Malcolm Mackay was eager to bet his life on that proposition. Atomic energy or—eternal captivity—death. And Bums, as much a fanatic as Mackay, was willing, too.
There were only two horns to this dilemma. There was no third to escape on, no going between them. So the Grand Old Man sank every penny of his fortune in it, and would have sunk any he could borrow had he been able to get it.
The Prometheus rose, slowly. And during the weeks and months it was being built, Mackay and Bums spent their time gathering supplies, instruments, chemicals. For one thing, every element must be represented, and in proportion to its availability. Radium even, though radium could never be a source of atomic power, for power derived from radium would still be too expensive for commercial use. But radium might be the absolutely essential primer for the engine—so radium went. And fluorine, the deadly, unmanageable halogen, everything.
Then, gradually, the things were moved in as the ship neared completion. The outer hull of the high-temperature tungsto steel, the space filled with hydrogen under pressure, since hydrogen was the best conductor of heat practicable, and in that interspace, the thousands of thermlectrium elements, and fans to force circulation.
The Prometheus was a beautiful ship when she was finished. She glowed with the gleam of a telescope mirror, polished to the ultimate. Only on one side was she black, black as space, and, here, studded with huge projectors and heaters. The power inevitably generated in absorbing the heat in the therm elements would be cast out here in tungsten bars thick as a man’s arm, and glowing white-hot in an atmosphere of hydrogen gas.
She left, finally. Struggling up from Earth, she reached Luna, her first stage, and filled her fuel tanks to the last possible ounce. Then, in August, 2050, she took off at length.
Reaching the Sun was no trick at all, once she had broken free of the Moon and of Earth. Day after day she fell with steadily mounting speed. The Sun loomed larger, hotter. The great gyroscopes went into action, and the Prometheus turned its silvered face to the Sun, reflecting the flooding heat. Nearer and nearer. Venus fell behind, then Mercury’s orbit at last.
They knew heat then. And radiation. The Sun loomed gigantic, a titanic furnace whose flames reached out a quarter of a million miles. The therm elements began to function, and the heat dropped somewhat. Then the rockets started again, started their braking action, slowly, steadily, breaking the ship to the orbit it must make, close about the Sun.
Hour after hour they droned and roared and rumbled, and the heat mounted, for all the straining power of the therm elements. Radio to Earth stopped the second day of the braking. The flooding radiations of the Sun killed it. They could still send, they knew, but they could not receive. Their signals were received by stations on the Moon, where the washing static of the Sun did not blanket all the signals that came. For they were beaming their waves, and the Sun, of course, was not.
“We must establish the orbit soon, John,” said Mackay, at last. He was lying down on his couch, sick and weak with the changing strains. “I am an old man, I fear, and I may not be able to endure much more of this.”
“We will have to brake more sharply then, Dr. Mackay,” replied Burns concernedly. “And then we may not be able to establish the perfectly circular orbit we need.”
Mackay smiled faintly, grimly. “If it is not soon, John, no orbit will mean anything to me.”
The rockets roared louder, and the ship slowed more rapidly. But it was three days yet before the orbit trimming could be started. They left the ship in an eccentric orbit at first, though, and counteracted for the vibrations of the ship, which tended to turn the blackened radiator side toward the Sun, by working the gyroscope planes.
Dr. Mackay recuperated slowly. It was three weeks actually, three precious, oxygen-consuming weeks, before they started the final orbit trimming. Then day after day they worked, observing, and occasionally giving a slight added rocket thrust for orbit trimming.
But finally, at a distance of three point seven three millions of miles, the Prometheus circled the titanic star. The sunward side, for all its polish, glowed red-hot continuously. And the inside of the ship remained a heated, desiccated furnace, for all the work of the therm elements. Even they could not perfectly handle the heat.
“Ah, John,” said Mackay at last, “in some ways Earth was better, for here we have strange conditions. I wish we could get a time signal from Earth. The space is distorted here by the Sun.”
