THE FLYING RING
I
Bentham T. Tassifer had had a very hard day indeed. He had discovered,
to his disgust, that fear is a great leveler, and that the professional
dignity of a deputy assistant solicitor at the Department of Justice
counted for very little when the world was on the point of extinction.
Like forty or fifty million other citizens of the United States, he had
attempted to participate in the scramble to "get onto the lee side of
the earth," but his efforts had been totally unavailing.
There wasn't a chance even for him--Bentham T. Tassifer--to get
further from Washington than he could be taken in a taxi. To New
York, perhaps! But New York had gone mad. Its harbor was blocked with
liners, cruisers, tugs, and ferry-boats away out beyond Sandy Hook,
so that there was no means of departure for those already loaded with
their terrified human freight. Tassifer had expostulated, insisted,
ordered, roared that it was imperative that he, if anybody, should at
once secure passage for Europe. But berths on the liners sailing from
Newfoundland were selling for twenty-five thousand dollars each. And he
hadn't the money. He had thought of asking for a war-ship to take him
away--like a recalled foreign ambassador--but he had been informed that
they were all otherwise engaged. His feelings were deeply hurt. Also,
he was--although he did not admit it--agonized with fear. He was only
fifty-three. And he didn't want to die young.
He found his wife already at the supper-table and rather snippy; so he
resolved to put on a brave front and laugh the matter off.
"Well," she inquired severely, as he removed his napkin from its ring
decorated with an enameled design of the Clan McIntosh plaid, "did you
get anything?"
Delicately detaching a fish-ball from its comrades, he made as if he
didn't fully understand.
"Get--anything?" he repeated vaguely. "Oh, you mean passage? No--that
is, I didn't take your suggestion seriously. Did you really mean that
you wanted to run away?"
Mrs. Tassifer fixed him with a pair of fiery, if watery, gray eyes, and
her lips drew down into a thin line.
"Bentham," she almost hissed, "don't trifle with _me_! You _know_ you
are just as anxious to get away from this God-forsaken country as I
am--as everybody is! Do you suppose I am going to wait here calmly for
a planet to fall on my head?"
Mr. Tassifer was frightened, but he preserved his outward placidity and
sampled a piece of fish-ball.
"I don't believe a word of it," he answered, avoiding her glance. "Who
ever heard of such a thing? Asteroid-rot!"
"Nobody else thinks it's _rot_, as you call it!" she snapped. "Rhoda
certainly knows about such things, and she says it's absolutely sure."
"Rhoda!" snorted Bentham. His wife's niece was a constant thorn in the
side of his pride. He resented her cleverness, conscious that, if women
got the vote, he could never manage to keep his job--some college girl
would get it probably.
"Well, she's a real professor, isn't she?" demanded Mrs. Tassifer, who
admired her brother's daughter in spite of her intellectual superiority.
"S'pose so," mumbled Bentham, removing a small bone from his mouth.
"Rhoda says," continued his wife, "that Professor Hooker is going to
start out in his flying machine and drive that asteroid off, so it
won't hit the earth at all!"
"Ha--ha--ha!" laughed Mr. Tassifer, but without mirth.
"Ha--ha--ha!" she mocked him. "You are very irritating at times,
Bentham!"
When she spoke that way, he took warning; that quiet evenness was not
to be misinterpreted.
"That crazy lunatic that landed on our golf-course? Bosh!"
"They say he is a very wonderful man," she commented.
Bentham turned round and faced her, for he was now on safer ground.
"Look here," he said impressively: "Take it from me, there's nothing in
it--even if Rhoda says so! I saw Seabury at the Cosmos Club last night,
and he said none of the big fellows took any stock in this Hooker at
all. Stands to reason, it's just--buncombe! Flying Ring! Oh, my!"
"You know Rhoda is awful thick with that fellow just the same,"
suggested his wife, a little nervously. "I wouldn't be a bit surprised
if she tried to get him to take her along."
"What!" exploded Bentham, scattering molecules of fish-ball over the
table-cloth in front of him. "Rhoda go with him? Who ever heard of such
a thing! An unmarried woman! What would everybody say?"
"She hasn't admitted it in so many words," his wife answered, "but I
can tell by the way she acts. She thinks he's the most extraordinary
man that ever lived. Talks about the 'wonderful opportunity' of flying
about in space--and all that!"
