“That, Leonard, is the start. Shall we see the vehicle itself?”
III
LAUNCHED INTO SPACE!
We were to leave at dawn, and during that night a thousand details ended
our attention: Jim’s resignation from the service, which he gave to the
superior through verbal traffic department without so much as a word of
explanation; my own resignation, leaving the post of Commander 3 of the
40 N temporarily to Argyle.
Temporarily! With what optimism I voiced it! But there was a queer pang
within me, an exaltation—which I think was as well a form of
madness—was upon us all. This thing we were about to do transcended all
our petty human affairs.
I was standing at the door of the workshop, gazing at a tree. Its leaves
were waving in a gentle night breeze, which as I stood there fanned my
hot, flushed cheeks with a grateful coolness. I found Alice beside me.
“I’m looking at that tree,” I said. “Really, you know I’ll be sorry to
leave it. These trees, these hills, the river—I wouldn’t like to leave
our earth and never come back, Alice. Would you?”
“No,” she said. Her hand pressed mine; her solemn blue eyes regarded me.
She was about to add something else, but she checked herself. A flush
rose to her cheeks; it mantled the whole column of her throat with red.
“Alice?”
“No,” she repeated. “We’ll come back, Len.”
Dr. Weatherby called us. And Jim shouted, “This infernal checking! Len,
come here and do your share. We’re going at dawn. Don’t you know that?”
* * * * *
I shall not forget the first sight I had of the vehicle. It lay in the
great main room of the workshop. A hundred feet long, round like a huge
cigarro, a dead white thing, lying there in the glow of the blue tubes.
Even in its silent immobility, there seemed about it a latent power, as
though it were not dead, but asleep—a sleeping giant, resting
quiescent, conscious of its own strength.
And there was about it too, an aspect almost infernal in its sleek,
bulging body, dead-white like bloodless flesh, in its windows, staring
like bulging, thick-lensed eyes. I felt instinctively a repulsion, a
desire to avoid it. I touched it finally; its smooth side was hard and
abnormally cold. A shudder ran over me.
But after a time these feelings passed. I was absorbed in examining this
thing which was to house us, to bear us upward and away.
Within the vehicle was a narrow corridor down one side. Corridor windows
opened to the left. To the right were rooms. Each had a window opening
to the side, a window in the floor beneath, and in the roof above.
There was a room for Jim and me, another for Dolores and Alice, and one
for Dr. Weatherby. An instrument and chart room forward, with a tower
room for keeping a lookout, and a galley with a new Maxton electronic
stove, fully equipped. And other rooms—a food room, and one crowded
with a variety of apparatus: air purifiers, Maxton heaters and
refrigerators, piping the heat and cold throughout the vehicle. There
was a score of devices with which I was familiar, and another score
which were totally strange.
Dr. Weatherby already had the vehicle fully equipped and provisioned.
With a tabulated list of its contents, he and Jim were laboriously
checking the items to verify that nothing had been overlooked.
“I don’t want to know how it works,” Jim had said. “Not ’til after we
start. Let’s get going. That’s the main idea.”
Then Alice took the list. She and Jim went from room to room. Dolores
stood a moment in the corridor, as Dr. Weatherby and I started for the
instrument room.
“Jim! Oh Jim, where are you?”
“He and Alice are farther back, Dolores,” I said. “In the galley, I
think. Don’t you want to come forward with us?”
“I guess not. I’ll go with Jim.”
She joined them and I heard her say, “Oh, I’m glad to find you, Jim. I
was a little frightened, just for a moment. I thought something was
wrong here on board.”