A week later they crossed the path of Jupiter, but the giant was
invisible, far away on the other side of the Sun. Redgrave laid his
course so as to avail himself to the utmost of the "pull" of the planets
without going near enough to them to be compelled to exert too much of
the priceless R. Force, which the indicators showed to be running
perilously low.
Between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars they made a most valuable economy
by landing on Ceres, one of the largest of the asteroids, and travelling
about fifty million miles on her towards the orbit of the Earth without
any expenditure of force whatever. They found that the tiny world
possessed a breathable atmosphere and a fluid resembling water, but
nearly as dense as mercury. A couple of flasks of it form the greatest
treasures of the British Museum and the National Museum at Washington.
The vegetable world was represented by coarse grass, lichens, and dwarf
shrubs, and the animal by different species of worms, lizards, flies,
and small burrowing animals of the rodent type.
As the orbit of Ceres, like that of the other asteroids, is considerably
inclined to that of the Earth, the _Astronef_ rose from its surface when
the plane of the Earth's revolution was reached, and the glittering
swarm of miniature planets plunged away into space beneath them.
"Where to now?" said Zaidie, as her husband came down on deck from the
conning-tower.
"I am going to try to steer a middle course between the orbits of
Mercury and Venus," he replied. "They just happen to be so placed now
that we ought to be able to get the advantage of the pull of both of
them as we pass, and that will save us a lot of power. The only thing
I'm afraid of is the pull of the Sun, equal to goodness knows how many
times the attraction of all the planets put together. You see, little
woman, it's like this," he went on, taking out a pencil and going down
on one knee on the deck: "Here's the _Astronef_; there's Venus; there's
Mercury; there's the Sun; and there, away on the other side of him, is
Mother Earth. If we can turn that corner safely and without expending
too much power we ought to be all right."
"And if we can't, what will happen?"
"It will be a choice between morphine and cremation in the atmosphere of
the Sun, dear, or rather gradually roasting as we fall towards it."
"Then, of course, it will be morphine," she said quite quietly, as she
turned away from his diagram and looked at the now fast-increasing disc
of the Sun. A well-balanced mind speedily becomes accustomed even to the
most terrible perils, and Zaidie had now looked this one so long and so
steadily in the face that for her it had already become merely the
choice between two forms of death with just a chance of escape hidden in
the closed hand of Fate.
Thirty-six Earth-hours later the glorious golden disc of Venus lay broad
and bright beneath them. Above was the blazing orb of the Sun, nearly
half as big again as it appears from the Earth, with Mercury, a round
black spot, travelling slowly across it.
"My dear Bird-Folk!" said Zaidie, looking down at the lovely world below
them. "If home wasn't home----"
"We can be back among them in a few hours with absolute safety,"
interrupted her husband, catching at the suggestion. "I've told you the
truth about the bare possibility of getting back to the Earth. It's only
a chance at best, and even if we pass the Sun we may not have force
enough left to prevent the _Astronef_ from being smashed to dust or
burnt up in the atmosphere. After all we might do worse----"
"What would you do if you were alone, Lenox?" she said, interrupting him
in turn.
"I should take my chance and go on. After all home's home and worth a
struggle. But you, dear----"
"I'm you, and so I take the same chances as you do. Besides, we're not
perfect enough for a world where there isn't any sin. We should probably
get quite miserable there. No, home's home, as you say."
"Then home it is, dear!" he replied.
The resplendent hemisphere of the Love-Star sank swiftly down into the
vault of Space, growing smaller and dimmer as the _Astronef_ sped
towards the little black spot on the face of the Sun, which to them was
like a buoy marking a place of utter and hopeless shipwreck in the Ocean
of Immensity.
The chronometer, still set to Earth-time, had now begun to mark the last
hours of the _Astronef's_ voyage. She was not only travelling at a speed
of which figures could give no comprehensible idea, but the Sun,
Mercury, and the Earth were rushing towards her with a compound
velocity, composed of the movement of the Solar System through Space and
of the movement of the two planets round the Sun.
Murgatroyd was at his post in the engine-room. Redgrave and Zaidie had
gone into the conning-tower, perhaps for the last time. For good fortune
or evil, for life or death, they would see the end of the voyage
together.
"How far yet, dear?" she said, as Venus began to slip away behind them,
rising like a splendid moon in their wake.
"Only sixty million miles or so, a matter of a few hours, more or
less--it all depends," he replied, without taking his eyes off the
compass.
"Sixty millions! Why I feel almost at home again."
"But we have to turn the corner of the street yet, dear, and after that
there's a fall of more than twenty-five million miles on to the more or
less kindly breast of Mother Earth."
