The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 05

by Anthology

  Gently the heavily laden Solarite rose from the hangar floor, and slowly floated out into the bright sunshine of the early February day. Beside it rode the little ship that Arcot had first built, piloted by the father of the inventor. With him rode the elder Morey and a dozen newsmen. The little ship was badly crowded now as they rose slowly, high into the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere. The sky about them was growing dark--they were going into space!

  At last they reached the absolute ceiling of the smaller ship, and it hung there while the Solarite went a few miles higher; then slowly, but ever faster and faster they were plunging ahead, gathering speed.

  They watched the radio speedometer creep up--1-2-3-4-5-6--steadily it rose as the acceleration pressed them hard against the back of the seats--8-9--still it rose as the hum of the generator became a low snarl--10-11-12--they were rocketing at twelve miles a second, the tenuous air about the ship shrieking in a thin scream of protest as it parted on the streamlined bow.

  Slowly the speed rose--reached fifteen miles a second. The sun's pull became steadily more powerful; they were falling toward the fiery sphere, away from the Earth. A microphone recessed in the outer wall brought them the fading whisper of air from outside. Arcot shouted a sudden warning:

  "Hold on--we're going to lose all weight--out into space!"

  There was a click, and the angry snarl of the overworked generator died in an instant as the thudding relays cut it out of the circuit. Simultaneously the air scoop which had carried air to the generator switched off, transferring to solar heat as a source of power. They seemed to be falling with terrific and ever-increasing speed. They looked down--saw the Earth shrinking visibly as they shot away at more than five miles a second; they were traveling fifteen miles a second ahead and five a second straight up.

  The men watched with intensest interest as the heavens opened up before them--they could see stars now a scant degree from the sun itself, for no air diffused its blinding glory. The heat of the rays seemed to burn them; there was a prickling pleasantness to it now, as they looked at the mighty sea of flame through smoked glasses. The vast arms of the corona reached out like the tentacles of some fiery octopus through thousands of miles of space--huge arms of flaming gas that writhed out as though to reach and drag back the whirling planets to the parent body. All about the mighty sphere, stretching far into space, a wan glow seemed to ebb and flow, a kaleidoscope of swiftly changing color. It was the zodiacal light, an aurora borealis on a scale inconceivable!

  Arcot worked rapidly with the controls, the absence of weight that gave that continued sense of an unending fall, aiding him and his assistants in their rapid setting of the controls.

  At last the work was done and the ship flashed on its way under the control of the instruments that would guide it across all the millions of miles of space and land it on Venus with unerring certainty. The photo-electric telescopic eye watched the planet constantly, keeping the ship surely and accurately on the course that would get them to the distant planet in the shortest possible time.

  Work thereafter became routine requiring a minimum of effort, and the men could rest and use their time to observe the beauties of the skies as no man had ever seen them during all the billions of years of time that this solar system has existed. The lack of atmosphere made it possible to use a power of magnification that no terrestrial telescope may use. The blurred outlines produced by the shifting air prohibits magnifications of more than a few hundred diameters, but here in space they could use the greatest power of their telescope. With it they could look at Mars and see it more clearly than any other man had ever seen it, despite the fact that it was now over two hundred million miles away.

  But though they spent much time taking photographs of the planets and of the moon, and in making spectrum analyses of the sun, time passed very slowly. Day after day they saw measured on the clocks, but they stayed awake, finding they needed little sleep, for they wasted no physical energy. Their weightlessness eliminated fatigue. However, they determined that during the twelve hours before reaching Venus they must be thoroughly alert, so they tried to sleep in pairs. Arcot and Morey were the first to seek slumber--but Morpheus seemed to be a mundane god, for he did not reward them. At last it became necessary for them to take a mild opiate, for their muscles refused to permit their tired brains to sleep. It was twelve hours later when they awoke, to relieve Wade and Fuller.

  They spent most of the twelve hours of their routine watch in playing games of chess. There was little to be done. The silver globe before them seemed unchanging, for they were still so far away it seemed little larger than the moon does when seen from Earth.

  But at last it was time for the effects of the mild drug to wear off, and for Wade and Fuller to awaken from their sleep.

  "Morey--I've an idea!" There was an expression of perfect innocence on Arcot's face--but a twinkle of humor in his eyes. "I wonder if it might not be interesting to observe the reactions of a man waking suddenly from sleep to find himself alone in space?" He stared thoughtfully at the control that would make the ship perfectly transparent, perfectly invisible.

  "I wonder if it would?" said Morey grasping Arcot's idea. "What do you say we try it?" Arcot turned the little switch--and where there had been the ship, it was no more--it was gone!

  Fuller stirred uneasily in his bed, tightly strapped as he was. The effects of the drug were wearing off. Sleepily he yawned--stretched, and blindly, his heavy eyes still closed, released the straps that held him in bed. Yawning widely he opened his eyes--with a sudden start sat upright--then, with an excellent imitation of an Indian on the warpath, he leaped from his bed, and started to run wildly across the floor. His eyes were raised to the place where the ceiling should have been--he called lustily in alarm--then suddenly he was flying up--and crashed heavily against the invisible ceiling! His face was a picture of utter astonishment as he fell lightly to the floor--then slowly it changed, and took on a chagrined smile--he understood!

