CHAPTER XX
ON THE LIP OF THE CHASM
Very near, now, was the strange apparition. On, on, swift as afalcon, the plane hurtled. Stern glanced at Beatrice. Never had heseen her more beautiful. About her face, rosy and full of life, theluxuriant loose hair was whipping. Her eyes sparkled with this newexcitement, and on her full red lips a smile betrayed her keenenjoyment. No trace of fear was there--nothing but confidence andstrength and joy in the adventure.
The phenomenon of the world's end--for nothing else describes itadequately--now appeared distinctly as a jagged line, beyond whichnothing showed. It differed from the horizon line, inasmuch as it wasclose at hand. Already the adventurers could peer down upon it at anacute angle.
Plainly could they see the outlines of trees growing along the verge.But beyond them, nothing.
It differed essentially from a canyon, because there was no other sideat all. Strain his eye as he might, Stern could detect no oppositewall. And now, realizing something of the possibilities of such achasm, he swung the Pauillac southward. Flying parallel to the edge ofthis tremendous barrier, he sought to solve the mystery of its truenature.
"If I go higher, perhaps I may be able to get some notion of it,"thought he, and swinging up-wind, he spiraled till the barometershowed he had gained another thousand feet.
But even this additional view profited him nothing. Half a mile towestward the ragged tree-line still showed as before, with vacancybehind it, and as far as Stern could see to north, to south, itstretched away till the dim blue of distance swallowed it. Yet,straight across the gulf, no land appeared. Only the sky itself wasvisible there, as calm and as unbroken as in the zenith, yet extendingfar below where the horizon-line should have been--down, in fact, towhere the tree-line cut it off from Stern's vision.
The effect was precisely that of coming to the edge of a vast plain,beyond which nothing lay, save space, and peering over.
"The end of the world, indeed!" thought the engineer, despite himself."But what can it mean? What can have happened to the sphere to havechanged it like this? Good Heavens, what a marvel--what acatastrophe!"
Determined at all hazards to know more of this titanic break or"fault," or whatsoever it might be, he banked again, and now, on adescending slant, veered down toward the lip of the chasm.
"Going out over it?" cried Beatrice.
He nodded.
"It may be miles deep!"
"You can't get killed any deader falling a hundred miles than you cana hundred feet!" he shouted back, above the droning racket of themotor.
And with a fresh grip on the wheel, head well forward, every sensealert and keen to meet whatever conditions might arise, to battle withcross-currents, "air-holes," or any other vortices swirling up out ofthose unknown depths, he skimmed the Pauillac fair toward the lip ofthe monstrous vacancy.
Now as they rushed almost above the verge he could see conclusivelythey were not dealing here with a canyon like the Yosemite or like anyother he had ever seen or heard of in the old days.
There was positively no bottom to the terrific thing!
Just a sheer edge and beyond that--nothing.
Nowhere any sign of an opposite bank; nowhere the faintest trace ofland. Far, far below, even a few faint clouds showed floating there asif in mid-heaven.
The effect was ghastly, unnerving and altogether terrible. Not thatStern feared height. No, it was the unreality of the experience, theinexplicable character of this yawning edge of the world that almostovercame him.
Only by a strong exercise of will-power could he hold the biplane toher course. His every instinct was to veer, to retreat back to solidearth, and land somewhere, and once more, at all hazards, get thecontact of reality.
But Stern resisted all these impulses, and now already had driven thePauillac right to the lip of the vast nothingness.
Now they were over!
"My God!" he cried, stunned by the realization of this thing. "Sheerspace! No bottom anywhere!"
For all at once they had shot, as it were, out into a void whichseemed to hold no connection at all with the earth they now werequitting.
Stern caught a glimpse of the tall forest growing up to within ahundred yards of the edge, then of smaller trees, dwindling to bushesand grasses, and strange red sand that bordered the gap--sand androcks, barren as though some up-draft from the void had killed offvegetable growth along the very brink.
Then all slid back and away. The red-ribbed wall of the great chasm,shattered and broken as by some inconceivable disaster, some cosmiccataclysm, fell away and away, downward, dimmer and more dim, until itfaded gradually into a blue haze, then vanished utterly.
And there below lay nothingness--and nothingness stretched out infront to where the sight lost itself in pearly vapors that overdimmedthe sky.
