The MOON MAKER
ARTHUR TRAIN
and
ROBERT W. WOOD
Illustrated by Frank D. McSherry, Jr.
1958
KRUEGER
HAMBURG, NEW YORK
THE MOON MAKER
Copyright 1958 by Kenneth J. Krueger.
All Rights Reserved.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Edition Limited to 500 Copies.
A DAWN PRESS BOOK
Contents
PART I: THE WANDERING ASTEROID
PART II: THE FLYING RING
PART III: THE FLIGHT OF THE RING
PART IV: ON THE MOON
PART V: THE ATTACK ON THE ASTEROID
THE MOON MAKER
When the world-war was at its height, wireless messages signed
with the name "Pax" had been received at the Naval Observatory at
Washington, in which the sender declared himself capable of controlling
the forces of nature. These mysterious messages were followed by
the occurrence of extraordinary natural phenomena such as violent
seismic shocks and an unprecedented display of the aurora borealis.
Coincidently, there appeared in the heavens a terrible air-craft, the
Flying Ring, which, by means of a powerful lavender ray, disrupted
the mountains in northern Africa and flooded the Desert of Sahara.
The warring nations were informed that if they did not conclude a
permanent peace, Pax would shift the axis of the earth and compel the
termination of hostilities by turning central Europe into an arctic
waste. The nations, convinced at last that, unless they acceded to his
demands, human life upon the globe would come to an end, entered into
negotiations for peace. At about the same time, Professor Benjamin
Hooker, attached to the Department of Applied Physics at Harvard
University, determined, by independent research, that the mysterious
force had its origin in the wilds of Labrador, and resolved to go there
himself to see what he could find out about Pax and his schemes. After
much hardship, he discovered the location of the Ring, arriving there
at the moment when Pax was about to carry out his threat to deflect
the axis of the globe; but, owing to an accident to the machinery
generating the lavender ray, an explosion occurred in which Pax and his
associates were destroyed. The Flying Ring, however, remained intact,
and Hooker, with his friend, the famous aviator Burke, succeeded in
mastering its mechanism and starting in it for the United States.
PART I
THE WANDERING ASTEROID
I
"Now," said Bentham T. Tassifer, with an air of defiance, "we'll see!"
He was a bandy-legged little man, whose abdominal structure suggested a
concealed melon.
Red-faced and perspiring, he arose from where he had been teeing up
his ball for the fifth hole, flourished his driver aggressively,
and, adjusting his knobby calves at a carefully calculated angle,
went through a variety of extraordinary contortions with his wrists
and forearms. Outwardly, he was the personification of pugnacious
assurance. He had every appearance of being absolutely certain of his
ability to swat that small white sphere to a distance of not less than
three hundred yards and plumb onto the next green. Inwardly, however,
Bentham had no confidence in himself at all. He knew that the chances
were just nineteen out of twenty that he would slice into the bushes
at about sixty yards and lose a brand new "baby bramble." But, as
befitted a deputy assistant solicitor at the Department of Justice,
he allowed no hint of nervousness to betray itself, looked sternly at
Judson, his lank opponent, and remarked again, "Now we'll see!"
Nobody but Mrs. Tassifer knew what a sucking dove Bentham really was in
his inmost soul. The world at large regarded him as a rather terrible
squatty person who had a chip on each shoulder, for he made almost
as much noise insisting on his rights as a native Briton. In point
of fact, he thought he looked like Stephen A. Douglas or, in lieu
of that, like Robert G. Ingersoll possibly. But that was all on the
exterior. And now, as he addressed the ball, he kept inwardly repeating
to himself: "Eye on the ball--head steady--follow through. Eye on the
ball--head steady--follow through." Then, summoning all his resources,
he swung his driver over his shoulder and was about to bring it down
with the impetus of a Travis, when he thought he saw a black gnat
dancing in front of his eyes.
"Tush!" he exclaimed, waving with his left hand. "These flies!"
"Aren't any flies," retorted his friend Judson, from the Department of
Agriculture, "in October."
"Well, I thought there was," said Bentham, dressing at the ball once
more. "There it is again!" he added, suddenly striking at something.
Then he fastened his eyes on the horizon. "You're right! It isn't
here--it's there! See it?" And he pointed out into the blue of space
with his driver.
"Flying machine," announced Judson. "Watch it go!"
The black speck was coming swiftly toward them and growing larger every
instant.
"It's like a doughnut--round with a hole in the middle!" cried Bentham.
"I believe that fellow intends to land here. What impudence!"