"Flying fiddlesticks!" he retorted. "If she goes off with that fellow,
I'll never have her in the house again--never!"
"Maybe there won't be any house," commented Mrs. Tassifer grimly.
"Don't say that!" he expostulated. "Don't!"
"I _knew_ you were afraid," she thrust at him.
"I'm not," he answered defiantly. "I don't believe a word of it. As
for getting passage for Europe, it's impossible--I asked at the War
Department this morning. I couldn't even get standing-room on one of
those open scow-tows the cruisers are taking over. The millionaires
have bought up every berth on the liners and tugs. Twenty-five thousand
dollars apiece they're asking! What chance has a poor man got, anyway,
in this world?" Tears stood in his eyes.
"All the same," she answered, "I'm not going to give up hope. And,
what's more, I believe Professor Hooker will be able to do something.
I'd like to see the inside of that Ring, too. Rhoda says she can
arrange it. Will you go with me?"
"Y-e-e-s," admitted Mr. Tassifer.
II
While it was quite true that the "big fellows" at the Cosmos Club
and elsewhere took little stock in Hooker, and the public at large
were openly incredulous, it was nevertheless the fact that the
announcement of his proposed attempt to destroy the asteroid created an
extraordinary amount of interest. For Professor Hooker's plan had at
last received the approval and cooperation of the government, and he
was now almost ready to undertake his flight. His crew was to consist
of Atterbury and Burke, who had been in daily consultation with him for
weeks, and little remained to be done except to verify some of their
more important calculations and install a new dynamo and their uranium
turbine.
Among the privileged few to whom he had offered to exhibit his sidereal
war-ship were Mr. and Mrs. Tassifer and, of course, Rhoda.
It was a beautiful spring afternoon about two weeks after the
conversation just recounted between the solicitor and his lady, and
their chauffeur found great difficulty in threading his way among the
crowds of people who had come out, as usual, to struggle for a glimpse
of the famous machine that was going to essay a trip through space, not
merely for the banal purposes of scientific discovery but actually to
attack and alter the course of a celestial body. Finally having gained
the gate without committing manslaughter, they found themselves on a
flat parade-ground, in the center of which rested a gigantic, shining,
circular tube, seventy-five feet in diameter and fifteen feet thick,
built of aluminum plates, and surmounted by the superstructure which
had been visible from outside, and which, as Bennie told them, bore the
tractor that lifted the car.
"It's the thing at the top shaped like an inverted thimble," he
explained. "There's a big cylinder of metallic uranium inside, and we
play our disintegrating rays on the under surface of this cylinder
from those oblique tubes below. When the rays hit the uranium in the
cylinder, the atoms explode, and the decomposition products are shot
off downward at almost the velocity of light. A back pressure is thus
produced which lifts the Ring exactly like a rocket."
"How long does one of your cylinders last?" inquired Rhoda.
"Atterbury--Pax's engineer, who came back with us--says that a cylinder
is good for about a ten-hour run."
"But you can't get very far out into space in ten hours, can you?" she
queried. "What will you do when the cylinder is exhausted?"
"I've figured out that we can get up a velocity of over fifteen miles
a second with a one-hour run of the tractor," he answered. "If we
then shut off the power, our momentum alone will carry us over fifty
thousand miles during the next hour. So, you see, we can coast most of
the way."
One of the khaki-uniformed guards now detached and lowered a steel
ladder and then climbed up and opened a round door in a sort of
vestibule on the side of the Ring.
"Now, Mrs. Tassifer," remarked Bennie, "that is the air-lock. It has
double doors. When the car is in a vacuum, or beyond the earth's
atmosphere, the contained air would all rush out into space if there
were any direct communication with the outside. You enter the air-lock
from the inside, close and bolt the inner door behind you, open the
other door and step out, just as the divers leave and enter a submarine
on the bottom of the ocean."
Bennie ran up the rungs, gave Mrs. Tassifer a hand, and then both of
them assisted Rhoda, who gingerly ascended to the vestibule. Thence
they passed into the large, well lighted chart-room of the Ring,
which, except for the glass observation-windows in the floor, looked
exactly like a comfortable cabin on board a yacht. This resemblance was
heightened by the fact that in the center of the room a number of easy
chairs were drawn up around a table, where a teakettle was purring in
homelike fashion. Burke, the aviator who had rescued Hooker from the
wilds of Ungava, a jolly-looking man of about thirty-five, now made his
appearance from the remote interior and was presented to the guests.
