The Chemist's son, a young man of twenty, rose reluctantly from his
obscure seat in a corner of the room. He was tall, and slight of build,
with thick, wavy chestnut hair and blue eyes; his delicate features were
offset by a square firmness of chin. He came forward slowly, flushing as
the eyes of the men were turned on him; a poetic-looking boy, with only
the firm line of his lips and the set of his jaw to mark him for a man.
"My son, gentlemen," Rogers added. "You all know Loto."
"We do," said George enthusiastically. He vacated his own chair, shoving
it forward, and selected another, more retired position for himself.
Loto settled himself in the chair and then hesitated, as though in doubt
how to begin. He was still flushing, and yet his manner was thoroughly
poised. His forehead was wrinkled in thought.
"Father and I were experimenting," he began abruptly, "about two years
ago. We were interested in electrons. We were experimenting with the
fluorescence in a Crookes tube--breaking down the atoms into electrons.
Then we followed the experiments of Lenard and Roentgen. We darkened the
tube and prepared a chemical screen, which grew luminous."
Loto turned to Rogers: "They don't want to hear all this. These
technicalities--"
Rogers smiled. "We hit upon it quite by accident--an accident that we
have never been able to duplicate. We had, that evening, an adaptation
of the familiar Crookes tube. I do not know the exact conditions we
secured; we had no idea we were on the threshold of any discovery and we
kept no record of what we did. Nor am I sure just how I prepared the
screen--what proportions of the chemicals I used--"
"You're worse than Loto," the Banker growled. "If you'll just tell us
what--"
"I will," agreed Rogers good-naturedly. "We were working one night in my
laboratory on Forty-third Street--only a few hundred yards from the
Scientific Club here. The room was dark, and we had set up a small
chemical screen. It grew luminous as the electrons from the tube struck
it, but the glowing was not what we had expected--not what we had
observed before. The difference is unexplainable to you, but we both
noticed it. And then Loto noticed something else, something in the
darkness behind the screen."
Loto was sitting upright on the edge of his chair; his eyes were
snapping with eagerness as he interrupted his father.
"I'll tell them because it was I who saw it first. Behind the screen,
the darkness of the room itself was growing luminous with a glowing
radiance that seemed to spread out into rays that were not parallel, but
divergent. It looked almost as though the screen were a searchlight
sending a spreading beam out behind it.
"Father saw it almost as soon as I did. It was a very curious light; it
did not illuminate the room about us. Then we suddenly discovered that
it went through the walls of the laboratory. We were looking into a
space that seemed to be opening up for miles ahead of us. The walls of
the room, the house itself, the city around us, were all blotted out. We
were looking into an empty distance."
"Empty?" echoed George tensely. "Didn't you see anything?"
"Not at first." Loto had relaxed; his earnest gaze passed from one to
the other of the intent faces of the men. "We were only conscious of
empty distance. It was not darkness nor was it light. It was more a dim
phosphorescence. We had forgotten the Crookes tube, the screen,
everything but that glowing, empty scene before us.
"After a moment, or it may have been much longer, the scene seemed to
brighten. It turned to gleaming silver, and then we saw that we were
looking out over a snow-covered waste. Miles of it. Snow reaching back
to the horizon, and dull gray sky overhead. The ground seemed about
sixty feet below us, and we were poised in the air above it."
Loto paused a moment, and Rogers added, "You understand, gentlemen, that
my laboratory is not on the ground floor of the building, but somewhat
above the level of that part of the city."
"But--" began the Big Business Man.
"Let him go on," growled the Banker. "Go on, boy. Didn't you see
anything but snow?"
"No, not at once. It was all bleak and desolate. But it kept on
brightening, losing its silvery, glowing look until at last we could
see it was daylight. It was apparently late afternoon--or perhaps early
morning. The sun wasn't showing--it must have been behind a cloud.
"We sat staring down at this cold, snowy landscape, and then, almost
from below us, something moving came into view. It had passed under
us--under the laboratory--and was traveling on away from us."
"What was it?" the Banker demanded.
"Well, it seemed to be a huge sled, with fur covered figures on it, and
pulled by an animal almost as large as a horse. But it wasn't a
horse--it was a dog."
Loto paused, but no one else spoke. After a moment he resumed:
"The sled slackened and stopped about a quarter of a mile north of the
laboratory--up toward where Central Park is now. And then we saw that
there was a building there, a large, oval-shaped structure. It may have
been built of snow, or ice--or perhaps some whitish stone. There seemed
to be an enclosed space behind it. The whole thing blended into the
landscape so that we had overlooked it before.
"The sled stopped. We could see the figures climbing down from it. Then
there was sudden darkness. The scene went black. We were sitting facing
the side wall of the laboratory."
"A wire in our apparatus had burned out," Rogers explained. "And that
night I was taken sick. It developed into pneumonia and I was laid up
for weeks. Loto was left alone to follow up our discovery."
"Just a minute," the Banker interjected. "Do I understand you to imply
that you actually saw all this? It was not a vision, or an electrical
picture of some sort that you were reproducing?"
"No, they mean it was an actual scene," the Big Business Man put in.
"They were seeing New York City at some other time. Isn't that so?"