"It will be the perfect imbecility on this reporter's part to try
and get anything out of your Uncle, or me, on our latest discovery,"
Olinski explained. "The time is not yet ripe for any sort of public
announcement."
"If he's a live-wire reporter," I offered, "and he seems to be just
that, I'm afraid he'll go the limit in getting what he's after."
"Of course he will," Pat smiled. "Now that Uncle Henry has refused
to be interviewed, he'll try some other means to get at him. Oh, the
life of a reporter must be terribly thrilling! One reads so much about
them in detective and mystery stories." She paused for a moment, and
then continued, half musingly. "I wonder what he's like--this Mr.
McGinity--this mono-maniac on the subject of news. Did you ever meet
him, personally, Uncle Henry?"
Henry nodded, and replied grudgingly: "I met him personally, not long
after he had tricked me into giving him the news of the comet. I was
acting as toastmaster at the annual banquet of the Colonial Lords of
Manors, and he was reporting the dinner. He tried to be friendly, but I
squelched him good and plenty."
"Oh, how interesting!" Pat enthused. "Tell me, please! Is he young and
good-looking?"
Henry's head jerked up. He did some rapid thinking, and then he lied
firmly: "He's an oldish person, fat and awkward, and almost bald."
Pat smiled faintly, and did not have much to say after that. I divined
that her little bubble of romantic anticipation had been pricked, but
as she had no suspicions then, and had accepted Henry's description of
the reporter as truthful, I passed it up. Considering Henry's position
at the moment, I could not very well cross purposes with him and
enlighten her. I happened to have been present at the same banquet, and
I could have offered her a vastly different picture of the reporter
from the fraudulent one Henry had painted.
An uncomfortable silence followed. The Prince was looking at Pat
quizzically. "Well, what about it?" he said suddenly.
"About what?" she replied.
"I should have thought you almost the last person in the world to
become interested in a news writer," he said. "To me, the most
repugnant of persons is a nosey newspaper reporter."
"Reporters are not repugnant to me," Pat replied quickly. "I've never
met one in my life, so why should I feel any contempt for them?"
"Thanks," said the Prince. "That's what I wanted to know."
"Don't be a cad," Pat retorted. "There is no more harm in my knowing a
reporter than in knowing you."
"Well," said the Prince, "it's like this. If I ever caught you talking
to a reporter, I'd lead you away by the ear."
"Really," Pat smiled dryly, as the color mounted her cheeks. "If any
one but you, Prince Matani, had made such a threat, I should refuse to
have anything more to do with him. As it is--oh, why be so fussed over
something that hasn't happened, and may never occur?"
I wondered why the Prince should make such a silly and indiscreet
remark. I could see that this little flash of petty jealousy and
cruelty that lay hidden under his formal and polite exterior had
annoyed Henry, although his voice was very kind as he continued to
exchange pleasantries with the princeling. In fact, Henry conversed on
every topic save that nearest his heart. It was only with the entry of
dessert and the departure of Orkins that he came back to realities.
"Now, listen, everyone," he said. "Olinski and I have kept something to
ourselves as long as possible, and now, assuming that some ungrateful,
treacherous culprit has betrayed our secret to the Daily Recorder, we
have decided to announce our discovery privately tonight."
"I see," the Prince commented, with a disdainful edge to his voice;
"you are going to tell us something important, and we are supposed to
know nothing until, of course, this McGinity, the reporter, gets the
story, and his paper is adorned with your portraits."
Henry fixed a cold and disparaging gaze on the Prince for a moment, and
then continued, with an even voice. "The servants are to know nothing,
and no one present here must breathe a word of it." He paused a moment.
"No one has anything to say? Very well. Instead of having coffee served
in the library, we shall dispense with that formality and proceed at
once to the observatory."
It was not long before we were gathered in the dome-ceilinged room
in one of the peaked towers, where Henry carried on his astronomical
observations. I was in an exultant mood, not because we were to be let
in on a great secret, but rather on account of Pat. My heart sang with
glee, and I suppressed a desire to whistle and whoop; and I thanked my
stars that McGinity was up to his favorite tricks again. Unwittingly,
by his telephone call, I felt sure he had forestalled the announcement
of Pat's engagement to the Prince.