"But how could one breathe on the moon?" continued Rhoda, after the
introduction, following up an idea suggested by the presence of the
air lock.
"Until we found the Ring, I didn't suppose one could," answered the
air-man. "But Pax has worked that all out for us beforehand. In that
next room, over there, we found three suits of heavy rubber with
helmets and oxygen-tanks, or, rather, small, double-walled cylinders
designed to carry liquid air. The slow evaporation of this supplies
fresh air to the interior of the rubber suits, the excess escaping
through a valve."
The two ladies having expressed some interest in these new "outing
suits," Burke obligingly put one of them on and walked up and down
the chart-room for their edification. It was a simple-enough device,
weighing but little, and resembled a modified suit of diving-armor,
although much less cumbersome.
Then Mrs. Tassifer busied herself at the tea-table, and Rhoda strolled
over and looked through one of the circular deadlights in the outer
wall of the Ring. What she saw was a skeleton framework of steel rods,
reaching out like the arm of a derrick and carrying at its extremity a
cylinder composed of a yellowish white metal, the open end of which was
closed by a plate of some transparent substance. This cylinder, from
which the disintegrating ray was discharged, pointed downward, and was
held in such a manner that it could be swung or aimed in any direction
by means of an electric motor operated from inside the chart-room.
Rhoda eagerly examined all the appliances as Bennie described them in
turn, and then followed her host into the adjacent control-room of the
Ring, which contained a tangle of complicated machinery and where hung
the famous twin gyroscopes, the axes of their thirty-inch disks at
right angles.
"These give us our automatic stability," explained the master of
the Ring. "They control the slant of the tractor. You see, we rise
just like a rocket, vertically at first, the blast shooting straight
down through the center of the machine, but when we wish to fly in
a horizontal direction at a fixed height, we tilt the tractor, and
the blast drives off in an oblique direction. The vertical component
of the recoil keeps us up, and the horizontal drives us forward. The
gyroscopes act on the rods controlling the slant of the tractor and
keep this balance automatically. You see, if we didn't have some device
of this sort, our equilibrium would be destroyed every time anybody
moved about in the Ring. But we have no idea how the machine is going
to behave when we get out into space away from the earth's attraction.
She may act like a kite without a tail."
He smiled confidently at his companion, however, as if he had no fears
upon that score.
Bentham Tassifer was tremendously impressed by what he saw, for, like
most lawyers, he had no knowledge of mechanics or physics, and the
sight of a perfectly contrived machine, the equanimity of which could
not possibly be upset by either cross-examination or any sort of
bullyragging, filled him with vast respect. He had been especially
taken with the gyroscopes and their automatic adjustment--was, in
fact, almost converted to the idea that the Ring might actually get
somewhere. And now, as he looked around the cozy chart-room, with its
crimson-cushioned armchairs and its walls hung with maps of the world
on Mercator's projection, on which dotted red lines in great curved
loops showed the previous flights of the Ring, he began to feel as if
he were an honored guest at the admiral's table on a flag-ship, rather
pleased than otherwise with the whole thing and his own vicarious part
in it, through being the uncle of the research professor.
He felt very drowsy after the mental exertion of following Bennie's
explanations, and the air was indubitably a trifle close in there. Mrs.
Tassifer also was having hard work to keep awake. Rhoda, beckoning to
Professor Hooker, tiptoed into the control-room.
"Those two old dears will be sound asleep in three minutes," she
whispered. "I want to talk to you. Where is the kitchen--galley, or
whatever you call it?"
Bennie led her through the condenser-room into a white-tiled apartment
furnished with both gas and electric stoves. There were chairs there
and a table, and Rhoda took possession of one and pointed to the other.
"Yes," she repeated; "I want to talk to you--seriously."
The ordinarily unobservant Bennie noticed that she was dressed in the
same trim tan suit she had worn when he first met her, and that her
cheeks were quite pink. She looked very nice there, in that white-tiled
room--very nice indeed! This was the second time he had been struck by
that salient fact. If all girls were like _her_! But most of them were,
unfortunately, more like Miss Beebe. He sat down opposite her and lit
his pipe. Somehow, he never felt the slightest awkwardness when in her
company--always at his best! She had a brain like--well, even better
than Seabury's, for instance, and a figure--His eye followed the line
of the tailor-made suit, and his heart pumped noticeably. Too much
tobacco, he thought.
