The Moon Era
By JACK WILLIAMSON
By the author of "The Alien Intelligence,"
"Twelve Hours to Live," etc., etc.,
_Illustration by Paul_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Wonder Stories February 1932.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Illustration: JACK WILLIAMSON]
_Jack Williamson has properly been called a first-rate writer of
colorful tales. His "Alien Intelligence" published in the early
days of_ SCIENCE WONDER STORIES _placed him, in the estimation
of our readers, in the class of A. Merrit and other masters. The
present story carries on Mr. Williamson's gripping portrayal of the
possibilities of science on other worlds._
_It is quite within reason that our moon, now dead and barren, was
once the scene of flourishing life. Although no water now exists
there, nor air shields from the moon the intense solar rays, in
another age the moon may have been bountifully endowed by nature.
If that is true, then the picture of the Eternal Ones drawn by
our author is certainly a colorful portrayal of what the lunar
civilization may have been like. And the picture of the Mother,
and her exciting and bizarre adventures with our hero, are, in our
opinion, among some of the best drawn by any author of science
fiction._
* * * * *
We were seated at dinner in the long dining room of my uncle's Long
Island mansion. There was glistening silver plate, and the meal had
been served with a formality to which I was unaccustomed. I was ill
at ease, though my uncle and I sat alone at the table. The business
of eating, without committing an egregious blunder before the several
servants, took all my attention.
It was the first time I had ever seen my uncle, Enfield Conway. A tall
man, stiffly erect, dressed severely in black. His face, though lean,
was not emaciated as is usual at his age of seventy years. His hair,
though almost perfectly white, was abundant, parted on the side. His
eyes were blue, and strong; he wore no glasses.
A uniformed chauffeur had met me at the station, in the afternoon. The
butler had sent an entirely unnecessary valet to my luxurious room. I
had not met my uncle until he came down to the dining room.
"I suppose, Stephen, you are wondering why I sent for you," he said in
his precise manner, when the servants had carried away the last course,
leaving cigars, and a bottle of mineral water for him.
I nodded. I had been instructor of history in a small high school
in Texas, where his telegram had reached me. There had been no
explanation; merely a summons to Long Island.
"You are aware that some of my patents have been quite profitable."
Again I nodded. "The evidence surrounds me."
"Stephen, my fortune amounts to upwards of three and a half million.
How should you like to be my heir?"
"Why, sir--I should not refuse. I'd like very much to be."
"You can, if you wish, earn that fortune. And fifty thousand a year
while I live."
I pushed back the chair and rose to my feet in excitement. Such riches
were beyond my dreams! I felt myself trembling.
"Anything--" I stammered. "I'll do anything you say, to earn that! It
means--"
"Wait," he said, looking at me calmly. "You don't know yet what I
require. Don't commit yourself too soon."
"What is it?" I asked, in a quivering voice.
"Stephen, I have been working in my private laboratory here for eleven
years. I have been building a machine. The best of my brains have gone
into that machine. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. The efforts of
able engineers and skilled mechanics.
"Now the machine is finished. It is to be tested. The engineers who
worked with me refused to try the machine. They insist that it is very
dangerous.
"And I am too old to make the trial. It will take a young man, with
strength, endurance, and courage.
"You are young, Stephen. You look vigorous enough. I suppose your
health is good? A sound heart? That's the main thing."
"I think so," I told him. "I've been coaching the Midland football
team. And it isn't many years since I was playing college football,
myself."
"And you have no dependents?"
"None.--But what is this machine?"
"I will show you. Come."
He rose, agilely enough for one of his seventy years, and led the way
from the long room. Through several magnificent rooms of the big house.
Out into the wide, landscaped grounds, beautiful and still in the
moonlight.
I followed silently. My brain was confusion. A whirl of mad thought.
All this wealth whose evidence surrounded me might be my own! I cared
nothing for luxury, for money itself. But the fortune would mean
freedom from the thankless toil of pedagogy. Books. Travel. Why I could
see with my own eyes the scenes of history's dramatic moments! Finance
research expeditions of my own! Delve with my own hands for the secrets
of Egypt's sands, uncover the age-old enigmas of ruined mounds that
once were proud cities of the East!
We approached a rough building,--resembling an airplane hangar,--of
galvanized iron, which glistened like silver in the rays of the full
moon.
Without speaking, Uncle Enfield produced a key from his pocket,
unlocked the heavy padlock on the door. He entered the building,
switching on electric lights inside it.