By this time, both of them could see plainly the details of the machine
which, constructed apparently of polished steel, flashed dizzily in
the sunlight as it shot over the golf-course. It was evidently a
hollow cylinder shaped like an anchor-ring or life-preserver, about
seventy-five feet in diameter, with a tripod superstructure carrying,
at its apex, a thimble-shaped device, the open mouth of which pointed
downward through the middle of the machine. A faint yellow glare--a
sort of luminous vapor--hovered below this gigantic car, which sailed
through the air with a deep humming sound.
"It's coming down!" shouted Bentham indignantly. "We'd better beat it!
This is an outrage!"
From overhead came a series of crackling vibrations, accompanied by a
muffled roar like escaping steam. The car had ceased to move forward
and was slowly descending. Strange creakings and snappings echoed like
rifle-shots all about them, and a Niagara of what looked like hot steam
shot through with a pale-yellow, phosphorescent light, drove down
through the center of the ring and tore away the surface of the fair
green, filling the air with a geyser of earth and grass. The two men,
almost blinded by the rain of mud, sand, and small stones, ran like
rabbits to the shelter of the nearest bunker.
"Outrageous! Inexcusable!" sputtered Mr. Tassifer, as he cowered on the
other side of it. "Fellow must be simply mad! Private property!"
Then, after a couple of minutes, hearing no further sounds and the
sand-storm having subsided, they raised their heads and peeked over
the top of the bunker. Between the fourth and fifth holes, the turf
on the fair green had been torn up in a circular patch of about a
hundred feet in diameter, and in the shallow crater thus excavated, and
surrounded by an irregular ring of divots, sand, and debris, rested a
gigantic flying machine surmounted by a superstructure not unlike the
fighting-mast of a battle-ship. The whole affair, embedded thus in the
golf-course, had an air of permanency that irritated Mr. Tassifer, and,
even as he gazed at the trespasser, a circular manhole opened in the
side, a jointed steel ladder was lowered to the ground, and a short man
in a strange kind of helmet climbed out and began to descend.
Then it was that Mr. Tassifer rose to the occasion.
"Here, you," he shouted, hurrying threateningly toward the newcomer;
"this is private property! You can't land here! Take yourself off!"
The man from the machine leaped to earth and turned a circular glass
face, like a small aquarium, to the enraged golfer. From outside,
his countenance had a horrible grotesque appearance, like that of a
man-eating shark. Lowering his head, he charged like an infuriated bull
at Mr. Tassifer, who ignominiously took to his heels and did not look
round until he had gained the shelter of the clubhouse piazza. Mr.
Judson had arrived there before him.
"I'm going to telephone this minute and get a warrant for that
fellow--trespass and assault--we'll see!" The little man was shaking
with baffled rage and humiliated dignity. "Right in the middle of the
fair green, too! How can we play that fifth hole, I'd like to know?"
"I say, play it as 'ground under repair,'" panted Mr. Judson, who was
just getting his breath.
"'Ground under repair!'" echoed Mr. Tassifer scornfully. "There isn't
any ground under repair. It's got to be played as 'a rub of the
green!'" He glared furiously at Judson.
"_Ground_ under repair!" repeated the other stubbornly.
"Rub of the green!" shouted Mr. Tassifer.
A sound of heavy footfalls came from behind them, and they turned to
see the man from the flying machine coming up the steps. He had taken
off his helmet and looked very pale and tired and quite tame.
"Excuse me," he said huskily. "Can I telephone to the observatory
from here? My name's Hooker and we've just come down from Ungava--five
hours. Simply _had_ to land on your course--nowhere else! You couldn't
let me have a cigarette, could you?"
II
The morning after the successful descent of the Flying Ring among the
bunkers and hazards of the golf-course of the Chevy Chase Club, at
Washington, Professor Benjamin Hooker awoke to find himself not only
famous but, beyond peradventure, the most interesting human being
upon the terrestrial globe. Equipped with a marvelous engine capable
of navigating space and of discharging a lavender ray which could
annihilate anything from a fleet of battle-ships to a mountain-range,
he was justly acclaimed "The First Citizen of the World." He, or the
nation to which he should give his allegiance, could, it was properly
assumed, control the destinies of mankind.
It had been universally known that the nations involved in the
world-war had concluded a treaty of peace only under the threat of the
mysterious being known as "Pax" to shift the axis of the globe and turn
Europe into an arctic waste. It was now, therefore, generally believed
that Hooker was himself none other than Pax, and that, having brought
about the end of the war, he had returned with his aerial monster to
pursue further scientific investigations under the auspices of the
national government.