"Look here," she said, with determination: "Don't start this fool
adventure. There is still the possibility that the moon may turn the
asteroid aside." He looked at her, astounded. "Oh, I mean it!" she
insisted, wrinkling her brows. "This machine is all very well--in
theory. It will _go_. But we all know that it won't come back!"
"Of course it will come back," he retorted, "unless it busts!"
"It's a thousand-to-one-shot!"
"Supposing it is--isn't it _up_ to me to go?" he replied simply. "It's
the only chance to save the earth from destruction. I'd be the worst
sort of a coward if I didn't. You wouldn't want me to show the white
feather--now!"
He stopped short at the look in her eyes--such a queer look. Her cheeks
had become quite pale.
"No," she answered, in a low voice, but still with a question in it.
"Then you are resolved to go?"
"Absolutely!" He gripped his pipe-stem hard between his teeth.
She looked down, and the red came back into her face, stealing
gradually from the collar of her almost military jacket to her eyes.
"Then take me, too!" she said.
"You! I _will_ not!" he answered brusquely.
"Please! Don't you think you almost owe it to me? It was my idea--and I
worked out your equations for you. I ought to have some of the fun."
"Don't be foolish," he urged, although he hated to deny her
anything. "You've got your life to live. You're young and clever
and--and pretty"--his own features had become unaccountably
warm--"and--and--what's the sense of it? Of course, it's a very
uncertain project--this space-navigation. I wouldn't let you risk your
life in this blooming car for--for anything! No--by thunder!"
"My life is my own--isn't it?--if I want to sacrifice it to science, as
you purpose doing with yours?"
"One of--us--is enough," he announced with conviction.
Somehow, the word "us" sounded curiously personal. She raised her
eyes to his, and there were tears in them. The flush had spread over
her whole face and to the very roots of her dark-yellow hair. He had
never seen her so before. She had always been so capable, so crisp, so
cool--and now she was so--young, and pathetic almost. He had a strange
inclination to reach over and put his arm along the back of her chair.
And then she gave him a funny, teary little smile.
"That's--just--it. _One_ of us--isn't _enough_--for _me_!"
Something blurred Professor Hooker's sight. There was a roaring in his
ears like that of a thousand pine trees in a gale.
"How do you mean?" he heard himself asking, in a weirdly conventional
tone, although he knew what she meant all the time, and the knowledge
seemed to be swelling him up like a balloon. Indeed, he felt as if he
was just coming out of a dose of laughing-gas--inflated and very much
excited and irresponsible.
The next instant, he was kneeling on the tiles in front of her; those
tailor-made arms were around his neck, and his face was pressed up
against the tan jacket, and her hair was tickling his ears.
"You funny little man!" she was saying, in a trembly voice. "You funny,
silly little man! I won't _let_ you go without me."
And Bennie answered--he could feel her heart beating through the tan
military jacket:
"Silly little thing yourself! Do you think I'd let you take a chance
like that _now_--dear?"
"You must!"
"I won't!"
He raised his head and drew down her face to his.
"I simply--simply--w-won't!"
"Rhoda! Where are you?"
Mrs. Tassifer's acrid voice echoed through the Ring from the
control-room. Bennie scrambled to his feet and hastily lit his pipe.
"Yes, auntie!" she called back sweetly, with a whimsical glance at
Bennie. "I'm in here looking at the electric stove--such a funny little
thing!"
III
As the date set for the departure of the Flying Ring on its amazing
venture drew near, a furious controversy arose in the newspapers as
to the feasibility of Professor Hooker's project. Leading scientists
wrote technical letters demonstrating not only that the Ring could not
possibly be controlled in space when beyond the earth's attraction,
but that it was manifestly absurd to suppose that it could even get
away from the earth's attraction at all. One distinguished pedagog was
particularly insistent upon the point that the gravitational force
of the earth was a _sina qua non_ for steering the Ring in a given
direction. He demonstrated conclusively--to himself, at any rate--that,
once in the pure ether, the Ring would be like a rudderless ship, quite
unmanageable and unable to meet and oppose any external influence. But
another, equally celebrated, immediately countered on him with great
effect by showing that, once in space, there would be no external
influence to alter the direction of the flying machine. Going his
opponent one better, he gave it as his own opinion that the Flying Ring
would never even start--couldn't get off the ground!
