CHAPTER VI
After the _Astronef's_ forward searchlight had flashed its farewells tothe thronging, cheering crowds of Washington, her propellers began towhirl, and she swung round northward on her way to say goodbye to theEmpire City.
A little before midnight her two lights flashed down over New York andBrooklyn, and were almost instantly answered by hundreds of electricbeams streaming up from different parts of the Twin Cities, and fromseveral men-of-war lying in the bay and the river.
"Goodbye for the present! Have you any messages for Mars?" flickered outfrom above the _Astronef's_ conning-tower.
What Uncle Sam's message was, if he had one, was never deciphered, forfifty beams began dotting and dashing at once, and the result was thatnothing but a blur of many mingled rays reached the conning-tower fromwhich Lord Redgrave and his bride were taking their last look at humanhabitations.
"You might have known that they would all answer at once," said Zaidie."I suppose the newspapers, of course, want interviews with the leadingMartians, and the others want to know what there is to be done in theway of trade. Anyhow, it would be a feather in Uncle Sam's cap if hemade the first Reciprocity Treaty with another world."
"And then proceeded to corner the commerce of the Solar System," laughedRedgrave. "Well, we'll see what can be done. Although I think, as anEnglishman, I ought to look after the Open Door."
"So that the Germans could get in before you, eh? That's just like youdear, good-natured English. But look," she went on, pointing downwards,"they're signalling again, all at once this time."
Half a dozen beams shone out together from the principal newspaperoffices of New York. Then simultaneously they began the dotting anddashing again. Redgrave took them down in pencil, and when thesignalling had stopped he read off:
"No war. Dual Alliance climbs down. Don't like idea of _Astronef_.Cables just received. Goodbye, and good luck! Come back soon, and safe!"
"What? We have stopped the war!" exclaimed Zaidie, clasping his arm."Well, thank God for that. How could we begin our voyage better? Youremember what we were saying the other day, Lenox. If that's only true,my father somewhere knows now what a blessing he has given his brothermen! We've stopped a war which might have deluged the world in blood.We've saved perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives, and kept sorrow fromthousands of homes. Lenox, when we get back, you and the States and theBritish Government will have to build a fleet of these ships, and thenthe Anglo-Saxon race must say to the rest of the world----"
"The millennium has come and its presiding goddess is Zaidie Redgrave.If you don't stop fighting, disband your armies and turn your fleetsinto liners and cargo boats, she'll proceed to sink your ships anddecimate your armies until you learn sense. Is that what you mean,dear?" laughed Redgrave, as he slipped his left hand round her waist andlaid his right on the searchlight-switch to reply to the message.
"Don't be ridiculous, Lenox. Still, I suppose that is something like it.They wouldn't deserve anything else if they were fools enough to go onfighting after they knew we could wipe them out."
"Exactly. I perfectly agree with your Ladyship, but still sufficientunto the day is the Armageddon thereof. Now I suppose we'd better saygoodbye and be off."
"And what a goodbye," whispered Zaidie, with an upward glance into thestarlit ocean of Space which lay above and around them. "Goodbye to theworld itself! Well, say it, Lenox, and let us go; I want to see what theothers are like."
"Very well then; goodbye it is," he said, beginning to jerk the switchbackwards and forwards with irregular motions, sending short flashes andlonger beams down towards the earth.
The Empire City read the farewell message.
"Thank God for the peace. Goodbye for the present. We shall convey thejoint compliments of John Bull and Uncle Sam to the peoples of theplanets when we find them. _Au revoir!_"
The message was answered by the blaze of the concentrated searchlightsfrom land and sea all directed on the _Astronef_. For a moment hershining shape glittered like a speck of diamond in the midst of theluminous haze far up in the sky, and then it vanished for many ananxious day from mortal sight.
A few moments later Zaidie pointed over the stern and said:
"Look, there's the moon! Just fancy--our first stopping place! Well, itdoesn't look so very far off at present."