Beatrice glanced at Stern as the Pauillac sped true as an arrow in itsflight, out into this strange and incomprehensible vacuity.
Just a shade paler now he seemed. Despite the keen wind, a glister ofsweat-drops studded his forehead. His jaw was set, set hard; she couldsee the powerful maxillary muscles knotted there where thethroat-cords met the angle of the bone. And she understood that, forthe first time since their tremendous adventure had begun, the manfelt shaken by this latest and greatest of all the mysteries they hadbeen called upon to face.
Already the verge lay far behind; and now the sense of empty spaceabove and on all sides and there below was overpowering.
Stern gasped with a peculiar choking sound. Then all at once, throwingthe front steering plane at an angle, he brought the machine about andheaded for the distant land.
He spoke no word, nor did she; but they both swept the edge of thechasm with anxious eyes, seeking a place to light.
It was with tremendous relief that they both saw the solid earth oncemore below them. And when, five minutes later, having chosen a clearand sand-barren on the verge, some two miles southward along theabyss, Stern brought the machine to earth, they felt a gratitude and arelief not to be voiced in words.
"By Jove!" exclaimed the man, lifting Beatrice from the seat, "if thatisn't enough to shake a man's nerve and upset all his ideas,geological or otherwise, I'd like to know what is!"
"Going to try to cross it?" she asked anxiously; "that is, if there isany other side? I know, of course, that if there is you'll find out,some way or other!"
"You overestimate me," he replied. "All I can do, for now, is to campdown here and try to figure the problem out--with your help. Whateverthis thing is, it's evident it stands between us and our plan. EitherChicago lies on the other side--(provided, of course, as you say, thatthere is one)--or else it's been swallowed up, ages ago, by whatevercatastrophe produced this yawning gulf.
"In either event we've got to try to discover the truth, and actaccordingly. But for now, there's nothing we can do. It's getting latealready. We've had enough for one day, little girl. Come on, let'smake the machine ready for the night, and camp down here and have abite to eat. Perhaps by to-morrow we may know just what we're upagainst!"
The moon had risen, flooding the world with spectral light, beforethe two adventurers had finished their meal. All during it they hadkept an unusual silence. The presence of that terrible gulf, there nottwo hundred feet away to westward of them, imposed its awe upon theirthoughts.
And after the meal was done, by tacit understanding they refrainedfrom trying to approach it or to peer over. Too great the risks bynight. They spoke but little, and presently exhausted by the tryingevents of the day--sought sleep under the vanes of the Pauillac.
But for an hour, tired as he was, the engineer lay thinking of thechasm, trying in vain to solve its problem or to understand how theywere to follow any further the search for the ruins of Chicago, wherefuel was to be had, or carry on the work of trying to find some livingmembers of the human race.
Morning found them revived and strengthened. Even before they madetheir fire or prepared their breakfast they were exploring along theedge of
the gigantic cleft.
Going first to make sure no rock should crumble under the girl'stread, no danger threaten, Stern tested every foot of the way to thevery edge of the sheer chasm.
"Slowly, now!" he cautioned, taking her hand. "We've got to be carefulhere. My God, what a drop!"
Awed, despite themselves, they stood there on a flat slab of schistthat projected boldly over the void. Seen from this point, the immensenothingness opened out below them even more terrible than it hadseemed from the biplane.
The fact is common knowledge that a height, viewed from a balloon oraeroplane, is always far less dizzying than from a lofty building or amonument. Giddiness vanishes when no solid support lies under thefeet. This fact Stern and the girl appreciated to the full as theypeered over the edge. Ten times more ominous and frightful the vastblue mystery beneath them now appeared than it had seemed before.
"Let's look sheer down," said the girl. "By lying flat and peeringover, there can't be any danger."
"All right, but only on condition that I keep tight hold of you!"
Cautiously they lay down and worked their way to the edge. Theengineer circled Beta's supple waist with his arm.
"Steady, now!" he warned. "When you feel giddy, let me know, and we'llgo back."
The effect of the chasm, from the very edge of the rock, wasterrifying. It was like nothing ever seen by human eyes. Peering downinto the Grand Canyon of the Colorado would have been child's playbeside it. For this was no question of looking down a half-mile, amile, or even five, to some solid bottom.
