It was shortly after noon when the newly christened _Solarite_ left on
its first trip into space. The sun was a great ball of fire low in the
west when they returned, dropping plummet-like from the depths of space,
the rush of the air about the hull, a long scream that mounted from a
half-heard sound in the outer limits of the Earth's atmosphere, to a
roar of tortured air as the ship dropped swiftly to the field and shot
into the hanger. Instantly the crew darted to the side of the great
cylinder as the door of the ship opened.
Fuller appeared in the opening, and at the first glimpse of his face,
the hanger crew knew something was wrong. "Hey, Jackson," Fuller called,
"get the field doctor--Arcot had a little accident out there in space!"
In moments the man designated returned with the doctor, leading him
swiftly down the long metal corridor of the _Solarite_ to Arcot's room
aboard.
There was a mean-looking cut in Arcot's scalp, but a quick, sure
examination by the doctor revealed that there appeared to be no serious
injury. He had been knocked unconscious by the blow that made the cut,
and he had not yet recovered his senses.
"How did this happen?" asked the doctor as he bathed the cut and deftly
bandaged it.
Morey explained: "There's a device aboard whose job it is to get us out
of the way of stray meteors, and it works automatically. Arcot and I
were just changing places at the controls. While neither of us was
strapped into our seats, a meteor came within range and the rocket tubes
shot the car out of the way. We both went tumbling head over heels and
Arcot landed on his ear. I was luckier, and was able to break my fall
with my hands, but it was a mean fall--at our speed we had about double
weight, so, though it was only about seven feet, we might as well have
fallen fourteen. We took turns piloting the ship, and Arcot was about to
bring us back when that shock just about shook us all over the ship. We
will have to make some changes. It does its job--but we need warning
enough to grab hold."
The doctor was through now, and he began to revive his patient. In a
moment he stirred and raised his hand to feel the sore spot. In ten
minutes he was conversing with his friends, apparently none the worse
except for a very severe headache. The doctor gave him a mild opiate,
and sent him to bed to sleep off the effects of the blow.
* * * * *
With the ship fully equipped, tested and checked in every possible way,
the time for leaving was set for the following Saturday, three days off.
Great supplies of stores had to be carried aboard in the meantime. Care
had to be exercised in this work, lest the cargo slip free under varying
acceleration of the _Solarite_, and batter itself to bits, or even wreck
some vital part of the ship. At noon on the day chosen, the first ship
ever to leave the bounds of the Earth's gravity was ready to start!
Gently the heavily laden _Solarite_ rose from the hangar floor, and
slowly floated out into the bright sunshine of the early February day.
Beside it rode the little ship that Arcot had first built, piloted by
the father of the inventor. With him rode the elder Morey and a dozen
newsmen. The little ship was badly crowded now as they rose slowly, high
into the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere. The sky about them
was growing dark--they were going into space!
At last they reached the absolute ceiling of the smaller ship, and it
hung there while the _Solarite_ went a few miles higher; then slowly,
but ever faster and faster they were plunging ahead, gathering speed.
They watched the radio speedometer creep up--1-2-3-4-5-6--steadily it
rose as the acceleration pressed them hard against the back of the
seats--8-9--still it rose as the hum of the generator became a low
snarl--10-11-12--they were rocketing at twelve miles a second, the
tenuous air about the ship shrieking in a thin scream of protest as it
parted on the streamlined bow.
Slowly the speed rose--reached fifteen miles a second. The sun's pull
became steadily more powerful; they were falling toward the fiery
sphere, away from the Earth. A microphone recessed in the outer wall
brought them the fading whisper of air from outside. Arcot shouted a
sudden warning:
"Hold on--we're going to lose all weight--out into space!"
There was a click, and the angry snarl of the overworked generator died
in an instant as the thudding relays cut it out of the circuit.
Simultaneously the air scoop which had carried air to the generator
switched off, transferring to solar heat as a source of power. They
seemed to be falling with terrific and ever-increasing speed. They
looked down--saw the Earth shrinking visibly as they shot away at more
than five miles a second; they were traveling fifteen miles a second
ahead and five a second straight up.
