows, our eyes fixed on that serene point of light till we were fairly hypnotized with its gleam. Our brains swam with emotion which overflowed in audible exclamations here and there through the company.
At length I became dizzy with staring, and had to turn away a moment to steady myself. Others, I noticed, were likewise affected.
Again I sought out the pale beam and watched it for long moments. Then one of our number broke the silence and voiced our common feeling:
“It grows no larger! It seems no nearer!” he said doubtfully.
Indeed, I think all of us, realizing something of the tremendous speed with which we were being hurled through space, and having not the slightest conception of the enormous distance that lay ahead, actually expected to see that far-off world begin almost immediately to bulk large above us. At that moment of disappointment we were diverted by another outcry.
“Look down! Look down!” shouted some one.
In providing for uno
bstructed vision in every direction, Hunter had built several alcoves in the deck-shed jutting out over the rails like shallow bay-windows with glass in the floor, so that one could get a clear view below.
To these observation ports we all rushed and looked over, as we had been bidden. Never shall I forget my sensations as my eye fell on the world we had left behind us. In our experience with the flying ship we had all become more or less inured to great heights with no support beneath. But the stoutest nerves quailed at the awful abyss that now opened under us. Many turned away at the first glance, sick with the horror of it.
Down, down, till it seemed there was no bottom to the universe, our vision at length rested on a circular field of softly glowing gray mist. So far below it was, and occupied so little space in the black bespangled circle of the nether heavens that it seemed incredible that this could be all that was left-to us of the Venus we had known.
For the first time the full awesomeness of our situation burst upon our consciousness. Our atom of a ship was all the world that was left to us, a little company of half a hundred souls hung out in vast, bleak, empty space, supported on less than airy nothing, the world we had known shrunk to this unsubstantial shadow, as unreal, and to all intents as far away as any one of the other glittering worlds about it.
Even as we watched, it had shrunk still more. In a half, bow along one margin it gleamed with a soft, silvery effulgence fading out toward the center of an ashy gray, and on the far side becoming barely visible.
I was aroused from my trancelike intentness by a voice at my side, and Hunter placed his hand on my arm and clutched it spasmodically in his nervousness with such force that I shrank from the pain of it.
“Awful! Awful! But wonderful beyond words!” he whispered. “Who could dream it would be so?”
I looked at him, speechless with the inadequacy of such words as came to my tongue. I was about to resort to some banal reply when we were interrupted by a frantic voice behind us. Carpenter, trembling so that he could hardly stand, his voice choking with the panic fear that had driven all blood from his pasty, tortured face, was clutching wildly at Hunter’s sleeve like a drowning man at a life-raft.
He was utterly beside himself with abject, uncontrollable terror and he, too, a man who had borne himself well through all the dangers of our previous voyage and had been one of Hunter’s staunchest supporters at the time of the defection of part of our company in West Venus. Of his moral courage he had given abundant evidence, and his physical bravery had stood severe test.
But this sudden and overwhelming revelation of undreamed-of heights and the appalling sense of utter aloneness and helplessness had torn his nerves to shreds and annihilated his will and reason.
I was too conscious of my own panic greatly to blame the man. I hold him now no more responsible for his words and acts than a gibbering idiot.
“Take us back!” he rasped in a weird mixture of shriek and whisper. “Take us back! Take us back! Take us back, if you can! You madman, to get us into this! Take us back—or if you can’t, let us die at once before we fall! I can’t stand this! We’re falling now, I believe!”
His tirade ended in a choking shriek, and he fell half fainting to the deck. This outburst was the electric spark to our explosive nerves. To some few of us, myself included, belongs the sorry credit of remaining at least passive spectators of what followed, making no demonstration of our panic, it is true, but too unnerved for the moment to be of any real service to our leader.
The majority of the company rushed around Carpenter, who had put voice to their own feelings and thereby given the little added impetus needed to drive their frenzied fear past all control.
Scarcely knowing what they did, they seized Hunter and dragged him bodily toward the motor-cabin.
“Make him turn back!” was the cry from a score of throats.
“Drop him overboard if he refuses!” shouted one.
“If we are to fall, let him go first!” screamed another.
“He knew this meant death! He sought suicide because no one in Venus believed his wild stories! We knew too much, so we must die, too!” came another hysterical voice.
“Shame! Shame!” cried someone at that.
We passive ones now had collected ourselves a little, and pushed into the frantic mob, exhorting them to be calm.
Weaver, at this, emerged from the motor-cabin, and his deep voice rose in a roar above the tumult, demanding silence.