  He spun around as loud cries suddenly resounded from Wade's room across the hall--then there was a dull thud, as he too, forgetting the weightlessness, jumped and hit the ceiling. Then the cries were gone, like the snuffing of a candle. From the control room there rose loud laughter--and a moment later they felt more normal, as they again saw the four strong walls about them.

  Wade sighed heavily and shook his head.

  They were approaching the planet visibly now. In the twelve hours that had passed they had covered a million miles, for now they were falling toward the planet under its attraction. It glowed before them now in wonderous splendour, a mighty disc of molten silver.

  For the last twenty-four hours they had been reducing their speed relative to Venus, to insure their forming an orbit about the planet, rather than shoot around it and back into space. Their velocity had been over a hundred miles a second part of the way, but now it had been reduced to ten. The gravity of the planet was urging them forward at ever increasing speed, and their problem became more acute moment by moment.

  "We'll never make it on the power units alone, out here in space," said Arcot seriously. "We'll just shoot around the planet. I'll tell you how we can do it, though. We'll circle around it, entering its atmosphere on the daylight side, and shoot into the upper limits of its atmosphere. There the power units can find some heat to work on, and we can really slow down. But we'll have to use the rocket tubes to get the acceleration we'll need to drive the ship into the air."

  There was a sudden clanging of a bell, and everyone dived for a hold, and held on tightly. An instant later there was a terrific wrench as the rocket jets threw the plane out of the way of a meteor.

  "We're getting near a planet. This is the third meteor we've met since we were more than a million miles from Earth. Venus and Earth and all the planets act like giant vacuum cleaners of space, pulling into themselves all the space debris and meteors within millions of miles by their gravitational attraction."

  Swiftly the planet ex
panded below them--growing vaster with each passing moment. It had changed from a disc to a globe, and now, as the molten silver of its surface seemed swiftly clouding, it turned grey; then they saw its true appearance, a vast field of rolling, billowing clouds!

  The Solarite was shooting around the planet now at ten miles a second, far more than enough to carry them away from the planet again, out into space once more if their speed was not checked.

  "Hold on everybody," Arcot called. "We're going to turn toward the planet now!" He depressed a small lever--there was a sudden shock, and all the space about them seemed to burst into huge, deep-red atomic hydrogen flames.

  The Solarite reeled under the sudden pressure, but the heavy gyroscopic stabilizers caught it, held it, and the ship remained on an even keel. Then suddenly there came to the ears of the men a long drawn whine, faint--almost inaudible--and the ship began slowing down. The Solarite had entered the atmosphere of Venus--the first man-made machine to thus penetrate the air of another world!

  Quickly Arcot snapped open the control that had kept the rockets flaming, turning the ship to the planet--driving it into the atmosphere. Now they could get their power from the air that each instant grew more dense about them.

  "Wade--in the power room--emergency control post--Morey--control board there--hang on, for we'll have to use some husky accelerations."

  Instantly the two men sprang for their posts--literally diving, for they were still almost weightless.

  Arcot pulled another lever--there was a dull snap as a relay in the power room responded--the lights wavered--dimmed--then the generator was once more humming smoothly--working on the atmosphere of Venus! In a moment the power units were again operating, and now as they sucked a plentitude of power from the surrounding air, they produced a force that made the men cling to their holds with almost frantic force. Around them the rapidly increasing density of the air made the whine grow to a roar; the temperature within the ship rose slowly, warmed by friction with the air, despite the extreme cold at this altitude, more than seventy-five miles above the surface of the planet.

  They began dropping rapidly now--their radio-speedometer had fallen from ten to nine--then slowly, but faster and faster as more heat could be extracted from the air, it had fallen 8--7--6--5--4. Now they were well below orbital speed, falling under the influence of the planet. The struggle was over--the men relaxed. The ship ran quietly now, the smooth hum of the air rushing over the great power units coming softly through the speaker to their ears, a humming melody--the song of a new world.

  IV

  Suddenly the blazing sun was gone and they were floating in a vast world of rolling mists--mists that brushed the car with tiny clicks, which, with the millions of particles that struck simultaneously, merged into a steady roar.

  "Ice--ice clouds!" Morey exclaimed.

  Arcot nodded. "We'll drop below the clouds; they're probably miles deep. Look, already they're changing--snow now--in a moment it will be water--then it'll clear away and we'll actually see Venus!"

  For ten miles--an endless distance it seemed--they dropped through clouds utterly impenetrable to the eye. Then gradually the clouds thinned; there appeared brief clear spots, spots into which they could see short distances--then here and there they caught glimpses of green below. Was it water--or land?