Old Sol, mighty in mass and power, was warping space so that spectrum lines were not the same, their instruments were not the same, the titanic electric and magnetic fields threw their delicate apparatus awry. But they worked.
It was fortunate the therm elements produced power, as well as getting rid of the heat. With the power, they kept the functions of the ship running, breaking down the water formed in their breathing to oxygen once more, and storing the hydrogen in one of the now empty fuel tanks.
And their observations went on, and their calculations. In six months it seemed they had never known another life than this of intolerable, blinding light if they dared to open an observation slit in the slightest; intolerable, deadly radiation if they dared to step beyond the protected walls of their laboratory and living quarters to the storage quarters without a protective suit. For the most of the ship was as transparent to the ultra-short waves of the Sun as empty space.
But it grew to be a habit with them, the sending of the daily, negative reports, the impossibility of hearing any signal from Earth, even of observing it, for there was the eternal Gegenschein. It was blinding here, the reflected light from the thin-strewn dust of the Sun.
That dust was slowing them down, of course. They were, actually, spiralling in toward the Sun. In some seventy-five years they would have been within reach of the prominences. But before then—one of the pans of their balance would have tipped. Atomic power—or the inevitable end.
But Mackay was happy here. His eyes turned from deep blue-gray to a pale blue with red, bloodshot balls, his skin turned first deep, deep brown from the filtering ultra-violet, then it became mottled and unhealthy. Burns’ skin changed, too, but his eyes endured better, for he was younger. Still, Mackay felt sure of his goal. He looked down into the flaming heart of a Sun spot, and he examined the under side of a prominence, and he watched the ebb and flow of Sol’s titanic tides of white-hot gas.
2050 passed into history, and 2051 and 2052 followed in swift succession. No hint of the great happenings of Earth and the planets reached there, only the awful burning of the Sun—and, in February of 2053, a hint of the great changes there.
“John,” said Mackay softly one day, “John—I think I see some hint of the secret. I think we may make it, John!”
Bums looked at the sharp-lined spectrum that lay on the table before Mackay, and at the pages of calculations and measurements and at the data sheets. “I don’t see anything much different in that, doctor. Isn’t it another will-o’-the-wisp?”
“I—I hope not, John. Don’t you see this—this little line here? Do you recognize it?”
“No—no, I don’t think I do,” he said slowly. “It’s a bit too high for the 4781 line. And I don’t know what’s in there—”
“There isn’t any there, John,” said Mackay softly. “There isn’t any. It’s a forbidden line, an impossible line. It’s the impossible line of sodium, John. It’s a transformation that just couldn’t take place. And it did, so I’m going to find out how it did. If I can make the impossible release take place the same way-”
“But that tells so little, so very little. Even if you could duplicate that change, make that line, you’d still be as far from the secret as from Sirius. Or Earth for that matter.”
“I’ll know more, though, John. You forget that only knowledge is the real secret. When I know all about the atom, I’ll know how to do what I want to do. If I know all the changes that can take place, and why, then I can make that other change. Ah, if only I could see just a few miles deeper into
the heart of the Sun—”
“We’ve seen some of the greatest Sun spots in history, and at close hand. Do you think we could see any deeper? The light—that terrible light.”
“It blinds even the instruments, so there is little more we can do. But we can calculate and take more photographs for more of those lines. But now I must see what the instruments recorded when we got this line.”
They recorded even more than the old man had hoped. It was enough. They duplicated that impossible line, and then they produced some more impossible lines. It was the key. It wasn’t impossibly difficult then. They could design the apparatus, and did, in September, three years and one month after lifting off for the final drop to the Sun.
They made it, piece by piece, and tested it in January. It wasn’t winter there; there was no winter. Only everlasting heat. And Mackay’s eyes were failing rapidly. His work was over. Both because he could scarcely work any longer, and because, on January 14, 2054, the energy of the atom was harnessed by man! The Great Secret was discovered. The hydrogen cycle of the sun.
