The Speculative Fiction of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  Next, it began to get light, and straight off I plunged into a whole universe of blinding fire, and straight through it. It was 12:22 by my watch.

  Do you know where I was? In the sun. That was my guess, and it turned out afterwards that I was right. Eight minutes out from port. It gave me my gait—exactly the speed of light, 186,000 miles a second. Ninety-three million miles in eight minutes by the watch. There wasn’t ever a prouder ghost. I was as pleased as a child, and wished I had something to race with.

  Before I was done thinking these things I was out on the other side and the sun shriveling up to a luminous wad behind me. It was less than a million miles in diameter, and I was through before I had time to get warm. I was in the dark again, now. In the dark; but I myself wasn’t dark. My body gave out a soft and ghostly glow and I felt like a lightning bug. I couldn’t make out the why of this, but I could read my watch by it, and that was more to the point.

  Presently I noticed a glow like my own a little way off, and was glad, and made a trumpet of my hands and hailed it—

  “Shipmate ahoy!”

  “Same to you!”

  “Where from?”

  “Chatham Street.”

  “Whither bound?”

  “I vish I knew—aind it?”

  “I reckon you’re going my way. Name?”

  “Solomon Goldstein. Yours?”

  “Captain Ben Stormfield, late of Fairhaven and ’Frisco. Come alongside, friend.”

  He did it. It was a great improvement, having company. I was born sociable, and never could stand solitude. I was trained to a prejudice against Jews—Christians always are, you know—but such of it as I had was in my head, there wasn’t any in my heart. But if I had been full of it it would have disappeared then, I was so lonesome and so anxious for company. Dear me, when you are going to—to—where I was going—you are humble-mindeder than you used to be, and thankful for whatever you can get, never mind the quality of it.

  We spun along together, and talked, and got acquainted and had a good time. I thought it would be a kindness to Solomon to dissipate his doubts, so that he would have a quiet mind. I could never be comfortable in a state of doubt myself. So I reasoned the thing out, and showed him that his being pointed the same as me was proof of where he was bound for. It cost him a good deal of distress, but in the end he was reconciled and said it was probably best the way it was, he wouldn’t be suitable company for angels and they would turn him down if he tried to work in; he had been treated like that in New York, and he judged that the ways of high society were about the same everywhere. He wanted me not to desert him when we got to where we were going, but stay by him, for he would be a stranger and friendless. Poor fellow, I was touched; and promised—“to all eternity.”

  Then we were quiet a long time, and I let him alone, and let him think. It would do him good. Now and then he sighed, and by and by I found he was crying. You know, I was mad with him in a minute; and says to myself, “Just like a Jew! He has promised some hayseed or other a coat for four dollars, and now he has made up his mind that if he was back he could work off a worse one on him for five. They haven’t any heart—that race—nor any principles.”

  He sobbed along to himself, and I got colder and colder and harder and harder towards him. At last I broke out and said—

  “Cheese it! Damn the coat! Drop it out of your mind.”

  “Goat?”

  “Yes. Find something else to cry about.”

  “Why, I wasn’t crying apoud a goat.”

  “What then?”

  “Oh, captain. I lost my little taughter, and now I never, never see her again any more. It break my heart!”

  By God, it went through me like a knife! I wouldn’t feel so mean again, and so grieved, not for a fleet of ships. And I spoke out and said what I felt; and went on damning myself for a hound till he was so distressed I had to stop; but I wasn’t half through. He begged me not to talk so, and said I oughtn’t to make so much of what I had done; he said it was only a mistake, and a mistake wasn’t a crime.

  There now—wasn’t it magnanimous? I ask you—wasn’t it? I think so. To my mind there was the stuff in him for a Christian; and I came out flat-footed and told him so. And if it hadn’t been too late I would have reformed him and made him one, or died in the act.