He backed up this demand with a pair of sturdy fists to such good purpose that the mutineers fell back a little, and presently he had Hunter out of their hands and standing with him, their backs to the cabin wall, where I and several other more sober ones joined them, not a little ashamed of our belated show of courage.
ALL this time Hunter had not spoken a word. Now he stood in dignified silence, eyeing them sadly, pityingly, understandingly, it seemed, without a trace of anger in his face.
This vigorous stand by Weaver, backed now by some dozen of us, together with the calm demeanor of Hunter, had a slightly sobering effect on our panic-stricken fellows. Some of them already showed a dawning shame at their conduct.
At length, when his voice could be heard easily, Hunter spoke.
“My friends,” he said, “you don’t know what you have been saying. Listen to me for a moment; then, if I cannot convince you that you are unduly alarmed, I will turn back as you ask. If I still seem then to be deceiving you, you may throw me overboard, as one of you has proposed, and as in such case I would richly deserve.”
He paused for a moment, and a low, angry murmur arose in the hostile group before him. He silenced it with a wave of his hand and went on:
“I have no heart to blame you for your alarm. Our position is appalling even to me, but I am sustained by my faith in the ship I have built and the proofs that my ideas of the universe are true. I said that Venus was round, like a great ball. Men scoffed at me. But below us now it lies in full view for all to see. At this distance we can see it as a whole, and know that I was right. You believed me once on faith. Now you must believe me from the evidence of your own eyes.
“We are not falling, as one of you feared just now, else Venus would not steadily grow smaller in seeming, as it does. We can turn back toward it at any moment if you insist, but it is no worse to go on. What a shame to stop on the eve of a great achievement because our hearts had failed us!”
He paused again. This time the murmurings were fewer and less angry in tone. Under the spell of his personality they were forgetting for a moment their panic, and I could see that his argument was bearing weight.
“We are going to have many trials to our nerves on this journey,” Hunter went on, “and I beg of you steel your wills to meet them without panic, as you did so bravely the perils of our former voyage.
“You were alarmed a little time ago because the world toward which we are speeding seemed to grow no nearer. That means to me that the distance we have to go is vastly greater than even I thought. But I had, nevertheless, provided for a long journey with food to last many times as long as I had any idea would be needed. Would a madman or one planning suicide or murder do that?”
By now I could see shame stealing over the faces of his hearers. Several started to speak, but again he silenced them with a gesture and went on:
“Now, let us watch the world above us and see if, after a little, it does not draw nearer. I promise you this: If within half a sleep it is not clear to your eyes and minds that we are actually approaching our goal, I will turn back again. I must exact from you in return a promise that in the meantime you remain quiet and in no way interfere with the running of the ship. Do you agree?”
He ceased speaking and awaited their reply. Several, thoroughly converted, gave assent at once. Others followed a little doubtfully, and finally the remainder, seeing themselves in a minority, grudgingly Joined in the promise.
Then with one accord we fell to studying the heavens above us.
At first gla
nce there seemed to be no visible change. The countless lights still twinkled as mere points of brilliance and still seemingly no nearer.
But after studying for a moment in comparison the steady light of that brightest of these illuminations, toward which we aimed, it seemed to me that there had been a change in it since last I saw it. I feared at first it might be my imagination, and said nothing.
But the longer I looked, the more convinced I became that I was no longer gazing at a mere point of light, but at a tiny sphere that, as I looked, took to my eyes a definite size about equal in diameter to the nail of a man’s thumb. No longer in doubt, I cried out excitedly:
“It shows nearer already! It has grown larger. It is a globe like Venus!”
One after another my fellow watchers assented.
“You are right,” Hunter declared. “My faith is justified sooner than I had hoped.
We will wait, however, for stronger proof.”
We had been so intent on this that we had not noticed a new element that had been creeping upon us unawares. There had been no lights on the vessel, save one small deck-lamp. The others had been turned off when we started our upward flight, that we might better see the phenomena of the heavens.
But now several of us noted at once that a bright glow pervaded the deck-shed. Our solitary light paled before it. We stared about aghast.
“It comes from below!” someone shouted suddenly.
We turned toward the observation alcoves. From their bottom windows streaked upward steady beams of intense white light!
Again we looked down, and again we fell into panic.
Our world of Venus that a little before had gleamed so dully had burst into brilliant flames, blazing from all its circular rim far into the heavens.
ONLY a fleeting instant this tremendous spectacle smote our retinas, and then, with hands before our faces, we shrank back from the windows, our eyes, accustomed only to the soft lights of our world, stricken momentarily blind by the terrible glare.