Fletcher Pratt (7 page)

Around the edge of the circular opening, on every side a dancing trail of sparks flashed off and were extinguished in the velvet black of interstellar space—a trail of fire from our car. (And here again I must insert a parenthetical remark at the risk of irritating the reader. These were not, as I originally imagined, blazing sparks; since there was no atmosphere there could, of course, he no combustion. They were rather in the nature of single electrons or ions, cast off by the fierce electrochemical reaction going on within our motors and glowing with a light of their own.)

Within this circle of sparks the stars stood out bright and clear on the background of black, shining not with the twinkling light they have as seen from Earth, but with a steady, strong radiance, like distant lamps. At the upper part of the circle was one redder than the rest, larger and dimmer—perceptibly a disc. I took this to be Mars. The moon was nowhere visible, but Earth filled the whole lower half of the picture, and it was the most glorious celestial object I have ever seen.

It was half shrouded in dark, but even the dark part was visible by the blotting out of the innumerable stars against which it stood, and it was ringed nearly round with a radiant ring where the sun, below and on one side, was reflected back from the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

The line where the western coast of North America dipped under the Pacific was still illumined and the continent's edge was visible against the shimmering blue of the ocean as a yellowish-green mass. Further down, around the line of the equator, a white ring of clouds shrouded the masses of land and water, and right in the center of the Pacific was a huge, dazzling spot of pure gold—the reflection of the sun, sent back from the water as from a mirror.

I felt the rub of Ashembe's shoulder against my own. Like me, he was contemplating the view spread before us with rapt attention. "Wonderful, isn't it?" I said.

"Yes," he replied shortly. "We move very slow at present. Your world still has predominating gravitational attraction. If too much speed is made at the present moment, said gravitational attraction would cause serious injury by crushing. But we escape. You do not feel less weighty?" As he mentioned it, I became more fully conscious of what had been, as it were, poised in the back of my head—a minor irritation. I felt curiously, as he put it, "less weighty." I stood up, and the muscular effort carried me right off my feet, a couple of inches off the floor of the space ship, and I floated gently back as though on wings. It was a singular and not altogether agreeable sensation; a feeling of disembodiment, such as one experiences in those horrible nightmares during which one drifts for hours just above the floor, pursued by some avenging shape. I shuddered a trifle—and the motion propelled me several inches across the car. Ashembe laughed.

"This is nothing. Wait for the moment when we shall arrive beyond the attraction of your sun."

No wonder he had been haggard and racked when he rose out of the waters of Sunderland Lake from the wreck of his first car....

Ashembe watched Earth fading away behind us for a few minutes, made some adjustments here and there, pulled himself upwards to the peak of the projectile along the racks. There he turned on the tubes that enabled him to look out through the nickel plates at that point and after a few minutes of observation returned, coming head downward along the racks like a monkey to the floor of the car again. I watched him as he turned off two of the circle of motors at the base and swung the keys of those on the opposite side to their full power, hardly daring to trust myself to motion, fearful of what I would do with my new-found strength in that constricted space.

"I am causing a change in direction," explained my fellow voyager. "We do now escape from predominating attraction of your Earth and must change course toward Venus. These motors no longer necessary for progress on so short journey, but we must turn course."

"Why aren't the motors necessary?"

"Absurd not to understand. You are badly taught in schools. We are now free body floating in vacuum, except for small amount of dust, solely under attraction of your sun, except for minor attraction from planets. Consequently, having momentum, we are minor planet of the same and would circulate around it in orbit with amount of speed required on leaving limit of Earthly attraction. Such orbit would not bring us to Venus. Consequently, having been unable to leave your Earth at moment which would bring our course to intersect that planet, we must change direction."

"Why not just turn off all motors but the one on the opposite side from the direction you want to go? Wouldn't it save fuel?"

"Because if I do this, it would give us rotation only and we spin forever around your sun as a minor planet." A shadow crossed his face. "Such was the unhappy case of early explorers from Murashema. Three or four of them now circle forever around our sun. So I merely turn off the motor at one side and then turn those opposite to full power, giving our motion moments in more than one direction and thereby swinging our course in wide hyperbola. You comprehend?"

For a marvel, I did. "How long before we will arrive?"

I asked.

From one of his pockets he produced a small calculating machine. "Venus is now approaching inferior conjunction." he said, sliding the parts back and forth. "Due to eccentricity of orbit and fact, we are projected from Earth at point on opposite side from Venus we must go on long hyperbola to get to this planet...." He calculated for a moment. "Distance to be covered totals about 20,000,000 miles in your measure. We cannot go much faster than average speed of forty miles per second or a little more than the speed of your Mercury planet. To go faster would not allow us to slow down on approaching Venus, and we would shoot past into your sun, ending in flaming smoke...." Again a calculation. "About one hundred and thirty-six hours from departure to arrival."

A hundred and thirty-six hours. I pulled my watch out, but being still unfamiliar with the curious effects of the lack of gravity in our exceedingly small planet, tossed it clear over my head, where it bounced gently off a cylinder of liquid hydrogen and returned with the deliberate motion of objects in the slow movies. Ashembe snickered. When I seized it again, it showed half-past eleven by the time of the spot we have left. We had already been gone some three hours and had about five and a half days more to travel before making a landing.