The men watched with intensest interest as the heavens opened up before
them--they could see stars now a scant degree from the sun itself, for
no air diffused its blinding glory. The heat of the rays seemed to burn
them; there was a prickling pleasantness to it now, as they looked at
the mighty sea of flame through smoked glasses. The vast arms of the
corona reached out like the tentacles of some fiery octopus through
thousands of miles of space--huge arms of flaming gas that writhed out
as though to reach and drag back the whirling planets to the parent
body. All about the mighty sphere, stretching far into space, a wan glow
seemed to ebb and flow, a kaleidoscope of swiftly changing color. It was
the zodiacal light, an aurora borealis on a scale inconceivable!
Arcot worked rapidly with the controls, the absence of weight that gave
that continued sense of an unending fall, aiding him and his assistants
in their rapid setting of the controls.
At last the work was done and the ship flashed on its way under the
control of the instruments that would guide it across all the millions
of miles of space and land it on Venus with unerring certainty. The
photo-electric telescopic eye watched the planet constantly, keeping the
ship surely and accurately on the course that would get them to the
distant planet in the shortest possible time.
Work thereafter became routine requiring a minimum of effort, and the
men could rest and use their time to observe the beauties of the skies
as no man had ever seen them during all the billions of years of time
that this solar system has existed. The lack of atmosphere made it
possible to use a power of magnification that no terrestrial telescope
may use. The blurred outlines produced by the shifting air prohibits
magnifications of more than a few hundred diameters, but here in space
they could use the greatest power of their telescope. With it they could
look at Mars and see it more clearly than any other man had ever seen
it, despite the fact that it was now over two hundred million miles
away.
But though they spent much time taking photographs of the planets and of
the moon, and in making spectrum analyses of the sun, time passed very
slowly. Day after day they saw measured on the clocks, but they stayed
awake, finding they needed little sleep, for they wasted no physical
energy. Their weightlessness eliminated fatigue. However, they
determined that during the twelve hours before reaching Venus they must
be thoroughly alert, so they tried to sleep in pairs. Arcot and Morey
were the first to seek slumber--but Morpheus seemed to be a mundane god,
for he did not reward them. At last it became necessary for them to
take a mild opiate, for their muscles refused to permit their tired
brains to sleep. It was twelve hours later when they awoke, to relieve
Wade and Fuller.
They spent most of the twelve hours of their routine watch in playing
games of chess. There was little to be done. The silver globe before
them seemed unchanging, for they were still so far away it seemed little
larger than the moon does when seen from Earth.
But at last it was time for the effects of the mild drug to wear off,
and for Wade and Fuller to awaken from their sleep.
"Morey--I've an idea!" There was an expression of perfect innocence on
Arcot's face--but a twinkle of humor in his eyes. "I wonder if it might
not be interesting to observe the reactions of a man waking suddenly
from sleep to find himself alone in space?" He stared thoughtfully at
the control that would make the ship perfectly transparent, perfectly
invisible.
"I wonder if it would?" said Morey grasping Arcot's idea. "What do you
say we try it?" Arcot turned the little switch--and where there had been
the ship, it was no more--it was gone!
Fuller stirred uneasily in his bed, tightly strapped as he was. The
effects of the drug were wearing off. Sleepily he yawned--stretched, and
blindly, his heavy eyes still closed, released the straps that held him
in bed. Yawning widely he opened his eyes--with a sudden start sat
upright--then, with an excellent imitation of an Indian on the warpath,
he leaped from his bed, and started to run wildly across the floor. His
eyes were raised to the place where the ceiling should have been--he
called lustily in alarm--then suddenly he was flying up--and crashed
heavily against the invisible ceiling! His face was a picture of utter
astonishment as he fell lightly to the floor--then slowly it changed,
and took on a chagrined smile--he understood!