It took the intense light of the mighty arc to stimulate the old eyes when the thing was done. Only its tremendous blinding power was visible. His ears could hear its roar, well enough, and his fingers could feel the outlines of the hulked machine. But he could no longer make it out when it at last roared its lusty greeting to human ears.
His thin lips parted in a contented smile, though, as his tough, old fingers caressed the cold metal and the smooth, cold glass. “It works, doesn’t it, John? It works. John, we’ve done it.” A shadow passed over the old man’s face for an instant. “We haven’t heard from Earth in over three years. Do you suppose some one else has discovered it, too? I suppose I ought not to be selfish, but I do hope they haven’t. I want to give this to the world.
“John, can you make the drive apparatus yourself?”
“Yes, doctor; I can. You had all the plans worked out, and they’re simple to follow. It isn’t really greatly different. Only that instead of using a high-temperature gas ejected at thousands of feet a second, we’ll use a high-voltage ion ejected at thousands of miles a second. And because we can burn hydrogen, as you predicted, we don’t have to worry at all about power.”
“No, John. We don’t have to worry at all about power.” The old man sighed, then chuckled contentedly. “I always wanted to live to see the day when atomic power ran the world. I guess I won’t, after all. I can’t see, but it won’t matter. I have so few years left, I won’t worry about a little thing like that. My work’s done, anyway. We don’t have to worry about power, John; the world doesn’t any more.
“Men will never again have to worry about power. Never again will they have to grub in the Earth for fuels. Or do things a hard way, because it is less costly of power. Power-power for all the world’s industry. All the wheels of Earth’s factories driven by the exploding atoms. The arctic heated to a garden by it. Vast Canada opened by it to human habitation, clear to the north pole.
“No more smoke-clouded cities.
“And the atom will lift the load of labor from man’s back. No more sweating for six hours every day for daily bread. An hour a day—and unlimited, infinite power. And, maybe, even, some day it will lead to successful transmutation, though I can’t see it. I mean, I can’t see it even mentally,” he said With a little smile. “The Sun showed me the secrets it held—and took away the impious vision that gazed upon them.
“It is worth it. The world will have power—and my work is done.
“You are starting the drive apparatus?”
“Yes, doctor. The main tube is to be—”
Bums launched into a technical discussion. The doctor’s eyes could not follow the plans, but the old mind was as keen as ever. It pictured every detail with a more penetrative vision than ever his eyes could. He chuckled contentedly as he thought of it.
“John, I have lost little, and gained more. I can see that tube better than you can. It’s a metal tube, but I can see to its deepest heart, and I can even see the ions streaming out, slowly, precisely. My mind has a better eye than ever my body had, and now it is developing. I can see the tube when it is not yet, and I can see the heart of it, which you cannot.
“Make it up, John. We must hurry back.”
The lathe hummed, powered by atomic energy, and the electric furnace glowed with a heat so intense the old scientist could see it, driven by the power of the bursting atoms.
The mental eye he had boasted of was keen, keener than his old eyes had ever been. But still it was blind. Somehow, it did not see the white-hot tungsten bars on the “night” side of the ship pouring thousands and thousands of kilowatts of power out into space. The power the therm elements were deriving from the cooling of the ship.
The drive tubes grew, and their great, metal bed bolts were turned. Then the great rocket tubes were sealed at the far end, cut, and insulated again. But now, electrically insulated. The great ion tubes took shape and were anchored, and the huge conductors ran back to the ion-gas chambers, and to the hunched bulk of the atomic engine. Day succeeded day, and Bums cut and fashioned the metal and welded it under the blazing power of the broken atoms in their atomic generator.
And at last the ship trembled with a new, soft surge. It must be slow, for the men were used now to weightlessness, three long years of it. But gradually, gradually the Prometheus, bearing the fire it had stolen from the Sun, swung swifter in its orbit, and spiraled out once more, slowly, slowly. And the radio drove out its beam toward Earth.