At any rate, Professor Benjamin Hooker, hitherto the most modest of all
the retiring inhabitants of Cambridge, Massachusetts, now found himself
in the spotlight of publicity, and hailed not only as the arbiter
of world-politics but as the dictator of human destiny. True to his
instincts, however, Professor Hooker paid no attention to this surfeit
of adulation. The day after his arrival, having reported himself at
the office of the Secretary of State, he retired to the Congressional
Library to prepare his statement for the Smithsonian Institution, and,
having rented a hall bedroom in a quiet lodging-house on H Street,
resumed the unpretentious existence of a scientific investigator.
By arrangement with the government, the Flying Ring was moved to a
large aerodrome beyond the city, where its mysteries were protected
from public curiosity by a steel fence, thirty feet high, outside
which, both by day and night, armed guards were constantly on patrol.
For, in the Flying Ring and in Professor Hooker, the government of the
United States realized that it possessed not only the key to permanent
peace but to the safety and prosperity of mankind as a whole. It may be
said quite confidently that the head on anybody other than Professor
Hooker would have been completely turned. Daily there arrived at
his boarding-house various ambassadorial representatives of foreign
nations, who conferred upon him, in the name of their governments
or monarchs, the highest decorations in their gift. But, as became
a true American, he thought little of these decorations, and simply
threw their crosses and other insignia into an empty and not very
clean bureau drawer. All this fuss and feathers took, in his opinion,
a confounded lot of time and interfered with the serious business of
life. Yet his very modesty operated to increase his notoriety. Here was
a shabby little man, with tousled brown hair, double-lensed spectacles,
and a protruding Adam's apple--the most famous man in the world; nay,
the most celebrated man since the creation--who, for simplicity and
diffidence, surpassed both U. S. Grant and Admiral Dewey, who was
content to go on wearing the same very baggy eighteen-dollar suit of
clothes for years, and to live in a three-dollar-a-week hall bedroom,
when his picture hung in every kitchen from the Atlantic seaboard to
the Pacific coast.
But, to speak accurately, Bennie Hooker was not so much disregardful of
these things as he was oblivious of them, for when he was not working
in the Congressional Library or the Smithsonian Institution, he was
wandering around Washington with his eyes on the ground or in the air,
engrossed in working out some spatial problem and totally unaware
that he was being pointed out at every corner as: "That's him! That's
Hooker!"
Thus, pondering on the mysteries of space and time, of infinity,
eternity, and the riddle of the universe--or, to be exact, upon an
equation which he was figuring out on the seventeenth leaf of his
note-book--Professor Benjamin Hooker wandered into Dupont Circle and
absent-mindedly seated himself on the southeast end of a green park
bench upon the northwest corner of which reclined a young lady dressed
in a tan tailor-made suit. Professor Hooker did not know that he was in
Dupont Circle; he did not even know that he was on a green park bench,
and, if he had, he would not have known upon which end of it he was.
Needless to say, he was entirely ignorant of the presence of the young
lady in the tan tailor-made suit. The equation was a very annoying one,
and, for some reason or other, he found it impossible to integrate it.
With his note-book on his knee, Professor Hooker chewed viciously the
rubber tip of his lead-pencil and cursed the devil that was in the
figures. And, as he was thus engaged, a clear, well-modulated young
voice, which appeared to emanate from a point directly over his right
shoulder, remarked,
"Why don't you write _x_ in its exponential form, Professor Hooker?"
So far as its arousing Professor Hooker to a consciousness of his
physical existence was concerned, the voice might have been the murmur
of the night breeze. To him, it was less than the voice of conscience.
"That's so," mused Professor Hooker. "Of course. Why didn't I think of
that before?"
And this, as he thought, he proceeded to do. But still the solution
would not come.
"But you didn't think of it at all, and you haven't even done what I
suggested!" declared the voice.
Then, for the first time, he looked up over his shoulder.
The girl in the tailor-made suit had moved along the bench and was
now sitting next him in the closest proximity possible without actual
contact. As she sat there, she was slightly taller than Professor
Hooker, who, unfortunately, was too preoccupied to be conscious of the
trim slenderness of her athletic figure, her alluring cheeks and chin,
the long black lashes of her large gray eyes, her low, wide forehead,
of the whimsical smile that played about her softly curving lips.
He saw none of these things, but he, somehow, received an impression
of vigor, poise, certainty, and comprehension. In other words, his
reaction was entirely intellectual and not in the slightest degree
physical, which made it very much easier for Professor Hooker to sit as
he did on that green park bench and say:
"Plague take the thing! Got any idea what's the matter with it?"
