Adrift in the Unknown; or, Queer Adventures in a Queer Realm

by William Wallace Cook

  *CHAPTER V.*

  *TRAVELING SUNWARD.*

  There never lived a man, I suppose, who did not, at some time or otherin his career, submit his veracity to question. A reformed burglar,therefore, although animated by the most disinterested motives, canscarcely hope to escape the shafts of the incredulous.

  Although well-grounded in the science of cracksmanship, and with somestore of legal learning as to alibis and so forth, my mind was as emptyof astronomical lore as a drained bottle. The professor's sayings werejotted down in a sort of commonplace book at a later day when leisureoffered.

  Memory may have played me false in some few minor points, but in all ofmajor importance this narrative is to be taken with the same sincerityin which it is written. I ask no more of the reader than that; and ifhe is not averse to strolling through unfrequented ways touching elbowswith a man who has a past, we shall get along famously.

  To return, then, to the steel car, and the obliquity it suddenlypresented to the direction of its course. Startling disclosures hadsomewhat obscured Gilhooly, and he had vanished from the lower roomwithout being missed.

  For a man of sixty-five, the professor was very agile, and he took thewinding iron stairway two steps at a time. I gained the storeroom closebehind him, and there we found Gilhooly, crooning to himself and workinglike mad.

  He was not working in the dark, but had possessed himself of mybull's-eye lantern, which I had left on descending from the loft sometime before. Mounted on a pile of packing cases, he was engaged inpainting a large steel cube, taking his pigment from an open cask with awhitewash brush.

  "My anti-gravity compound!" exclaimed the professor in an irritatedtone. "There are several blocks on the floor, as you can see: Gilhoolybegan painting that one, and it rose as insulation proceeded, lodging tothe left of the dome and tilted the car."

  "This is the shabbiest lot of coaches I ever saw in my life," saidGilhooly, dabbing away with the brush. "I won't own a road with suchrolling stock."

  The three men downstairs had followed Quinn and me. After some coaxing,Meigs got Gilhooly to descend from his perch and give up the whitewashbrush.

  Thereupon the cube was pried over until it rested directly under anotherblock in the point of the dome, and the professor finished theinsulation begun by the railway magnate.

  "Gilhooly will have to be watched," said Quinn, "or he will play havocwith the materials I have stored up here. He has wasted at least aquart of that anti-gravity mixture, and it is worth its weight in gold.Nay, it is worth more than that, for after this supply is exhaustedthere will be none to be had for love or money.

  "Our rate of speed has been multiplied by two, and we are rushingthrough space with frightful rapidity. There is my telescope"--and theprofessor pointed to the instrument which stood beneath a window in thesloping roof of the car. "Suppose Gilhooly had demolished that! Or whatif he had wrecked the oxygen vat, or the anti-temperature reservoir!Gentlemen, I shudder to think of what might have happened."

  The professor sank down on a copper tank and brushed his perspiring browwith a bandanna handkerchief. I placed the lamp on a box beside thebull's-eye lantern and reclined on a bale of something or other that layconveniently near.

  Meigs and Popham dropped down on a packing case with Gilhooly mooredbetween them, and Markham took up his station on an overturned cask.

  The loft of the car, stored as it was with odds and ends of science,together with a supply of provisions made ready for us by the farsightedand wonderful man who was conducting this select party into the unknown,was an object of deep solicitude and interest.

  Out of a desire to tag the various materials understandingly, I liftedthe lid of my curiosity and let out a few questions.

  "If I mistake not," said I, "you mentioned this anti-temperaturematerial once before. What is it, professor?"

  "A liquid," he answered amiably. "As a discovery, it is outranked onlyby my anti-gravity compound. An ounce of the fluid in a bath rendersthe bather impervious to heat or cold, keeping in the animal caloric andkeeping out all other extremes of temperature. Some of the mixture wasincorporated into the paint with which this car is coated.

  "Yonder is the water receptacle," and the professor nodded toward alarge tank opposite him. "With economy, the supply in that reservoirwill last us several months. The food I have provided is of theready-prepared kind, mostly in tins, with an alcohol lamp for thebrewing of tea, coffee, and chocolate. During this hegira into infinityI have omitted nothing, gentlemen, which will minister to your comfort."

  "You are a very able man, professor," acknowledged Popham. "How longhave you been planning this little excursion?"

  "Ever since I began erecting what the Harlemites were pleased to call mycastle," smiled Quinn. "The plan was conceived at the time the successof the manipulations of yourself and your friends seemed assured."

  "It was your purpose to foil the speculative gentlemen," I struck in,"and so come to the aid of a long-suffering public?"

  "You hit off the matter finely, Mr. Munn," replied the professor. "Thatwas my purpose."

  "Could not your anti-temperature mixture have been donated to the poorwith beneficial results?"