One altogether loses the sense of time, I found, in a place where it is perpetual day, where the warmth is even and the surroundings unendingly the same. On the third day of our journey I forgot to wind my watch, and it was not until sometime later—not, indeed, till we left Venus— that I set it going again. When either of us felt like it, we retired to one of the outer chambers, from which the light had been removed, and slept. Again, when we felt like it, we helped ourselves to food from Ashembe's store, though there was very little eaten. The sense of hunger seemed to have been left behind with the earth.

At first I helped Ashembe a little. He had left before his preparations were fairly complete, and there was still some apparatus to be built. He fitted up one of the shells next to the interior chamber as a workshop. There he spent long hours cutting and grinding, working with welding tool and mercury tube to his heart's content. But I early tired of watching operations of whose method and purpose I had no understanding and at which I could be but of small assistance.

In one of the cases which we had tumbled aboard at the last moment I found a few books, but they turned out to be useless, technical things—differential calculus, metallurgy and astronomy—and however deep my boredom, it did not reach the level of reading abstruse volumes on subjects of which I understood nothing.

It was on the second or third day out, I think, that I discovered the deck of cards. They kept me busy for as much as forty-eight hours playing endless games of solitaire and trying to work out the probabilities of the game coming out correctly or of a certain card turning up from past performances. But I soon found that the cards responded to no discoverable laws in their permutations.

Only a limited amount of time could be spent in looking through the nickel screen at the landscape (or should I say space-scape?); it had a depressing sameness once the marvel of the first glance had worn off. Altogether I found time hanging so heavily on my hands that I wondered all voyagers from planet to planet did not go raving mad before arriving. It was just as I had taken up a last desperate attempt to give mind and body something to do (by setting down the words of all the poems I knew and counting up the letters to see which appeared oftenest—to such depths of inanity does boredom reduce even comparatively intelligent persons!) that Ashembe, returning from a trip to the observation screens in the central chamber, announced the near approach of our destination.

I followed him back through the low doors, which had to be entered belly-wise, waiting while he tightened each behind us.*

* Schierstedt mentions above that just before leaving the Earth the door of the inner chamber was tightened and the crack caulked with atotta. Evidently this had been removed. Possibly it was a temporary arrangement, while passing through the atmosphere, or he may have been mistaken.

Within the interior chamber the tube and heater around the nickel plates at the peak of the projectile were turned on, and through them the orb of Venus could be clearly seen—now about the same size to the sight as Earth when we had left it. We seemed to be drifting slowly sidewise down toward it, an effect attributable to the fact that the observation screen was not right at the point of the car. I have seen the same effect as I stood at the bow of a ship pulling in to a dock; it seems as though her course is altogether wrong and will take her clear past, until you hear the grinding of her plates against the piles.

The night side of the planet was toward us; beyond it the sun, a greater and more glorious sun than any person of Earth ever sees, was just emerging from the planet's shadow, tossing huge red flames of blinding radiance millions of miles high. It hurt my eyes, and I turned away, but Ashembe, noting my trouble, threw a switch of some kind and the radiance was dimmed. Then I saw Venus as she is—a great dark shield of a planet, picked out all round the edge with a glow of unearthly radiance where the sun is reflected from her cloudy surface.

Out beyond her a star or two burned in the heavens, and down across the picture sprayed the stream of sparks from the big motor at the prow, now working at full speed to check our momentum before we reached the planet's atmosphere. Ashembe floated beside me working energetically with observational instruments of one sort and another, prominent among which was a small spectroscope.

"Correct for your astronomers," he murmured as he bent over the instrument. "Rate of revolution of this planet is very slow, if upper atmosphere forms any criterion. Hence it will be well to turn the Shoraru upon arrival in upper atmosphere and land at point within sunlit hemisphere. Otherwise we might spend considerable period in the dark in a bad place. I do not like the same." He fell silent, turning the adjusting arrangements on his instruments. "And still I do not like to do the same. It too rapidly uses up much-needed fuel. Efficiency of all fuel is fifty per cent less in atmosphere than in a vacuum."

"What is Venus like?" I asked. "Can you tell anything about it from your instruments?"

"No, certainly not," he answered promptly. "Am I a saint? No, you call that kind of prophet—am I a prophet? The upper atmosphere is deficient in water vapor and oxygen as compared with our worlds and has much carbon dioxide, but what else? We can tell when we arrive."

A silence fell upon us; Ashembe was busy with his instruments and I with my thoughts as we watched the planet grow slowly larger on our sight. Now it had completely blotted out the sun from our sight and filled the whole of the central heavens for us—a great disc of black, rimmed round with light on which no mark or feature was visible. One by one the stars were swallowed up in that wall of blackness as we drew closer, and it seemed as though we had slowly changed our course in some way and were now falling down toward it instead of approaching it along the same straight path we had been following.