He spun around as loud cries suddenly resounded from Wade's room across
the hall--then there was a dull thud, as he too, forgetting the
weightlessness, jumped and hit the ceiling. Then the cries were gone,
like the snuffing of a candle. From the control room there rose loud
laughter--and a moment later they felt more normal, as they again saw
the four strong walls about them.
Wade sighed heavily and shook his head.
They were approaching the planet visibly now. In the twelve hours that
had passed they had covered a million miles, for now they were falling
toward the planet under its attraction. It glowed before them now in
wonderous splendour, a mighty disc of molten silver.
For the last twenty-four hours they had been reducing their speed
relative to Venus, to insure their forming an orbit about the planet,
rather than shoot around it and back into space. Their velocity had been
over a hundred miles a second part of the way, but now it had been
reduced to ten. The gravity of the planet was urging them forward at
ever increasing speed, and their problem became more acute moment by
moment.
"We'll never make it on the power units alone, out here in space," said
Arcot seriously. "We'll just shoot around the planet. I'll tell you how
we can do it, though. We'll circle around it, entering its atmosphere on
the daylight side, and shoot into the upper limits of its atmosphere.
There the power units can find some heat to work on, and we can really
slow down. But we'll have to use the rocket tubes to get the
acceleration we'll need to drive the ship into the air."
There was a sudden clanging of a bell, and everyone dived for a hold,
and held on tightly. An instant later there was a terrific wrench as the
rocket jets threw the plane out of the way of a meteor.
"We're getting near a planet. This is the third meteor we've met since
we were more than a million miles from Earth. Venus and Earth and all
the planets act like giant vacuum cleaners of space, pulling into
themselves all the space debris and meteors within millions of miles by
their gravitational attraction."
Swiftly the planet expanded below them--growing vaster with each passing
moment. It had changed from a disc to a globe, and now, as the molten
silver of its surface seemed swiftly clouding, it turned grey; then they
saw its true appearance, a vast field of rolling, billowing clouds!
The _Solarite_ was shooting around the planet now at ten miles a second,
far more than enough to carry them away from the planet again, out into
space once more if their speed was not checked.
"Hold on everybody," Arcot called. "We're going to turn toward the
planet now!" He depressed a small lever--there was a sudden shock, and
all the space about them seemed to burst into huge, deep-red atomic
hydrogen flames.
The _Solarite_ reeled under the sudden pressure, but the heavy
gyroscopic stabilizers caught it, held it, and the ship remained on an
even keel. Then suddenly there came to the ears of the men a long drawn
whine, faint--almost inaudible--and the ship began slowing down. The
_Solarite_ had entered the atmosphere of Venus--the first man-made
machine to thus penetrate the air of another world!
Quickly Arcot snapped open the control that had kept the rockets
flaming, turning the ship to the planet--driving it into the atmosphere.
Now they could get their power from the air that each instant grew more
dense about them.
"Wade--in the power room--emergency control post--Morey--control board
there--hang on, for we'll have to use some husky accelerations."
Instantly the two men sprang for their posts--literally diving, for they
were still almost weightless.
Arcot pulled another lever--there was a dull snap as a relay in the
power room responded--the lights wavered--dimmed--then the generator was
once more humming smoothly--working on the atmosphere of Venus! In a
moment the power units were again operating, and now as they sucked a
plentitude of power from the surrounding air, they produced a force that
made the men cling to their holds with almost frantic force. Around them
the rapidly increasing density of the air made the whine grow to a roar;
the temperature within the ship rose slowly, warmed by friction with
the air, despite the extreme cold at this altitude, more than
seventy-five miles above the surface of the planet.
They began dropping rapidly now--their radio-speedometer had fallen from
ten to nine--then slowly, but faster and faster as more heat could be
extracted from the air, it had fallen 8--7--6--5--4. Now they were well
below orbital speed, falling under the influence of the planet. The
struggle was over--the men relaxed. The ship ran quietly now, the smooth
hum of the air rushing over the great power units coming softly through
the speaker to their ears, a humming melody--the song of a new world.