by Jerry
Three weeks brought us within the attraction of the earth. The sun blazed in the sky. I could feel the sensation of weight as we slowed down. We intended to remain above the globe for some time, in order to make a careful examination of the surface. Seen through the electro-telescope the earth was indeed a sorry sight. There was no green thing left on its surface. The insects had killed themselves, worked their own destruction, when they stripped the globe of its vegetation—of the green plants, the only food-producing and air-purifying life upon the earth. What scenes must have been enacted when those huge desperate insects with terrible hunger fell upon one another after all other food was gone! The earth seemed to me but a vast grave.
I observed the cities. Here was our real interest. New York and Paris, the last outposts of man on earth, were best preserved. In the silent streets of the first, as we hovered about it, I saw the Woolworth Building, the tallest skyscraper remaining. Several thousand miles away was the Eiffel Tower in Paris. In these two structures our objective lay.
After much labor, carried on with the greatest precautions to prevent damage, we ripped the structures from their bases. We were ready to take them where they would serve as imperishable monuments of the days which our race spent on the earth. It would have taken months to build rigid supports for carrying them, but, thanks to the almost human metal arms of our ships, we could take them into space immediately. Making a last inspection of the supporting tentacles on the Woolworth Building, I gave the word. The building was lifted from its severed foundations, supported on a rough cast consulium slab held by a tentacle. Cracks appeared in the facing, but that was unavoidable; and I was justified in my confidence that the steel frame would stand the strain. In the meantime Staner, my assistant, had raised the Eiffel Tower; and we started on our long return journey.
As soon as we had the building far enough from the pull of the earth to permit a great acceleration, my curiosity got the best of me. I donned a space suit of consulium air-tight and heat-tight armor, and left the disc to inspect the Woolworth Building and its strange contents. As I entered, I thrilled at the thought that here humanity had made a last stand; here it was too, that the survivors of the Great Menace had planned to leave their home forever. Curiously, I wandered about for hours. In one room I stooped over a desk where counsel over humanity’s very existence might have been held! I felt a shock.
Later—how long later I do not know—I awoke. I was dazed, lying in a corner of the room in the tower. The space suit was bent, and I could not move even a leg. The room was littered with a confusion of objects. What had happened?
I crawled painfully to a window, getting there only because of the lack of weight. No discs were visible, no supporting tentacles. The lower part of the building was gone! I was alone in space, adrift in a tiny world of my own! A meteorite had carried away the tower as the disc sped on unknowing! Had they seen my plight? Would Staner realize my fate while there was still a remote chance of his finding me in the vast expanse of space? Was I doomed to die? Such thoughts passed through my mind. I thought of the others, safe in the discs, and envied them. I thought at last of the equipment on my space suit, which provided air for me to breathe in airless space. The supply would last only a few hours. If they did not find me—would I die gasping vainly for a last breath? Would I tear open my suit and perish of the cold airlessness of space rather than hang on until strangulation throttled me? In any event, my body would go whirling through space to its tomb, some day to strike a dead planet—some day, with the irony of fate, to reach Neptune, and make for it an eternal satellite.
I looked from the window again. I saw a dot in the distance, rapidly growing larger. The disc! The men had realized my predicament. Surely I was saved!
The disc grew larger—slowly took form. They neared! I could see the tentacles extended. They waved at me. I waved back, knowing that I was observed through the electro-telescope. All the tentacles were extended. Why all? One would have served to hold this small world of mine. The disc drew alongside of the tower. It entwined the tower in a perfect maze of tentacles. Why that precaution? My brain raced. As the power was applied I had a terrible feeling of weight and pressure.
At last I understood the awful truth. My fragment of the building was falling toward some body, gripped by its field of gravitation. The disc was trying to escape, to drag me with it! With enormous effort I turned over. My head lay a foot from, a window. Painfully, I reached the window. Resting my face on the frame, I looked out. Below me I saw the immense grayish bulk of the body. Mars! I watched it, fascinated. Minutes passed. Mars rushed toward me! I glanced at the disc. It could not escape. I saw a flash. It was the powerful auxiliary radium rockets. Staner thought to escape by means of the force of their recoil. A feeling of numbness crept over me. The acceleration was too great. What of my friends in the disc? Were they, too—
I awoke on the disc, three weeks later. The fever had gone. Staner was bending over me. Behind him stood the crew. Out of the window I could see the other disc carrying the two buildings. There was a gentle shock as the power went on for a descent. The men lifted me, and I could see the landscape of Triton. We were safe, and the expedition was a success!
The End.
VIA THE HEWITT RAY
M.F. Rupert
WE all recognize today that the world in which we exist is a very limited one. There are sounds that we cannot hear, colors that we cannot see, and by the limitations of our sense of touch, things we cannot feel. And, inasmuch as it is our sensual perceptions that give us our knowledge of the world, we must recognize that the world we are aware of is a very incomplete one. What, one might ask, might one find in planes of existence and sensation beyond our own?