Bottom there was none--nothing save dull purple haze, shifting vapors,and an unearthly dim light which seemed to radiate upward as thoughthe sun's rays, reflected, were striving to beat up again.
"There must be miles and miles of air below us," said Stern, "toaccount for this curious light-effect. Air, of course, will eventuallycut off the vision. Given a sufficiently thick layer, say a fewhundred miles, it couldn't be seen through. So if there _is_ a bottomto this place, be it one hundred or even five hundred miles down, ofcourse we couldn't see it. All we could see would be the air, whichwould give this sort of blue effect."
"Yes; but in that case how can we see the sun, or the moon, or stars?"
"Light from above only has to pierce forty or fifty miles of reallydense air. Above that height it's excessively rarified. While downbelow earth-level, of course, it would get more and more dense all thetime, till at the bottom of a five-hundred-mile drop the density andpressure would be tremendous."
Beatrice made no answer. The spectacle she was gazing at filled herwith solemn thoughts. Jagged, rent and riven, the rock extendeddownward. Here vast and broken ledges ran along its flanks--red,yellow, black, all seared and burned and vitrified as by the fire ofHell; there huge masses, up-piled, seemed about to fall into theabyss.
A quarter-mile to southward, a rivulet had found its way over aprojecting ledge. Spraying and silvery it fell, till, dissipated bythe up-draft from the abyss, it dissolved in mist.
The ledge on which they were lying extended downward perhaps threehundred yards, then sloped backward, leaving sheer empty space beneaththem. They seemed to be poised in mid-heaven. It was totally unlikethe sensation on a mountain-top, or even floating among the clouds;for a moment it seemed to Stern that he was looking up toward anunfathomable, infinite dome above him.
He shuddered, despite his cool and scientific spirit of observation.
"Some chemical action going on somewhere down there," said he, half todivert his own attention from his thoughts. "Smell that sulphur? Ifthis place wasn't once the scene of volcanic activities, I'm nojudge!"
A moderate yet very steady wind blew upward from the chasm, freightedwith a scent of sulphur and some other substance new to Stern.
Beatrice, all at once overcome by sudden giddiness, drew back and hidher face in both hands.
"No bottom to it--no end!" she said in a scared tone. "Here's the endof the world, right here, and beyond this very rock--nothing!"
Stern, puzzled, shook his head.
"That's really impossible, absurd and ridiculous, of course," heanswered. "There _must_ be something beyond. The way this stone fallsproves that."
He pitched a two-pound lump of granite far out into the air. It fellvertically, whirling, and vanished with the speed of a meteor.
"If a whole side of the earth had split off, and what we see downbelow there were really sky, of course the earth's center of gravitywould have shifted," he explained, "and that rock would have fallen intoward the cliff below us, not straight down."
"How can you be sure it doesn't fall that way after the impulse yougave it has been lost?"
"I shall have to make some close scientific tests here, lasting a dayor two, before I'm positive; but my impression is that this, afterall, is only a canyon--a split in the surface--rather than an actualend of the crust."
"But if it were a canyon, why should blue sky show down there at anangle of forty-five degrees?"
"I'll have to think that out, later," he replied. "Directly under us,you see all seems deep purple. That's another fact to consider. I tellyou, Beatrice, there's more to be figured out here than can be done inhalf an hour.
"As I see it, some vast catastrophe must have rent the earth, athousand or fifteen hundred years ago, as a result of which everybodywas killed except you and me. We're standing now on the edge of thescar left by that explosion, or whatever it was. How deep or how widethat scar is, I don't know. Everything depends on our finding out, orat least on our guessing it with some degree of accuracy."
"How so?"
"Because, don't you see, this chasm stands between us and Chicago andthe West, and all our hopes of finding human life there. And--"
"Why not coast south along the edge here, and see if we can't runacross some ruined city or other where we can refill the tanks?"
"I'll think it over," the engineer answered. "In the meantime we cancamp down here a couple of days or so, and rest; and I can make somecalculations with a pendulum and so on."
"And if you decide there's probably another side to this gulf, whatthen?"
"We cross," he said; then for a while stood silent, musing as hepeered down into the bottomless abyss that stretched there hungrilybeneath their narrow observation-rock.
"We cross, that's all!"
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