Redgrave turned and saw the pale yellow crescent of the new moonswimming high above the eastern edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
"It almost looks as if we could steer straight to it right over thewater--only, of course, it wouldn't wait there for us," she went on.
"Oh, it'll be there when we want it, never fear," he laughed, "and,after all, it's only a mere matter of about two hundred and fortythousand miles away, and what's that in a trip that will cover hundredsof millions? It will just be a sort of jumping-off place into Space forus."
"Still, I shouldn't like to miss seeing it," she said. "I want to seewhat there is on that other side which nobody has ever seen yet, andsettle that question about air and water. Won't it just be heavenly tobe able to come back and tell them all about it at home? But just fancyme talking stuff like this when we are going, perhaps, to solve some ofthe hidden mysteries of Creation, and, may be, look upon things thathuman eyes were never meant to see," she went on, with a sudden changein her voice.
He felt a little shiver in the arm that was resting upon his, and hishand went down and caught hers.
"Well, we shall see a good many marvels, and, perhaps, miracles, beforewe come back, but why should there be anything in Creation that the eyesof created beings should not look upon? Anyhow, there's one thing weshall do I hope, we shall solve once and for all the great problem ofthe worlds.
"Look, for instance," he went on, turning round and pointing to thewest, "there is Venus following the sun. In a few days I hope you and Iwill be standing on her surface, perhaps trying to talk by signs withher inhabitants, and taking photographs of her scenery. There's Marstoo, that little red one up yonder. Before we come back we shall havesettled a good many problems about him, too. We shall have navigated therings of Saturn, and perhaps graphed them from his surface. We shallhave crossed the bands of Jupiter, and found out whether they are cloudsor not; perhaps we shall have landed on one of his moons and taken avoyage round him.
"Still, that's not the question just now, and if you are in a hurry tocircumnavigate the moon we'd better begin to get a wriggle on us as theysay down yonder; so come below and we'll shut up. A bit later I'll showyou something that no human eyes have ever seen."
"What's that?" she asked as they turned away towards the companionladder.
"I won't spoil it by telling you," he said, stopping at the top of thestairs and taking her by the shoulders. "By the way," he went on, "I mayremind your Ladyship that you are just now drawing the last breaths ofearthly air which you will taste for some time, in fact until we getback. And you may as well take your last look at earth as earth, for thenext time you see it it will be a planet."
She turned to the open window and looked over into the enormous voidbeneath, for all this time the _Astronef_ had been mounting swiftlytowards the zenith.
She could see, by the growing moonlight, vast, vague shapes of land andsea. The myriad lights of New York and Brooklyn were mingled in a tinypatch of dimly luminous haze. The air about her had suddenly grownbitterly cold, and she saw that the stars and planets were shining witha brilliancy she had never seen before. Redgrave came back to her, andlaying his arm across her shoulder, said:
"Well, have you said goodbye to your native world? It is a bit solemn,isn't it, saying goodbye to a world that you have been born on; whichcontains everything that has made up your life, everything that is dearto you?"
"Not quite everything," she said, looking up at him--"at least I don'tthink so."
He lost no time in making the only reply which was appropriate under thecircumstances; and then he said, drawing her close to him:
"Nor I, as _you_ know, darling. This is our world,
a world travellingamong worlds, and since I have been able to bring the most delightful ofthe daughters of Terra with me, I, at any rate, am perfectly happy. Now,I think it's getting on to supper time, so if your Ladyship will go toyour household duties, I'll have a look at my engines and makeeverything snug for the voyage."
The first thing he did when he left the conning-tower was tohermetically close every external opening in the ship. Then he went andcarefully inspected the apparatus for purifying the air and supplying itwith fresh oxygen from the tanks in which it was stored in liquid form.Lastly he descended into the lower hold and turned on the energy ofrepulsion to its fullest extent, at the same time stopping the engineswhich had been working the propellers.
It was now no longer necessary or even possible to steer the _Astronef_.She was directed solely by the repulsive force which would carry herwith ever-increasing swiftness, as the attraction of the earthdiminished, towards that neutral point at which the attraction of theearth is exactly balanced by the moon. Her momentum would carry her pastthis point, and then the "R. Force" would be gradually brought into playin order to avert the unpleasant consequences of a fall of some fortyodd thousand miles.
