I laughed at all this, for I enjoyed it hugely.

"Spare yourselves any needless worry about me, gentlemen," said I.

"Look to home, and you will probably find enough there to fret your

consciences."

Professor Quinn continued to take pleasure out of the queer situation.

"I can honor a man like Munn," said he, "where I am tempted to despise

men like you, Gilhooly, Meigs, Markham, and Popham. As Munn said, he

has the courage of his convictions. He does not take from the poor, for

in the very nature of things he cannot. His loot comes from those who

are able to lose it, while you are vampires, and sapping the very

lifeblood of the nation. You are all criminally deluded, although,

perhaps, doing what you conscientiously believe to be exactly right.

Would to Heaven," and here the professor grew suddenly sincere and

intensely earnest, "that something would conspire to open your eyes to

the exact truth. But I have despaired of that, and I am trying, in my

own feeble way, to meet the present emergency."

"You are either a fool or a madman!" cried Popham.

"A rattle-brained zealot!" chimed in Meigs.

"You are the one who should see things differently," said Markham. "You

preach a doctrine which you fail to apply personally."

"Enough of this talk, gentlemen," I interposed. "My situation is

precarious and I must ask you to hurry a little."

"Sir," shouted Popham, leveling a forefinger at me, "I shall see you

properly jailed for this. Why, you miserable footpad, I can----"

"Save your breath," I interrupted tartly, meeting his forefinger with

the muzzle of the pepper box. "Lead is no respecter of persons. One of

you has called me a dangerous man. I am all of that, and desperate.

Mr. Popham, you saw how Mr. Gilhooly carried out my orders. You will

proceed in the same manner, and without further loss of time. In five

minutes I must be out of here."

He started to argue the point with me, and I allowed my forefinger to

flex, ever so slightly, upon the trigger.

That was enough. A man values his life in a direct ratio with what he

considers his importance; therefore, the esteem in which these four

millionaires held themselves must have been overwhelming.

The Honorable Augustus Popham finally yielded up his personal property

with the same readiness that had characterized his friend. Hannibal

Markham followed him, and after Markham came J. Archibald Meigs.

I had a pleasant word for each as I marshaled the four bundles, strung

them on the fingers of my left hand and backed toward the door, which

was a few paces behind me.

"When a good general beats a retreat," said I, preparing to pull open

the door and let myself out, "he places as many obstacles in the path of

the pursuing force as possible. When I leave, therefore, I shall lock

this door on the outside."

I was watched by the plutocrats in philosophical silence; by the

professor, with a geniality that nothing seemed able to shake.

I had spared Quinn because he was a friend of the poor, as I had

discovered. And I had been poor myself some fifteen minutes back.

"Good-by," said I airily.

"_Au revoir_," answered the professor. "Look well where you step."

I threw open the door with a laugh. The laugh faded into a shout of

terror.

I threw out my hands, revolver and packets of loot falling through the

door, and I only barely saving myself with one foot over the threshold.

The horror that gripped me then is such a horror as comes to a man but

once in a lifetime. My brain sickened and chilled, my heart all but

stopped its beating, and my limbs grew rigid.

In the black of the fearsome night--not the atmospheric blue-black I had

been accustomed to, but the ebony dark of Erebus--I saw a wild greenish

star below, a huge disk whose gleaming nimbus danced on my sight in

quivering lines.

Half crazed, I flung back into the room and fell groveling to the floor,

my ears echoing with the professor's merriment and the startled

exclamations of the four men I had robbed--all to no purpose.

Presently I sat up, rubbing forehead and eyes.

The professor stood in the open door, gloating over the vista below.

"Come!" he called, beckoning to the huddled quartet at the other side of

the room. "Come, Gilhooly, Meigs, Popham, and Markham--come, look down

upon the scene of your feverish activities. You were plutocrats there,

more powerful than kings! Here you are no more than shoulder high with

me, and yon muddled thief on the floor! You have been snatched from the

scene of your pernicious labors--exiled into planetary space where you

will be powerless to work further evil. I have not lived in vain; for

this, this is the triumph of my career."

Slowly Meigs disentangled himself from the mute group by the opposite

wall and crept on all fours to the threshold that overlooked the void

and the greenish star.

He recoiled with a yell; then, maddened by what he had seen, he leaped

erect and tried to hurl himself out into space.

"Fool!" cried the professor, laying hold of him and struggling to keep

him back. "Would you become a satellite of this twenty-by-thirty

planet? We are beyond the atmosphere of the earth--look! See the four

packets of loot and the thief's revolver."

He pointed through the door and the bulging handkerchiefs and my

six-shooter were abreast of us, hanging in space, turning slowly,

weirdly--a sight to upset the strongest mind.

Gilhooly jumped forward, gave vent to a maniacal laugh, then crumpled

down on the floor.

"Bid up for the G.H.&D.," he mumbled, "bid to the limit! I must have

that road--I _will_ have it."

"Brace up, Meigs!" said the professor sharply, pulling the key from the

outer side of the lock, slamming the door, fastening it, and putting the

key in his pocket. "Take care of Gilhooly, man! His mind falters!

Heavens, are you all mad? Are your keen minds, unshaken in the

contemplation of vast deals for the enslavement of the poor, so quick to

break? I had thought better of you than this!"

Meigs, white as the spotless linen that covered his breast, advanced

upon the professor. He tried to speak, but without success. At last,

with a supreme effort, the words came:

"Madman, what have you done?"

"That is better," returned the professor, smiling as he looked at Meigs

and noted how Markham and Popham ranged themselves at his side; "much

better. You were engaged in plots back there on the earth, and the

success of those plots would have proved a great calamity. I have saved

the world from the calamity!"

"Your--your castle has risen from the earth?" asked Meigs.

"It has fallen off the earth. As you and I and the others happened to

be inside, we fell with it!"

Sudden rage convulsed Meigs. He crouched downward, his eyes ablaze and

his fingers working convulsively.

"Scoundrel!" he screamed, and launched himself at the professor's throat

like a tiger.

*CHAPTER IV.*

*THE PLUTOCRATS RECONCILED.*

Looking back now at that dreadful hour when the realization of our awful

predicament burst upon us, I wonder that I preserved my own equilibrium.

The first shock came near to throwing me off my poise, but after that I

gained the whip hand of my wits by swift and sure degrees.

I verily believe the professor would have been strangled by Meigs, aided

and abetted by Popham and Markham, had I not rushed to his rescue. I

had muscles of iron, and after I had caught Meigs by the nape of the

neck and thrown him backward, I planted myself between Quinn and his

foes.

"Leave the professor alone," said I. "You men show mighty poor

judgment, it strikes me, in trying to lay violent hands on him."

"He deserves death," babbled Meigs. "He had no business shooting us

into space in this summary manner."

Fear and anger had made Meigs childish. He measured our dilemma in

terms so common a smile came to my lips.

"Judgment, poor judgment!" sniffed Popham. "Look at Gilhooly, and then

talk about poor judgment, if you can."

In truth, the railway magnate presented a sorry spectacle. His clothing

was in wild disorder, his hair was rumpled about his head, and he was

hopping back and forth with two fingers in the air.

He was under the impression that he was dealing in railroad stocks,

completing the huge transaction that had made him the talk of two

continents.

"This professor ought to be flayed alive," declared Markham. "Where are

we going, and when will we get there?"

"Now," said I. "you are striking the keynote. Who knows where we are

going if the professor doesn't? And who knows when we shall arrive

there if it is out of his power to tell? We need the professor, for if

we are to be saved it will be his knowledge that does it."

"But what will my family think?" whimpered Meigs. "And my business

interests!"

He threw up his hands and fell back in his seat with a groan. Then

abruptly he straightened up again.

"This is a dream! By gad, it must be! The whole affair is too

outrageously unreal for any sane man to believe."

Gilhooly gave a maudlin chuckle.

"I was dead sure I'd get that last block of X.Y.&Z. stock! That road is

the last span in my network of ties and rails. Ha! _Now_ we'll see!

_Now!_"

Meigs shivered. Gilhooly's maunderings struck sharply at his desire to

coddle himself with a myth.

"It's awful to have Gilhooly like that," spoke up Augustus Popham. "If

he had not been thrown out of balance, his wide knowledge of matters

relating to transportation might have proved of inestimable service to

us now."

Professor Quinn laughed. It was an eerie laugh, and it shook me to hear

it.

"Oh, you!" cried Markham reproachfully, whirling on Quinn. "After

causing this disaster and overthrowing as brilliant a mind as there ever

was in Wall Street, you have the heart to indulge in levity. Look here:

how far are we from the earth at the present moment?"

"That is a difficult matter to estimate, even approximately," answered

Quinn calmly. "Ordinarily, gravity exerts a force that can be measured

definitely on the earth's surface. A body falling freely from rest

acquires a velocity which is equal to the product of thirty-two and

one-fifth feet and the number of seconds during which the motion has

lasted. What is the time now?"

Three gentlemen reached for their watches, failed to find them, and

turned hard looks on me. I appreciated their dilemma and drew from my

vest an open-face timepiece that was personal property and honestly come

by.

"It is twelve-fifteen," said I.

Quinn took a pencil and notebook from his pocket and did some figuring.

"We might be a little more than two miles from our native planet," said

he, "but----"

"Only two miles!" cried the three exiles in chorus.

"You can take us back, sir," said Popham, who had been pacing the floor

nervously. "Shut off the power of this infernal machine and let us drop

back to where we belong. Two miles is no great matter. Your castle is

a slow freight compared with some of Gilhooly's express trains."

"I cannot take you back, sir," returned the professor, "and I would not

if I could. You did not hear me out. The law of velocity, recited for

your benefit a moment ago, does not measure the speed of this car."

"No?" murmured Markham.

"Decidedly not. The earth sweeps along in its orbit at the rate of

eighteen miles to the second, while some aerolites and meteoroids attain

a speed of twenty and thirty miles to the second. In building this car,

I equipped it with an anti-gravity block geared up to fifty miles to the

second. The lever on the wall"--and here Quinn turned and pointed to

it---"is thrown so as to give us the maximum."

"In other words," said Popham feebly, "we are sailing skyward at a rate

of--of three thousand miles per--per minute?"

"Presumably. As we left my city lot in New York at about

eleven-fifteen, it follows that we have been one hour on the way."

"And should be one hundred and eighty thousand miles from home,"

faltered Meigs.

"About that," answered the professor calmly. "I do not know just how

much our progress was impeded by the atmospheric envelope of the earth,

but I think we may call our distance from the mother orb some one

hundred and eighty thousand miles, in round numbers."

These startling figures came near to unsettling the three gentlemen

again. In that flight through space we were confronting immensities

well-nigh beyond our puny comprehension. And the professor was not yet

done.

"In the storeroom overhead," he continued, "I have a supply of cubes and

insulating compound which I can combine and give tremendous added

velocity to the car."

"I am sure we are traveling fast enough," said Meigs, leaning back on

the divan hopelessly dejected.

"If you are now ready to listen to reason," proceeded Quinn. "I will

tell you how Mr. Munn here saved your lives by rescuing me from your mad

attack."

"Our lives, forsooth!" exclaimed Markham bitterly. "Of what value is

life to us, situated as we are?"

"That is one way to look at it, of course," rejoined Quinn caustically.

"But I did not exile you into planetary space for the purpose of wiping

you out of existence."

"You might as well have done so," said Popham severely. "That is what

this harum-scarum plot of yours amounts to in the long run."

"You may not care to learn how I am preserving you at the present

moment," continued Quinn, "nor how I shall do so in the future, yet I

will tell you so that you may understand how much you owe to Mr. Munn's

foresight and courage."