Bennie, Atterbury, and Burke read all these letters, articles, and
editorials with considerable amusement, spending all their waking-hours
in the Ring, overseeing the installation of the new apparatus and
making plans to meet all possible emergencies. The longer they
waited--and the collision between the earth and the asteroid was due to
occur on April twenty-second--the less distance it would be necessary
for the Ring to traverse to meet its enemy. They had, therefore,
arranged to leave the earth on April twentieth.
But while all these preparations were being made, a great
migration--like nothing in the history of mankind save possibly the
western movement of the Huns and Ostrogoths--was taking place from
Lower California and the Southwestern states, northward along the
Pacific coast, across the deserts of Arizona and Nevada, and eastward
across the Gulf of Mexico by tug, barge, and steamer, as hundreds of
thousands of Mexicans, miners, cowboys, and their families sought to
escape their impending doom. The migration, however, was not confined
to the Southwest. A large proportion of the total population of the
Northwestern states also streamed across the boundary into Canada and
British Columbia. The rivers were choked with flotillas of boats; flat
cars and coal-cars brought fabulous prices and took the place of
Pullmans; while a millionaire who could commandeer, beg, borrow, steal,
or purchase a cattle-van was regarded as fortunate indeed.
In the East, where there was, perhaps, less actual hysteria, millions
of men, women, and children clamored with but a single voice for
passage to Europe or to any port upon the other side of the world.
At Boston, New York, and Baltimore, the congestion from incoming and
outgoing ships was so great that passengers could speak from vessel to
vessel until they were well out to sea. The same situation prevailed at
San Francisco. For every mere thousand who escaped through the Golden
Gate, there were millions more who either could secure no passage or
who had not the means of paying for it.
To be sure, the daily papers were still published, and a pretense was
made at keeping office-hours. But most people were actively engaged
in excavating subcellars in their houses, to which they might take
refuge from the prophesied deluge of rock and slag. The minds of many,
of course, refused to grasp the situation. This was particularly the
case with the very old, who remembered having been fooled before by
these scientists. Hadn't the papers, only ten years before, stated that
the earth was going to pass through the tail of Halley's Comet? And
hadn't everybody sat up for three whole nights without even _seeing_
a comet? And, after it was all over, the scientists had said that the
event had really occurred, only nobody had known about it. They nodded
their heads, averring that it would be the same way with this asteroid
business that everybody was shouting about. Anyhow, there was no use
worrying yet a while. But, in spite of these octogenarian wiseacres,
by the first of April, the population of Canada had increased, at the
expense of the United States, by twenty million people, and, as the
weeks passed and the new green star burned brighter every night, people
began to ask why something was not done--why the Ring did not start
upon its journey.
Unmindful of the conflicting emotions which he inspired, Bennie Hooker
quietly and calmly went about his work, with no thought of posing as a
modern Perseus about to attack and slay a fiery Medusa.
IV
At last, the great day--the greatest day in the scientific history of
mankind--dawned clear and still. Not a cloud broke the calm continuity
of the blue. It seemed almost as if one could see into the distant
infinity of space--whither the newspapers all said it was Professor
Hooker's genuine intention to go. These papers also announced that
it was the purpose of the space-flyer ("aviator" being an obviously
inaccurate _descriptio personae_) to wait until the earth's revolution
upon its axis should bring the asteroid directly above the Ring, thus
avoiding the necessity, once he had started, of altering the direction
of flight. This would not occur until about midnight.
Bennie had packed his valise and, accompanied by Atterbury and Burke,
had reached the field at an early hour. The machinery had been given
its final test, and fresh provisions taken on board. All was in
readiness for the flight. But would the machine fly? That was the
question. It had flown once, to be sure, but would it fly again? No one
could tell.
The Ring had been raised on a rough trestle of timbers to facilitate
the start by furnishing a path for the escape of the air vortex carried
down by the blast from the tractor. The steel fence which had been
built around the machine had been removed, and a barbed-wire enclosure,
over a quarter-mile in diameter, had been thrown around the Ring,
this being the danger-zone, as calculated from observations of the
destruction wrought at the golf-links when the Ring landed. By three
o'clock, there was closely packed outside of this barrier a dense mass
of humanity, estimated at not less than two hundred and fifty thousand
persons.