"Come in," he said. "Here it is. I'll explain it as well as I can."
* * * * *
I walked through the narrow doorway and uttered an involuntary
exclamation of surprise at sight of the huge machine that rested upon
the clean concrete floor.
Two huge disks of copper, with a cylinder of bright, chromium-plated
metal between them. Its shape vaguely suggested that of an ordinary
spool of adhesive plaster, from which a little has been used--the
polished cylinder, which was of smaller diameter than the disks, took
the place of the roll of plaster.
The lower of the massive disks rested on the concrete floor. Its
diameter was about twenty feet. The cylinder above it was about sixteen
feet in diameter, and eight feet high. The copper disk above was the
same size as the lower one.
Small round windows stared from the riveted metal plates forming the
cylinder. The whole was like a building, it burst on me. A circular
room with bright metal walls. Copper floor and copper roof projecting
beyond those walls.
My uncle walked to the other side of this astounding mechanism. He
turned a projecting knob. An oval door, four feet high, swung inward
in the curving wall. Four inches thick. Of plated steel. Fitting very
tightly against cushions of rubber.
My uncle climbed through the door, into the dark interior. I followed
with a growing sense of wonder and excitement. I groped toward him
through the darkness. Then I heard the click of a switch, and lights
flashed on within the round chamber.
I gazed about me in astonishment.
Walls, floor, and ceiling were covered with soft, white fiber. The
little room was crowded with apparatus. Clamped against one white
wall was a row of the tall steel flasks in which commercial oxygen is
compressed. Across the room was a bank of storage batteries. The walls
were hung with numerous instruments, all clamped neatly in place.
Sextants. Compasses. Pressure gauges. Numerous dials whose functions
were not apparent. Cooking utensils. An automatic pistol. Cameras.
Telescopes. Binoculars.
In the center of the room stood a table or cabinet, with switches,
dials, and levers upon its top. A heavy cable, apparently of aluminum,
ran from it to the ceiling.
I was gazing about in bewilderment. "I don't understand all this--" I
began.
"Naturally," said my uncle. "It is quite a novel invention. Even the
engineers who built it did not understand it. I confess that the theory
of it is yet beyond me. But what happens is quite simple.
"Eleven years ago, Steven, I discovered a new phenomenon. I had
happened to charge two parallel copper plates, whose distances apart
had a certain very definite relation to their combined masses, with a
high tension current at a certain frequency.
"The plates, Stephen, were in some way--how, I do not pretend to
understand--cut out of the earth's gravitational field. Insulated from
gravity. The effect extended to any object placed between them. By a
slight variation of the current's strength, I was able to increase the
repulsion, until the plates pulled upward with a force approximately
equal to their own weight.
"My efforts to discover the reason for this phenomenon--it is referred
to in my notes as the Conway Effect--have not been successful. But I
have built this machine to make a practical application of it. Now that
it is finished, the four engineers who helped design it have deserted.
They refused to assist with any trials."
"Why?" I asked.
"Muller, who had the construction in charge, somehow came to the
conclusion that the suspension or reversal of gravity was due to motion
in a fourth dimension. He claimed that he had experimental proof of
his theory, by building models of the device, setting the dials, and
causing them to vanish. I would have none of it. But the other men
seemed to accept his ideas. At any rate, they refused with him to have
any part in the tests. They thought they would vanish, like Muller says
his models did, and not come back."
"The thing is supposed to rise above the ground?" I asked.
"Quite so." My uncle smiled. "When the force of gravitation is merely
suspended, it should fly off the earth at a tangent, due to the diurnal
rotation. This initial velocity, which in these latitudes, amounts to
considerably less than one thousand miles per hour, can be built up at
will, by reversing gravitation, and falling away from the earth."
"_Falling away from the earth!_" I was staggered. "And where is one to
fall?"
"This machine was designed for a trip to the moon. At the beginning of
the voyage, gravitation will be merely cut out, allowing the machine to
fly off on a tangent, toward the point of intersection with the moon's
orbit. Safely beyond the atmosphere, repulsion can be used to build up
the acceleration. Within the gravitational sphere of the moon, positive
gravitation can be utilized further to increase the speed. And reversed
gravitation to retard the velocity, to make possible a safe landing.
The return will be made in the same manner."