I was beginning to entertain a high regard for Quinn in spite of what he

had done. He may have been laboring under terrible delusions, but his

resource certainly commanded respect.

"To my forethought," he continued, "is due the fact that you are

breathing oxygen at this moment; and had I not invented a liquid which

fortifies animate or inanimate bodies against heat and cold, our rush

through the atmosphere of the earth would have incinerated this car and

its contents--nay, would have caused it to explode and settle back on

our native planet in impalpable powder."

These were things that none of us, aside from the professor, had so much

as taken thought of. My respect for him was growing into something like

awe, and I fancied I detected traces of the same sentiment in the other

three.

"There are roving bodies in space," Quinn went on, noting with apparent

satisfaction the interest he had aroused, "with which we might come into

collision. I have a good telescope at the observatory window upstairs,

and while I cannot guide this car, I can at least increase or slacken

its speed so as to dodge any other derelict that may come into dangerous

proximity with us."

"Hadn't you better be up there on the look-out?" queried Markham in some

trepidation.

He was manifesting an interest in his personal safety that pleased the

professor.

"There is not much danger at present," returned Quinn. "When we have

plunged farther into the interstellar void, it will be well to stand

watch and watch about at the telescope."

"Will it not be possible to land on some other planet, Mars, for

instance?" queried Popham with sudden hope.

"I should prefer Mars," added Meigs, reflecting the hope shown in his

friend's face. "They have been signaling from Mars, and perhaps we can

find out what they want over there."

Quinn shook his head.

"We are in the hands of fate, gentlemen," said he. "We may drop into

some port, but what that port will be is beyond my power even to

surmise."

"The moon isn't so far off," suggested Markham.

"Only two hundred and forty thousand miles," said Quinn.

"We should be there in less than two hours from the time of starting,"

remarked Meigs, after a mental bout with the figures.

"If I wished," said Quinn, "I could increase our speed; traveling at the

rate we are, however, something will have to be deducted for the

resistance of the earth's atmosphere. If we drop on a planet it must be

a planet with an atmosphere. The moon has none, and consequently is a

dead world. Besides, fate might not throw us into its vicinity, or----"

"Just a minute, sir," interposed Markham, "for I am a man who likes to

understand thoroughly every situation with which he is called upon to

deal. You invited us to your castle, not, I am constrained to believe,

to have us victimized by Munn, here, nor to have us invest in any of

your discoveries, but to snatch us away from the scene of our labors.

Is that correct, Professor Quinn?"

"Entirely so, Mr. Markham," replied Quinn.

"Evidently," proceeded Markham, "your plot has cost you some time and

labor. You had first to find your gravity-resisting compound----"

"The plot followed as a result of my discovery," smiled the professor.

"I did not first evolve the plot and then go searching for means to get

you off the earth. When I had made the discovery, it remained for me to

give it to the world--or to better the world by taking you four

gentlemen away from it. Had I given the public the benefit, you shrewd

men of affairs might have devised means for setting it aside, or for

controlling it. Not being a business man myself, I feared to take

chances. For that reason the present enterprise appealed to me."

"You have planned so well in the smaller details that I wonder you

overlooked the main point."

"And that is----"

"What you are going to do with us, now that your plan has succeeded."

The professor tossed his hands deprecatingly as though that was really

the most insignificant part of his startling scheme.

"We can't go bobbing around through interstellar space," grumbled

Popham. "I don't relish the idea of being cribbed, cabined and confined

in a steel room indefinitely. I should go mad from the very thought."

"It's awful to contemplate," said Meigs, casting a melancholy glance

through the iron latticework at one of the windows.

The bags of loot were in that vicinity, at the moment, and his glance

swerved reproachfully to me.

"We shall make a landing, I have no doubt," said the professor

soothingly, "somehow and somewhere."

"By gad, sir," cried Popham, bringing his fist emphatically down on the

table, "I don't like such a hit-and-miss way of doing things. Whenever

I set out to accomplish anything, the goal is always clear in my mind;

yet, here I am, through no desire of my own, afloat in the great void,

without a single aim or a remote prospect. If we are going to land

anywhere--and you remain firm in your decision not to take us back to

our native planet--I demand that you make landfall on some orb that is

worth while."

"Very good, Popham," approved Meigs. "Unless I am greatly mistaken, that

was the very idea Markham had in mind when he began questioning the

professor. Eh, Markham?"

"It was," replied Markham. "A full knowledge of where we are going is

necessary to a thorough understanding of our--er--most remarkable

situation. Now, there are worlds larger than the one we have recently

left. Personally, I am predisposed in favor of a large planet--one on

which there are traction interests, fuel supplies, and products of the

soil similar to those we have been accustomed to."

Under the spell of Markham's words, Popham began to glow and expand.

Meigs, all attention, pressed a little closer.

"The bigger the planet the bigger our field of operations!" cried

Popham. "What's the matter with Jupiter?"

"Or Saturn?" echoed Meigs.

"Or Neptune?" put in Markham.

"What's the matter with the whole solar system?" inquired Quinn, with

gentle irony. He turned to me. "Observe, Mr. Munn, how extravagant are

the ideas inspired by monopoly! These gentlemen are hardly started on

their journey into space before they forget the business interests, the

friends and the environment they are leaving behind and begin planning

the commercial conquest of the stars!" He shook his head forebodingly.

"Your regeneration," he added to the millionaires, "calls for a landing

on some barren world, some outcast of the solar system, where you will

have nothing to do but think over the evil of your past and learn

something of the duty you owe your fellow-men."

Popham, Markham, and Meigs were visibly annoyed by the professor's

remarks. Withdrawing as far as the limits of the steel structure would

allow, they put their heads together and held a brief but animated

conversation in tones so low that the professor and I could not

overhear.

"Think of that, professor!" I muttered. "And yet there are people who

find fault with a respectable burglar."

"Softly, Mr. Munn," returned Quinn. "Before we are done with this

journey I am fain to believe that all of you will have a different

outlook upon life, and a higher regard for your duties of citizenship."

Just then, Popham turned from his friends and stepped toward the

professor. His manner was truculent--probably just such a manner as he

was accustomed to use in facing a board of obstinate directors.

"If you will not return us to our native planet, Professor Quinn," said

he sharply, "then we shall stand upon our rights. We are unalterably

opposed to landing upon any orb whose diameter measures less than----"

At that instant a most astounding thing happened. The car ducked

sideways, throwing the whole structure out of plumb.

Loose articles began to drop from shelves and other places and to slide

across the floor to the lowest point. By a quick movement I saved the

lamp and braced myself in an upright position.

Cries of terror went up from Markham, Meigs, and Popham.

"Where's Gilhooly?" shouted the professor.

He was answered by a wild yell from overhead.

"He's in the storeroom!" cried Quinn. "Follow me with that lamp,

Munn--quick!"

The professor rushed for the stairway and I made after him with what

speed I could.

*CHAPTER V.*

*TRAVELING SUNWARD.*

There never lived a man, I suppose, who did not, at some time or other

in his career, submit his veracity to question. A reformed burglar,

therefore, although animated by the most disinterested motives, can

scarcely hope to escape the shafts of the incredulous.

Although well-grounded in the science of cracksmanship, and with some

store of legal learning as to alibis and so forth, my mind was as empty

of astronomical lore as a drained bottle. The professor's sayings were

jotted down in a sort of commonplace book at a later day when leisure

offered.

Memory may have played me false in some few minor points, but in all of

major importance this narrative is to be taken with the same sincerity

in which it is written. I ask no more of the reader than that; and if

he is not averse to strolling through unfrequented ways touching elbows

with a man who has a past, we shall get along famously.

To return, then, to the steel car, and the obliquity it suddenly

presented to the direction of its course. Startling disclosures had

somewhat obscured Gilhooly, and he had vanished from the lower room

without being missed.

For a man of sixty-five, the professor was very agile, and he took the

winding iron stairway two steps at a time. I gained the storeroom close

behind him, and there we found Gilhooly, crooning to himself and working

like mad.

He was not working in the dark, but had possessed himself of my

bull's-eye lantern, which I had left on descending from the loft some

time before. Mounted on a pile of packing cases, he was engaged in

painting a large steel cube, taking his pigment from an open cask with a

whitewash brush.

"My anti-gravity compound!" exclaimed the professor in an irritated

tone. "There are several blocks on the floor, as you can see: Gilhooly

began painting that one, and it rose as insulation proceeded, lodging to

the left of the dome and tilted the car."

"This is the shabbiest lot of coaches I ever saw in my life," said

Gilhooly, dabbing away with the brush. "I won't own a road with such

rolling stock."

The three men downstairs had followed Quinn and me. After some coaxing,

Meigs got Gilhooly to descend from his perch and give up the whitewash

brush.

Thereupon the cube was pried over until it rested directly under another

block in the point of the dome, and the professor finished the

insulation begun by the railway magnate.

"Gilhooly will have to be watched," said Quinn, "or he will play havoc

with the materials I have stored up here. He has wasted at least a

quart of that anti-gravity mixture, and it is worth its weight in gold.

Nay, it is worth more than that, for after this supply is exhausted

there will be none to be had for love or money.

"Our rate of speed has been multiplied by two, and we are rushing

through space with frightful rapidity. There is my telescope"--and the

professor pointed to the instrument which stood beneath a window in the

sloping roof of the car. "Suppose Gilhooly had demolished that! Or what

if he had wrecked the oxygen vat, or the anti-temperature reservoir!

Gentlemen, I shudder to think of what might have happened."

The professor sank down on a copper tank and brushed his perspiring brow

with a bandanna handkerchief. I placed the lamp on a box beside the

bull's-eye lantern and reclined on a bale of something or other that lay

conveniently near.

Meigs and Popham dropped down on a packing case with Gilhooly moored

between them, and Markham took up his station on an overturned cask.

The loft of the car, stored as it was with odds and ends of science,

together with a supply of provisions made ready for us by the farsighted

and wonderful man who was conducting this select party into the unknown,

was an object of deep solicitude and interest.

Out of a desire to tag the various materials understandingly, I lifted

the lid of my curiosity and let out a few questions.

"If I mistake not," said I, "you mentioned this anti-temperature

material once before. What is it, professor?"

"A liquid," he answered amiably. "As a discovery, it is outranked only

by my anti-gravity compound. An ounce of the fluid in a bath renders

the bather impervious to heat or cold, keeping in the animal caloric and

keeping out all other extremes of temperature. Some of the mixture was

incorporated into the paint with which this car is coated.

"Yonder is the water receptacle," and the professor nodded toward a

large tank opposite him. "With economy, the supply in that reservoir

will last us several months. The food I have provided is of the

ready-prepared kind, mostly in tins, with an alcohol lamp for the

brewing of tea, coffee, and chocolate. During this hegira into infinity

I have omitted nothing, gentlemen, which will minister to your comfort."

"You are a very able man, professor," acknowledged Popham. "How long

have you been planning this little excursion?"

"Ever since I began erecting what the Harlemites were pleased to call my

castle," smiled Quinn. "The plan was conceived at the time the success

of the manipulations of yourself and your friends seemed assured."

"It was your purpose to foil the speculative gentlemen," I struck in,

"and so come to the aid of a long-suffering public?"

"You hit off the matter finely, Mr. Munn," replied the professor. "That

was my purpose."

"Could not your anti-temperature mixture have been donated to the poor

with beneficial results?"

"It is altogether too expensive for general use. I will not conceal from

you gentlemen the fact that we are falling sunward. If we make landfall

on a planet where the heat is several hundred degrees beyond our earthly

powers of endurance, the mixture in question will preserve us."