"A fall! It does sound rather awful when you put it that way; but I am
not going to let you frighten me. I believe Mother Earth will receive
her wandering children quite as kindly as they deserve."
The moon-like disc of Venus grew swiftly smaller, and the black spot on
the face of the Sun larger and larger as the _Astronef_ rushed silently
and imperceptibly, and yet with almost inconceivable velocity towards
doom or fortune. Neither Zaidie nor Redgrave spoke again for nearly
three hours--hours which to them seemed to pass like so many minutes.
Their eyes were fixed on the black disc of Mercury, which, as they
approached it, expanded with magical rapidity till it completely
eclipsed the blazing orb behind it. Their thoughts were far away on the
still invisible Earth and all the splendid possibilities that it held
for two young lives like theirs.
As the sunlight vanished they looked at each other in the golden
moonlight of Venus, and Zaidie let her head rest for a moment on her
husband's shoulder. Then a swiftly broadening gleam of light shot out
from behind the black circle of Mercury. The first crisis had come.
Redgrave put out his hand to the signal-board and rang for full power.
The planet seemed to swing round as the _Astronef_ rushed into the
blaze. In a few minutes it passed through the phases from "new" to
"full." Venus became eclipsed in turn as they swung between Mercury and
the Sun, and then Redgrave, after a rapid glance to either side, said:
"If we can only keep the two pulls balanced we shall do it. That will
keep us in a straight line, and our own momentum ought to carry us into
the Earth's attraction."
Zaidie did not reply. She was shading her eyes with her hand from the
almost intolerable brilliance of the Sun's rays, and looking straight
ahead to catch the first glimpse of the silver-grey orb. Her husband
read her thoughts and respected them. But a few minutes later he
startled her out of her dream of home by exclaiming:
"Good God, we're turning!"
"What do you say, dear? Turning what?"
"On our own centre. Look! I'm afraid only a miracle can save us now,
darling."
She glanced to the left-hand side where he was pointing. The Sun, no
longer now a sun, but a vast ocean of flame filling nearly a third of
the vault of Space, was sinking beneath them. On the right Mercury was
rising. Zaidie knew only too well what this meant. It meant that the
keel of the _Astronef_ was being dragged out of the straight line which
would cut the Earth's orbit some forty million miles away. It meant
that, in spite of the exertion of the full power that the engines could
develop, they had begun to fall into the Sun.
Redgrave laid his hand on hers, and their eyes met. There was no need
for words. Perhaps speech just then would have been impossible. In that
mute glance each looked into the other's soul and was content. Then he
left the conning-tower, and Zaidie dropped on to her knees before the
instrument-table and laid her forehead upon her clasped hands.
Her husband went to the saloon, unlocked a little cupboard in the wall
and took out a blue bottle of corrugated glass labelled "Morphine,
Poison." He took another empty bottle of white glass and measured fifty
drops into it. Then he went to the engine-room and said abruptly:
"Murgatroyd, I'm afraid it's all up with us. We're falling into the
Sun, and you know what that means. In a few hours the _Astronef_ will be
red-hot. So it's roasting alive--or this. I recommend this."
"And what might that be, my Lord?" said the old engineer, looking at the
bottle which his master held out towards him.
"That's morphine--poison. Fill that up with water, drink it, and in half
an hour you'll be dead without knowing it. Of course, you won't take it
until there's absolutely no hope; but, granted that, you'll find this a
better death than roasting or baking alive." Then his voice changed
suddenly as he went on, "Of course, I need not say now, Murgatroyd, how
deeply I regret now that I asked you to come in the _Astronef_."
"My Lord, my people have served yours for seven hundred years, and,
whether on Earth or among the stars, where you go it is my duty to go
also. But don't ask me to take the poison. It is not for me to say that
a journey like this is tempting Providence, but, by my lights, if I am
to die I shall die the death that Providence in its wisdom sends."
"I daresay you're right in one way, Murgatroyd, but it's no time to
argue about beliefs now. There's the bottle. Do as you think right. And
now, in case the miracle doesn't happen, goodbye."
"Goodbye, my Lord, if it is to be," replied the old Yorkshireman, taking
the hand which Redgrave held out to him. "I'll keep the power on to the
last, I suppose?"
"Yes, you may as well. If it doesn't keep us away from the Sun it won't
be much use to us in two or three hours."
He left the engine-room and went back to the conning-tower. Zaidie was
still on her knees. Beneath and around them the awful gulf of flame was
broadening and deepening. Mercury was rising higher and growing smaller.
He put the bottle down on the table and waited. Then Zaidie looked up.