I was staring at him blankly. A trip to the moon seemed insane, beyond
reason. Especially for a professor of history, with only a modicum of
scientific knowledge. And it must be dangerous, if those engineers--.
But three million--what dangers would I not face for such a fortune?
"Everything has been done," he went on, "to insure the comfort
and safety of the passenger. The walls are insulated with a fiber
composition especially worked out to afford protection from the cold of
space, and from the unshielded radiation of the sun. The steel armor is
strong enough not only to hold the necessary air pressure, but to stop
any ordinary meteoric particles.
"You notice the oxygen cylinders, for maintaining that essential
element in the air. There is automatic apparatus for purifying it.
It is pumped through caustic soda to absorb the carbon dioxide, and
through refrigerator tubes to condense the excess moisture.
"The batteries, besides energizing the plates, are amply powerful to
supply lights and heat for cooking.
"That, I believe, fairly outlines the machine and the projected voyage.
Now it is up to you. Take time to consider it fully. Ask me any
questions you wish."
* * * * *
He sat down deliberately in the large, cushioned chair, beside the
central table, which was evidently intended for the operator. He stared
at me alertly, with calm blue eyes.
I was extremely agitated. My knees had a weak feeling, so that I
desired to sit down also; though I was so nervous that I kept striding
back and forth across the resilient white fiber of the floor.
Three millions! It would mean so much! Books, magazines, maps--I should
have to economize no longer. Years--all my life, if I wished--abroad.
The tombs of Egypt. The sand-covered cities of the Gobi. My theory that
mankind originated in South Africa. All those puzzles that I had longed
to be able to study. Stonehenge! Angkor! Easter Island!
But the adventure seemed madness. A voyage to the moon! In a craft
condemned by the very engineers that had built it. To be hurled away
from the earth at speeds no man had attained before. To face unknown
perils of space. Dangers beyond guessing. Hurtling meteors. The
all-penetrating cosmic ray. The burning heat of the sun. The absolute
zero. What, beyond speculation and theory, did men know of space? I was
no astronomer; how was I to cope with the emergencies that might rise?
"How long will it take?" I demanded suddenly.
My uncle smiled a little. "Glad you are taking it seriously," he said.
"The duration of the voyage depends on the speed you make, of course.
A week each way is a conservative estimate. And perhaps two or three
days on the moon. To take notes. Photograph it. Move around a little,
if possible; land in several different places. There is oxygen and
concentrated food to last six months. But a fortnight should see you
nearly back. I'll go over the charts and calculations with you."
"Can I leave the machine on the moon?"
"No. No atmosphere. And it would be too hot in the day, too cold at
night. Of course an insulated suit and oxygen mask might be devised.
Something like diving armor. But I haven't worked at that. You will be
expected just to take a few pictures, be prepared to describe what you
have seen."
I continued to pace the floor, pausing sometimes to examine some piece
of apparatus. How would it feel, I wondered, to be shut up in here?
Drifting in space. Far from the world of my birth. Alone. In silence.
Entombed. Would it not drive me mad?
My uncle rose suddenly from the chair.
"Sleep on it, Stephen," he advised. "See how you feel in the morning.
Or take longer if you wish."
He switched off the light in the machine. Led the way out into the
shed. And from it into the brilliant moonlight that flooded the wide,
magnificent grounds about the great house that would be one of the
prizes of this mad adventure.
As he was locking the shed, I gazed up at the moon.
Broad, bright disk. Silvery, mottled. Extinguishing the stars with
argent splendor. And all at once it came over me--the desire to
penetrate the enigmatic mystery of this companion world, that men have
watched since the race began.
What an adventure? To be the first human to tread this silver planet.
To be the first to solve its age-old riddles. Why think of Angkor, or
Stonehenge, of Luxor and Karnak, when I might win the secrets of the
moon?
Even if death came, what did it matter against the call of this
adventure? Many men would trade their lives eagerly for such a chance.
Suddenly I was strong. All weakness had left me. All fear and doubt.
A few moments before I had been tired, wishing to sit down. Now vast
energy filled me. I was conscious of an extraordinary elation. Swiftly
I turned to my uncle.
"Let's go back," I said. "Show me as much about it as you can tonight.
I am going."
He gripped my hand tightly, without a word, before he turned back to
the lock.
CHAPTER II
Toward the Moon
It was in the second week, after that sudden decision came to me, that
I started. At the end my uncle became a little alarmed, and tried to
persuade me to stay longer, to make more elaborate preparations. I
believe that he was secretly becoming fond of me, despite his brisk
precise manner. I think he took the opinion of his engineers seriously
enough to consider my return very uncertain.