  With a suddenness that startled them, they were out of the clouds, shooting smoothly and swiftly above a broad plain. It seemed to stretch for endless miles across the globe, to be lost in the far distance to east and west; but to the north they saw a low range of hills that rose blue and misty in the distance.

  "Venus! We made it!" Morey cried jubilantly. "The first men ever to leave Earth--I'm going to start the old sender and radio back home! Man--look at that stretch of plain!" He jumped to his feet and started across the control room. "Lord--I feel like of ton of lead now--I sure am out of condition for walking after all that time just floating!"

  Arcot raised a restraining hand. "Whoa--wait a minute there, Morey--you won't get anything through to them now. The Earth is on the other side of Venus--it's on the night side, remember--and we're on the day side. In about twelve hours we'll be able to send a message. In the meantime, take the controls while I make a test of the air here, will you?"

  Relieved of the controls, Arcot rose and walked down the corridor to the power room where the chemical laboratory had been set up. Wade had already collected a dozen samples of air, and was working on them.

  "How is it--what have you tested for so far?" asked Arcot.

  "Oxygen and CO{2}. The oxygen is about twenty-two per cent, or considering the slightly lower air pressure here, we will have just about the right amount of oxygen. The CO{2} is about one-tenth of one per cent. The atmosphere is O.K. for terrestrial life apparently; that mouse there is living quite happily. Whatever the other seventy-five per cent or so of diluting gas is, I don't know, but it isn't nitrogen."

  Briefly Arcot and Wade discussed the unusual atmosphere, finally deciding that the inert gas was argon.

  "No great amount of nitrogen," Arcot concluded. "That means that life will have a sweet time extracting it from the air--but wherever there is life, it finds a way to do the impossible. Test it more accurately, will you--you try for nitrogen and I'll try the component inert gasses."

  They ran the analyses rapidly, and in a very short time--less than an hour--their results stood at 23 per cent oxygen, .1 per cent carbon dioxide, 68 per cent argon, 6 per cent nitrogen, 2 per cent helium, 5 per cent neon, .05 per cent hydrogen, and the rest krypton and xenon apparently. The analyses of these inert gasses had to be done rather roughly in this short time, but it was sufficient to balance fairly accurately.

  The two chemists reported back to the control cabin.

  "Well, we'll be able to breathe the atmosphere of Venus with ease. I believe we can go on now. I have been surprised to see no water in sight, but I think I see my mistake now. You know the Mississippi has its mouth further from the center of the Earth than its source; it flows up hill! The answer is, of course, that the centrifugal force of the Earth's spin impels it to flow that way. Similarly, I am sure now that we will find that Venus has a vast belt of water about the middle, and to the north and south there will be two great caps of dry land. We are on the northern cap.

  "We have the microphone turned way down. Let's step up the power a bit and see if there are any sounds outside," said Arcot and walked over to the power control switch. An instant later a low hum came from the loudspeaker. There was a light breeze blowing. In the distance, forming a dull background for the hum, there came a low rumbling that seemed punctuated now and then by a greater sound.

  "Must be a long way off," said Arcot, a puzzled frown on his face. "Swing the ship around so we can see in what direction the sound is loudest," he suggested.

  Slowly Morey swung the ship around on its vertical axis. Without a doubt, something off in the direction of the hills was making a considerable noise.

  "Arcot, if that's a fight between two animals--two of those giant animals that you said might be here--I don't care to get near them!" Fuller's narrowed eyes strove to penetrate the haze that screened the low hills in the blue distance.

  The microphone was shut off while the Solarite shot swiftly forward toward the source of the sound. Quickly the hills grew, the blue mistiness disappearing, and the jagged mounds revealing themselves as bleak harsh rock. As they drew nearer they saw beyond the hills, intermittent flashes of brilliant light, heard shattering blasts of sound.

  "A thunderstorm!" Wade began, but Arcot interrupted.

  "Not so fast, Wade--Fuller's animal is there--the only animal in all creation that can make a noise like that! Look through the telescope--see those dots wheeling about there above the flashing lights? The only animal that can make that racket is man! There are men over there--and they aren't in a playful mood! Turn on the invisibility while we can, Morey--and let's get nearer!"

  "Look out--here we go!" Morey began to close a
tiny switch set in one side of the instrument panel--then, before the relay below could move, he had flipped it back.

  "Here, you take it, Arcot--you always think about two steps ahead of me--you're quicker and know the machine better anyway."

  Quickly the two men exchanged places.

  "I don't know about that, Morey," said a voice from vacancy, for Arcot had at once thrown the ship into invisibility. "The longer we're here, the more mistakes I see we made in our calculations. I see what put me off so badly on my estimate of the intelligence of life found here! The sun gives it a double dose of heat--but also a double dose of other radiations--some of which evidently speed up evolution. Anyway, we may be able to find friends here more quickly if we aid one side or the other in the very lively battle going on there. Before we go any further, what's our decision?"

  "I think it is a fine idea," said Fuller. "But which side are we to aid--and what are the sides? We haven't even seen them yet. Let's go nearer and take a good look."