"Falling sunward!" exclaimed Markham. "It was hard upon midnight when

we left the earth. If my school-day learning is not at fault, the sun,

at the hour of our departure, was on the opposite side of our planet.

How, then, does it happen that we are falling toward the great

luminary?"

"Bravo!" cried the professor, vastly pleased. "I am glad to see, Mr.

Markham, that your intellect has not suffered a total eclipse by the

demands of commercial supremacy. Night is the result of one of the

Earth's hemispheres being turned from the sun, and, other things being

equal, we should now be falling toward the outer limits of our solar

system; but, if I may use the term, the castle was not aimed for a

direct fall from the earth's crust. We dropped at a very sharp angle,

and the influence of the sun has attracted us still farther out of a

straight course. I trust you follow me?"

The three millionaires understood the situation, but, judging from the

expression of their faces, the knowledge brought keen disappointment.

"There are only two planets between the earth and the sun," observed

Markham, "Mercury and Venus, if I remember rightly."

"Both insignificant," grumbled Popham.

"Venus is about the size of our own planet, gentlemen," said the

professor. "However, it has long been supposed that there is another

group of planets between Mercury and the sun, among them a little world

called Vulcan, which----"

"That does not interest us," cut in Meigs. "Sunward the planets are

smaller, but they get larger as you go the other way."

"Larger," expounded the professor, "but less dense."

"As I was about to tell you, a moment ago," pursued Popham, "Meigs,

Markham, and I have decided that either Saturn or Mars would about fill

the bill so far as we are concerned. There are lights on Mars, which,

as we figure it, presupposes electricity; and electricity means

civilization to a degree that affords us a promising prospect. Then,

again, there are canals on Mars, and, if canals, certainly water

transportation. Transportation problems of any sort will interest

Gilhooly; indeed, we are prone to think they would bring him back to his

normal poise. Saturn, on the other hand, has rings, and such a condition

might afford opportunities to wide-awake men such as are unknown

anywhere else in the solar system. Take us either to Mars or to Saturn,

Professor Quinn, as you may find it most convenient. We demand it!"

"It is impossible to do anything of that kind, Mr. Popham," returned the

professor decidedly. "The influence of the sun upon our course is too

powerful."

"Are we to understand, then," cried Markham, "that we are compelled to

put up with either Mercury or Venus?"

"Even there, gentlemen, we have no choice. We are in the grip of

circumstances and must perforce accept whatever fate throws our way.

Possibly we shall become a satellite of the sun, revolving around and

around it--Quinn's Planet, the smallest of any in the great system."

Although I felt drowsy, I aroused myself with an effort and kept sharp

eyes on the professor's face. I do not think he was in earnest, but

merely talking to see what effect his remarks would have on the three

millionaires.

"Corner, corner, corner," babbled Gilhooly; "make a corner, corner

everything."

Markham dropped his face in his hands, Meigs bowed his head, and I saw a

shiver run through Popham.

"Egad," muttered Popham, "this castle of yours, Quinn, is little short

of a steel tomb. Inasmuch as we are safely interred, what's the use of

living? Gilhooly is the only fortunate one among us, for his reason is

shattered and he cannot realize what he is facing."

"You are talking less like a man, now, Popham," reproved Quinn, "than

like a driveling idiot. While there's life there's hope. How many

brilliant minds have been overthrown as a result of your manipulations

of stock in Wall Street? How many bright futures have been wrecked by

an adverse trend of the speculative market? Were those unfortunates any

better off because thrust into madhouses and unable to realize the fate

that had overtaken them? For shame, sir!"

"You are perfectly sure, are you, professor," I struck in, attempting to

give a more pleasant twist to the conversation, "that we shall come out

all right in the end?"

"I have my plans, Mr. Munn," he answered, not unkindly, "and the success

or failure of them will depend largely upon the mental attitude of these

gentlemen."

This was too deep for me, and I cast about for some equally important

question which would bring a less indefinite response.

"Anyhow," said I, "we have plenty of food for a long journey? It would

be a fearful thing to have a famine so--so many miles from a base of

supplies."

"The food supply, Mr. Munn," answered the professor, "is adequate.

There will be no famine."

"And the water, the oxygen, the----"

"I have looked after everything necessary to our safety and comfort."

I had confidence in Quinn. He had shown that he was an able man, and

that his promises were to be taken at face value. With a sigh of

relief, I settled back in tolerable comfort.

Meigs took the role of questioner out of my hands at this point, and,

although I was eager to hear all that was said, "tired nature's sweet

restorer" got the better of my curiosity and I fell asleep on the bale.

*CHAPTER VI.*

*A LANDING EFFECTED.*

It is not my purpose to cumber this narrative with the smaller details

of our journey, novel and thrilling though some of them proved to be.

It is with our experiences on the planet which finally claimed us that

this account has mostly to do, so I shall glide over intermediate

incidents in a somewhat cursory manner.

Our faculties, keyed to an understanding of earthly conditions only,

found themselves continually at bay; and at nothing did they stand more

aghast than at the lightning-like speed with which we shot through

space.

The energy developed by the two insulated cubes gave to our steel car

the stupendous velocity of one hundred miles per second, six thousand

miles per minute, three hundred and sixty thousand miles per hour!

Human reason might well falter at the threshold of such immensity.

Yet while I slept peacefully on that bale in the storeroom, these

figures were verified by the professor and J. Archibald Meigs, who

happened to be the only two who were wide awake. It has been my lasting

regret that they did not rouse me so that I might also have had a view

of the noble spectacle for the first time unrolled to earthly eyes.

We passed the moon, a dreary, burned-out world, and the professor was

able to check off two hundred and forty thousand miles of our sunward

plunge. We had traveled a little more than half an hour at our ultimate

velocity; taking this into consideration, and noting the exact minute

when we crossed the centre of the satellite's orbit, the professor was

able to do some figuring and so test his theories as to speed.

The car skimmed through ether less than five hundred miles above the

lunar crust. Quinn was doubly pleased, for he not only proved that our

velocity was substantially as he had supposed, but also discovered that

the moon's attraction, so powerful on the tides of our mother sphere,

could not swerve the car by a hair's breadth from its direct course, or

overcome the influence of the sun.

Meigs told me later that the marvelous beauty of the satellite, gleaming

against the black void with ghostly radiance, was probably worth the

trip and its attendant inconveniences. He and Quinn had looked their

fill on the hemisphere which is never seen from the earth.

After this the hours literally flew past, the novelty of our journey

precluding any such thing as monotony. In fact, we hardly allowed

ourselves a sufficient amount of time for rest and refreshment.

A lookout was kept continually at the eye-piece of the telescope to

signal the approach of any asteroid with which we might possibly come

into collision. Only once did this danger threaten us, and then, as may

be supposed, it was the professor who proved our salvation.

The lever in the wall of the lower or living room of the car

communicated with screens, ingeniously arranged for shutting off the

power of the anti-gravity cubes. By lessening our speed, the professor

suffered the asteroid to cross our course, our car ducking through the

luminous trail that swept out behind it.

Night reigned around us constantly. Our car caught the rays of the sun,

it is true, but the lack of an atmosphere caused the light to be thrown

back into space and lost.

The castle was nothing less than a small planet, attended by five

satellites which, held to our vicinity by the car's attraction, circled

around us continually. These satellites were the four knotted

handkerchiefs containing the tribute I had levied upon the plutocrats,

and also the revolver which had assisted me in the work.

These objects went through varied phases exactly as more pretentious

satellites would have done. It would be difficult to describe my

feelings as I watched them from the car windows.

I am prone to think, at the present writing, that this lost booty,

waxing and waning under my eyes, planted in my nature those first seeds

of regret which finally grew into a reformation.

I recall a conversation that I had with Markham while I sat with my eye

at the lower end of the telescope, watching for stray asteroids.

The millionaires had given me to understand that I was not in their set.

Circumstances over which they had no control had brought us together

within the narrow confines of the car, but no social barriers had been

leveled. Occasionally the novelty of our situation, and the consequent

excitement, would cause one or other of the wealthy gentleman to forget

the gulf that yawned between us.

This attitude of the magnate afforded me a good deal of innocent

enjoyment. They had left social prestige, no less than their bank

accounts, behind them, and what little collateral they had had upon

their persons was now "satelliting" about the car. The line they drew

between themselves and me, in their thoughtful moments, was a

distinction without much of a difference.

Markham, I remember, was munching a sandwich, contrived out of two

crackers and a slice of tinned beef.

"Did you never reflect, Mr. Munn," said he, "upon the evil of your

past?"

"When a man writes books which are mainly drawn from his own experience,

Mr. Markham," said I, "he has to go into his past pretty exhaustively."

"Ah, yes, I was forgetting about the books. Were you not horrified with

the results of your retrospection?"

"Horrified? Well, yes, here and there. I lost a big haul once through

the breaking of a jimmy, and I was horrified to think how any dealer in

burglar's kits could have foisted such an unreliable instrument upon a

well-meaning cracksman."

Markham stared at me dazedly.

"I have set down the experience in Chapter One of 'Forty Ways for

Cracking Safes,'" I proceeded, "and one of the first of my ten rules for

success in any safe-cracking job was this: Be sure that your kit is

reliable, and without flaws."

"Mr. Munn, Mr. Munn!" whispered Markham hoarsely. "Think of the people

from whom you have taken property dishonestly."

"I never think of them but to wish that I had been able to relieve them

of more."

"This is awful!" muttered Markham. "You really exult over what you have

done."

He would have started down the iron stairs had I not restrained him with

a word.

"Let me ask you something, Mr. Markham," said I. "Last fall, bread went

to ten cents a loaf because the wheat market was cornered--and a man by

the name of Markham did the cornering. The people who had to put up that

extra five cents missed it more than did those from whom I took five

hundred dollars."

Markham coughed. "Any asteroids in sight?" he inquired absently.

"I wonder if _you_ ever did any reflecting?" I asked tartly.

"What do you think of Quinn?" and Markham looked away as I took my eye

from the telescope and gave him an expressive wink.

"I don't think," I continued, "that you ever wrote a book called 'Forty

Ways to Starve the Poor.' You have material enough for a pretty

effective volume on the subject, but you haven't my nerve."

"No," he returned slowly, "I haven't your nerve. It requires unalloyed

impudence and a mind incapable of clear thinking to liken the results of

high finance with those of your own petty and highly criminal

proceedings. You are too bright a man, Mr. Munn, to allow yourself to

be led afield by sophistries of that kind."

"Mr. Markham, Mr. Markham!" I breathed, in horrified protest.

"You have bolstered up your nefarious business with false ideals," he

went on, "and you are unregenerate and lost!"

"This is awful!" I murmured.

"When we get to where we are going," pursued Markham, either failing to

note my sarcasm or else hoping to ride it down, "I trust you will hold

your criminal instincts in check. If there are any people there, don't

give them any false ideals or implant the notion that your standards

belong to the rest of us."

"I would not so belittle my ideals," I returned bluntly.

"Sir," he cried sharply, "am I to understand that you set yourself up as

being any better than Mr. Popham, Mr. Gilhooly, Mr. Meigs, or myself?"

"What you understand doesn't concern me in the least," I answered

airily. "What you don't understand, it strikes me, is the matter that

ought to claim your attention."

"Confound you, sir! Your overwhelming ignorance is equalled only by

your colossal egotism. I am sorry that I allowed myself to be beguiled

into any talk with you."

"Our regrets are mutual," said I, "for your conversation is

demoralizing. You are a past master in successful trickery--trickery of

the sort that ought to be stamped out. If the law was as quick to deal

with you as with me----"

"Hold!" fumed Markham, plunging for the stairs, "I have heard enough."