But I could see no reason for longer delay. The operation of the
machine was simple; he had explained it quite fully.
There was a switch to close, to send current from the batteries through
the coils that raised it to the potential necessary to energize the
copper disks. And a large rheostat that controlled the force, from a
slight decrease in gravity, to a complete reversal.
The auxiliary apparatus, for control of temperature and atmosphere, was
largely automatic. And not beyond my limited mechanical comprehension.
I was certain that I should be able to make any necessary repairs or
adjustments.
Now I was filled with the greatest haste to undertake the adventure. No
doubt or hesitation had troubled me since the moment of the decision. I
felt only a longing to be sweeping away from the earth. To view scenes
that the ages had kept hidden from human eyes; to tread the world that
has always been the symbol of the unattainable.
My uncle recalled one of the engineers, a sallow young fellow named
Gorton. On the second morning, to supplement my uncle's instruction he
went over the machine again, showing me the function of every part.
Before he left, he warned me.
"If you are idiot enough to get in that darned contraption, and turn on
the power," he told me, "you'll never come back. Muller said so. And
he proved it. So long as the batteries and coil are outside the field
of force between the plates, the plates act according to schedule, and
rise up in the air.
"But Muller made self-contained models. With the battery and all
inside. And they didn't rise up. They went out! Vanished. Just like
that!" He snapped his fingers.
"Muller said the things moved along another dimension, right out of
our world. And he ought to know. String of degrees a mile long. Into
another dimension. No telling what sort of hell you'll blunder into."
I thanked the man. But his warnings only increased my eagerness. I was
about to tear aside the veil of the unknown. What if I did blunder into
new worlds? Might they not yield rewards of knowledge richer than those
of the barren moon? I might be a new Columbus, a greater Balboa.
I slept a few hours in the afternoon, after Gorton had gone. I felt
no conscious need of slumber, but my uncle insisted upon it. And to my
surprise, I fell soundly asleep, almost as soon as I lay down.
At sunset, we went down again to the shed in which the machine was
housed. My uncle started a motor, which opened the roof like a pair of
enormous doors, by means of pulleys and cables. The red light of the
evening sky streamed down upon the machine.
We made a final inspection of all the apparatus. My uncle explained
again the charts and instruments that I was to use in navigating space.
Finally he questioned me for an hour, making me explain the various
parts of the machine, correcting any error.
I was not to start until nearly midnight.
We returned to the house, where an elaborate dinner was waiting. I ate
almost absently, hardly noticing the servants of whom I had been so
conscious upon my arrival. My uncle was full of conversation. Talking
of his own life, and asking me many questions about my own, and about
my father, whom he had seen last when they were boys. My mind was upon
the adventure before me; I could answer him only disjointedly. But I
was aware that he had taken a real liking for me; I was not surprised
at his request that I postpone the departure.
At last we went back down to the machine. The white moon was high; its
soft radiance bathed the gleaming machine, through the opened roof. I
stared up at its bright disk. Was it possible that in a short week I
should be there, looking back upon the earth? It seemed madness! But
the madness of glorious adventure!
Without hesitation, I clambered through the oval door. A last time my
uncle wrung my hand. He had tears in his eyes. And his voice was a
little husky.
"I want you to come back, Stephen."
I swung the door into its cushioned seat, upon massive hinges,
tightened the screws that were to hold it. A final glance about the
white-walled interior of the machine. All was in order. The chronometer
by the wall, ticking steadily, told me that the moment had come.
My uncle's anxious face was pressed against one of the ports. I smiled
at him. Waved. His hand moved across the port. He left the shed.
I dropped into the big chair beside the table, reached for the switch.
With my fingers upon the button, I hesitated the merest second. Was
there anything else? Anything neglected? Anything I had yet to do on
earth? Was I ready to die, if so I must?
The deep, vibrant hum of the coils, beneath the table, answered the
pressure of my finger. I took the handle of the rheostat, swung it to
the zero mark, where gravitation was to be cut off completely.
My sensation was exactly as if the chair, the floor, had fallen from
under me. The same sensation that one feels when an elevator drops very
abruptly. Almost I floated out of the chair. I had to grasp at the arm
of it to stay within it.