These remained, patiently waiting for that sight which no more than
half a dozen pairs of eyes had ever seen before. At eight o'clock,
a heavy limousine pushed its way through the crowd, was admitted
by the guards, and rumbled its way across the field to the foot of
the landing-ladder below the great cylinder, and from it emerged
President Thomas, of the National Institute; Professor Evarts, of
the Observatory, Mr. and Mrs. Bentham T. Tassifer, and their niece,
Miss Rhoda Gibbs, over whose shoulder was slung a small camera. At
the honk of the horn, Bennie appeared at the air-lock, turned on an
electric light at the head of the wooden stairway which led up the
side of the scaffolding, and welcomed his guests, one by one, as they
made the unaccustomed ascent to bid farewell to the "Columbus of the
Universe," as Professor Hooker was now half sarcastically called by the
newspapers. Inside, the chart-room was warm and brilliantly lighted.
The last extras containing "full accounts" of the preparations for the
trip into space lay upon the center-table--preparations of which the
world, except the three men themselves, knew nothing. In fact, these
three had so fully tested each piece of apparatus, so carefully made
all their preparations down to the minutest detail, that they had
only to fasten the air-lock, throw over the switch connected with the
dynamo, and their journey would be begun without more ado. Indeed, the
visitors felt that, after their struggles with the crowd outside the
gate, it was almost an anticlimax to find the three so calmly facing
the prospect of a flight into eternity, and, after a few moments'
conversation, shook hands and prepared to depart. The clock pointed
to nineteen minutes to nine. The start was to take place precisely at
eight-fifty. At the bottom, they all stopped and looked up. Bennie
waved his hand to them.
"Good luck!" shouted Tassifer. "Don't stay way too long!"
Then they turned to the waiting motor and began to climb in. Hooker,
somewhat unnerved, in spite of himself, at seeing the last, as he
feared, of Rhoda, withdrew quickly through the air-lock into the
chart-room. It was now eight-forty-seven--only three minutes more!
Atterbury had gone into the condenser-room. Burke was at his post in
the control-room.
"Are you both ready?" called Bennie.
"Ready!" answered Atterbury.
"Ready!" came the cheery voice of Burke.
Down below, the party had all squeezed into the motor except Rhoda--who
stopped with her foot on the steps.
"Oh dear, I forgot to leave the films!" she exclaimed. "Don't wait.
I'll just run up the ladder and then hustle after you to the gate."
The chauffeur started the motor. Above her towered the gleaming
cylinder of aluminum. What if the air-lock had been finally closed? No;
the ladder had yet to be replaced. Hurriedly she climbed up and entered
the lock. The door into the chart-room was ajar, and she could see
Bennie as he walked to the door of the control-room to ask if all was
ready. Swinging it wide enough to slip through, she threw herself on
the floor in the shadow of one of the long wicker easy chairs. Bennie
turned, glanced at his watch, and, stepping to the lock, hauled up
the ladder and closed and clamped both doors. For a moment, he stood
under the big lamp, its white light shading the big hollows beneath
his eyes, the tense lines about his mouth. No wonder that his face was
drawn! He was about to speak the word that would sever--perhaps for all
eternity--their connection with the earth.
"Rhoda!" he murmured, unconscious of her presence.
An impulse almost overcame her to cry out to him, to beseech him not to
set forth upon this crazy if marvelous adventure. But before she could
speak, Burke appeared in the doorway.
"Well," he said, "everything's ready. What are you waiting for?"
Bennie pulled himself together with a jerk, walked over to the window,
and looked out and up into the sky.
"It looks all-fired dark and cold up there," he muttered.
Then, turning, he caught Burke's eye, and the latter smiled.
"Well, that's where we're goin', ain't it?" inquired the aviator.
Bennie set his teeth and walked over to the speaking-tube which
communicated with the condenser-room.
"All right, Atterbury!" he called sharply. "Turn her loose!"
V
The gate of the entanglement opened just enough to permit the exit of
the motor bearing the irate Tassifers, and was instantly closed behind
it. But once outside, it was impossible to proceed further, for the
crowd had now swelled to such proportions that it absolutely blocked
all movement.
"We're stuck--and that's all there is about it. They might just as
well have let us stay inside," scolded Mrs. Tassifer. "We might as well
make up our minds to stop right here and see whatever is to be seen.