I have said that I was a hard man, in those times. I could call a spade

a spade with never a thought that my angle of vision was distorted. I

have regretted expressing my views in this frank fashion to Markham, yet

I believe that there was injustice in his remarks no less than in mine.

Being the only person in the car who possessed a watch, the professor

appointed me official time-keeper. It was my duty to bulletin the hour,

with its equivalent in days such as we were accustomed to, upon a

blackboard in the lower room; I had also to enter this information upon

a book, which the professor called the "log-book."

Every ten hours we had a class in astronomy, with the professor as

instructor and with every man save Gilhooly and the lookout as students.

The railway magnate's aberration continued; all we could do was to watch

him solicitously and prevent him from doing any injury to himself or to

our paraphernalia.

The class learned that the nearest planet with an atmosphere, and

supposedly habitable, was Venus, which, at inferior conjunction, is

distant some twenty-five million miles from Terra, as Quinn called our

own planet. Counting out the delays at starting, and in maneuvring to

escape the asteroid, our instructor asserted that we should reach Venus

in something like seventy-five hours.

Markham, Meigs, and Popham, on consulting the bulletin board and finding

that seventy hours had passed, began to brush their clothes and tidy

themselves against the hour of landing. But they were destined to

disappointment.

Unable to locate Venus at the point where he had hoped to find it, the

professor decided that it was nearing superior conjunction and was

somewhere on the other side of the sun. Meigs made a deplorable display

of temper.

Quinn was a mighty poor astronomer, he said sneeringly, if he could find

himself so far wide of the mark on such a simple matter. Meigs further

added--with a good deal of childishness as I thought--that the role of a

derelict was distasteful to him: a derelict, he argued, was nothing more

than a tramp, and he objected to being a tramp, even a celestial tramp.

I was out of patience with the man. Admiration for the professor had

taken fast hold of me and I would not have him sneered at or maligned.

A war of hot words was on between myself and the Wall Street broker when

Quinn interfered.

"True," said he, "we have missed Venus by a few millions of miles, but

we are aimed directly at the orbit of another world, and I can so

manipulate the lever as to wait for it, if necessary, and drop upon its

surface when it overtakes us."

"What world is that?" said Popham, pricking tip his ears.

"Mercury," answered the professor. "It is the smallest orb in our solar

system and measures some three thousand miles in diameter."

"I thought Venus was rather contracted for men with such large schemes

as ourselves," remarked Meigs, shaking his head, "but this other planet

seems to be smaller still."

"I wonder if they have coal mines there?" murmured Popham meditatively.

"And if they grow wheat and cotton?" added Meigs.

"If Mercury is inhabited," spoke up Markham eagerly, "food will

certainly be as necessary there as on the earth. I don't know,

gentlemen, but it strikes me we might fall into worse places."

"Poor Gilhooly!" sighed Meigs. "What a pity it will be if the

Mercurials prove to have traction interests!"

"How long before we shall reach this planet you speak of, professor?"

inquired Popham.

"Well," answered Quinn thoughtfully, "Mercury is rather slow. It

travels along its orbit at the rate of thirty miles per second, while we

are moving at one hundred miles. At a rough estimate, I should say we

can effect a juncture with the planet in ten hours, although an extra

hour may be required for maneuvres to secure a landing."

The ten hours that followed were hours of great anxiety and feverish

labor. Believing that my nerves were the steadiest, the professor

placed me at the telescope to act as pilot while he served as engineer

and manipulated the lever.

The responsibilities of my position so worked upon me that I had no time

for the glories of the planet we were endeavoring to intercept. Through

the telescope I saw huge mountains and broad plains, but they were

blurred over with a reddish light and the lesser details of topography

were lost.

When five hours were gone, the professor left the lever and came

upstairs to have a look through the telescope for himself.

"You have done very well indeed, Mr. Munn," he was pleased to say, "but

I think that I had better take this post from now on, while you go below

and station yourself at the switch board. The slightest mismanagement,

when the critical moment arrives, might hurl us against Mercury with a

force that would result in annihilation.

"The lever turns in a half circle, as you may know. The arc is divided

into spaces, numbered from zero to ninety. I will call down to you the

number to which you must throw the lever; you will repeat the number

back to me, and instantly obey my order."

"Trust me, sir," said I.

But the professor was loath to let me go without still further

impressing upon me the importance of the work before us.

"In order to alight safely, Mr. Munn," he continued, "we must graduate

the power of the anti-gravity cubes to the Mercurial atmosphere. By

proceeding intelligently in the matter, we shall make the car weigh

slightly more than the atmosphere we encounter; then, when we are about

to land, we will let the car just counterbalance the 'pull' of the

planet and there will not be the slightest jar."

"I understand, professor," I answered and went downstairs.

Markham, Meigs, and Popham ascended to the upper chamber, this position

bringing them a few feet nearer the goal of our desires as well as

giving them a point of vantage from which to watch events. Gilhooly was

the only one besides myself in the lower room; he was kneeling on the

divan writing imaginary stock quotations on the steel wall with the

point of his finger.

For four hours or more the professor called out for slight variations in

the speed of the car, but in the main the lever was held on the number,

90, which gave a maximum velocity. The tension of the minutes ushering

in the last hour of the ten is beyond my power to describe.

Once in my evil days I manipulated the tumblers of a combination and

pulled open a vault door. Behind the door stood two men with revolvers.

For two seconds I stared agape at the trap which I had sprung upon

myself; and when I got away I had a bullet in my shoulder.

Intensify my feelings fourfold as I stood looking into the leveled

revolvers of those two men, then spread out the two seconds to cover a

half hour. In this way only can I describe my state of mind while we

fought for a safe landing on the planet Mercury.

Cries of wonder and apprehension echoed to me from overhead. Above them

I heard the shrill voice of the professor:

"Zero."

"Zero," I repeated, throwing the lever clear over.

There followed a jolt as the screens covered the cubes and shut off

their energy. Instantly there came the sickening sensation of a fall,

accompanied by a rush of displaced air that roared and bellowed all

about the car.

"Forty-five!" shrieked Quinn.

"Forty-five!" I yelled, throwing the lever half over.

Then we caught ourselves with a suddenness that threw me to my knees.

We were moving upward again--I could feel the steel floor rising under

me.

"Twenty!" came down from above.

"Twenty," I answered hoarsely, struggling erect and shifting the lever.

I felt that we were still rising, but slowly. The professor was

juggling with an unknown atmosphere, and on the success of his judgment

depended our lives.

"Fifteen!"

"Fifteen!" and over went the lever for five degrees.

We were swinging stationary in mid-air. From the window by the switch

board I looked outward and downward with bulging eyes.

A dazzling glow covered peak and plain, and I turned away that my sight

might not be blinded to the lever numbers.

"Ten!" cried the professor.

"Ten it is!" and I threw the switch to the number given.

Then again we dropped, but slowly, very slowly.

"Five!"

I repeated the order, and again the air rushed against the blunt base of

the car, yet not so fiercely as before. Then, all of a sudden, I felt a

grip of fingers about my throat, and I was hauled from the lever and

thrown back on the floor.

Gilhooly had a knee on my breast and was strangling me with fingers of

steel. The fire of an insane purpose gleamed in his eyes, and he seemed

possessed of the strength of a dozen demons.

I struggled, but I might as well have tried to rise under the

thousand-tons pressure of a hydraulic press.

"Ten!" cried Quinn.

I did not answer--I could not, for my tongue was lolling between my

lips.

"Ten!" screamed Quinn. "_Ten--or we're lost!_"

A groan, hardly audible, escaped my gasping throat. I heard a frantic

clamor above and then there was such a jar and crash as I hope I shall

never experience again.

All tangible life slipped away from me, and I collapsed into an

unconsciousness that I felt might be death itself.

*CHAPTER VII.*

*FACING A MERCURIAL STORM.*

That our lives were preserved and the car saved from destruction was due

to two circumstances, one of them most peculiar and of far-reaching

importance.

The lesser of the two circumstances was this: the car had not dropped to

the plain, but had had its downward rush intercepted by an elevation, so

that the force of our fall was just about half what might have been

expected.

As to the other and more vital circumstance, the fall itself was not

what it would have been on our own sphere. The "pull" of gravity on

Mercury, as we afterward discovered, has only one-third the power it has

on Terra. To this phenomenon were due many wonderful things, as the

reader will discover before we have gone very far.

I was not the first of our party to open his eyes after the landing, for

when I sat up and stared about me I saw the professor moving around the

steel chamber and ministering to the others.

Gilhooly was creeping toward the divan on all fours, muttering something

about "a great slump in the market" and chuckling over the way in which

he had "got out from under."

J. Archibald Meigs was groaning and trying to lift himself on his elbow;

Augustus Popham was on his knees, wobbling erratically and apparently

undecided whether to say his prayers or to try and get up; Hannibal

Markham was flattened out along the floor, the professor kneeling over

him and chafing his temples.

"What sort of a navigator are you, Quinn?" asked Meigs crossly. "By

gad, it is more dangerous to make port with you than it is to sail

through space."

"Don't blame the professor for a fault of mine, Meigs," I spoke up

warmly.

The broker looked at me with something like contempt.

"I blame him for placing an incompetent and irresponsible person at such

an important post as the switch board," said Meigs. "He should have

known that a man who holds your distorted views on the subject of

personal property is not to be trusted."

"That's right," added Popham, lifting himself to the divan.

"Gilhooly made an attack on me," said I. "He bore me down and came

within one of strangling me."

"Quinn is the cause of Gilhooly's abnormal condition," persisted Meigs,

who was bound to have Quinn at fault for every evil that overtook us.

I got up, rather more wrathful than the situation demanded. The fall

had jarred my temper no less than my body, and I was in a mood to have

the business out with Meigs at close quarters.

"Softly, Mr. Munn!" cautioned the professor. "It is well to have a deaf

ear for these gentlemen at times. Help me lift Mr. Markham to the

divan."

The professor's words dispelled my anger. Without another word to Meigs

I went over and assisted in getting the food trust magnate into a more

comfortable position.

Markham was not long in recovering, and when we took stock of ourselves

we found that we were not much the worse for our shaking up. Quinn

called to me to go upstairs with him and see if any havoc had been

wrought there.

We found that no particular damage had been done to the instruments or

other material. When we descended to the lower chamber, after an

absence of fifteen or twenty minutes, Meigs had the key in the steel

door and was standing at the entrance with Popham and Markham on either

side of him.

"Where did you get that key?" demanded the professor, one hand groping

in his pocket.

Heretofore he had been careful to keep the key upon his person. Small

wonder that he was now surprised to find it in the possession of Meigs.

"I found it on the floor," replied the broker with a good deal of

dignity. "Probably you lost it out of your pocket when you fell from

the stairs a few minutes ago."

"What are you intending to do?" asked the professor quietly.

"Professor Quinn, sir," returned Meigs with elaborate condescension, "we

have reached the parting of the ways. While we were traveling through

space, I and my friends could do nothing less than bear with your

company, and with that of the rogue at your side; but now that we are

safely moored on Mercury, and can debark, we see fit to withdraw

ourselves and renounce further intercourse with you."

"Ah!" murmured Quinn, a slow smile hovering about his thin lips.

The smile caused some acerbity to manifest itself in the three gentlemen

at the door. They drew themselves up haughtily.

"Quinn," went on the broker sharply, "you lured us into your castle and

abducted us from our native orb, with small regard for the feelings of

our relatives or friends, and no consideration whatever for the business

interests with which we were engaged; so----"

"Your business interests had my every consideration," interrupted the

professor.

Meigs took no notice of the remark.

