SteampubkPrime

by Mike Ashley

  The general agreement has brought into play the best, the only true free trade. Every country says frankly what industries it wishes to maintain, according to its condition and needs. Every country is self-reliant and so far as possible, self-sustaining; and the various countries work together for the good of the whole of mankind.

  Co-operation has taken the place of hostile competition.

  War is at an end. A single old hulk, now, mounted with a telescopic gun, can settle an angry dispute from a distance of two score miles. A telescopic cannon sends forth another smaller cannon that is protected by a secondary all-chamber containing a lesser explosive to counteract the first explosive pressure. This cannon, in turn, generates another one, and the final cannon discharges upon the doomed point or city a bursting projectile that destroys more than could be restored in fifty years.

  Still, mankind is not satisfied. There are always people now, as formerly, who drop to the rear of the procession, and there are always passionate and criminal impulses.

  VII.

  THE SUN-TELESCOPE AND DEPARTURE

  Graemantle’s Ithacan villa was a vast establishment, adorned with all the magnificence now so easy — diamonds, emeralds, and rubies set in the walls for decoration; beautiful wall paintings, tapestries — with amusement rooms for theatrical performances, and an Odorifer and Coloriscope. These contrivances were something like church-organs, but filled with clever mechanism that produced new effects. The Coloriscope had innumerable opening and closing shutters that revealed different colors in pleasing succession or in union, like that of musical chords; and the Odorifer was provided with a great number of tubes that sent forth delicious and varying perfumes, either singly or in harmonious combination. But I was still more interested in the sun-telescope not far away from the house — which was a scheme originated by Gladwin. The Society of Futurity had kept it up, but had never got any definite results from it.

  It was rigged somewhat like the Mars magnetograph, with poles and wires around a large circle, but had a telephone receiver attached to it.

  Through this receiver we could hear strange and awful moanings, but no one had ever been able to get a definite message from it. Zorlin insisted that, according to Kurol philosophy, the sun was the abode of lost souls.

  “Do you mean to say,” I asked, “that what we regard as the main physical force of light, warmth, life, and heat is Hell?”

  “Yes,” he affirmed. “Why should there be any question about it? You earthlings debate as to the existence or non-existence of Hell, and there it is, staring you in the face, all the time. Of course it warms and cheers you when it shines moderately. But you cannot look at it with the naked eye without suffering a horrible shock, or even blindness. Are not its effects in summer fiendish and intolerable? And when it shines too intensely, does it not drive people mad and cause epidemics of wrath and suicide? Also it seems quite reasonable that malefactors, lost souls from this earth, should be utilized by being contributed to that immense combustion which gives useful heat and comfort to you here. That would be a sort of compensation for the evil they did while on this planet.”

  It was a curious notion, not entirely new to some readers and thinkers; yet it caused much dispute among the people he met.

  After that, I never could listen to the dreary groanings of the sun-telephone without thinking of what he said. Perhaps this strengthened the desire that was rising in me to get away to some serener clime and entourage than this earth’s. Then, too, in spite of all obstacles and opposition, I could not give up the idea of winning Electra.

  I had talked with Zorlin about it; and while, as a Kurol, he could not quite approve my marrying, he at last consented to accompany me if I could induce Electra to leave the country — in brief, to elope with me.

  Going to her, I used all my faculties of persuasion, but she would agree to nothing more than to make a brief tour around the earth with me, on condition that Zorlin should go with us as counselor, companion, and friend. It must be done, however, I told her, without the knowledge of Graemantle, and especially without that of Hammerfleet, who was still at large, although he had been excluded from the house, and was not allowed to see her.

  This was how I came to make my trip to Europe and other parts of the globe, and to observe the new state of things everywhere; and a wonderfully interesting and delightful trip it was. But several things prevented it from becoming a genuine elopement.

  In the first place, Electra held to her idea that she ought not to marry me. In the next place, Zorlin, being with us, was similarly inclined to prevent my marrying Electra. And finally, just after we had embarked in the commodious air-ship that I had engaged for the journey, I found that Eva Pryor had been smuggled aboard by Electra, and was to be one of our party.

  The noble Electra fairly laughed in my face when Eva appeared from the cabin; though she laughed with such good humor and grace that I could not possibly take offence or do anything else but admire her. What impressed me also very favorably was that Eva had abandoned her dreadful nineteenth century costume and was dressed in the peaceful and becoming robes of the new day; for this I took — perhaps conceitedly — as evidence of a gentle and womanly desire to give pleasure to me.

  There was soon a very exciting flight and chase; for both Graemantle and Hammerfleet, on learning of our departure, followed us in different airboats.

  It was a wild career, indeed, high in air above the whirling globe; but I shall never regret the impulse which led me into it, because we had so many adventures and such charming talks — Electra, Eva, and I, with the missionary from Mars; and because I learned so many things about the temporal advancement of men in this new age.