Henry constituted himself both host and lecturer. Pat and the Prince
seemed quite happy together again, their little tilt at the dinner
table apparently forgotten. But the evening had not progressed very
far before I was again struck by the curious mixture of impudence and
rashness in the Prince. I wondered if all men of his social caste
possessed this overbearing consciousness of superiority.
After we were comfortably grouped about the room, Henry touched a
button in the wall, and a section of the dome-shaped glass roof slid
back. Simultaneously, the electrically propelled telescope moved
majestically into place. A click of an electric switch and the room was
partially darkened. We gazed upward into a bright field of twinkling
planets, stretching above us like a dark blue velvet canopy, studded
with gilt paper stars.
At Henry's invitation, Pat and the Prince viewed the ruddy-hued planet
Mars through the telescope. As they enjoyed the close-up of this most
famous of faraway planets, he grew discoursive.
"Mars is now at the nearest point to the earth for the first time in
one hundred years," he said, "and its south-pole is turned towards us.
It is one-half the diameter of the earth, and its day is but half an
hour longer than our own."
"And you really think the planet is inhabited by people like
ourselves?" Pat said, her imagination seemingly enthralled by the
gorgeous night spectacle of the planet.
"Why not?" Henry smiled. "Mars has oxygen, the breath of life,
diluted with nitrogen, the same as the air of the earth. Its physical
conditions for life closely resemble our own."
"Do I understand you to say that you believe life on Mars is similar
to our own, and as far advanced as our own civilization?" the Prince
interrogated.
"First, let me explain more fully the physical conditions on the
planet," Henry said. "Mars has its seasons, which essentially resemble
the earth's. That white spot you observed in the neighborhood of its
south-pole is a polar cap of ice and snow, just now reforming after
shrinking and melting away during the summer. Those greenish-blue areas
you saw in the planet's southern hemisphere, parallel to the equator,
are the vegetated sections--the tropical jungles."
"And what's all this tommyrot about canals being distributed like a
network over the planet's surface, and supplying water from the melting
polar snow-caps for the vegetation of Mars?" the Prince asked, a little
impudently.
"Dr. Percival Lowell made the first study of these strange geometric
tracings, on the regularity of the 'canal' patterns," Henry responded
quietly. "On his studies was based largely the theory that the planet
is inhabited.
"If your little country of Georgia, in southern Russia," he continued,
"was slowly drying up and there were available large quantities of
water from melting snow and ice at certain locations in your northern
and southern boundaries, you would soon build canals, or ditches, for
irrigation purposes, wouldn't you? You would--if you had any brains."
The Prince eyed him speculatively, and replied, "But I have failed
to see any markings of these so-called canals on Mars, through your
telescope. Why is that?"
"Objects on Mars less than ten miles in size cannot be seen clearly
except through the largest telescopes," he answered. "These patterns
follow the curves of great circles. Several of them appear to pass
through the same point. At these spots 'lakes' are observed."
"Isn't there the possibility of an optical illusion about all this?"
the Prince persisted. "Isn't it possible that you and other astronomers
let your imagination run riot, and create in your mind these conditions
on Mars necessary to sustain life, patterned after those existing on
earth?"
"Nothing of the sort," Henry replied in exasperation. "The existence
of life there is evidenced by the presence of free oxygen in the
atmosphere."
"Do you mean to say that men and women of flesh and blood, with brains,
like those who walk the earth, populate this dried-up planet?" the
Prince said. "Ah, it is too impossible!"
"Yes, Uncle Henry, it does seem almost beyond human conception," Pat
interjected.
"Furthermore," the Prince went on, "authoritative sources claim that
no creature with warm blood could survive there, with the temperature
ranging between 150 and 250 degrees. A cold-blooded creature might
freeze and then thaw out, but a warm-blooded one would freeze and
remain dead as a door nail. The indications, I fear, are that your
inhabitants of Mars are in the order of--of sublimated lobsters."
"Lobsters!" Pat repeated, laughing.
"Don't be an ass, Your Highness," Olinski interposed at that point.
"Or, at any rate, try not to be an ass."
"But it all sounds so deuced silly," exclaimed the Prince, in some
heat. "You know yourself, Mr. Olinski, that science has definitely
proved that Mars cannot support life as we know it. You may as well
admit," he continued, turning again to Henry, "that you really have no
proof except your own imagination that there is life on Mars. Providing
there is some sort of living organisms there, it is utterly absurd and
preposterous to claim that life is as much advanced, physically and
intellectually, as our own."