Don't let those men climb on the roof of the car, Bentham. Just look at
them!"
Tassifer had caught out of the corner of his eye the dangling ends of
a pair of trousers supplemented by a heavy pair of mud-covered shoes
swaying outside the window of the limousine.
"Here you! Come down out of that!" he roared, grabbing at the legs
and loosening the owner from his perch. "If anybody's going to sit up
there, _I'm_ going to! I paid for this car."
The man landed heavily amid the jeers of the onlookers, and Bentham,
opening the door, climbed on the driver's seat and swung himself up
to the roof. Here, at a height of nine feet above the crowd, he had a
magnificent view on all sides.
The great bulk of the Ring loomed dark in the moonlight. High in the
heavens, a little east of the meridian and not far from the red-flushed
planet Mars, Medusa shone with a pale, greenish light. It was easy for
a trained eye to pick it out, though it was not a conspicuous object,
even at its present distance of less than two million miles.
"Speech! Speech!" yelled the spectators, instinctively recognizing that
Bentham was a ridiculous person.
"Shut up!" he retorted, in his most aggressive manner, and somehow
suggesting a fugitive cat on a fence. "Mind your own business!"
"Hooray!" cheered the crowd unanimously. "Speech!"
Tassifer glowered at them mutely. There was nothing to throw.
"Don't mind them, Bentham," came plaintively from within the car.
He might have jumped on their heads--committed any degree of
manslaughter--had not a sudden murmur directed his attention toward the
Ring.
A dull purring sound filled the air.
Then Tassifer grabbed at his tall hat.
A rush of wind spread out from the center of the field, carrying caps,
newspapers, and other light objects over the heads of the onlookers.
The purring sound increased in volume, and presently a faint glow
appeared at the top of the tripod, and a yellow beam of light shot down
through the center of the Ring, throwing the cross-beams of the wooden
scaffolding into bright relief. The wind increased to a gale, and dust
filled the air. The ground shook under the impact of the yellow blast
of helium which drove down from the tractor with a roar like that of a
Niagara. Through the whirling clouds of dust, Tassifer caught a glimpse
of what appeared to be the sudden explosion of the scaffolding--great
timbers and joists flying through the air, followed by the collapse of
the entire structure, which fell with a crash and was promptly torn to
pieces, blown apart, and scattered over the ground by the typhoon which
whirled in every direction from the middle of the aerodrome. The Ring,
though deprived of all support, did not fall, however--it remained
suspended, as it were, in the air--nay, it was rising, slowly and
majestically at first, like a balloon, and then faster, with the rush
and roar of a rocket. Ten seconds, and it had risen a hundred feet. A
minute, and it had soared two-thirds of a mile above the field. And
then it darted up, up and almost out of sight, leaving a fading streak
behind it like that of a shooting star.
"Gee whiz!" gasped Tassifer. "Hookey!"
Even his associate solicitors in the Department of Justice, had they
heard, would have forgiven him. It was an echo of his first infantile
vision of an elephant.
A white mass of faces followed the upward lift and rush of the Ring,
which now, with its trail of yellow light, was vanishing toward the
moon, its roar but faintly audible amid the extraordinary silence of
the multitude. Then, nothing could be heard. The Ring, now at a height
of eighteen miles, was in an atmosphere so rarified as to transmit no
sound.
Suddenly Mrs. Tassifer's face appeared in the aperture below.
"What do you suppose has become of Rhoda?" she inquired.
VI
Less than a mile away, Professor Thornton stood at his window in the
observatory watching for the burst of light which, if it came, would
indicate to him that the Ring had started upon its flight into space.
He had already been to the equatorial-room and revolved its dome until
the mouth of the great telescope pointed in the general direction which
the Ring would presumably take. Medusa was almost at the zenith, her
pale-green light somewhat dimmed by the light of the full moon, which
blazed in the sky a few degrees to the east of the asteroid. He glanced
at the clock. It was already quarter to nine. Perhaps Hooker might not
start on time, after all. Something might go wrong with the complicated
anatomy of the machine; some unexpected delay might occur--in which
event he, Thornton, would not be notified and would wait at the
telescope vainly searching the heavens while, perhaps, the Ring would
suddenly start on its flight--the direction slightly altered from that
as originally planned--and he would miss it altogether. So he returned
to his office to observe with the naked eye the departure of the Ring,
note its general direction, and make sure of getting it in the finder
of the telescope.