"Let me have your note-book," ordered the young lady, and, without
waiting for a reply, removed it genially from his reluctant fingers and
annexed the pencil. "There!" she said. "Now, it's simple enough--don't
you see? X has the significance of the real part of the complex."
"Well," declared Bennie, with obvious admiration, "you're certainly a
shark at mathematics!"
The young lady took out her watch.
"You had better be thankful that I'm not the man-eating variety--it's
nearly lunch-time!"
If Professor Hooker's eyes had been as sensitive to delicate shades
of the complexion as they were to the varied hues shown in his
spectrophotometer, he would have noticed that a pink flush--very nearly
wave-length 6250, he would have said--spread over her face as she
caught his eye; but this incident wholly escaped his notice.
At the same moment, the bellow of a factory whistle somewhere over
Alexandria way caused Professor Hooker to arouse himself out of his
state of semilethargy.
"By thunder, it's one o'clock!" he exclaimed, and, without further
ado, he arose, bolted across the Circle, and made a flying leap for
a street-car which was just swinging into Connecticut Avenue. The
tailor-made girl followed him with an amused gaze.
"I really believe I know more mathematics than he does," she remarked
complacently to herself. "But isn't he just a dear?" And with that, she
too, arose and walked briskly away, as if she knew exactly where she
was going--which she did.
III
He was fifteen minutes late to lunch, and the other boarders had
made way with everything on the table except a single chop and a few
scrapings of macaroni which Mrs. Mullins, the landlady, had carefully
rescued and preserved for him. But Professor Hooker, who ate merely
as a matter of form, did not notice the absence of the other courses
and, automatically obeying the law of compensation, evened up on
the sago pudding, of which there was an inevitable abundance. Then
he went up to his room, lit his pipe, seated himself, cross-legged,
sideways on his bed, and got to work at his note-book again. The
equation, however, in spite of the young lady's clever suggestions,
still refused to be solved. For an hour, he chewed his pencil, arising
occasionally and walking up and down, three steps each way, in front
of the marble-topped walnut bureau, until the middle-aged spinster who
occupied the room below was ready to scream with nerves. As however,
she was waiting for a man to come and take her out walking, she was
obliged to possess her soul and feet in patience.
* * * * *
"I ought to have let that young woman finish up this calculation for
me." Hooker at last conceded to the face in the glass. "I can't handle
the thing myself, and now I'll have to go out to Georgetown and bother
Thornton with it."
Thornton was the senior astronomer at the new Naval Observatory, and,
with his junior associate, Evarts, had been the first scientist to
observe the mysterious phenomena incident to the manifestations of
Pax's power. But as Professor Hooker, at this point, remembered that he
had left one of his other note-books at the Smithsonian, and as this
note-book, when found, in turn suggested another unsolved problem,
it was almost dark before he boarded the Georgetown car and quite
naturally took his seat among the places reserved for smokers.
The evening paper, however, offered very little of interest. In fact,
Professor Hooker rarely found anything upon its front pages that he
cared to read. The antics of political parties and their bosses, the
matrimonial eccentricities of social leaders, "what the man will wear,"
even the vivid accounts of battle, murder, and sudden death with which
its columns were replete meant nothing to him. Disgustedly he folded
over the newspaper and ran his eye down the miscellaneous foreign-news
items. An obscure paragraph caught his eye.
THE NEW COMET
Geneva, Switzerland--The officials of the observatory here have
just published the corrected elements of the orbit of the new
comet reported by Battelli last month. They predict that this new
intruder into the solar system will be of unusual brilliancy,
probably surpassing that of the Great Comet of 1811.
Here was something worth while--something directly pertaining to
Professor Hooker's bailiwick. Comets were his specialty. He had a
familiar acquaintance with them and their families--knew them all by
their first names, so to speak. Now, the Great Comet of 1811 had been
the most sensational sidereal exhibition on record. It had caused a
confident belief throughout the nations that the end of the world
was surely at hand. If the new comet were going to be anything like
that--holy smoke!
The full moon was climbing over the ghostly white domes of the
observatory as Professor Hooker, still pondering on the comet, trudged
up the long hill to where his friend gave his life to the unselfish
service of mankind. At the farther end of the building, a light glowed
in a single window, and, having been admitted by a sleepy porter, he
walked down the long corridor and knocked at Thornton's door. Receiving
no response, he waited for a moment, knocked again, and then opened the
door himself. Thornton was sitting at his desk, completely absorbed in
his calculations.