"So," he continued, "remembering these wrongs, we feel that we can no

longer associate with you. As for Munn"--here he turned a fastidious

eye in my direction--"he is utterly impossible to men of our social

standing. This planet, you tell us, is three thousand miles in

diameter. May we request that you and Munn take one end of the diameter

and leave the other end to us?"

The professor laughed softly and seated himself.

"Sit down, Mr. Munn," said he. "We have been ostracized by our

fellow-exiles. Let us see how well they get along without us."

"We bid you farewell," finished Meigs loftily.

Thereupon he turned the key, threw open the door--and dropped on the

threshold as though he had been shot! Markham and Popham cried aloud,

threw their arms across their faces and reeled back.

A blast as from a furnace drove in at the opening, filling the chamber

like a draft from Hades. I could scarcely breathe in the stifling

atmosphere.

"Hurry, Munn!" cried Quinn. "Drag Meigs away from the door or he'll be

burned to a crisp!"

The broker was already smoking when I caught his ankles and jerked him

inside. The professor slammed the door.

Presently the air within the car readjusted itself to normal conditions.

Meigs, red as a beet and breathing heavily, was little the worse for his

warm experience.

"I fancy, Mr. Meigs," cooed the professor, "that you will wish to avail

yourself of one of my anti-temperature baths before cutting loose from

myself and Mr. Munn. There is plenty of water left for all of us, and I

will go aloft, set up the collapsible tub, and make the bath ready. We

have alighted in the tropics, evidently, and at the period of

mid-summer. The temperature is about five hundred degrees, fahrenheit."

With that the professor took the key from the door to keep Gilhooly from

making a dash outside, and started for the storeroom. I followed him,

the three disgruntled gentlemen gazing after us mutely.

The professor and I were the first to fortify ourselves with the

anti-temperature bath. After dipping our bodies, we rinsed our clothing

in the liquid.

Aside from a pleasant, cooling sensation the bath gave no evidence of

its potent qualities. There was no hardening of the skin, as I fancied

there might be, no change in its ruddy color, no inconvenience.

When we went down again we sent the other three gentlemen aloft, the

professor instructing them as to the necessity of making their clothing

as well as their bodies proof against the climate. In due course,

Popham, Meigs, and Markham once more showed themselves.

Gilhooly, of course, had also to be made immune; and he struggled

against it so fiercely that we were obliged to hold him in the tub while

the professor poured three buckets of the mixture over him.

He was not disrobed, and when sufficiently drenched he leaped from the

tub and fled, raving, to the lower chamber.

"Now," said the professor, "we are prepared to fare forth. You

gentlemen"--he addressed himself to Markham, Meigs, and Popham--"may go

with Mr. Munn and me, or keep by yourselves, as you may elect. But it

will be well to make this car our headquarters. Here we have food and

drink, also a stronghold in case of attack by the Mercurials--if there

happen to be any."

"How can there be any life in such an over-heated atmosphere?" inquired

Markham.

"Nature is a great leveler of barriers," replied Quinn. "She is able to

adjust life to its environment, you may be sure, just as easily as she

can bridge the social chasm that separates a thief from a trust

magnate."

His eyes twinkled.

"Such a bridge," he added, "would not prove much of a tax on her

resources. For my own part, I do not think the chasm either so wide or

so deep as you gentlemen appear to imagine."

I chuckled at that, and Meigs and his two companions grew duly

resentful.

"As for Mr. Gilhooly," continued Quinn, "we cannot take him with us on

our tour of observation. It will be best to leave him locked in the car.

I will close the trap leading into the store-room and I do not think it

will be possible for him to work much damage in the room below."

"I don't know what good it will do me to go out with your exploring

expedition," said Popham dejectedly; "in a country as hot as this there

can be no earthly use for coal."

"Or wearing apparel," added Meigs listlessly. "Cotton couldn't grow in

such a temperature. And as for wheat!" He shook his head wearily.

Cotton and wheat were the abc of his Wall Street experience. Beyond

those commodities he groped in the dark.

"What sort of food can be grown on such a sun-baked planet?" grumbled

Markham.

The railway man was shouting something about watered stock, and his

babbling was wafted up to us.

"Gilhooly," added Markham, "is the only fortunate man in the party.

Realization will blast the hopes and mayhap prove the death of the rest

of us, while he--he cannot realize!"

"You gentlemen lose courage too quickly," said the professor. "In my

lectures on Venus I told you how that planet was inclined to the plane

of its orbit. The axis of Mercury has a still greater inclination; in

fact, the orb leans on itself as though about to fall. Its days are of

about the same length as the days of Terra--only three minutes

longer--but its years, owing to its contracted orbit, are much shorter.

In eighty-eight days Mercury makes its round, so that each season is

only twenty-two days in length.

"At the poles of Mercury, in what answers to the polar regions of our

own earth, there must be a more tempered climate----"

"Then let us get there, by all means," cut in Popham.

"In whatever we do," answered Quinn, "we must make haste slowly."

"Let's get out and look around, anyhow," cried Meigs. "It may happen,

after all, that we have a world to conquer here, and I have not the

patience to remain longer in this steel cell of yours."

"Very good," returned the professor. "We will make our preparations and

go forth."

He shut off the flow of oxygen from the tank and then followed the rest

of us to the under apartment, closing a steel door over the trap at the

head of the stairs and locking it. Gilhooly, imagining himself a

conductor, was walking around the edge of the circular divan collecting

tickets from imaginary passengers.

"Sing Sing!" he called out as the professor unlocked the door at the

entrance and pulled it open.

"Here's where you get off, Munn," said Meigs maliciously.

"Here's where we all get off," returned the professor, smiling.

Thereupon we passed hastily into the blinding glare of the Mercurial

day. For several minutes our eyes rebelled at the brightness; when

finally they became inured to it, we looked around us upon a desolation

that struck dismay to our hearts.

We saw then that our car had alighted upon an elevation which was

nothing less than the rim of an extinct volcano of vast proportions.

From ridge to ridge across the abysmal crater at least half a mile could

be measured.

It was beyond the power of our eyes to penetrate to the black depths of

the great pit.

"Listen!" cried the professor, his voice resounding so thunderously as

almost to deafen us--some trick of the atmosphere.

We stood silently, our ears alert, and heard a confused babel of sound

proceeding apparently out of the very core of the volcano.

"Sub-Mercurial fires may be at work down there," whispered the

professor, nodding toward the crater.

Even the whisper sounded unpleasantly loud to us.

"What a world!" came from Augustus Popham in bellowing tones. "With

fire within and without, what chance is there for life, liberty, and the

pursuit of happiness?"

Some of Meigs' peevishness had got into the coal man, and he rent the

air with it. We remained mule after this outburst, I with my gaze

hopefully on the professor and the professor blinking at the sun.

In a little time I allowed my own eyes to falter zenithward, and the

glory of the sun in Mercury's mid-heaven has ever since been one of the

treasured memories of my life. Its disk was six times its diameter as

viewed from Earth, and the grandeur of its flaming surface is beyond the

powers of my feeble pen to make known.

I was oppressed and held captive by a feeling of awe and wonder. There

was a red tinge to the atmosphere, caused by a reflection from the red

of the planet's brick-like crust; through this warm color pulsed the

golden streamers--yellow and scarlet overhead, fading to faintest orange

on the horizon.

"Think you, Mr. Popham," murmured the professor, his voice awakening us

as from a trance, "that all yon splendor, which has been in these skies

for ages upon ages, was created for the enjoyment of no living thing?

If so, you are wrong. There are now, as there have always been, beings

with an intelligence capable of appreciating all this magnificent

profusion of light and color. But enough. We have looked down into the

crater and up into the heavens; suppose we turn our eyes another way and

see what there is to offer."

He faced about as he spoke, and gazed down the bare rocky slope of the

volcano and off across an equally bare and forbidding plain.

"No trees, no water, no life of any kind," muttered Meigs querulously.

"There is a bright spot over there," said Quinn, shading his eyes and

pointing.

Our eyes followed his finger and encountered a glittering object on a

slight elevation. As we gazed, the object, whatever it was, slowly

vanished.

"We might investigate that," suggested Popham excitedly. "Perhaps it

was a Mercurial wearing a sort of armor to protect him from the heat.

It may be that there are people here, and that they live underground."

He would have started forthwith, but the professor stretched out a hand

and detained him.

"Just a moment," said Quinn. "Before we get too far from the car, let

me make sure that all of you are sufficiently immune from the heat. Do

you feel that you are fully protected in that respect, gentlemen?"

So far as I was personally concerned, I had not felt the slightest

inconvenience from the sun's rays. I declared as much, and the others

likewise so expressed themselves.

"There's another one of the things!" spoke up Meigs, pointing in another

direction.

We were just able to detect a glow on another low elevation when it also

flashed into thin air. Then we began looking for the little hills, and

counted no less than a dozen within our range of vision.

Some of the hills were capped with the mysterious gleam, which dazzled

for a time and then twinkled out.

The professor was perplexed, as I could see plainly.

"We'll examine one of those hills," said Meigs, "and find out what this

means."

The top of the volcano, where we were standing, was perhaps five hundred

feet from the plain. As Meigs spoke, he leaped for a rock a yard or so

below him.

To the astonishment of all of us, he rose in the air like a human

balloon, soared over the rock by a score of feet, and alighted several

rods down the slope.

It was a titanic jump, but Meigs had regained a foothold with the

lightness of a piece of down. He was a large man, was Meigs, his

ponderosity exceeding two hundred pounds, Fairbanks.

He was as much surprised at his agility as we were, and began to essay

various feats. He leaped straight upward, gaining a maximum height of a

dozen yards and returning lightly and easily to his original position.

Next he coupled his leap with an aerial somersault, and carried on with

an abandon much beneath the dignity of a Wall Street broker, as it

struck me. In fact, he acted like a schoolboy out for a holiday, and so

full of animal spirits he hardly knew what to do with himself.

"You'd think he belonged to a circus," observed the disgusted Popham.

"I'll go down there and put a stop to the performance."

"And I'll go along and help," added Markham, visibly distracted because

of the broker's folly.

They started down the steep with rod-long steps; and presently one would

have thought they wore seven-league boots from the amount of speed they

developed.

Instead of putting a stop to the broker's performance they joined in.

By and by they were playing leapfrog, every bound taking them forward

half a hundred feet.

"Gravity here is far from having the force it has on Terra," remarked

the professor. "Exertion comes easy and gives most astonishing results.

Those men, Mr. Munn, are not used to such activity, yet their marvelous

gymnastics do not seem to tire them in the least. Suppose that we

ourselves make a test of the Mercurial gravity?"

I needed no second bidding, and Quinn and I took the descent as

buoyantly as thistle-down before the wind. Somehow the lightness of our

heels got into our heads, and the staid professor and myself began

cavorting like a pair of ten-year-olds.

The delightful freedom of movement, was as novel as it was exhilarating.

Liberty of muscle bred license of mind; had we been smoking opium we

could not have acted more outrageously.

Nor was there any fatigue apparent. I felt that I could have run a

hundred miles in as many minutes and never paused for breath.

Carried away by the wonderful effects of diminished gravity, we forgot

all about our projected investigation of the little hills. In the midst

of a game of tag we were suddenly brought to our senses with a round

turn.

A pall had fallen over the landscape. The sun was blotted out by inky

clouds, and a tremendous wind began to blow.

"We must get back to the car!" cried Quinn.

His voice, great in volume though it was, was all but drowned in the

shriek and roar of the blast. The lightness that had afforded us so

much enjoyment in still air now became a source of grave danger, for we

could not keep our feet in the fury of the tempest.