  "It is altogether too expensive for general use. I will not conceal fromyou gentlemen the fact that we are falling sunward. If we make landfallon a planet where the heat is several hundred degrees beyond our earthlypowers of endurance, the mixture in question will preserve us."

  "Falling sunward!" exclaimed Markham. "It was hard upon midnight whenwe left the earth. If my school-day learning is not at fault, the sun,at the hour of our departure, was on the opposite side of our planet.How, then, does it happen that we are falling toward the greatluminary?"

  "Bravo!" cried the professor, vastly pleased. "I am glad to see, Mr.Markham, that your intellect has not suffered a total eclipse by thedemands of commercial supremacy. Night is the result of one of theEarth's hemispheres being turned from the sun, and, other things beingequal, we should now be falling toward the outer limits of our solarsystem; but, if I may use the term, the castle was not aimed for adirect fall from the earth's crust. We dropped at a very sharp angle,and the influence of the sun has attracted us still farther out of astraight course. I trust you follow me?"

  The three millionaires understood the situation, but, judging from theexpression of their faces, the knowledge brought keen disappointment.

  "There are only two planets between the earth and the sun," observedMarkham, "Mercury and Venus, if I remember rightly."

  "Both insignificant," grumbled Popham.

  "Venus is about the size of our own planet, gentlemen," said theprofessor. "However, it has long been supposed that there is anothergroup of planets between Mercury and the sun, among them a little worldcalled Vulcan, which----"

  "That does not interest us," cut in Meigs. "Sunward the planets aresmaller, but they get larger as you go the other way."

  "Larger," expounded the professor, "but less dense."

  "As I was about to tell you, a moment ago," pursued Popham, "Meigs,Markham, and I have decided that either Saturn or Mars would about fillthe bill so far as we are concerned. There are lights on Mars, which,as we figure it, presupposes electricity; and electricity meanscivilization to a degree that affords us a promising prospect. Then,again, there are canals on Mars, and, if canals, certainly watertransportation. Transportation problems of any sort will interestGilhooly; indeed, we are prone to think they would bring him back to hisnormal poise. Saturn, on the other hand, has rings, and such a conditionmight afford opportunities to wide-awake men such as are unknownanywhere else in the solar system. Take us either to Mars or to Saturn,Professor Quinn, as you may find it most convenient. We demand it!"

  "It is impossible to do anything of that kind, Mr. Popham," returned theprofessor decidedly. "The influence of the sun upon our course is toopowerful."

  "Are we to understand, then," cried Markha
m, "that we are compelled toput up with either Mercury or Venus?"

  "Even there, gentlemen, we have no choice. We are in the grip ofcircumstances and must perforce accept whatever fate throws our way.Possibly we shall become a satellite of the sun, revolving around andaround it--Quinn's Planet, the smallest of any in the great system."

  Although I felt drowsy, I aroused myself with an effort and kept sharpeyes on the professor's face. I do not think he was in earnest, butmerely talking to see what effect his remarks would have on the threemillionaires.

  "Corner, corner, corner," babbled Gilhooly; "make a corner, cornereverything."

  Markham dropped his face in his hands, Meigs bowed his head, and I saw ashiver run through Popham.

  "Egad," muttered Popham, "this castle of yours, Quinn, is little shortof a steel tomb. Inasmuch as we are safely interred, what's the use ofliving? Gilhooly is the only fortunate one among us, for his reason isshattered and he cannot realize what he is facing."

  "You are talking less like a man, now, Popham," reproved Quinn, "thanlike a driveling idiot. While there's life there's hope. How manybrilliant minds have been overthrown as a result of your manipulationsof stock in Wall Street? How many bright futures have been wrecked byan adverse trend of the speculative market? Were those unfortunates anybetter off because thrust into madhouses and unable to realize the fatethat had overtaken them? For shame, sir!"

  "You are perfectly sure, are you, professor," I struck in, attempting togive a more pleasant twist to the conversation, "that we shall come outall right in the end?"

  "I have my plans, Mr. Munn," he answered, not unkindly, "and the successor failure of them will depend largely upon the mental attitude of thesegentlemen."

  This was too deep for me, and I cast about for some equally importantquestion which would bring a less indefinite response.

  "Anyhow," said I, "we have plenty of food for a long journey? It wouldbe a fearful thing to have a famine so--so many miles from a base ofsupplies."

  "The food supply, Mr. Munn," answered the professor, "is adequate.There will be no famine."

  "And the water, the oxygen, the----"

  "I have looked after everything necessary to our safety and comfort."

  I had confidence in Quinn. He had shown that he was an able man, andthat his promises were to be taken at face value. With a sigh ofrelief, I settled back in tolerable comfort.

  Meigs took the role of questioner out of my hands at this point, and,although I was eager to hear all that was said, "tired nature's sweetrestorer" got the better of my curiosity and I fell asleep on the bale.