The grave profile of the astronomer showed through the dim light from
the shrouded electric lamp like the head of an ancient statue of some
Greek philosopher. Before him lay a litter of white papers covered
with figures and an open book of logarithms. Immured in the interior
of the great dome, with its monumental walls like those of an ancient
Egyptian pyramid, they could hear no sound save the slow tick of the
sidereal clock and the faint whir of the complicated machinery that
drove the telescope in its infallible following of the movements of the
solar system. For upward of two minutes, Thornton remained unconscious
of Hooker's presence. Then, with a sigh, he laid down his pencil and,
looking up, observed his friend for the first time.
"Hello, Bennie," he exclaimed, with a suggestion of excitement in his
ordinarily calm voice; "pull your chair up here! We've got something
big--the biggest thing, in fact, that has ever happened in astronomy!
We got the elements of Battelli's comet yesterday. Unless I've made
some mistake in my figures, there's going to be a smash-up in the
universe!"
From Thornton, the conservative, such a declaration had immeasurable
significance.
"You mean it's going to hit the earth?" asked Hooker, with interest.
"No," answered Thornton; "but it looks as if it would strike one of the
smaller asteroids in a head-on collision--and if it does--"
"Something will drop," finished Hooker. "Which asteroid?"
"Medusa--one I've been following in its orbit for more than two
years--a small planet, largely composed of pitchblende."
Hooker pursed his lips into a whistle.
"What do you really suppose will happen?" he inquired.
"No one can tell," replied, the astronomer. "The collision might check
Medusa in its orbit and cause it to fall into the sun. In falling, it
might cross the earth's path and strike us--it might mean the end of
the world!"
"Gee whiz!" ejaculated Professor Hooker. "When is this interesting
event going to take place?"
"I calculate that the comet and the asteroid will come into collision
at three o'clock on the morning of the eighteenth of next month. You
can come over and see it if you like."
"I'll be here," Bennie assured him, jotting down the date. "And now,"
he added, pulling his note-book from his pocket, "be a good fellow and
solve this equation for me, will you?"
"Good Lord!" protested Thornton. "Really, don't you think it's almost
bedtime? I'm no good outside my own line, anyway."
"This _is_ your line," retorted Bennie. "Look here, Thornton; don't go
back on me. All this fooling-around of mine with radium and that sort
of stuff has weakened my mathematics. I've simply got to solve this
equation. I almost solved it this morning," he added, with a shamefaced
recollection of the girl in the tan suit.
"There's no use your calling on me," answered Thornton definitely. "It
would take a week for me to catch up with you, anyhow."
Hooker's face clearly showed his disappointment.
"But, Thornton," he protested, "who else is there but you? You're the
most expert mathematician in America!"
The astronomer laughed.
"I wish I were," he replied. "But the fact of the matter is my
mathematics is by no means my strong point. Anyhow, I haven't the time.
It's simply out of the question."
"Well, who _is_ there?" persisted Bennie.
Thornton leaned back meditatively.
"I suggest your trying the research professor of applied mathematics at
the new National Institute."
"Thanks," answered his friend, slipping his note-book back into his
pocket and putting on his hat. "By the way, what's the gent's name?"
Thornton's eye twinkled.
"His name," he said, "is Miss Rhoda Gibbs."
IV
Professor Bennie Hooker arose next morning and got on line in company
with Mrs. Mullins' other boarders for his bath in the tin tub just as
usual. But something was different. Breakfast, while no stodgier than
usual, did not taste quite the same, and he answered Miss Parkinson,
the spinster who roomed beneath him, quite sharply that he wasn't
responsible for the milk or for the maple sirup either, although, in
his absent-mindedness, he had appropriated considerably more than his
share of both. The fact of the matter was that Thornton had told him to
go to a woman for assistance--a woman!
It was now upward of thirty years since there had been a woman in
Bennie's life--leaving out, of course, Miss Beebe, his landlady in
Cambridge, and Bridget McGee, the biddy who cleaned his room in the
house on the Appian Way, where Miss Beebe resided. He had never liked
women, anyway--not since they had insisted on swathing him as a child
in flannel soaked in various kinds of healing oils, and his experience
with Miss Beebe and the McGee had not increased his regard. They were
fools--or just scrawny fakers, aping intelligence like Miss Beebe,
who filled him with disgust. Yet, had he known it, that withered
virgin adored the ground upon which Bennie's carpet slippers trod,
and she had not raised the rent on him for eighteen years. Such are
life's tragedies. And now to be sent to one of the despised sex to
crave succor, to beg for aid, humbly to be shown how to solve a not
extraordinarily difficult problem in astronomical mathematics--it
simply made him sick. He wouldn't go to her--he simply wouldn't!