"But I have proof," Henry announced firmly. "Mr. Olinski and I have
demonstrated that fact."
"I don't catch the point, really," said the Prince.
"Then listen attentively, Your Highness," said Olinski, "and you'll get
an earful." Motioning to Henry, he added: "Let's have it."
"Yes," said Henry, in a deeply serious voice, "we have completely
proved that life not only exists on Mars, but that in some respects
civilization there is more advanced, especially in the sciences, than
on earth."
"Life as we know it here on this sphere?" Jane inquired. "How
extraordinary."
Henry nodded, and said: "It is information on our discovery, which
has leaked out in some mysterious way, that this reporter, McGinity,
apparently, is seeking. But we are not yet ready to divulge our secret
findings until we have arranged to give a public demonstration."
"Oh, how thrilling!" Pat ejaculated. "And when will that be?"
"Probably within a week," Henry replied.
The Prince whistled. "Well, somebody's going dotty," he said. "That's
all I've got to say. It's too utterly absurd--impossible."
"But it is possible," Henry said. "Radio has made it technically
possible. Radio has successfully bridged the hitherto impassable
sidereal abyss between earth and Mars--annihilated space."
"I'm not an authority on radio," the Prince grumbled.
"Every American schoolboy knows with what tremendous velocity radio
spins round the earth, seven and one-half times in one second," Henry
went on. "Now, we know it jumps from planet to planet. Its echo
actually has come back to us from outside the orbit of the moon."
"I dare say the Martians have been listening in to our short wave
broadcasts, symphony orchestras and jazz?" the Prince remarked. "Am I
right?"
"Quite," answered Henry.
"Nevertheless," said the Prince, "I've read on good authority that our
short waves can't possibly penetrate the outer layer of the earth's
atmosphere, and so reach outer space. However, tell us what you and Mr.
Olinski have discovered."
"And remember," Olinski broke in, "no one is to breathe a word of this
to any one but the five of us who already know of it."
"Except to this reporter, McGinity, of course," the Prince added, with
a sarcastic note.
"Keep calm, Your Highness," Olinski murmured, impatiently.
"H'm," said Henry, and then he began. "After many months of intense
application, we have at last established direct radio communication
with Mars by the use of short, high frequency waves, with which, as I
said before, there is no limit to distance.
"The registering of mysterious galactic radio waves from outer space
has long been puzzling the scientific world. As the intensity of these
waves is very low, we constructed a very delicately-strung apparatus
for their reception. At first, we got a strange group of sounds which
baffled us completely. Less than a month ago, however, one night, about
ten o'clock, our apparatus began to register a series of distinct dots
and dashes. But these signals were in no known code, beginning on a low
note and ending with a sort of 'zipp.'
"Outstanding were four distinct groups of four dashes, which convinced
us that some form of intelligence in the upper atmosphere was striving
for inter-galactic communication. They registered regularly, night
after night, about the same time, ten o'clock. Now, here comes the
amazing part. While I was busily engaged making measurements, and
taking photographs, Mars, at present, being on its periodic parade past
the earth, Mr. Olinski succeeded in decoding these four dashes. They
turned out to be the signal of the transmitting station on Mars. We
could not very well be mistaken, because when we replied, giving our
station signal, in the same code, we got an answer.
"Last night, at the same hour, we established definite connection
with this station on Mars, after considerable difficulty in making
ourselves known to them. You see, the Martians do not know this planet
by the name of 'Earth,' as we call it. They have given this world the
appellation of the 'Blue Sphere,' which is quite natural, as the earth
to Mars appears to be veiled in blue.
"On the other hand, we made the mistake of calling their planet,
'Mars.' Apparently, by their signaling, they were curious as to the
meaning of the word. This gave us cause to think that it might be known
to its inhabitants under an entirely different name. Later, it was
proved that we were right, because the Martian station said so. They
call their own planet, the 'Red Sphere.'"
At that point, Henry brought his startling disclosures to an abrupt
conclusion. A sort of awe fell among us. The news of this wonderful
scientific achievement had petrified us all in complete silence.