  We were good friends again, and he didn’t need to keep his sorrows to himself any more, he could pour them right into my heart, which was wide open and ready; and he did; till it seemed to me I couldn’t bear it. Lord, the misery of it! She was his pet, his playfellow, the apple of his eye; she was ten years old, and dead six months, and he was glad to die, himself, so he could have her in his arms again and be with her always—and now that dream was over. Why, she was gone—forever. The word had a new meaning. It took my breath, it made me gasp. All our lives we believe we are going to see our lost friends again—we are not disurbed with doubts, we think we know it. It is what keeps us alive. And here, in this father’s heart that hope was dead. I had never seen that before. This was the first time, and I—why it was I that had killed it. If I had only thought! If I had only kept still, and left him to find it out for himself. He let his tears run, and now and then his trouble wrung a groan out of him, and his lips quivered and he said—

  “Poor little Minnie—and poor me.”

  And to myself I said the same—

  “Poor little Minnie—and poor me.”

  That feeling stayed by me, and never left me. And many’s the time, when I was thinking of that poor Jew’s disaster, I have said in my thoughts, “I wish I was bound for heaven, and could trade places with him, so he could see his child, damned if I wouldn’t do it.” If ever you are situated like that, you will understand the feeling.

  CHAPTER II

  We talked late, and fell asleep pretty tired, about two in the morning; had a sound sleep, and woke refreshed and fine towards noon. Pitch dark, still. We were not hungry, but I could have smoked with a relish, if I had had the things. Also, I could have enjoyed a drink.

  We had to stop and think a minute, when we woke, before we came fully to ourselves and realized our situation, for we thought we had been dreaming. In fact it was hard to get rid of the idea that it was all a dream. But we had to get rid of it, and we did. Then a ghastly cold shock went through us—we remembered where we were pointed for. Next, we were astonished. Astonished because we hadn’t arrived. Astonished and glad. Glad we hadn’t arrived. Hopeful that we might not arrive for some little time yet.

  “How far is it that ve haf come, Captain Sthormfilt?”

  “Eleven or twelve hundred million miles.”

  “Ach Gott, it is a speed!”

  “Right you are. There isn’t anything that can pass us but thought. It would take the lightning express twenty-four or twenty-five days to fly around the globe; we could do it four times in a second—yes, sir, and do it easy. Solomon, I wish we had something to race with.”

  Along in the afternoon we saw a soft blur of light a little way off, north-east-half-east, about two points off the weather bow, and hailed it. It closed up on us, and turned out to be a corpse by the name of Bailey, from Oshkosh, that had died at 7:10 the night before. A good creature, but moody and reflective. Republican in politics, and had the idea that nothing could save civilization but that party. He was melancholy, and we got him to talk, so as to cheer him up; and along by spells, as he got to feeling better, his private matters got to leaking out—among others, the fact that he had committed suicide. You know, we had suspected it; he had a hole through his forehead that you couldn’t have plugged with a marlinespike.

  By and by his spirits sagged again. Then the cause came out. He was delicate and sensitive in his morals, and he had been doing something in politics, the last thing, which he was wondering if it was exactly straight. There was an election to fill a vacancy in his town government, and it was such a close fit that one vote would decide it. He wasn’t going to be there to vote—he was going to be up here, with
us. But if he could keep a democrat from voting, that would answer just as well, and the republican candidate would pull through. So, when he was ready for suicide he went to a rigidly honorable friend, who was a democrat, and got him to pair off with him. The republican ticket was safe, then, and he killed himself. So he was a little troubled about it, and uncertain; afraid that maybe he hadn’t played quite fair, for a Presbyterian.

  But Solomon admired him, and thought it was an amazingly smart idea, and just gloated over him with envy, and grinned that Jew grin of intense satisfaction, you know, and slapped his thigh and said—

  “Py Chorge, Pailey, almost thou persuadest me to pe a Ghristian.”

  It was about his girl that he killed himself—Candace Miller. He couldn’t ever quite get her to say she loved him, though she seemed to, and had good hopes. But the thing that decided him was a note from her, in which she told him she loved him as a friend, and hoped they would always be friends, but she found her heart belonged to another. Poor Bailey, he broke down there and cried.