As he sat on his bed, smoking defiantly an after-breakfast pipe, he
could see her in his mind's eye,--a lean, flat-chested, bony person,
with a sharp nose and chin, thin gray hair--and a mole, perhaps.
"Snippy"--that is what she would be like--in the Beebe order! She would
listen to him with a supercilious sniff and condescend patronizingly to
put him in the wrong. Yet, he was very anxious to solve his problem,
for ever since he had navigated the Flying Ring back from Ungava, he
had been meditating on the possibilities afforded by this machine,
which could negative the force of gravity. No; he must suppress
his natural feelings in the matter and seek out this horny old
maid--the research professor of applied mathematics at the National
Institute--and get it over with. But he wouldn't change his collar for
her--no, sir!
Still recalcitrant, he took the car over to Georgetown and inquired of
the porter at the observatory for the research professor. The nearer
he got to her the more averse he was to calling upon any woman for
assistance; but once having appealed to the porter, it was too late to
draw back, particularly when the latter conducted him to the door of a
small room overlooking the garden, knocked, and left him there.
"Come in!"
The words had a certain musical quality as if half sung, although
spoken, and while he did not recognize the voice, its cheerfulness
communicated itself to the dejected spirits of the professor. With his
pipe still in his mouth, to show his superiority, Hooker turned the
knob and pushed open the door.
There, between two high French windows, sat the tan tailor-made girl!
She had evidently been dictating, for a weazened, stenographic-looking
male with a tonsure was bending over a note-book with elevated pencil.
As Professor Hooker entered, the stenographer arose stiffly, and the
tan young lady lifted her face toward the door and said,
"Good morning!" Then turning to the stenographer: "You may go,
Stebbens. I want seven copies of that condensation of Hiroshito's
'Theory of Thermic Induction.'"
Bennie stared at her, choking with embarrassment.
"Are _you_ the research professor of applied mathematics?" he
exclaimed, as the stenographer slid by him.
"That's me," she laughed.
"I ought to have guessed it," responded Bennie humbly.
"How did you get on with your problem?"
"I didn't," he replied. "The truth is, I got side-tracked on something
else."
Then, suddenly becoming conscious of his pipe, he thrust it hurriedly
into his trousers pocket.
"For heaven's sake go on smoking!" said the girl. "I don't believe you
could think at all without your pipe."
"That's true, too," said Bennie, replacing it where it belonged, with
gratitude. "Do you mind taking a look at these equations? I'm after
something different this time--not as hard as the other one--but I'm
not sure of the solution." He laid his note-book down before her.
The girl glanced at it thoughtfully for a moment, and, drawing toward
her a pad of yellow paper, she swiftly integrated the equation before
Bennie's embarrassed but admiring eyes.
"I suppose one gets groggy occasionally," she said. "Of course I can
see that you're on some gravitational problem."
"Yes," he replied; "I'm trying to calculate the rate at which the
velocity of the Flying Ring--Pax's antigravity machine that I found up
in Labrador, you know--would increase as it left the earth if I took
it out into space. The attraction of gravitation, at a distance, say,
of twelve thousand miles above the earth would amount to comparatively
little, and our velocity would increase at a simply terrific rate. I
must get an absolute solution of the problem. Skooting round in space
would have to be done by a sort of dead reckoning, I suppose, anyhow,
but a knowledge of our velocity would be essential, wouldn't it?"
"By 'our velocity' do you mean that you are planning to take me with
you?" inquired the young lady pleasantly.
At this highly indelicate suggestion, Professor Hooker stared at his
fair companion blankly.
"You--I--thunder--no!" he stammered, suddenly turning pink and
experiencing a sensation of warm stickiness around his collar.
"Wouldn't do at all, you know! No idea of such a thing! Hope you didn't
think--"
She leaned back again in her chair and rested her head against the
wall, looking dreamily over Bennie's head to a great astronomical chart
hanging upon the opposite side of the room.
"You know," she responded, and there was almost a suggestion of awe in
her voice. "I have sometimes thought of the unlimited possibilities
which the Flying Ring would afford to a person who had the courage to
avail himself--or herself--of them. There is nothing, so far as I can
see, to prevent your navigating the Ring anywhere in space. Provided
you arranged for a sufficient supply of oxygen, a flight to the moon
would hardly present any difficulties at all."