I began to feel once more the blessed sensation of weight. I had been holding to the racks near the peak of the projectile and now it seemed as though we had been tilted forward and I was sliding down a steeply inclined plane toward the huge dark planet that rose up to meet us. A pencil from my vest pocket fell out, striking the edge of one of the racks with a tinkling sound. With an effort, for my muscles had become cramped during the hour or more we must have been there, I reversed position. Ashembe lay on his side, consulting a perfect congress of instruments.

I noted that the sparks from, our bow motor had taken on a greenish tinge, quite unlike their previous color and that we seemed to be moving more slowly. Pointing an inquisitive finger at the sparks, I demanded, "What is it?"

"Now entering—atmosphere of planet—" he replied jerkily, working the keys of his instruments. "Must check progress. No—quickly!" he shouted, springing to his feet and bracing himself against the racks. He began to pull from one of them the atotta suit we had made—how many aeons ago was it?—at Joyous Gard.

"Here," he said, pulling the suit on. "Unlock door of this chamber and each other for me. Fear I must explode whole of fuel in outer chamber to check progress and assure landing on other face of planet.... Lock outer door after me and return to next chamber within. When I give the signal, admit me." I did not stop to learn what the signal might be, but began climbing along the racks to where the door, like the transom over a window, now stood some twelve feet above my head. It was a difficult job, made harder by the fact that the Shoraru had begun to rock in the most alarming manner, and when I reached it, I thought I would never get the lock open.

Ashembe, tightly buckled in his atotta suit, followed, urging me to speed by jabbing me with an instrument he carried. Together we tumbled through the narrow opening; I nearly fell to the bottom of the next chamber in doing it, but managed to catch one of the racks in time and to navigate around its walls as if on a mountain ledge.

The rocking motion increased and was accompanied by a sibilant whistle, low and monotonous.

Through the next door we went and the next—would those infernal rooms never come to an end?—and then finally into one so much hotter than the rest that the perspiration started out on my face. With his hand at my chest, Ashembe motioned me to go back and began to lower himself down the racks toward the peak of the projectile.

"Explode whole of fuel," he had said. That meant danger-near and pressing. I slid the door into position and turned the lock, climbing round the racks to reach the next door. What if he were killed in the explosion—or injured? What a position for a bond salesman, I thought, clinging to a rack which held a jar of liquid hydrogen, to steady myself against the alarming pitching of the car. At that moment there came a great burst of sound and a pitch so violent that it jerked loose my hold and hurled me downward half a dozen feet to what had been the ceiling and had become the floor of the chamber.

It was lined with atotta and I lit on what is supposed to be the least sensitive portion of man's anatomy, but the bump was severe, and I had no more than gotten to my hands and knees when there came a second explosion and another pitch that flattened me against the side of the chamber, knocking the wind from my body.

It was several minutes before I recovered myself sufficiently to stand upright. The pitching had ceased as had the whistling sound without. The bow seemed higher too —the space-ship was traveling at an angle that now made one of her sides the floor. But there was no sign of Ashembe.

Taking advantage of our change of course, I walked along the side of the car among the racks and placed my ear against the door. Silence. The suspense was agonizing. There was no sense of motion now, no sound whatever, nothing but the soft light from the sensitized quartz and the silent racks filled with materials for an interplanetary voyage. I squatted down, hanging to one of the racks with both hands, fearful of another abrupt change of direction. An age passed by.

Finally, just as I had made up my mind to climb back to the central chamber and get into one of the other atotta suits and dare the dangers of whatever lay beyond the locked door, there came three measured metallic taps against it; a pause, and then again three taps. Fumbling with haste, I threw back the complex lock to look down into the outer chamber, now directly below me, and meet a breath of icy air. There he was, hanging to the racks near the door by his hands. I reached down, gripped his arm and pulled amain, and in a moment he was beside me.

Together we climbed to the door of the next chamber, being aided by the slight slant the Shoraru now took. For all the fact that he was loaded with the atotta suit, it was Ashembe who got through first, pulling me up after him, and it was he who preceded me all the way to the inner chamber. We hurried down the side to the nickel screens.

At first I thought there was something wrong with them. They showed nothing but a whirling, indistinct mass, shadowy gray in hue, behind which, as behind a curtain, there was a dim, red light. The gray mist seemed to be flashing past at tremendous speed, and after a moment I realized we were among the clouds that perpetually encircle the planet, just emerging into the daylight zone. The rain of sparks from the motor at the bow had ceased. I found my voice.

"It's all right then. What did you do?"

"I exploded the helium in the outer chamber," answered Ashembe, who had flung back the hood of his suit and was now busy with his instruments again, "thereby lifting the forward end of the Shoraru and giving us direction more tangential to surface of the planet. But alas! We are now deficient in fuel. I desire greatly to find pleci in this atmosphere or in combination in surface formations. No further great distance can we go without liberal supply of fuel—Attend!" He pointed suddenly to the screen.

I just caught a fleeting glimpse of the surface of the planet through the rolling clouds. A surface of steaming moisture, with long, irregular blots across it—nothing more. And then we were again swallowed up in the clouds. The light behind them was stronger now, like that on a day filled with both sunshine and mist. I turned to Ashembe, opened my mouth to speak—and suddenly we met ground with a rending crash that threw me off my feet again and rattled the cylinders in their beds. We had landed on Venus.*