  Curious! Just then we sighted a blue light a little astern, and hailed it, and when it ranged up alongside Bailey shouted—

  “Why Tom Wilson! what a happy surprise; what ever brought you here, comrade?”

  Wilson gave him an appealing look that was sort of heartbreaking to see, and said—

  “Don’t welcome me like that, George, I’m not worthy. I’m a low-down dog, and not fit for any clean man’s company.”

  “Don’t!” said Bailey. “Don’t talk like that. What is it?”

  “George, I did a treacherous thing. To think I could do it to an old playfellow like you, that I was born and raised with! But it was only a silly practical joke, and I never dreamed that any harm could come of it. I wrote that letter. She loved you, George.”

  “My God!”

  “Yes, she did. She was the first one to the house; and when she saw you lying dead in your blood and the letter by you, signed with her name, she read it and knew! She flung herself on your corpse, and kissed your face and your eyes, and poured out her love and her grief and despair, and I saw it. I had murdered you, I had broken her heart, I couldn’t bear it—and I am here.”

  Another suicide, you see. Bailey—well, he couldn’t go back, you know, and it was pitiful to see him, he was so frantic over what he had lost by killing himself before ever stopping to find out whether she wrote the letter or not. He kept on regretting and lamenting and wishing he had waited and been more rational, and arranging over and over again in different ways, how he ought to have acted, and how he would act now, if he could only have the chance over again. All no good, of course, and made us miserable to hear it, for he couldn’t ever have his chance again forever—we realized that, and the whole ghastliness of the situation. Some people think you are at rest when you die. Let them wait, they’ll see.

  Solomon took Bailey aside to comfort him—a good idea; people that carry griefs in their hearts know how to comfort others’ griefs.

  We whizzed along about a week before we picked up another straggler. This time it was a nigger. He was about thirty-eight or forty, and had been a slave nearly half of his life. Named Sam. A cheerful, good-natured cuss, and likeable. As I learned later, a pick-up is a depressing influence upon the company for some time, because he is full of thinkings about his people at home and their grief over losing him; and so his talk is all about that, and he wants sympathy, and cries a good deal, and tells you how dear and good his wife was, or his poor old mother, or his sisters and brothers, and of course in common kindness you have to listen, and it keeps the company feeling desolate and wretched for days together, and starts up their own sorrows over their own loss of family and friends; but when the pick-up is a young person that has lost a sweetheart, that is the worst. There isn’t any end to their talk, and their sorrow and their tears. And dear, dear, that one tiresome everlasting question that they keep on asking till you are worn to the bone with it: don’t we think he (or she) will die soon, and come? What can you say? There’s only one thing: yes, we hope he will. And when you have said it a couple of thousand times, you lose patience and wish you hadn’t died. But dead people are people, just the same, and they bring their habits with them, which is natural. On the earth, when you arrive in a city—any city on the globe—the people peck at you with the same old regular questions—

  “First time you have visited our city?”

  “How does it impress you?”

  “When did you arrive?”

  “How long are you going to stay?”

  Sometimes you have to leave next day, to get a rest. We arranged differently with the lovers, by and by: we bunched them together to themselves and made them burn their own smoke. And it was no harm; they like it best that way. There was plenty of sympathy and sentiment, and that was what they wanted.

  Sam had pipe, tobacco and matches; I cannot tell you how glad I was. But only for a little moment; then there was a sharp disappointment: the matches wouldn’t light. Bailey explained it: there was no atmosphere there in space, and the match couldn’t burn without oxygen. I said we would keep the things—we might strike through the atmosphere of a planet or a sun, sometime or other, and if it was a big one we might have time for one whiff, anyway. But he said no, it wasn’t on the cards.

  “Ours are spiritualized bodies and spiritualized clothes and things,” he said, “otherwise they would have been consumed in a flash when we first darted through the earth’s atmosphere. This is spiritualized tobacco, and fire-proof.”