"Very little," answered Bennie. "It is perfectly plain that Pax had
anticipated just such a flight, for the Ring is fully equipped with
oxygen-tanks and all sorts of similar appliances. It may be that he
actually did visit the moon! So long as I can get uranium cylinders
for my tractor, I could take the Ring anywhere. But there are other
considerations, certain chances that a chap oughtn't to take--unless
he hopes to accomplish something worth while. The navigation of
interplanetary space is an entirely new game, and the chances are that,
no matter how much care I took, I shouldn't learn all the rules the
first time. Then, if anything went wrong--"
"If anything went wrong, and your engine ran down, or something
happened to your machinery, you might find yourself caught between the
gravitation of the moon and of the earth and whirling round and round
forever through the universe."
Bennie took a long pull on his pipe.
"That would be a new kind of immortality, wouldn't it?" he remarked
whimsically.
V
There was soon no doubt regarding Thornton's prediction. Careful
observation, supplemented by independent calculations, demonstrated
beyond peradventure that the asteroid Medusa would certainly pass
through the head of the comet, which now blazed nightly in the sky like
the beam of a huge search-light. Never had such a meteor been known
before, for it surpassed in brilliancy and size the famous comet of
1811. All night long the streets of every American city were filled
with crowds of people watching the huge fire-ball, the diameter of
which appeared to the terrestrial observer to be nearly half that of
the moon itself. From the dawn of time these dragons of the sky have
caused consternation in the hearts, not only of the ignorant savage but
in those of the half-civilized as well, and even among the educated
classes there still lingers some echo of that fear, inherited through
millions of generations of men, who, from the birth of the race,
have sought to read upon the scroll of the heavens the tracings of
the hand of Fate. And so the boulevards of the capital swarmed with
thousands of people, who gazed in silence at this monster of the sky.
Unlike the Chinese, who endeavor to scare away such celestial demons
by exploding firecrackers and making all the noise humanly possible,
these Occidental multitudes viewed the comet in solemn if not religious
awe, realizing poignantly, for the first time, that our universe is
not protected from attack by wandering celestial bodies. Had a hostile
Zeppelin appeared upon the horizon, a fleet of aeroplanes would have
instantly arisen to meet and destroy it. But no known human agency
existed which could go forth to challenge and possibly vanquish a
fire-monster appearing thus malevolently out of the infinity of space.
The man in the street walked with his nose pointing to the midnight
zenith, and next morning complained at breakfast of having a most
unaccountable "crick" in his neck; but the crowd was still save for the
new boys, who ran hither and thither shouting shrilly: "Extree! Extree!
All about the comic!"
Consumptive old men, gray-bearded and withered survivors of antebellum
days, wastrels of the vicissitudes of fortune came crawling out of
garrets to set up small, battered brass telescopes on weather-beaten
mahogany tripods. And about these collected knots of people, who
eagerly paid small sums to get a nearer view of this astonishing
phenomenon which portended no one knew what. In the "black-and-tan"
quarters of the city, the impassioned tones of the exhorters,
mingled with the groans and wailings of converts and the chant of
salvation-hymns, filled the air, for there, at least, the conviction
prevailed that the day of Judgment was at hand, and that the sheep were
at last to be definitely separated from the goats.
* * * * *
Four days after the meeting of comet and asteroid, which was duly
reported by observing astronomers, newsboys were again crying, "Extra!"
in the streets of Washington. An evening paper had been made the
recipient of the following, the result of calculation on the part of
Thornton:
EARTH TO BE ANNIHILATED!
ASTEROID "MEDUSA" WILL TORPEDO OUR PLANET ON
APRIL 22. CATACLYSM NOW ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN
It is announced positively by the officials of the National
Observatory that the asteroid Medusa, having been arrested in its
orbit by its collision with the comet, is now plunging toward the
sun with an increasing hourly acceleration and will undoubtedly hit
the earth in less than five months from to-day. Calculations have
shown that the point of impact will be in Mexico on the line of
latitude passing through Tampico, though it is possible that the
body may fall in the Pacific if the time of arrival is a little
later than that predicted, or in the gulf of Mexico, if earlier.
The opinions held by the leading scientific men of the country as
to the immediate effects of the collision differ in the extreme.
Some consider that, aside from earthquakes, tidal waves and
considerable atmospheric disturbances, the destructive effects will
be confined to an area of not more than three or four hundred miles
radius. Others believe, however, that the concussion will destroy
all life over the greater part of two Americas, and that the
"splash" of the asteroid will bury the United States under a layer
of fused rock, broken stones, dust, and mud to a depth varying from
several miles in Texas to several feet in Maine and Oregon. All
agree, however, in the belief that every building in the United
States will be razed to the ground by the shock, and that the
atmospheric disturbances will be such as to render the loss of life
enormous over the entire continent.