Her eyes were clear, and her face was perfectly calm. She rose and put
her arm through his, and said:
"Well, is there any hope, dear? There can't be now, can there? Is that
the morphine?"
"Yes," he replied, slipping his arm beneath hers and round her waist.
"I'm afraid there's not much chance now, little woman. We're using up
the last of the power, and you see----"
As he said this he looked at the thermometer. The mercury had risen from
65 degrees Fahrenheit, the normal temperature of the interior of the
_Astronef_, to 93 degrees, and during the half-minute that he watched it
rose another degree. There was no mistaking such a warning as that. He
had brought two little liqueur glasses in his pocket from the saloon. He
divided the morphine between them, and filled them up with water.
"Not until the last moment, dear," said Zaidie, as he set one of them
before her. "We have no right to do it until then."
"Very well. When the mercury reaches a hundred and fifty. After that it
will go up ten and fifteen degrees at a jump, and we----"
"Yes, at a hundred and fifty," she replied, cutting short a speech she
dared not hear the end of. "I understand. It will be impossible to hope
any more."
Now, side by side, they stood and watched the thermometer.
Ninety-five--ninety-eight--a hundred and three--a hundred and
ten--eighteen--twenty-four--thirty-two--forty-one.
The silent minutes passed, and with each the silver thread--for them the
thread of life--grew, with strange contradiction, longer and longer, and
with every minute it grew more quickly.
A hundred and forty-six.
With his right arm Redgrave drew Zaidie still closer to him. He put out
his left hand and took up the little glass. She did the same.
"Goodbye, dear, till we have slept and wake again!"
"Goodbye, darling, God grant that we may!" But the agony of that last
farewell was more than Zaidie could bear. She looked away at the little
glass in her hand, a hand which even now did not tremble. Then she
raised her eyes again to take one last look at the glory of the stars,
and at the Fate Incarnate in Flame which lay beneath them. Then, even as
the end of the last minute came, a cry broke through her white,
half-parted lips:
"The Earth, the Earth--thank God, the Earth!"
With the hand that held the draught of Lethe--which in another moment
she would have swallowed--she caught at her husband's hand, pulled the
glass out of it, and then with a little sigh she dropped senseless on
the floor of the conning-tower. Redgrave looked for a moment in the
direction that her eyes had taken. A pale, silver-grey crescent, with a
little white spot near it, was rising out of the blackness beyond the
edge of the solar ocean of flame. Home was in sight at last, but would
they reach it--and how?
He picked her up and carried her to their room and laid her on the bed.
Then he went to the medicine chest again, this time for a very different
purpose.
An hour later, they were on the upper deck with their telescopes turned
on to the rapidly growing crescent of the Home-World, which, in its
eternal march through Space, had come into the line of direct attraction
just in time to turn the scale in which the lives of the Space-voyagers
were trembling. The higher it rose, the bigger and broader and brighter
it grew, and, at last, Zaidie--forgetting in her transport of joy all
the perils that were yet to come--sprang to her feet and clapped her
hands, and cried:
"There's America!"
Then she dropped back into her long deck-chair and began a good, hearty,
healthy cry.
EPILOGUE
There is little now to be told that all the world does not already know
as well as it knows the circumstances of Lord and Lady Redgrave's
departure from the Earth, at the beginning of that marvellous voyage,
that desperate plunge into the unknown immensities of Space which began
so happily, and yet with so many grave misgivings in the hearts of their
friends, and which, after passing many perils, the adventurous voyagers
finished even more happily than they had begun.
As I said at the beginning of this narrative the sole purpose of writing
it has been to place before the reading public an account of the
adventures experienced by Lord Redgrave and his beautiful Countess from
the time of their departure from the Earth to the hour of their return
to it. Therefore there is no need to re-tell a tale already told, and
one that has been read and re-read a thousand times. Every one who has
read his or her newspaper from Chamskatska to Cape Horn, and from Alaska
to South Australia, knows how the Commander of the _Astronef_ so nursed
the remains which were left to him of the R. Force after overcoming the
attraction of the Sun, that he was able to steer an oblique course
between the Moon and the Earth, and to counteract what Zaidie called the
all too-loving attraction of the Mother Planet, and, after sixty hours
of agonising suspense, at last re-entered their native atmosphere.
The expenditure of the last few units of the R. Force enabled them to
just clear the summits of the Bolivian Andes, to cross the foothills and
western slopes of Peru, and finally to let the _Astronef_ drop quietly
on to the bosom of the broad Pacific about twenty miles westward of the
Port of Mollendo.