"Merciful powers!" roared Popham, as he and Meigs were driven against

each other with a terrific impact.

Although sorely put to it to keep myself from being blown away, I

managed to cling to a rock and watch the weird gyrations of the two

millionaires. Their collision had caused them to lose their footing,

and, clinging desperately to each other, they were hurled back and

forth, touching the ground now and then, only to rebound from it like

rubber balls. And all the time this ground-and-lofty tumbling was going

on both men were whooping frantically for some one to come to their aid.

I was too hard beset to think of leaving my place of temporary refuge,

and it was only when I saw the professor and Markham, their right hands

clasped, staggering toward the two men, that I made up my mind to join

them. Three of us, in a chain, might be able to do something toward

rescuing Popham and Meigs.

Breathing deep, like a swimmer about to plunge through a whirlpool, I

cast myself adrift and allowed the wind to drive me in the direction of

the professor and Markham. No matter how strongly I braced backward

against the blast, every time I lifted a foot I was hurled onward and

almost overturned. Finally, more by good luck than anything else, I

came close enough to catch the professor's hand.

"Popham and Meigs will be killed if we can't get to them!" shouted

Markham.

There were eddies in the wind, like those in the swift current of a

stream, and Popham and Meigs had become entangled in them. Had they

been blown off on a straightaway course, they would long since have been

too far away for us to do anything toward laying hands on them and

getting them upright.

The professor had taken note of the gyratory movements of our hapless

companions, and he called upon Markham and me to plant ourselves as

firmly as possible and remain in our present positions. This was easier

said than done; yet, by calling upon every ounce of our reserve

strength, we contrived, after a fashion, to keep our places.

Popham and Meigs were bounding and leaping through the arc of a great

circle. All we had to do was to remain where we were and wait for them.

They came to us in mid-air, and we had literally to reach up and pull

them down. For a space the five of us were tangled in an indiscriminate

heap, our united weight offering greater resistance to the wind and

giving us an opportunity to rest and collect our scattered wits.

"Join hands," cried the professor, "and we'll get under the lee of that

rock. Careful, now! We must not get separated again."

By desperate work we succeeded in getting to our feet and clasping

hands; then, hurled and buffeted, we gained the rock and fell breathless

under the leeward side of it.

"What a place, what a place!" groaned Popham.

"I wish Venus hadn't been out of our course," wailed Meigs. "Certainly

we couldn't have been any worse off there than here."

"No wonder nothing can grow on this sun-scorched world," growled

Markham. "Even if plants could stand the heat such a wind would pull

them up by the roots."

"What are we to do now?" demanded Popham. "You got us into this, Quinn,

and you've got to get us out of it."

"Now's a good time for you three to go off to the other side of the

planet," I remarked. "Whenever there's danger, you suddenly realize that

you can't get along without the professor. Oh, you're a fine lot of

nabobs, you are."

"Peace, Mr. Munn," called the professor. "We have enough to occupy our

minds without wasting time in useless bickering. I was at fault, for I

knew what terrible gales visit this planet, and that they come suddenly.

It was a mistake to venture so far from the car."

"A mistake," breathed Meigs, with some heat, "that came near having

tragic consequences. Popham and I were knocked about like a couple of

footballs."

"What's to be done, what's to be done?" cried Popham impatiently. "The

gale is increasing, and who knows but this rock may be plucked up bodily

and rolled over us? We can't stay here."

"That is true," said the professor. "We must get back to the car."

"There's no telling what will become of us if we try that," called

Markham.

"And there's no telling what will become of us if we remain here,"

answered the professor. "If we form a chain, it is quite possible that

we may succeed in getting back to our refuge."

"Even the car may not be able to stand up against this wind," clamored

Meigs.

"We shall have to take our chances with it, nevertheless," went on

Quinn. "If we should get separated, each of us must make the best

preparations he can to weather the gale, and then, when it has blown

itself out, hunt for the car. That must be our rendezvous during the

time we are here."

The professor got up slowly, bracing himself against the fierce swirl

that came around the side of the rock.

"Come," he called; "it is now or never."

I could see that the gale had increased alarmingly. Its force seemed

irresistible, and yet I knew that we could not remain where we were.

We clasped hands again, but were unable to cling together, being lifted

high and thrown helter-skelter in all directions. Lightning

flashed--such lightning as I have never seen before or since.

It snapped and crackled overhead and ran like trailing serpents over the

rocks. We were in a sea of flame.

And the thunder! It seemed to split the heavens and crack open the

lava-like hills. Rain came; yet not rain, for it turned to damp vapor

in the red-hot atmosphere. The Mercurial elements were at war--wind,

steam, thunder, and lightning all marshaling their hosts and charging to

conflict.

To regain the steel car was impossible. We were lost in the fearsome

fury of darkness and storm, driven helplessly and with smashing force

across the vast plain.

I was hurled against something which I gripped with convulsive energy.

The something gripped me in return.

"Help!" I cried, bereft of my wits and eager only for rescue.

"Munn!" shouted a voice. "Is this you?"

"Quinn!" I exclaimed.

"We must hang together." said Quinn.

And then, tightly locked in each other's arms, we were lifted high on a

billow of fog and driven relentlessly I know not how far.

When the blast released us, we fell to the rocks and rolled over and

over; then the surface beneath us gave way and we dropped.

The distance we fell could be only a matter of guesswork, and even

guesswork was out of the question in the disordered state of our minds

at that moment. Suffice to say the fall did not render us unconscious,

and we struck on something that vibrated under the impact of our bodies.

We were still in blank darkness, and the turmoil of the tempest no

longer beat about us, but could be heard crashing somewhere overhead.

"Thank Heaven!" murmured the professor, withdrawing himself from me.

"Are you alive, Mr. Munn?"

"I believe so," I answered. "What has happened to us, professor?"

"We have been flung into some sort of a shelter, it seems to me," he

replied.

"But we are not on stable ground," he added. "We are sitting on an

object that is descending with us, descending rapidly and--ah, wonder of

wonders!"

Abruptly we fell into broad day, surrounded by such sights and sounds

that I thought myself dealing with the mysteries of a disordered dream.

*CHAPTER VIII.*

*THE MERCURIALS.*

Professor Quinn and I were sitting on a large box constructed of metal

that was polished to dazzling brilliancy. So far as our purposes were

concerned, this box was nothing less than an elevator; we had fallen

upon it and it had carried us down into the wonderful interior of the

planet.

Now, truly, we were in another world--a world that teemed with life--a

smiling and pleasant region underlying a most barren and inhospitable

shell. The scoriated exterior of the planet was the husk; here was the

kernel.

It was a white world, extending league on league in every direction and

roofed with a lofty vault that sparkled as with stars. From every hand

came a bee-like hum, proving that we were in a hive of industry and

life.

Houses spread out before us in rows, queerly shaped structures that

looked as though they might have been built of alabaster, and so

diminutive that the tallest scarcely came more than head high. Back of

the houses were fields thickly covered with nodding blossoms that looked

like snow; through the fields ran waterways dividing each into small

squares.

So intent were we on the background of this strange picture that we

failed to take account of what was going on in our immediate vicinity.

Suddenly a weird creature hopped to the top of the box and stood between

my companion and myself, regarding us fixedly. This, I supposed, was

one of the Mercurials. If he considered the professor and myself

objects of curiosity and surmise, we were no less keen in so regarding

him.

He stood twenty-three or twenty-four inches high; his head was an ivory

billiard ball, and his trunk a larger spheroid; from his middle downward

hung a red kirtle. He had one eye at the front of the head and an ear

at the back; the olfactory organ was missing, but there was a mouth

opening perpendicularly under the eye.

The upper spheroid rested directly on the lower; and at each side of the

lower one, corresponding to the shoulders, were two tentacle-like arms,

sinuous as whips and ending in hands that were made up of a palm and

seven digits. Queerest of all, there were two more arms set in the

breast and back.

From the creature's shoulder was suspended a round object like a

canteen. For all of five minutes Quinn and I eyed this surprising

figure and were eyed in return.

"Can you talk English?" asked the professor at last.

It was a foolish question, such as I was far from expecting from the

professor, but something had to be said, and I suppose that was as good

as anything else. As the professor began speaking the head whirled

squarely around, presenting the ear.

After my companion was done, the head spun back again, and the breast

arm caught the canteen while the fingers of a shoulder arm began

manipulating a set of keys. The result was language, with all the

variations of tone and accent. But it was an unknown tongue, if an

expression of that kind may be allowed in such a case.

Since the word-box was as ineffective as our own speech, we fell back

with more success on the language of signs. At this the Mercurial had

the better of us, for he could make signs with four hands.

The professor signified that we were hungry, and the Mercurial signified

that we were to descend from the box. This we did, and found ourselves

in the centre of a group of Mercurials whose word-boxes were chattering

like so many magpies.

The Mercurial with whom we were already on gesticulating terms played

off some orders on his own canteen, and two of the others advanced upon

the box from which we had just descended. Pulling out a slide in the

side of the receptacle, they exposed two ewers of steaming food, and we

were motioned to fall to.

We stood not upon the order, but obeyed instantly, using a pair of small

paddles which were thrust into our hands. I had no idea what the food

might be, but it was tender and of good flavor.

"A bright little people," observed the professor as he ate.

"Seemingly," I responded.

"Nature has denied them the power of speech, yet see how they have

surmounted the difficulty. I must give that talking machine of theirs a

close inspection. We are in a most wonderful country, Mr. Munn."

"The little I have seen of it already quite dazes me," said I. "What a

pickpocket a man could make of himself with all those hands!"

Quinn gave me a reproachful look, and I hastily apologized for even

mentioning a branch of my profession.

"Do you understand now," said he, turning the subject very pleasantly,

"what those bright objects were which we saw on the tops of the low

hills?"

"No," said I.

"They were ovens," he answered. "Food is put in them and sent up to the

hot surface of the planet. When properly cooked it is lowered again."

Association with this learned man was a liberal education in itself. I

can never be sufficiently thankful to fate for causing our paths to

cross.

"You think, then," said I, "that we were blown to the top of one of the

hills and fell into a shaft used by the traveling ovens?"

"Nothing else could have happened."

The professor gave a start and looked worried.

"Dear, dear!" he exclaimed. "I was quite forgetting our friends. While

we are here feasting and taking our ease, they are battling with the

storm, and are no doubt in peril of their lives. How very, very

thoughtless we are, Mr. Munn."

I was not greatly exercised over the matter. The trust magnates believed

that there was a figurative gulf between myself and them, and I was more

than willing that this gulf should grow from the symbol to the reality.

"I doubt if we can return to the outside of the planet at present,

professor," said I, "and even if we were able to do so, what could we

accomplish in the face of that tremendous storm?"

"True, very true," said he.

"That oven," said I, by way of taking his mind from the plutocrats,

"must have been very warm when we landed on it and descended to these

regions."

"We should have been grilled, sir," returned the professor, "but for the

fact that we are coated, and our clothing impregnated, with my

anti-temperature fluid."

"These Mercurials appear to stand the heat pretty well," I remarked.

"Covered, as we are, with the anti-temperature compound," he returned,

"it is impossible for us to judge, even approximately, of the degree of

heat that obtains in these sub-Mercurial regions. Naturally it must be

very much less than prevails on the surface of the planet, and yet, even

at that, if left unprotected we should probably be shriveled to

cinders."

"Hardly, professor," I ventured to protest. "Those fields"--and I waved

my paddle toward the open country--"are growing rank with a white herb,

which is evidently cooked in these ovens and served for food. Quite

likely we are eating of it now, and very good eating I find it. However,

the point I wish to make is this: If the heat was so intense as you

surmise, those fields would be wilted and dried up."