  Ascending from Fire Island at dawn we swept southward along the Atlantic coastline; our ship flying through the atmospheric expanses like a huge bird, without effort. Never shall I forget the exhilaration of that moment and of the next few hours. After the first surprise and disappointment of finding that Eva was with us it was astonishing how soon I reconciled myself to the situation. When you are separated from your own century and all your accustomed surroundings and thrown into the air, even with one of these marvelous boats to float you, there is a sense of desolation in your grandeur which induces an unexpected humility and makes it very comforting to have near you the woman you loved long ago, even if you have decided that you no longer love her. As the days went on and we were held together in this close neighborliness, I became more and mere conscious of something in Eva that soothed me and sustained my cheerfulness. She was so quiet, so resigned, so friendly that I began to like her companionship exceedingly. In some way also which it is hard to define, I could understand her, and she could understand me better than the new woman Electra and the Mars missionary Zorlin. We all, however, seemed to be placed in a new relation, which was much more satisfactory than the relations of people in the old, noisy, restless nineteenth century. There was no effort among us to keep up conversation, or, as the ancient phrase put it, to “entertain” one another. Each of us occupied and amused himself or herself independently. When conversation became natural or useful we conversed, but there was no occasion for the two women to be silly or vain in order to attract the attention of the two men, Zorlin and myself; and, on the other hand, he and I did not feel called upon to put ourselves into an artificial mood in order to suit some fantastic requirement on their part as to what we ought to do for the purpose of pleasing them.

  For the first time in my experience I enjoyed the pleasure of a quiet, healthy, unforced intercourse with other beings of my own kind, and with a guest from Mars who was so nearly like us.

  Just as we came over Cape Hatteras we saw, by the aid of a strong field-glass, that Graemantle and Hammerfleet were following in our track; and almost at the same moment a threatening cyclone rose from the south, over the Gulf Stream. Our navigator avoided the cyclone with great skill. As everyone knows, storms of this kind, born of the wild union of cold air currents with tropic heat and moist
ure rising from the Gulf Stream, pass inward to the United States and follow a long parabolic curve through that country, darting out seaward again at some far north-eastward point. We turned our rudder and flew east over the sea, so as to keep clear of the edge of the enormous tempest as it whirled in over the land.

  It was a magnificent and impressive sight, and so absorbed were we in gazing at it, that only at the moment when we were escaping the tail of the cyclone did we observe that Hammerfleet’s airship had sailed into the main body of it, was spun round like a top in the swirl of mist and wind, and then was broken and thrown down, a wreck, to the ocean below.

  Although I was rather exultant over his disaster, I made a prayer for him, for I did not think that he could come out from the ruin alive, and certainly did not wish him any evil, either in this life or beyond it.

  It turned out that he did escape whole; but we did not know of this until long afterwards.

  At Cuba we stopped to renew our batteries, take in provisions, and rest. We found the island peaceful, happy, and prosperous under a limited Republican Government, and free from all nightmares of tyranny, either white or black. From there — believing that we were now quit of Hammerfleet, and having decided to convert our journey for a while into a tour of observation — we darted over sea and land down to the Amazon country. We were received at Para by a branch of the Darwinian Society, and, on their extensive plantations, were attended by apes whom they had developed to an extraordinary degree. These apes had arrived at a fair imitative proficiency in human language, were skilful in agriculture, under proper direction, and made very good servants for the rougher and simpler kind of housework, or for carrying baggage and the like.

  One of the most interesting things in the Amazon region was the fact that large tracts of country had been sterilized by saturation with petroleum. This prevented excessive vegetable growth, and enabled the inhabitants, with the aid of great syndicates, to carry on a normal and highly profitable production of rubber trees, and of forests, the wood fiber from which was turned into food and various useful tissues. All sorts of food were manufactured here from wood cellulose with inorganic salts of potash and sulphuric acid, and by the action of bacterial ferments.

  Here at Para, also, is made a large part of the world’s supply of artificial silk. The disintegrated cellulose of the food-factories, after being thoroughly bleached to dazzling whiteness, is dissolved in one of the chlorinated alcohols, under pressure, to a glossy mass. This is afterwards put into a cylindrical hydraulic press and forced through plates filled with innumerable small discs of sapphire, through every one of which a hole one-thousandth of an inch in diameter is bored by diamond dust. The fiber, when it reaches the hot air of the room in which the press is situated, shrinks immediately by the evaporation of the alcoholic solvent, and is put at once on to reels. The entirely amorphous character of the material and the perfect surface of the sapphire die produce a fabric far more dazzling and beautiful than the silk formerly obtained from the silkworm.

  Not knowing what had become of Graemantle, whom we had lost sight of when we were dodging the cyclone, and not wishing to be overtaken and interfered with by him, we had to hurry away from Para and the Amazon. Traveling mostly in the early evening or the early morning, when we were less likely to be observed or followed, we zigzagged through the air over Brazil, crossing the Andes two or three times from east to west and back, and than bearing down to Chili and the Argentine Republic. Everywhere in those regions we found the same system of building in use that had aroused my admiration in the United States. This is the “plastic” system of molding edifices, still more effective than the fusing of bricks into solid masses, which I have mentioned before.