All this time thousands of anxious eyes had been peering through
telescopes every night in quest of the wanderers who must now be
returning if ever they were to return, and a reward of ten thousand
dollars, offered conjointly by the British and United States Governments
for the first authentic tidings of the _Astronef_, was won by a smart
young Californian, who was Assistant Astronomer at the Harvard
University Observatory at Arequipa.
One night when he was on duty watching a lunar occultation, he saw
something sweep across the disc of the full moon just as the captain and
officers of the _St. Louis_ had seen that same something sweep across
the disc of the rising sun. What else could it be if not the _Astronef_?
He rang for another assistant to go on with the occultation, and wired
down to the coast requesting the British Consul at Mollendo to look out
for an arrival from the skies.
Three hours later the gleam of an electric searchlight flickered down
over the huge black cone of the Misti, and by dawn the next morning one
of Her Majesty's cruisers--most appropriately named _Astræa_--attached
to the Pacific Squadron then _en route_ from Lima to Valparaiso, steamed
out westward from Mollendo and found the long, shining hull of the
_Astronef_ waiting quietly on the unrippled rollers of the Pacific, and
Lord and Lady Redgrave having breakfast in the deck-chamber.
Compliments and congratulations having been duly exchanged, she was
taken in tow by the cruiser, and so reached Valparaiso. Here she lay for
a few days while the wires of the world were being kept hot with
telegraphic accounts of her return to Earth, and while her Commander,
with the assistance of the officers of the National Laboratory, was
replenishing his stock of the R. Fluid from the chemicals which they had
placed at his disposal.
It would, of course, have been quite possible for him and Zaidie to have
taken steamer northward to Panama, crossed the Isthmus, and returned to
New York and Washington _viâ_ Jamaica. The British Admiral even offered
to place his fastest cruiser at their disposal for a run to San
Francisco, whence the Overland Limited would have landed them in New
York in four days and a half, but Zaidie vetoed this as quickly as she
had done the other proposition. If she had her way the _Astronef_ should
go back to Washington as she had left it, by means of her own motive
force, and so, of course, it came to pass.
Even Murgatroyd's grim and homely features seemed irradiated by a glow
of what he afterwards thought unholy pride when he once more stood by
his levers and heard the familiar signal coming from the conning-tower.
"A tenth."
And then--"Stand by steering-gear."
The next moment there was another tinkle in the engine-room.
Redgrave, standing with Zaidie in the conning-tower, moved the
power-wheel through ten degrees, and then to the amazement of tens of
thousands of spectators, the hull of the _Astronef_ rose perpendicularly
from the waters of the Bay. The British Squadron and a detachment of the
Chilian fleet thundered out a salute which was answered a few moments
later by the shore batteries, Redgrave went down into the deck-chamber
and fired twenty-one shots from one of the Maxim-Nordenfelts--the same
with which he had mown down the crowds of Martians in the square of
their great city a hundred and thirty million miles away, and while he
was doing this Zaidie in the conning-tower ran the White Ensign up to
the top of the flagstaff.
Then the glass doors were closed again, the propellers began to revolve
at their utmost speed, and the Space-Navigator with one tremendous leap
cleared the double chain of the Andes and vanished to the
north-eastward.
To describe the reception of Lord and Lady Redgrave when the _Astronef_
dropped a few hours later, on to the very spot in front of the steps of
the Capitol at Washington from which she had risen just four months
before, would only be to repeat what has already been told in the Press
of the world, and especially of the United States, with a far more
luxuriant wealth of detail than could possibly be emulated here. Suffice
it to say that the first human form that Zaidie embraced after her long
wanderings was that of Mrs. Van Stuyler, whom the President of the
United States had escorted to the gangway.
The most marvellous of human adventures become commonplace by
repetition, and Mrs. Van Stuyler had already spent nearly a fortnight
devouring every item, whether of fact or fancy, with which the American
Press had embroidered the adventures of the _Astronef_ and her crew. And
so when the first embracings and emotions were over, all she could find
to say was:
"Well, Zaidie dear, and how did you enjoy it, after all?"
"It was just gorgeous, Mrs. Van, and if there was a more gorgeous word
than that in the American language I'd use it," replied Zaidie, with
another hug, "Why didn't you come? You'd have been--well no, perhaps I'd
better not say what you would have been. But just think of it, or try
to--A honeymoon trip of over two thousand million miles, and
back--safe--thank God!"
As she said this, Zaidie threw her arm over Mrs. Van Stuyler's shoulder,
and drew her away towards the forward end of the deck-chamber. At the
same moment the President's hand met Lord Redgrave's in a long, strong
grip. They didn't say anything just then. Men seldom do under such
circumstances.