For a few moments I experienced nauseating vertigo. The white crowded
room seemed to spin about me. To drop away endlessly beneath me. Sick,
helpless, miserable, I clung weakly to the great chair. Falling ...
falling ... falling. Would I never strike bottom?
* * * * *
Then I realized, with relief, that the sensation was due merely to the
absence of gravity's familiar pull. The machine had worked! My last,
lingering doubt was killed. Strange elation filled me.
I was flying away from the earth. Flying.
The thought seemed to work a miracle of change in my feelings. The
dreadful, dizzy nausea gave way to a feeling of exhilaration. Of
lightness. I was filled with a sense of power and well-being, such as I
had never before experienced.
I left the great chair, floated rather than walked to one of the
windows.
Already I was high in the air. So high that the moon-lit earth was a
dim and misty plain before me. I could see many lights; the westward
sky was aglow, above New York. But already I was unable to pick out the
lights at my uncle's mansion.
The machine had risen through the opened roof of the shed. It was
driving out into space, as it had been planned to do! The adventure was
succeeding.
As I watched, the earth sank visibly. Became a great concave bowl of
misty silver. Expanded slowly, as the minutes went by. And became
suddenly convex. A huge dark sphere, washed with pale gray light.
Presently, after an hour, when the dials showed that I was beyond the
faintest trace of atmosphere, I returned to the table and increased the
power, moving the rheostat to the last contact. I looked at charts and
chronometer. According to my uncle's calculations, four hours at this
acceleration were required, before the controls were set again.
I returned to the window and stared in amazement at the earth, that I
had left vast and silver gray and motionless.
It was spinning madly, backward!
The continents seemed to race beneath me--I was now high enough to see
a vast section of the globe. Asia. North America. Europe. Asia again.
In seconds.
It was madness! The earth spinning in a few moments, instead of the
usual twenty-four hours. And turning backward! But I could not doubt my
eyes. Even as I watched, the planet seemed to spin faster. Ever faster!
The continental outlines merged into dim indistinctness.
I looked away from the mad earth, in bewilderment. The firmament was
very black. And the very stars were creeping about it, with visible
motions!
Then the sun came into view, plunging across the sky like a flaming
comet. It swung supernally across my field of vision, vanished.
Appeared again. And again. Its motion became ever swifter.
What was the meaning of such an apparent revolution of the sun about
the sky? It meant, I knew, that earth and moon had swung about the
star. That a year had passed! But were years going by as fast as my
chronometer ticked off the seconds?
Another strange thing. I could recognize the constellations of the
Zodiac, through which the sun was plunging. And it was going backward!
As the earth was spinning backward!
I moved to another window, searched for the moon, my goal. It hung
still among spinning stars. But in its light there was a flicker,
far more rapid than the flashing of the sun across the wild heavens.
I wondered, then knew that I saw the waxing and waning of the moon.
Months, passing so swiftly that soon the flicker became a gray blur.
The flashing past of the sun became more frequent. Until it was a
strange belt of flame about the strange heavens, in which the stars
crept and moved like living things.
A universe gone mad! Suns and planets spinning helpless in the might of
a cosmic storm! The machine from which I watched the only sane thing in
a runaway cosmos!
Then reason came to my rescue.
Earth, moon, sun, and stars could not all be mad. The trouble was with
_myself_! My perceptions had changed. The machine--
Slowly it came to me, until I knew I had grasped the truth.
Time, true time, is measured by the movements of the heavenly bodies.
Our day is the time of earth's rotation on its axis. Our year the
period of its revolution about the sun.
Those intervals had become crowded so thick in my perception that they
were indistinguishable. Then countless years were spinning past, while
I hung still in space!
Incredible! But the conclusion was inevitable.
And the apparent motion of earth and sun had been backward.
That meant--and the thought was staggering--that the ages were reeling
backward. That I was plunging at an incalculable rate into the past.
Vaguely I recalled magazine articles that I had read, upon the nature
of space and time. A lecture. The subject had fascinated me, though I
had only a layman's knowledge of it.
The lecturer had defined our universe in terms of space-time. A
four-dimensional "continuum." Time was a fourth dimension, he had
said. An extension as real as the three of what we call space, and not
completely distinguishable from them. A direction in which motion would
carry one into the past, or into the future.
All memory, he had said, is a groping back along this dimension, at
right angles to each of the three of space. Dreams, vivid memories,
he insisted, carry one's consciousness in reality back along this
dimension, until the body, swept relentlessly along the stream of time,
drags it forward again.