  By the plastic method immense palaces are reared for the ordinary dwellings of the rich, with miles of terraces and raised gardens, towers, domes, and long vistas of pillars, surpassing in grandeur even the imaginative conception of ancient Carthage as depicted by the old English painter Turner. State Capitols and all Government or municipal buildings and numerous vast churches filled with gorgeous chapels are built on even a greater scale of magnificence and massive proportions, in designs of exquisite beauty. Large corporations erect their structures by means of iron molds of every variety, all capable of being assembled like parts of a machine, and producing unitedly the total architectural effect desired, These molds are set up in position to form the whole house — the walls, doors, partitions, pillars; ceiling, and, with the aid of iron beams, the roof. The molds are faced with beautiful figures, and also, where appropriate, with sculpture in bas-relief. They are made from models supplied by the very best artists, working in harmony to secure the finest result; and, therefore, the effect of the building, when created, has nothing cheap or mechanical about it.

  When the molds are all in place great iron tanks are brought to the spot, containing a stone like semi-fluid mixture, which is pumped through pipes into the molds. In three days this mixture becomes perfectly hard; the moulds are taken away, and a complete house or immense palace or cathedral stands revealed. Whole mountains are crushed to powder by gigantic machines, to furnish material for the plastic mixture; and many of the superfluous buildings in the formerly overcrowded cities have been ground up for the same purpose. A palace which would formerly have impoverished the richest of men, or even a prosperous State, is now put up and finished-except for the interior decorations, which must be done by hand-at an expense which among the ancients (of whom I was formerly one) would hardly have paid for the modeling and chiseling of a single great statue.

  We extended our journey, with various pauses for rest, and frequent trips by electric trains on land and then by ocean shutter-vessels, to the Antarctic Continent, where the greatest surprise of all awaited me in the large and flourishing community of two or three million beings inhabiting the interior of that ice-girt region and rejoicing in the genial warmth diffused by its central volcanoes? But now I must speak of a thing that had worried us more or less, all along, and eventually brought our curious escapade to an end.

  VIII.

  SEA-SIGNALLING — THE FINAL FLIGHT

  We had noticed at times when the sky was cloudy, both by day and by night, certain periodic flashes of light appearing on the clouds in quick succession. Electra told me that these were caused by the system of cloud-telegraphy now in use; and to anyone familiar with the Morse alphabet, as I was, it was easy to read the messages so flashed about the heavens, though I could not understand those that were in cipher. Most of them were of a general nature, and had nothing to do with us. But at intervals we observed that telegraphic inquiries were being made on the clouds about our party, and that certain persons whom we were not able to identify — most of them signing these communications with numerals instead of names — were answering those inquiries. I may as well jot down in this place the information I gathered as to the mode of signalling by cloud-flash and by other new methods.

  Powerful electric rays are, by means of lenses, brought to thin pencils of intense light. A single one of these is then projected upward against a cloud. A controlling shutter in the path of the beam of light interrupts it at will, so that it may be made to show long or short flashes on the clouds. Words are thus illuminated in the sky, and made to shine in the zenith repeatedly, until an answering reflection is obtained. The chief use of this cloud-telegraphy is, of course, on the sea between ships and “steamers” (as they are still called, notwithstanding that they do not use steam) or for airboats. Conversation may be carried on in this way between vessels many miles apart; and a message received by one can be transmitted to others, so that inquiries and replies fly all around the globe and to remote parts of ocean. The system was found useful in those later voyages to the North Pole, which have not been followed up since a general exploration of the open Arctic Sea was effected. It has also saved many lives, prevented collisions, and caught many fugitive criminals. Sailing vessels are provided with a water-paddle to drive the necessary electric gene
rating mechanism for signaling when the ship is in motion.

  In some of the much-traveled sea regions, another method of communication is used for the daytime. A sail-cloth, woven with metallic wire, is hung between the tips of two masts, and is connected to a special electric generating apparatus, producing waves of extreme sharpness and great intensity that follow each other at the rate of seven hundred per second. An electric stress thus propagated to infinite distance is; at moderate distances, strong enough to be collected by the metalized sail of another vessel. One ship, for example, wishes to know whether there is another within the area of signaling, but out of sight. The musical note formed by electric inductive waves is set going, and, by means of a key, is stopped and started again at will. Other vessels in the area have watchers who, at intervals, listen to an exquisitely sensitive telephone made selectively sensitive to waves of exactly seven hundred per second. This is brought about by a tuning-fork attachment to the diaphragm, tuned exactly to respond to waves of that rate; hence, although the part of the waves collected by the sail-cloth is many million times less than could be gathered if it were close to the signaling ship, yet the tuning-fork collects successive waves until the amplexitude of vibration is sufficient to cause audibility. The signaling current is continuous for several seconds. Then the transmitting vessel stops it and connects the sail with its receiving apparatus to listen for a return wave. After the preliminary signals have been exchanged, conversation is carried on in the usual way. It is slow, of course, owing to the time necessary for the successive impulses to rise to the point of audibility; but the method is very accurate and reliable in all but foggy or rainy weather.