For Thornton had never doubted that the Ring would start. He had
known Hooker, boy and man, for nearly thirty years, knew that he
was a practical as well as a brilliant scientist, and, when Pax had
threatened to knock the earth topsyturvy, had himself been the one to
rout the professor out of his scholastic seclusion on the Appian Way
in Cambridge, and stimulate him to those investigations which shortly
resulted in the discovery of the valley of the Ring in Ungava and the
navigation of the air-craft back to the United States.
Thornton did not question the ability of Hooker and his comrades to
navigate space in the great machine, or the power of the lavender
ray to destroy Medusa or any other heavenly body. What he feared was
the unknown factor of chance, always arising when an experiment is
hazarded under new conditions. What did they know of space? Would
their liquid-air tanks accomplish their purpose? What would be the
effect of the complex and opposing forces of attraction to which,
once outside the sphere of the earth's gravitation, this new man-made
meteor would be exposed? Could the Ring be "turned" so as properly to
alight? Would it turn? Would the human organs function under these
extraordinary artificial conditions? Would, in fact, the brain work
properly or logically when no natural premises were left from which
to reason? Well, they would see! But the Ring would start! Oh, yes,
it would start--and its departure would be caught on the film of the
automatic moving-picture astronomical camera attached to the big
telescope--provided, of course, that he succeeded in following its
meteoric flight.
The observatory stood on the top of a small hill, and, from his window,
Thornton could see across a sea of tumultuous housetops, colorless in
the moonlight, to a dark strip where lay the aerodrome.
He raised his eyes and gazed up through the heavens, that looked almost
like a field of pale-blue corn-flowers sprinkled with a myriad of
daisies, into the deeper blue of the infinity behind and beyond the
Milky Way, just as he had looked through his big telescope now for
nearly thirty years. That vast, blue-black arch had always looked the
same--save for the slight changes in the celestial bodies themselves
which were his life-study. Blue, deep blue--flash! Suddenly the heavens
were no longer blue but dazzling white. The silence of night was
shattered by a roar from the sky above the aerodrome. The Ring! It was
off!
Half blinded by the glare, he rushed to the equatorial-room. Already
the intense brilliancy had died away, but through the yawning gap in
the roof he caught a glimpse of a fast-fading streak of yellow light.
Toward this streak, he turned the telescope--but it was no longer
there! Upward again--and then, at last, he caught it in the finder--a
glowing dot--and brought the cross-wire upon it--only to lose it, so
rapid was its flight. Once more, and a third time, he caught it on the
cross-thread, but it passed out of the field of the larger instrument
before he could shift the position. A fear that he would never succeed
in bringing the giant lenses to bear upon it seized him. He knew that
if he could not pick it up within the first few minutes, it would be
hopeless to find it.
Then, unexpectedly, there it was--slowly descending into the field of
the telescope, its yellow beam pointing directly upward. For a moment,
he almost forgot that the astronomical telescope inverts the object.
Once more he fixed his eye at the finder. He could see distinctly the
under surface of the Ring, illuminated by the light of the glowing gas
which streamed beneath it, while the blinding glow of the helium jet,
seen nearly end-on, looked like a great ball of fire in its center.
It reminded him forcibly of the planet Saturn. Was it possible that
his old friend Bennie Hooker, with two companions, was inside of that
minute, flaming pellet?
Momentarily it grew smaller. The minutes passed; the hour came and
went, and still Thornton stuck at his post. At nine-fifty, all that
he could see was a faint wisp of pale-yellow light, like an almost
invisible comet. He estimated that it would remain visible for perhaps
fifteen minutes more, and then--good-by!
Suddenly, to his utter amazement, it commenced to fade, and in eight or
ten seconds more it vanished. He wiped his glasses and anxiously looked
again. There was no sign of the Ring whatever. He glanced up at the sky
over the telescope, but it bore no trace of cloud. The Ring had been
completely swallowed up in the abyss of space!
"Good God," he thought, "something has gone wrong, and they are falling
back!"
He did not know that the Ring was at that moment flying out into space
with a velocity of over twenty miles a second, and that Hooker had
stopped his driving machinery and was depending upon the momentum of
his machine to carry him over the remainder of his journey--in other
words, that he was coasting out to his encounter with the asteroid
Medusa.