"Nature, Mr. Munn," answered the professor, "adapts itself to every

condition. On our own planet we see how life and comfort are rendered

possible in every zone from the farthest north to the tropics; and this

same adaptability of intelligent creatures to their environment, we may

be sure, proceeds throughout the universe. These one-eared, one-eyed,

diminutive creatures are formed in the manner best calculated to afford

them comfort and happiness amid these surroundings. And, as with them,

so with the products of their husbandry."

"You could argue a squirrel out of a tree, professor," said I, with

whole-souled admiration. "I am sorry I did not take a course of

scientific training, for it would have helped me immensely in my

business. A burglar should be an all-around man. If I ever return to

Terra----"

"So long as you feel as you do regarding your odious profession, Mr.

Munn," broke in the professor, compressing his lips, "you will never

return to Terra."

"A return is possible?" I asked, hiding the wonder his words aroused.

"Anything is possible."

"How about the millionaires? Are they to return provided the means are

at hand?"

"Provided they experience a change of heart. In their present state of

delusion, they are mere firebrands of destruction. Before they ever

again take part in mundane affairs, they must be taught to see things

differently. I wonder what has become of them?"

The professor's brow clouded with anxiety.

"Don't fret about them, professor," said I. "They are not overeager for

our society. Let them have a taste of shifting for themselves without

your knowledge and resourcefulness to shield them from everything that

goes wrong. It will do them a world of good."

"Perhaps you are right, Mr. Munn," my companion answered musingly. "If

I could know they had survived the storm, I should feel tolerably easy

in my mind. These little Mercurials appear to be a friendly people, and

if our comrades escaped that frightful tempest they must sooner or later

fall into the hands of these dwellers of the under-world."

"I suppose," I ventured, seeking to draw my companion's mind from the

plutocrats, "that this Mercurial under-world is another illustration of

the way Nature takes care of her proteges. After baking the outside

shell of the planet to a degree that makes all life impossible, she

thoughtfully scoops out the interior so that these small creatures will

have a place to go."

"You have stated the case correctly, Mr. Munn," and the professor's face

lighted up as he swept his gaze over the country immediately adjacent.

"These ovens," he proceeded, "are a remarkable example of adapting means

to an end. The fierce heat of the surface does the cooking."

"Popham will find little pleasure in that," I laughed.

"Like the rest of us," answered the professor grimly, "he will have to

accustom himself to new conditions."

"Everything must be different here from the surroundings with which we

have been familiar all our lives. I wonder what form of property is

considered most valuable to these Mercurials?"

The professor frowned. My mind was running in its old groove despite

its novel environment.

"That query was inspired by an unworthy motive, Mr. Munn," said Quinn

severely.

I bowed humbly. "Every man his own way," said I. "I cannot help trying

to adjust myself along the line of the principles I know best.

Nevertheless I am of an intensely curious disposition, and those

talk-boxes fill me with wonder."

"The Mercurials are dumb, it seems," answered the professor, "and they

have to resort to purely mechanical means for an exchange of ideas.

Language appears to flow readily enough from the little boxes."

"If any one of them ever lost his four hands," I observed, "he would not

only find it impossible to help himself but would be unable to tell

others what to do to help him. Nature has been prodigal with them in

the matter of hands, and in this, no doubt, showed her usual wisdom."

"I am glad to see your thoughts taking a philosophical trend, Mr. Munn,"

said the professor. "It argues well for your future."

By that time we had emptied the receptacle of food, and as we dropped

our paddles and drew back, the word-boxes of a hundred Mercurials

shrieked despairingly. The pygmies clustered about the empty basins,

glared into them, and then turned their menacing eyes on the professor

and myself.

"Goodness me, Mr. Munn," exclaimed the professor. "We have probably

eaten the food supply of the entire district. If we do not have a care,

our voracious appetites are like to prove our undoing. Look, there come

more of the Mercurials. They're after their supper, I'll warrant, and

they are going to be disappointed."

I looked in the direction indicated by the professor, and saw a long

line of billiard balls rolling our way.

It was a procession, headed by a pompous little Mercurial whose trunk

and arms were gorgeously gilded. With two of his hands he carried a

metal plate and spoon, and with the other two he wielded a silver baton

about the size of a match.

Plates and paddles were also carried by the rest of the advancing

Mercurials, their word-boxes chanting a sort of quickstep. The sight of

the professor and myself, towering mountain-like over the throng about

us, brought the procession to an abrupt halt with a squeak of dismay.

The gentleman in the red kirtle went forward and held converse with the

gentleman of the gilt torso. Before they got through, their word-boxes

were fairly roaring, and stricken groans went up from every talk-machine

in the line.

The advent of two leviathans like my companion and myself must have had

a demoralizing effect, but that seemed as nothing in comparison with the

harrowing results of our voracity.

The leader raised his baton. Silence fell. The leader then advanced to

where we were standing and circled around us, examining us critically

with his solitary eye.

The survey finished, he tried his word-box on us, the professor

answering in all the languages of our home planet, living and dead, of

which he was master. But in vain; we could not come to an

understanding.

The begilded gentleman finally gave over and whirled on the underling in

the red kirtle. His fingers flew over the keys of his canteen, and

speech of a swift and commanding kind was poured out.

A skurrying about of the oven tenders resulted. From somewhere a fresh

supply of uncooked food was brought and placed in the huge metal box.

While this was going forward, Quinn suddenly seized my arm, a troubled

look crossing his face.

"What is the matter, professor?" I asked.

"Matter enough, Mr. Munn!" he answered. "The lever was left on Number

Five!"

His thoughts were up with the steel car. I was surprised at this, for

it appeared to me that there was more than enough to claim our full

attention right in our immediate vicinity.

"And what of that, sir?" I asked.

"The anti-gravity cubes lighten the car by five degrees," he answered

excitedly. "Thus buoyed, and in its elevated position, I doubt if the

car should hold its own against the fury of the storm!"

"You think it has been blown----"

"Aye! Blown to the uttermost parts of Mercury and perhaps wrecked and

lost--lost with all our scientific apparatus and other paraphernalia!"

"But----"

"And that is not all," went on the professor. "The lever should have

been thrown to zero and then removed to prevent Gilhooly from tampering

with it. Who knows what that mad railway magnate may take it into his

head to do? Suppose he were to grasp the lever and give the cubes their

full power. He would be launched into the void, sir, and we should be

marooned on this sun-baked planet, compelled to live out our lives with

these one-eyed quadrumana, devastating the country of its food

supply--our presence a curse instead of a blessing!"

I had already imagined a possible return to Terra, and from this it,

seemed that the professor had not lost sight of that contingency.

"What is to be done?" I asked, catching some of his excitement.

"We must return to the outer shell--we must find the car--we must go

back on the oven when they send it up!"

As he finished speaking, Quinn ran frantically to the metal box and

leaped to its top. I followed, clumsily upsetting a half dozen

Mercurials who chanced to gel in my way.

The oven was loaded by that time and ready for its return to the intense

heat; nay, more, the chef in the red kirtle already had his hand on a

wheel which presumably released the lifting power.

Our movements, however, had acted as a check on proceedings.

"We've got to go back!" cried the professor, forgetting in his stress of

feeling that his words were lost on the throng around us. "Don't

attempt to stop us, don't! We'll return----"

The Mercurials began leaping to the box from all sides in a veritable

swarm. Carried away by the excitement of the moment, I sank to my knees

and swept my arms about me, throwing them back pell-mell.

The professor also resorted to violence. In the midst of it all, I

caught a glimpse of the gilded gentleman aiming his baton.

A moment more and there was a lurid flash, which enveloped my companion

and myself in a billow of violet fire. Every atom of strength was drawn

from my limbs, and I fell limply to the ground with the professor on top

of me.

*CHAPTER IX.*

*LEARNING THE WORD-BOX.*

It was not the violet fire that did the work for the professor and me.

Rather it was some chemical, known to the Mercurials, and which

manifested its presence by an overpowering odor.

Long after we had regained consciousness, the drug-like smell clung to

our clothes and sapped our strength. Shackles of iron could not have

been more effective in making us prisoners.

Cords were made fast to our feet, and we were dragged by a small army of

Mercurials down the principal street of their city and out into one of

the white, irrigated fields.

Had a dwelling been found large enough, I presume we should have been

comfortably housed, but we were of such stupendous proportions that

there were no walls capable of containing us.

When we reached the field, a ring a foot high was reared about us. As

the odor lessened and my strength increased I tried to roll over this

low barrier, but received such a shock that I was only too glad to roll

back to the professor's side again.

"It is of no use, Mr. Munn," said the professor, who had been watching

my attempt. "These Mercurials are possessed of ways and means beyond

our earthly powers to combat. We must accept the situation with all the

philosophy we can muster."

This great man, who could remain unshaken under any fate that befell

him, was a constant source of strength and inspiration to me. While we

lay forsaken by our captors and couched on the strange white herbage of

that underground field, our discourse drifted along many channels.

I remember that I asked him a question concerning a matter that had long

been weighing upon my mind.

"How is it, professor," said I, "that your anti-gravity compound remains

in a liquid state in an open cask? I should think its inherent energy

would cause it to fly upward _en masse_."

"I can demonstrate that by means of an algebraic formula," said he.

"Are you acquainted with algebra?"

"No," I answered humbly.

"Then," he went on disappointedly, "I fear you will have to remain in

ignorance. You must rest content with the evidence of your senses,

since an explanation in terms you can understand is impossible."

And thus the matter rested. When we were so far recovered as to be able

to rise, we made an attempt to step over the ring that hemmed us in, but

were shocked by the same unseen power I had already encountered, and

driven back.

"See with what weapons nature has provided these people!" murmured the

professor. "Throughout the universe everywhere you will find, Mr. Munn,

that Nature takes care of her own. Ah, here comes Captain Goldman!

Retainers follow, and they are bringing--now, what are they bringing?

Why, as I live, they have manufactured a couple of large word-boxes.

Evidently we are to be taught the use of them."

The professor was right. Ever since our disastrous attempt to regain

the surface we had been tabooed by the inhabitants of the country.

"Captain Goldman," as my companion referred to the little man who had

used his mysterious baton with such telling effect, was crossing the

fields toward us, followed by six of his countrymen bearing the talking

machines. As a precautionary measure, the captain carried his weapon.

Arriving at the ring, Captain Goldman reversed the baton and with the

black tip of it cut an imaginary doorway for himself in the air. He then

stepped through and joined us, without shock or resistance.

Thus, by means to us inexplicable, he broke the power of the circle at a

given point. The others followed him through the entrance he had

cleared.

Wielding the baton with two of his hands, Captain Goldman began

manipulating his word-box with the other two. He was not addressing us,

however, but those who had come with him.

Three of his followers advanced to me with one of the machines, while

the remaining three conveyed a machine to the professor. At once our

instruction in the art of mechanical speech began.

It is not my intention to burden the readers with the details of our

lessons, although a few remarks under this head may not be out of place.

As to the word-box itself, it had seven keys. This made it somewhat

difficult for a five-fingered creature to operate with any great degree

of fluency, although the professor did get so he could peg out his ideas

at a remarkable rate.

There are but six syllables in the Mercurial language, each syllable

being represented by a corresponding key. The way these syllables were

fingered gave the words. As they could be combined and repeated and

combined again, the vocabulary of the boxes was practically unlimited.

The syllable notes were of resonant quality and of such divergent timber

as to be quickly and easily recognized. The syllable for Key 1 was

synonymous with our personal pronoun "I," and was the most assertive and

determined note in the whole gamut of the box.