Andrew Murgatroyd, relieved from his duties in the wheel-house, made acareful inspection of the auxiliary machinery, which was under hisspecial charge, and then retired to his quarters in the after end of thevessel to prepare his own evening meal.
Meanwhile, her Ladyship, with the help of the ingenious contrivanceswith which the kitchen of the _Astronef_ was stocked, had prepared adainty little _souper a deux_. Her husband opened a bottle of the finestchampagne that the cellars of Smeaton could supply, to drink to theprosperity of the voyage, and the health of his beautifulfellow-voyager. When he had filled the two tall glasses the wine beganto run over the side which was toward the stern of the vessel. They tookno notice of this at first, but when Zaidie put her glass down shestared at it for a moment, and said, in a half-frightened voice:
"Why, what's the matter, Lenox? look at the wine! It won't keepstraight, and yet the table's perfectly level--and see! the water in thejug looks as though it were going to run up the side."
Redgrave took up the glass and held it balanced in his hand. When he hadgot the surface of the wine level the glass was no longer perpendicularto the table.
"Ah, I see what it is," he said, taking another sip and putting theglass down. "You notice that, although the wine isn't lying straight inthe glass, it isn't moving about. It's just as still as it would be onearth. That means that our centre of gravity is not exactly in line withthe centre of the earth. We haven't quite swung into our properposition, and that reminds me, dear. You will have to be prepared forsome rather curious experiences in that way. For instance, just see ifthat jug of water is as heavy as it ought to be."
She took hold of the handle, and exerting, as she thought, just enoughforce to lift the jug a few inches, was astonished to find herselfholding it out at arm's length with scarcely any effort. She put it downagain very carefully as though she were afraid it would go floating offthe table, and said, looking rather scared:
"That's very strange, but I suppose it's all perfectly natural?"
"Perfectly; it merely means that we have left Mother Earth a good longway behind us."
"How far?" she asked.
"I can't tell you exactly," he replied, "until I go to theinstrument-room and take the angles, but I should say roughly aboutseventy thousand miles. When we've finished we'll go and have coffee onthe upper deck, and then we shall see something of the glories of Spaceas no human eyes have ever seen them before."
"Seventy thousand miles away from home already, and we only started acouple of hours ago!" Zaidie found the idea a trifle terrifying, andfinished her meal almost in silence. When she got up she was not alittle disconcerted when the effort she made not only took her off herchair but off her feet as well. She rose into the air nearly to thesurface of the table.
"Sakes!" she said, "this is getting quite a little embarrassing; I shallbe hitting my head against the roof next."
"Oh, you'll soon get used to it," he laughed, pulling her down on to herfeet by the skirt of her dress; "always remember to exert very littlestrength in everything you do, and don't forget to do everything veryslowly."
When the coffee was made he carried the apparatus up into thedeck-chamber. Then he came back and said:
"You'd better wrap yourself up warmly. It's a good deal colder up therethan it is here."
When she reached the deck and took a first glance about her, Zaidieseemed suddenly to lapse into a state of somnambulism.
The whole heavens above and around were strewn with thick clusters ofstars which she had never seen before. The stars she remembered seeingfrom the earth were only pin-points in the darkness compared with themyriads of blazing orbs which were now shooting their rays across theblack void of Space.
So many millions of new ones had come into view, that she looked in vainfor the familiar constellations. She saw only vast clusters of livinggems of every colour crowding the heavens on every side of her.
She walked slowly round the deck, gazing to right and left and above,incapable for the moment either of thought or speech, but only of dumbwonder, mingled with a dim sense of overwhelming awe. Presently shecraned her neck backwards and looked straight up to the zenith. A hugesilver crescent, supporting, as it were, a dim greenish-coloured body inits arms, stretched overhead across nearly a sixth of the heavens.