They could not hear the messages that Earth and Luna pounded back at them, but gladly they guessed them. The ion tubes whispered and murmured softly, with a slithering rustle as of a snake in dry leaves, and the ship accelerated steadily, slowly. They ran those tubes day and night and slowly increased the power. There was no need for maximum efficiency now. No need to care as they wasted their power. There was plenty more.
Their only difficulty was that, with the mighty ion tubes working, they could not receive radio signals, even when they had gradually circled out beyond Mercury, and finally Venus, slowly growing accustomed once more to weight. They did not want to turn off their tubes, because they must get accustomed to weight once more, and they were moving very rapidly now, more and more rapidly, so that they passed Venus far too rapidly for the ships that rose from the planet to congratulate Dr. Mackay and tell him the great news.
They circled on, in the Prometheus, till they were used once more to Earth gravity, and then they were near Earth and had to apply the braking ion rockets.
“No stopping at the Moon, John.” Malcolm Mackay smiled. “We and all humanity are through with that. We will go directly to Earth. We had best land in the Mojave desert. Tell them, tell them to keep away, for the ions will be dangerous.”
John Burns drove out his message, and Earth loomed huge, and North America came slowly into view, then they were settling toward the desert.
The old scientist heard the faint, cold cry of ruptured air first, for his eyes were dark, and only his ears brought messages from outside. “That’s air, John!” he cried suddenly. “Were in the air again! Earth’s air! How far up are we?”
“Only another one hundred and fifty miles now, doctor. We’re almost home.”
“Home—I should like to see for just this second, to see it again. John—John, I’ll never see Earth again. I’ll never—but that means little. I’ll hear it. I’ll hear it and smell it in my nostrils, clean and sweet and moist, and I’ll taste it in the air. Earth’s air, John, thick and spicy with green things. It’s autumn. I want to smell burning leaves again, John. And feel snow, and hear its soft caress on a glass pane, and hear the soft sounds men make in snow. I’m glad it’s autumn. Spring has its smells, but they aren’t so spicy and clean. They’re not so interesting, when you can’t see the color of the grass, so green—too bright, like a child’s crayon drawing. Colors—I’ll miss them. There weren’t any out there. Colors—I’ll never see the leaves agai
n, John.
“But I’ll smell them, and I’ll hear the hum and whisper of a thousand thousand atomic engines making the world over for mankind.
“Where are we? The air is shrilling thickly now.”
“We’re less than fifty miles up. They’ve cleared the Mojave for fifty miles around us, but, doctor, there’s a hundred thousand private air cars there—a new design. They must have developed broadcast power. They’re all individually powered and apparently by electrical means.”
“Broadcast power? That is good. Then atomic energy will reach every home. The apparatus would be expensive, too expensive for homes.”
“The air is full of ships—there are half a dozen great stratosphere ships flying near us now; can you hear the chug of their propellers?”
“Is that the noise—ah! Men, men again, John. I want to hear a thousand voices all at once.”
Bums laughed recklessly, carefree. “You will, from the looks of things. You will! There’s nearer a thousand thousand down there now!”
“The ship is slowing?” asked Mackay.
Burns was silent for a moment. Then, suddenly, the dry rustle of the tubes changed its note, it flared for an instant, there was a soft, grating thud, a harsh scraping of sand—and the ion tubes died in silence.
“The ship is stopped, doctor. We’re home.”
Dimly, faintly, the sound of a thousand voices clamoring and shouting came through the heavy walls. Mackay had landed! The Grand Old Man was back! And half the world had turned out to welcome him, the man who had remade all Earth, and all Venus.
The lock opened, and to Mackay came the roar of voices, the thrum and hum and rumble of thousands and tens of thousands of propellers. There were the musical cacophony of a thousand air-car signals, and the mighty thunder of a titanic voice, rumbling, hoarse, and god-like in power, cutting through, drowning it all.
“They’re welcoming you, Dr. Mackay—welcoming you.” “So I hear,” said Mackay, half happily, half sadly, “but I am so tired, perhaps I can rest a bit first. I am older than you are, John. You have done as much as I; you had better answer them.”
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