Would we find a life such as our own existing coincidently with us, occupying the same space as we do?
Are there really a fourth and other dimensions of physical existence, and if so, would life in those other planes pursue the same course of development that our own life has taken?
Our present author has set herself a task of answering many of these problems, and she has done it in a manner that is so charming and picturesque and yet so scientifically plausible that we are sure our readers will be thrilled from the first word to the last.
LETTER to Lucile Hewitt from her father, John J. Hewitt:
My Dear Daughter:
It is now eleven o’clock and I have one hour in which to give you my farewell message. Do not be alarmed, Lucile. I am not contemplating suicide, but as a climax to my life-long studies, I am now going to put to the final test my latest discoveries. Should I be successful in this experiment, you will not see me for a long time. When you find that I am missing, do not fear for me but rejoice that I have succeeded in the great undertaking.
You have now finished college and are engrossed in your own work so, although I shall miss you and do not doubt you will miss me, I feel free to make this experiment. Financially, you do not need me as you are now a self-supporting young woman and I have left provision wherein you will receive this house and all that I own after a year. The greatest hardship is severing, for the time being, our dear comradeship, but I know you will join with me in making this sacrifice.
Do you remember, dear, that about a year ago I told you of the experiments I was making in light waves? It is about those experiments and. what they led up to that I wish to write. I will try not to be too technical.
In the laboratory you will find my equipment, electrical apparatus, and lightwave machine, and also the Hewitt Ray machine. In the top right-hand drawer of my desk is a manuscript explaining fully the new discoveries I have made. Please do not allow anything to be disturbed in the laboratory while I am gone. If I do not return within a year, you may publish the manuscript. I hope to be back before the year is up and attend to those things myself, but if I do not return then you, my beloved may present to the world my life’s work.
No doubt, you remember when I erected the lightwave machine. I told you then that it was
similar to a radio receiving set, but instead of receiving radio waves, it was intended to receive light waves. Just as sound is transmitted from a source through the air by a series of waves, so light is transmitted through space by a series of ether waves. This machine receives the light waves just as radio receives the radio waves. Of course the real explanation is much more complicated and only a physicist could really understand and appreciate the beauty and immensity of the idea, but as I am writing simply for your benefit, the explanation I gave you a year ago is sufficient.
Messages from Beyond
WHEN I built the machine I had no idea of the astounding revelations I was to receive. But one day, while twirling the dial, I noticed a peculiar arrangement of spectral lines showing on the screen.
Do you remember enough of your physics to understand what this means? The spectrum is the colored band which is produced by placing a prism in the path of a beam of light. When the spectrum is studied minutely with a spectroscope it is found not to be a continuous band of colors, but to be crossed by many dark lines called Fraunhofer lines, which are familiar to all who study light waves. It is also well known that the difference in color in the spectrum corresponds to the difference of wavelength. Keep this explanation in mind as you read what follows.
As soon as I noticed these peculiar lines showing through the spectrum I immediately ceased twirling the dials and studied the spectral lines, the characteristics of which were totally unfamiliar. I made a careful note of the arrangement of the lines; I also noted at what numbers the dials were set, and the time, which was five o’clock in the evening. For fifteen minutes this peculiar spectrum appeared on the screen and was then displaced by the usual Fraunhofer lines. Not touching the dials, I waited carefully for a reappearance of the dark lines, but not until five o’clock the next evening did they come. I compared them line for line with my drawing of the day before and they were exactly the same! For many nights at five o’clock these unusual lines appeared on the screen. Finally I dared to change the dials, to see whether, if I restored those numbers, the phenomenon would occur.
It did, but only at five o’clock. With the help of Professor Hendricks, who died last month, I built a lightwave sending set and after a vast amount of research and labor we found the combination of prisms and lenses that produced the correct spectrum. By manipulating the wavelengths we produced the dark line spectrum which had at first amazed me when beholding it on my own screen.
Do not be impatient with me for this long, dry discourse on light waves and spectra. I am apt to forget that you are not as intensely interested in the details as I. I know that by now you are impatiently asking yourself, “But what’s it all about?”
I will try to tell you. You know that Professor Hendricks and myself have always believed in the reality of the fourth and even the fifth and sixth dimensions. Remember how you laughed at us and told us that theoretically we were correct, but you declared actual and tangible proof was impossible? Now do not laugh, dear, when I say that Professor Hendricks and myself believed that these unusual lines were being sent by intelligent beings but not of our dimension! The elements of these lines are not known to us.
Do I make myself clear? If these strange spectral lines showed on my receiving screen, they were being sent by someone. The fact that they showed night after night at the same time and only when the dials were set in a certain manner proved that it was no accidental short-circuiting of the wavelength but that they were being sent deliberately. The precise and undeviating arrangement of lines argued that a message of some kind was being sent. What the message meant and who was sending it we did not know but we intended to find out if possible.