  It was very annoying. But I said we would keep it, just the same—

  “It will burn in hell, anyway.”

  When the nigger found that that was where I was going, it filled him with distress, and he hoped I was mistaken, and did his best to persuade me I was; but I hadn’t any doubts, and so he had to give in. He was as grieved about it as my best friend could be, and tried his best to believe it wouldn’t be as hot there as people said, and hoped and believed I would get used to it after a while, and not mind it. His kindly talk won me completely; and when he gave me the pipe and tobacco, and begged me to think of him sometimes when I was smoking, I was a good deal moved. He was a good chap, and like his race: I have seen but few niggers that hadn’t their hearts in the right place.

  As week after week slipped along by we picked up a straggler at intervals, and at the end of the first year our herd numbered 36. It looked like a flock of glow-worms, and was a quite pretty sight. We could have had a regiment if we had kept all we came across, but the speeds were various and that was an interference. The slowest ship makes the pace for the fleet, of course. I raised our gait a little, as an accommodation, and established it at 200,000 miles a second. Some wanted to get on faster, on account of wanting to join lost friends, so we let them go. I was not in a particular hurry, myself—my business would keep. Some that had been consumptives and such like, were rickety and slow, and they dropped behind and disappeared. Some that were troublesome and disagreeable, and always raising Cain over any little thing that didn’t suit them, I ordered off the course, with a competent cursing and a warning to stand clear. We had all sorts left, young and old, and on the whole they were satisfactory enough, though a few of them were not up to standard, I will admit.

  CHAPTER III

  Well, when I had been dead about thirty years, I begun to get a little anxious. Mind you, I had been whizzing through space all that time, like a comet. Like a comet! Why, Peters, I laid over the lot of them! Of course there warn’t any of them going my way, as a steady thing, you know, because they travel in a long circle like the loop of a lasso, whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart for Hereafter; but I happened on one every now and then that was going my way for an hour or so, and then we had a bit of a brush together. But it was generally pretty one-sided, because I sailed by them the same as if they were standing still. An ordinary comet don’t make more than about 200,000 miles a minute. Of course when I came across one of that sort—like Encke’s and Ha
lley’s comets, for instance—it warn’t anything but just a flash and a vanish, you see. You couldn’t rightly call it a race. It was as if the comet was a gravel-train and I was a telegraph despatch. But after I got outside of our astronomical system, I used to flush a comet occasionally that was something like. We haven’t got any such comets—ours don’t begin. One night I was swinging along at a good round gait, everything taut and trim, and the wind in my favor—I judged I was going about a million miles a minute—it might have been more, it couldn’t have been less—when I flushed a most uncommonly big one about three points off my starboard bow. By his stern lights I judged he was bearing about northeast-and-by-north-half-east. Well, it was so near my course that I wouldn’t throw away the chance; so I fell off a point, steadied my helm, and went for him. You should have heard me whiz, and seen the electric fur fly! In about a minute and a half I was fringed out with an electrical nimbus that flamed around for miles and miles and lit up all space like broad day. The comet was burning blue in the distance, like a sickly torch, when I first sighted him, but he begun to grow bigger and bigger as I crept up on him. I slipped up on him so fast that when I had gone about 150,000,000 miles I was close enough to be swallowed up in the phosphorescent glory of his wake, and I couldn’t see anything for the glare. Thinks I, it won’t do to run into him, so I shunted to one side and tore along. By and by I closed up abreast of his tail. Do you know what it was like? It was like a gnat closing up on the continent of America. I forged along. By and by I had sailed along his coast for a little upwards of a hundred and fifty million miles and then I could see by the shape of him that I hadn’t even got up to his waistband yet. Why, Peters, we don’t know anything about comets, down here. If you want to see comets that are comets, you’ve got to go outside of our solar system—where there’s room for them, you understand. My friend, I’ve seen comets out there that couldn’t even lay down inside the orbits of our noblest comets without their tails hanging over.