Then Redgrave came to her side, took her in his arms, lifted her as ifshe had been a little child, and laid her in a long, low deck-chair, sothat she could look at it without inconvenience.
The splendid crescent seemed to be growing visibly bigger, and as shelay there in a trance of wonder and admiration she saw point after pointof dazzling white light flash out in the dark portions, and then beginto send out rays as though they were gigantic volcanoes in fulleruption, and were pouring torrents of living fire from their blazingcraters.
"Sunrise on the Moon!" said Redgrave, who had stretched himself onanother chair beside her. "A glorious sight, isn't it? But nothing towhat we shall see to-morrow morning--only there doesn't happen to be anymorning just about here."
"Yes," she said dreamily, "glorious, isn't it? That and all thestars--but I can't think anything yet, Lenox, it's all too mighty andtoo marvellous. It doesn't seem as though human eyes were meant to lookupon things like this. But where's the earth? We must be able to seethat still."
"Not from here," he said, "because it's underneath us. Come below now,and you shall see what I promised you."
They went down into the lower part of the vessel and to the after endbehind the engine-room. Redgrave switched on a couple of electriclights, and then pulled a lever attached to one of the side-walls. Apart of the flooring about six feet square slid noiselessly away; thenhe pulled another lever on the opposite side and a similar piecedisappeared, leaving a large space covered only by a thick plate ofabsolutely transparent glass. He switched off the lights again and ledher to the edge of it, and said:
"There is your native world, dear. That is your Mother Earth."
Wonderful as the moon had seemed, the gorgeous spectacle which layseemingly at her feet was infinitely more magnificent. A vast disc ofsilver grey, streaked and dotted with lines and points of dazzlinglights, and more than half covered with vast, glimmering, greyish-greenexpanses, seemed to form the floor of the tremendous gulf beneath them.They were not yet too far away to make out the general features of thecontinents and oceans, and fortunately the hemisphere presented to themhappened to be singularly free from clouds.
To the right spread out the majestic outlines of the continents of Northand South America, and to the left Asia, the Malay Archipelago, andAustralia. At the top was a vast, roughly circular area of dazzlingwhiteness, and Redgrave, pointing to this, said:
"There, look up a little further north than the middle of that whitepatch, and you'll see what no eyes but yours and mine have everseen--the
North Pole! When we come back we shall see the South Pole,because we shall approach the earth from the other end, as it were.
"I suppose you recognise a good deal of the picture. All that brightpart up to the north, with the black spots on it, is Canada. The blackspots are forests. That long white line to the left is the Rockies. Yousee they're all bright at the north, and as you go south you only see afew bright dots. Those are the snow-peaks.
"Those long thin white lines in South America are the tops of the Andes,and the big, dark patches to the right of them are the forests andplains of Brazil and the Argentine. Not a bad way of studying geography,is it? If we stopped here long enough we should see the whole earth spinright round under us, but we haven't time for that. We shall be in themoon before it's morning in New York, but we shall probably get aglimpse of Europe to-morrow."
Zaidie stood gazing for nearly an hour at this marvellous vision of thehome-world which she had left so far behind her before she could tearherself away and allow her husband to shut the slides again. The greatlydiminished weight of her body destroyed the fatigue of standing almostentirely. In fact, on board the _Astronef_ just then it was almost aseasy to stand as it was to lie down.
There was of course very little sleep for the travellers on this firstnight of their wonderful voyage, but towards the sixth hour afterleaving the earth, Zaidie, overcome as much by the emotions which hadbeen awakened within her as by physical fatigue, went to bed, aftermaking her husband promise that he would wake her in good time to seethe descent upon the moon. Two hours later she was awake and drinkingthe coffee which he had prepared for her. Then she went on to the upperdeck.
To her astonishment she found, on one hand, day more brilliant than shehad ever seen it before, and on the other hand darkness blacker than theblackest earthly night. On the right was an intensely brilliant orb,about half as large again as the full moon seen from the earth, shiningwith inconceivable brightness out of a sky black as midnight andthronged with stars. It was the Sun; the Sun shining in the midst ofairless Space.