One evening immediately after receiving what we had by now come to call ‘our message’, we switched on our sending set and repeated the message line for line. After a few moments, there flashed back on our receiving screen the identical lines! For the first time the message had come through again! We were highly elated, you may be sure, and figured that whoever was sending that message had received our repetition of their code and was indicating that.
What to do now? We could, of course, repeat the message every night after we received it and in this way keep in touch with the beings who were communicating with us. But as we had no means of finding out what the lines meant, we would not get very far by that method.
Determined to Go
THEN came the illness and death of Professor Hendricks and I was left to carry on alone. I almost despaired of making any progress when there flashed into my mind another possible way of communicating with these strangers.
Several years ago I was working on a series of experiments in short wavelengths, especially cathode and X-rays. As you may remember, cathode rays are streams of electrons shot off from a surface at very high velocity. Just as the X-ray was discovered by experimenting with the cathode rays, so one day, experimenting with the X-ray, I discovered an entirely new ray which I called the Hewitt Ray. No doubt you remember the excitement that the publication of its discovery caused.
Like the X-ray, the Hewitt Ray will penetrate any substance opaque to ordinary light, but the great difference is that it does not, like the X-ray, stop at forming a shadow picture, for by diminishing the gas pressure within the tube and by increasing the voltage across the electrodes, the penetrating power of the resulting rays is increased to such an extent that the object on which the ray is focused is disintegrated. And what is stranger still, not the picture of the object appears at the focal point, but the actual object itself is reassembled and reappears, none the worse for its experience.
You were just a young girl then, but you must remember all the talk and conjecture aroused by the discovery of this new ray. It was thought for a time that it would revolutionize transportation. In fact, it was proved practical for swift traveling. Huge Hewitt Ray machines were built with a focus of many miles and a few intrepid souls were found to lend themselves to the experiment; but although they arrived safely at their destination and were loud in their praise of this method of traveling, the general public would have none of it. Humanity has not yet evolved to the point where it is willing to travel 186,000 miles per second. So my Hewitt Ray, conceded to be a marvelous thing, was put on the shelf like many other revolutionary inventions. No doubt, a few thousand years from now, it will be used universally.
So, as I thought of this ray, I wondered if, by experimenting a little further, I could possibly change the ray so that it would not merely reassemble the object which it disintegrated but allow the object to travel on. Into what, you may ask? Space? The fourth dimension, or wherever it is that a light wave goes when it has passed beyond our eye?
I will not weary you, Lucile, with the details but I have succeeded in changing the rays as I wanted to and have discovered that light waves do not die out but by an energy transformation they pass off into another plane of energy.
You ask how I know? I know because with my improved Hewitt Ray I have disintegrated objects such as books, vases, flowers, and live animals and sent them traveling as part of the wave of light into the unknown world from which I have been receiving messages.
With the dials of my light-wave machine set to receive an answer from the beings with whom I have been in communication, I sent through the medium of the Hewitt Ray these objects and animals; and every time I sent something through, no matter at what time of the day or night, I received a message which I interpreted to mean that the objects were received.
Now, Lucile, all this preliminary explanation over, we come to the vital part of my letter. I have determined to go to this new world. It will be a simple accomplishment. I have built a large Hewitt Ray projector which will be automatically shut off after I have passed through. What sort of world I will find or what kind of people or beings I will meet I do not know. I believe they are friendly and will welcome me, but anyway I will soon find out.
Now, dear daughter, I will leave you. Enclosed you will find the keys to the laboratory and deta
iled instructions for working the light-wave receiving and sending set. Every evening at five o’clock I will endeavor to send you a message, according to the light-wave code I have worked out. It will make me very happy if you will answer.
Goodbye, dear. That you may keep well and happy is the wish of
Your loving father,
JOHN J. HEWITT.
CHAPTER II
Lucile Hewitt’s Story
TO say that I was astonished and alarmed to receive this letter is describing my feeling feebly. Darling old Dad, to travel along a light wave, into a new world filled, no doubt, with unknown dangers! Why, he was forever cautioning me to be careful! Even as late as 1945 he thought airplanes were dangerous! I have often begged him to let me take him for a ride in my fly-about but he declared he did not have the necessary courage. Yet he risked his life daily in his beloved laboratory.
It is really too bad that I am not scientifically inclined. What a help I might have been to Dad! But I honestly tried to fit myself for a scientific career and it was not my fault that I failed miserably.
When Dad got out his Hewitt Ray and there was talk of utilizing it for travel, then my interest in science awoke. To travel with the speed of light! Imagine the thrill! Unknown to Dad, for I knew he would forbid me, I slipped away from school and volunteered for a demonstration trip along the Hewitt Ray. I was one of the ‘intrepid souls’ Dad speaks of. It was glorious! To place yourself before the ray and in a flash be hundreds of miles away! That is traveling!