The most extreme view is that taken by Professor Katz, of Columbia,
who asserts that the impact will reduce our globe to powder. His
colleague, Professor Smithers, claims that that part of the earth's
surface subjected to the blow will be entirely fused and vaporized,
while other scientists believe that the concurrent earthquake shock
will travel completely around the earth and destroy all life upon
both hemispheres. All agree that, if nothing worse occurs, the vast
bulk of the asteroid will penetrate the film of the earth's surface
for several hundred miles, the globe's diurnal rotation will be
affected, the shape will be changed, and its orbit around the sun
will be altered. Ultimate consequences cannot be predicted but
THE END OF THE WORLD IS AT HAND!
The civilized world received the astounding news of the pending
annihilation of the earth, first, with the amused silence of
incredulity, and then with a gasp of horror that swept over the entire
surface of the globe. The immediate reaction of the human brain to
this inconceivable catastrophe was that of sublime disbelief in its
possibility. The finite mind, incapable, as it is, of grasping the
infinities, resolutely declined to accept any proposition outside the
history of man's experience. Since that moment when the human race in
the course of evolution, had appeared upon the face of our planet, the
latter's orbit through space had never been attacked or even affected
by any other celestial body, and since the earth had spun for countless
millions of years in its regular course about the center of the solar
system, and summer had inevitably followed winter, and men had been
born, made love, fought, and died, no one was ready at first to accept
the simple scientific truth that, if a meteorite weighing perhaps
only a single ton could fall flaming earthward to bury itself in some
farmer's plowed field, there was no reason, in the nature of things,
why a meteorite a million times larger should not do the same thing,
or why another planet several times larger than the earth should not
shatter it to atoms.
Kings, emperors, presidents, sultans, and rajahs, with their courts,
Cabinets, and wise men, treated the preliminary announcement of the
observatories of Washington, Moscow, and Greenwich much as they had in
the past treated the prophecies of clairvoyants and others that the
day of Judgment was positively going to occur on certain specified
dates. The newspapers carefully refrained from any editorial comment.
Somebody, evidently, had made a big mistake which would presently
be discovered, and then everybody would breathe easily again. But,
unfortunately, the supposed mistake obstinately continued to remain
undetected, and further observations merely served to corroborate those
already made and to substantiate, not only the probability but the
absolute certainty of what Thornton had prophesied.
Then, with a shriek of astonishment and despair the newspapers of all
the nations gave themselves over to this, the greatest sensation in
the history of the planet, and the combined energies of astronomers
throughout the entire globe were concentrated upon determining, so far
as possible, the size and weight of the falling asteroid, and the point
upon the surface of the earth which would receive its momentous impact.
It was soon authoritatively announced that its diameter was not less
than ninety or more than one hundred and sixty miles, and that,
unless it was deflected from its course by the attraction of the moon
or of some planet, it would strike the earth in the neighborhood of
Galveston, Texas, with a velocity of nearly nineteen miles a second.
What the precise result of this terrific concussion would be upon the
earth and its movement, it was, of course, impossible for anybody to
predict accurately or even imagine.
Would the earth be shattered, or would it resist the titanic blow
of this monster from out of space? Would both bodies retain their
integrity so that, one embedded in the other in a strange and horrible
association, they would gyrate through eternity? What would the effect
be upon the earth's orbit, its climatic conditions, and its life? What
might happen at the worst, the mind of man refused to conjecture. But
it was admitted that, beyond peradventure, the best that could be hoped
for would be that the asteroid itself might suffer annihilation--in
which event, its shattered carcass would lie smothering a thousand
miles of the earth's surface, changing the latter's axis and sending
it staggering along a new orbit under conditions which might render
human life upon the globe impossible. And the blow itself! Could life
continue after such a shock, which would be greater by ten thousand
times than that of the most violent earthquake known in the history of
man?
And in the midst of all this rumpus, Professor Benjamin Hooker suddenly
stated that he purposed going out in the Flying Ring to meet the
asteroid in its fall through space, attack it with the famous lavender
ray that had disrupted the Atlas mountains, and either deflect it from
its course so that it should not strike the earth at all or blow Medusa
into smithereens! Yet his announcement that he intended to sally forth
and slay the celestial monster--like a little scientific David--did not
tend to assuage the universal terror in the slightest.