The tiny atmosphere enclosed in the glass-domed deck-space was lightedbrilliantly, but it was not perceptibly warmer, though Redgrave warnedher not to touch anything upon which the sun's rays fell directly, asshe might find it uncomfortably hot. On the other side was the sameblack immensity which she had seen the night before, an ocean ofdarkness clustered with islands of light. High above in the zenithfloated the great silver-grey disc of earth, a good deal smaller now.But there was another object beneath them which was at present of farmore interest to her.
Looking down to the left, she saw a vast semi-luminous area in which nota star was to be seen. It was the earth-lit portion of the long familiarand yet mysterious orb which was to be their resting place for the nextfew hours.
"The sun hasn't risen over there yet," said Redgrave, as she was peeringdown into the void. "It's earth-light still. Now look at the otherside."
She crossed the deck, and saw the strangest scene she had yet beheld.Apparently only a few miles below her was a huge crescent-shaped plainarching away for hundreds of miles on either side. The outer edge had aragged look, and little excrescences, which soon took the shape offlat-topped mountains, projected from it and stood out bright and sharpagainst the black void beneath, out of which the stars shone up, as itseemed, a few feet beyond the edge of the disc.
The plain itself was a scene of awful and utter desolation. Hugemountain-walls, towering to immense heights and enclosing great circularand oval plains, one side of them blazing with intolerable light, andthe other side black with impenetrable obscurity; enormous valleysreaching down from brilliant day into rayless night--perhaps down intothe very bowels of the dead world itself; vast grey-white plains lyinground the mountains, crossed by little ridges and by long black lines,which could only be immense fissures with perpendicular sides--but allhard, grey-white and black, all intolerable brightness or inky gloom;not a sign of life anywhere; no shady forests, no green fields, nobroad, glittering oceans; only a ghastly wilderness of dead mountainsand dead plains.
"What an awful place," Zaidie whispered. "Surely we can't land there.How far are we from it?"
"About fifteen hundred miles," replied Redgrave, who was sweeping thescene below him with one of the two powerful telescopes which stood onthe deck. "No, it doesn't look very cheerful, does it? But it's amarvellous sight for all that, and one that a good many people on earthwould give one of their eyes to see from here. I'm letting her droppretty fast, and we shall probably land in a couple of hours or so.Meanwhile you may as well get out your moon atlas, and study yourlunography. I'm going to turn the power a bit astern so that we shall godown obliquely, and see more of the lighted disc. We started at new moonso that you should have a look at the full earth, and also so that wecould get round to the invisible side while it is lighted up."
They both went below, he to deflect the repulsive force so that one setof engines should give them a somewhat oblique direction, while theother, acting directly on the surface of the moon, simply retarded theirfall; and she to get out her maps.
When they got back the _Astronef_ had changed her apparent position,and, instead of falling directly on to the moon, was descending towardsit in a slanting direction. The result of this was that the sunlitcrescent rapidly grew in breadth. Peak after peak and range after rangerose up swiftly out of the black gulf beyond. The sun climbed quickly upthrough the star-strewn, mid-day heavens, and the full earth sank moreswiftly still behind them.
Another hour of silent, entranced wonder and admiration followed, andthen Redgrave said:
"Don't you think it's about time we were beginning to think ofbreakfast, dear--or do you think you can wait till we land?"
"Breakfast on the moon!" she exclaimed. "That would be just too lovelyfor words--of course we'll wait!"
"Very well," he said; "you see that big black ring nearly belowus?--that, as I suppose you know, is the celebrated Mount Tycho. I'lltry and find a convenient spot on the top of the ring to drop on, andthen you will be able to survey the scenery from seventeen or eighteenthousand feet above the plains."
About two hours later a slight, jarring tremor ran through the frame ofthe vessel, and the first stage of the voyage was ended. After a passageof less than twelve hours the _Astronef_ had crossed a gulf of nearlytwo hundred and fifty thousand miles, and rested on the untroddensurface of the lunar world.
A Honeymoon in Space Page 7