The seventh key emitted a sound so utterly unlike the other sounds as to

be in a class by itself. It was used for spacing between words, for

exclamatory purposes and for the audible expression of laughter and

grief.

It was likewise the expletive or swear-key; for these small egotists had

all the passions of other mortals, and Key 7 acted as a sort of safety

valve. The manner in which the key was used gave it its versatility.

Day by day our lessons proceeded, the professor learning with a rapidity

that was marvelous. He was well along in the polysyllables while I was

struggling with the basic tones and acquiring some facility in spacing

and in the expression of the feelings.

Our ears kept pace with our fingers, and in a fortnight the professor

was so eloquent with his word-box that he could now and then play off a

metaphor, or some other frill, to the great delight of himself and his

auditors.

Next to a wonderful jimmy invented by a cracksman named "Cricket"

Doniphan, whom I knew well, and who, at that period, was doing time in

Stillwater, I take off my hat to that Mercurial word-box as the most

marvelous contrivance ever evolved by a thinking mind. I have a very

good memory, and when sufficiently proficient with the keys I practiced

by repeating passages from "Forty Ways of Cracking Safes," which, as

distinguished from "The Sandbagger's Manual," I considered my _chef

d'oeuvre_. I could not discover that my terse English, faulty enough

though it was, lost anything in force from translation into the

Mercurial tongue. (The word "tongue" is used with reservations, for, of

course, tongue that language was not.)

Difficulty was experienced in getting a suitable Mercurial equivalent

for the good English word "cracksman." Finally, however, I hit upon

three quick touches of the swear-key, which made the word intelligible

in my own ears if not to any one's else.

Soon I began to observe a little throng gathering across my side of the

prison ring, listening intently as I practiced. From day to day the

throng increased.

Over on the other side of the ring Professor Quinn was absorbed in

cutting all manner of scientific capers with his word-box. "The

Mutability of Newtonian Law" formed his staple theme, and he was able to

put it through the keys with amazing variations.

But no crowd gathered to listen to the professor. The Mercurials were

all on my side of the compound. Thus it was clear to me that my brand

of science was more attractive to the little people than the

professor's. While "The Mutability of Newtonian Law" languished for an

audience, "The Sandbagger's Manual" was fast acquiring one that taxed

the capacity of the word-box.

The professor, for a long time, had been so wrapped up in his attempt to

master the Mercurial language that he had paid little heed to me and my

efforts. The attention my work was securing, however, finally caused

him to sit up and take notice. Halting his weighty remarks, he laid

aside his talk machine, came over to my side of the circle, and stood

behind me, listening. The first I knew of his presence was the reaching

of two angry hands over my head and the snatching away of the instrument

on which I was, at that moment, reciting the ten rules for a cracksman's

success.

My audience was as greatly put out as I was myself. While I was leaping

to my feet and whirling around, my listeners were clamoring on their

word-boxes for me to proceed.

Professor Quinn, white-faced and in a greater temper than I had ever

before seen him, held my talking apparatus over his head and seemed of a

mind to clash it down on the earth at his feet.

"I say, professor," I called restrainingly, "don't do anything rash."

"Mr. Munn," he gasped, his voice thick with suppressed emotion, "is my

confidence in you to be destroyed utterly? I singled you out as one of

the worthiest of all those brought from Terra, and yet I find you busily

inculcating false ideas of personal property into the keen minds of

these Mercurials! For shame, sir! Would you demoralize this planet?

Would you turn these law-abiding people into thieves?"

"Professor," I answered, "your ideas and mine do not harmonize on this

matter of property rights."

"While I admit, Mr. Munn," he answered, "that conditions on our own

planet in a measure condoned your actions, yet I maintain that you have

no right to air your ideas in Njambai. Here the conditions are of an

altogether different sort. So far as I have been able to learn, this orb

has not fallen under the noxious spell of the monopolists. You have no

excuse for instructing the Mercurials in the alpha and omega of your

contemptible profession."

"Contemptible?" I repeated. "That is a hard term, professor. Besides,

they seem to be fond of the instruction. Everybody listens to me, while

you haven't had so much as a corporal's guard to enjoy that astronomical

stuff you have been playing off on your concertina."

"Your line, perhaps, is more attractive than mine," and the shadow of a

smile curled about his thin lips, "for the notion of getting something

for nothing has a direct appeal to every thinking being. On the other

hand, my thesis on 'The Mutability of Newtonian Law' requires profound

thought before it can be assimilated. Yet, be that as it may, I shall

not allow you to degrade these people with the unworthy ideas that have

been coming from your word-box. I can destroy this machine, sir, and I

shall do so unless you promise never again to let an ignoble thought

come out of it. What do you say?"

"Your mere command is enough, professor," I replied. "It is not

necessary to couple it with a threat."

His face softened, and he at once returned to me my talk-producer.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Munn," said he. "I have confidence in your

word, and know that I can trust you."

Thereupon he went back to his own side of the ring, and I applied myself

assiduously to undoing any evil my ill-considered practicing may have

wrought. I told the Mercurials that my utterances had been in the

nature of a fairy story, and I gave the lie to my convictions by

declaring that the reasoning, as in all fairy tales, was unsound.

From that hour my audiences vanished. The professor, although his talk

was profound and somewhat wearying, seemed to the Mercurials as more

worth while, and they flocked to hear him. We began acquiring a

knowledge of the country, and of its people and institutions, with our

very first lesson. In two weeks we had gathered most of the information

that follows:

Their planet they called Njambai; their country was Baigol. Baigol was

one of four kingdoms comprising the under-world of Njambai. The other

three kingdoms were Baijinkz, Baigossh, and Baigadd--all derived from

the root word "bai," signifying planet.

There were only two places on Njambai where water was able to collect

and defy the absorbing power of the sun. These places were at the two

ends of the planet's axis, corresponding to the polar regions of Earth.

Here there were seas feeding rivers that ran through the under-world and

irrigated the fields.

The kingdoms of Baijinkz and Baigossh lay on the shores of these seas,

the former at the north and the latter at the south. They were the only

kingdoms on the outer shell of Njambai, and levied tribute from the

interior kingdoms of Baigol and Baigadd for water rights.

The distribution of light and heat throughout the nether kingdoms was by

a system of gigantic reflectors, located at either end of a radius drawn

through the equator. There was one stupendous reflector on either side

of the planet, measuring no less than twenty _spatli_ across--a _spatl_

being the equivalent of a geographical mile.

These reflectors, we were told, followed the sun as it moved through the

heavens, and reflected heat and light to countless other reflectors

ingeniously placed to acquire and radiate the solar energy.

The heat thus secured was further intensified by the planet's shell,

which, forming the vault of the nether kingdoms, constantly diffused

warmth.

The king was Golbai, the nine hundred and twenty-fifth of his line. The

name of the pompous gentleman whom the professor had christened "Captain

Goldman" was Ocou.

Names of people, places, and things, as here given, are simply a rude

equivalent as nearly as can be rendered into English.

From my wording the astute reader will probably discover more than the

six basic syllables of the Baigol language. The flexibility of the

word-box will account for this, and the inconsistency is only seeming

and not real.

Baigol had one half the inner sphere, and Baigadd the other half. These

two kingdoms were not on the best of terms, owing to a wretched piece of

business carried out by Gaddbai, king of the other country, which will

be adverted to later.

The four kingdoms were connected by a railway, if such the mode of

transportation could be called. The roadbed was a "V"-shaped groove,

and the wheels of the cars were solid spheres with axles pierced through

their diameter. On these axles the carriages were supported.

For a people so wonderfully progressive the Baigols were strangely

backward in their motive power, their trains being dragged by

hand--relays of the small creatures taking them in charge.

Owing to the diminished force of gravity, large weights were easily

handled, and a fair rate of speed was developed by the train haulers.

But it was a very primitive method of transportation.

The trunk line connecting the nether kingdoms was known as the Baigadd

and Baigol Interplanetary System. When two weeks of our enforced stay

in Baigol had passed, a startling rumor was wafted from the word-boxes

of the other kingdom to the effect that the management of the line had

secured a wonderful new traction power of tremendous speed and unlimited

endurance.

The kingdom of Baigol was agog with excitement, for the president,

vice-president, and board of directors of the Interplanetary were to

take a trial spin over the road in a special equipped with their new

motive power.

We had not yet been allowed to leave the mysterious circle which

imprisoned us, but we could stand erect, and so overtop the fields and

houses that we were able to see the railway station.

Billiard balls came rolling in from every direction, clustering about

the right of way and clambering to roof tops and other elevations that

would afford an unobstructed view of the centre of excitement.

At last, far off, the professor and I heard a thunderous shout:

"Toot, t-o-o-t! Ting-a-ling-a-ling!"

No word-box could have been the source of that echoing cry. The

professor gave a gasp and clutched my arm convulsively.

"Do you recognize that voice?" he asked hoarsely. "Merciful powers, Mr.

Munn, how could such a thing happen? Look! Look!"

Over the fields beyond the city, leaping along at fifty-foot bounds and

dragging behind him a train of queer-looking cars crowded with officials

of the system, came no less a person than Emmet Gilhooly!

The professor threw himself at the barrier that hedged us round. He

could not pass, although he struggled frantically.

"Take it coolly, professor," I urged, grasping and holding him upright.

"But this is outrageous, Mr. Munn!" he cried. "Poor Gilhooly! Is _he_

the new traction power the other kingdom has been talking about? How

does he happen to be here? And why are they treating him like that?

This must be stopped! Where's my word-box?"

His eyes swept the ground. Glimpsing his talking machine he dived for

it and began working the keys like mad.

No one paid any attention to the furious language that went up under his

frenzied fingers, however. Leviathan in harness absorbed the entire

attention of all the Baigols, and with another "Toot, toot!

Ting-a-ling-a-ling!" the railway magnate galloped out of sight.

It was a sad spectacle indeed. I was almost as completely unmanned by

it as was Professor Quinn.

*CHAPTER X.*

*HOW WE WERE CATALOGUED.*

Let it not be supposed that we had given no thought to our companions in

exile during our two weeks' probation in Baigol. The professor and I

had talked of them frequently, wondering whether they were alive or

dead, and, if alive, where they were and what they were doing.

Our story had been punched out of our word-boxes for the benefit of the

Baigols, but had not seemed to make much of an impression on Ocou, or on

others who came to see us.

Now the sight of Gilhooly would add corroborative detail, and we harped

on that key until Ocou promised to communicate directly with King

Golbai, and find out what his wishes were in the matter.

As for the professor, he wanted to go roaming the four kingdoms looking

for the other exiles, first visiting Baigadd and appropriating the

motive power of the B.&B.I. system.

The most we could get from Ocou was a promise to learn his majesty's

pleasure in our affairs; and while we were abiding the king's decision,

other events took place which were of prime importance to us.

Ocou had a queer-looking machine borne to our "home circle," which was

the humorous fashion in which the professor referred to our prison ring.

The machine was an upright shaft measuring some three feet in height.

To its base was attached a golden cord several yards long and

terminating in a small silver disk.

Professor Quinn and I were consumed with curiosity while this

contrivance was being set up and made ready. We put a question through

our word-boxes, but were only smiled at mysteriously.

Presently I was made to sit down, Turk fashion, while one of Ocou's

attendants came to me and passed the silver disk over my head. One end

of Ocou's baton had a black tip, the other a white.

As the disk passed over my head, Ocou rested the white tip of the baton

on the pedestal. Instantly a slide flew out of the shaft's top bearing a

painted ideograph.

The professor and I were not "up" in the Baigol ideographs, and were

very much surprised at the actions of Ocou and his companions when they

looked at the slide. They recoiled, stared at me suspiciously, and

moved about me with caution.