* * * * *
Then I recalled what my uncle had told me of the refusal of his
engineers to try the machine. Recalled Gorton's warning. Muller, they
both had told me, had declared that the machine would move along a
fourth dimension, out of our world. He had made models of the machine,
and they had vanished when the power was turned on.
Now I knew that Muller was right. His models had vanished because they
had been carried into the past. Had not continued to exist in the
present time.
And now I was moving along that fourth dimension. The dimension of
time. And very swiftly, for the years went past too fast for counting.
The reversal of gravitation, it came to me, must be some effect of this
change of direction in time. But I am not a scientist, I can explain
the "Conway Effect" no better than my uncle, for all the wonders that
it has brought into my life.
At first it was horribly strange and terrifying.
After I had thought out my explanation of the mad antics of the earth
and sun and moon, and of the hurrying stars, I was, however, no longer
frightened. I gazed out through my small round ports at the melting
firmament with some degree of equanimity.
I continued to watch the charts my uncle had prepared, and to make
adjustments of the rheostat when they were indicated by the chronometer.
And presently, feeling hungry, I toasted biscuits on the electric
stove, cut off a generous slice of a cheese that I found in the
supplies, opened a vacuum bottle of steaming chocolate, and made a
hearty and very satisfactory meal.
When I had finished, the aspect of the space about me was unchanged.
Crawling stars, already forming themselves into constellations the
most of which were unfamiliar. The sun a broad belt of burning gold,
counting off the years too swiftly for the eye to follow. A living
flame that girdled the firmament. The earth was a huge gray sphere,
spinning so swiftly behind me that no detail was visible.
And even the moon, hanging in space ahead, was turning slowly. No
longer was the same familiar face toward me, and toward the earth.
Already I had reached a point in past time at which the moon was
turning on its axis more rapidly than it revolved about the earth. The
tidal drag had not yet completely stopped the moon's apparent rotation.
And if already the moon was turning, what would it be when I reached
it? Hurtling into the past as I was, would I see oceans cover its dry
sea-floors? Would I see an atmosphere soften the harsh outlines of its
rugged mountains? Would I see life, vegetation, spread over its plains?
Was I to witness the rejuvenation of an aged world?
It seemed fantastic. But it was taking place. The speed of rotation
slowly increased as I watched.
The hours slipped past.
I became heavy with sleep. The two days before the departure had not
been easy. I had worked day and night to familiarize myself with the
machine's operation. The nervous strain had been exhausting. The
amazing incidents of the voyage had kept me tense, sapped my strength.
The chart told me that no change was to be made in the controls for
many hours. I inspected the gauges which showed the condition of the
atmosphere in the chamber. Oxygen content, humidity, temperature, were
correct. The air smelled sweet and clean. I completed the rounds, found
everything in order.
I adjusted the big chair to a reclining position, and threw myself upon
it. For hours I slept, waking at intervals to make a tour of inspection.
Sometimes, in the following days, I wondered if I should be able to
go back. Muller's models had carried no operator, of course to start
them on the flight back through time to the starting point. Would I be
able to reverse the time-flight? If I followed the directions on the
operating chart, on the flight back, would I be flung forward through
the ages, back to my own era?
I wondered. But the speculation brought forth no conclusion. A strange,
unique experience was mine. Glorious adventure. Death was not too high
a price to pay.
It did not even occur to me to attempt to turn back earthward, when I
found that I was slipping through time. And I did not have sufficient
control of the machine to have done so, had I wished. Dependent upon
the chart for navigating instructions, I could not have plotted a
return path from the midway point. And I knew no way to stop my flight,
except by using the repulsion of the moon's reversed gravitation.
My flight lasted six days, by the chronometer.
Long before the end, the moon was spinning very swiftly. And the edges
of its outline had become hazy, so that I knew it had an atmosphere.
I followed the charted directions, until I was in the upper layers of
that atmosphere. The moon's surface was sliding very rapidly beneath
me, and the atmosphere with it, due to the swift rotation of the
satellite. Consequently, fierce winds screamed about the machine.
I hung in the atmosphere, merely using enough power to balance the
moon's comparatively feeble gravitational pull, until the pressure of
that rushing wind swept me with it. The mistily indistinct surface
slowed, became motionless beneath me.
With power decreased still further, I settled slowly, watching alertly
through the ports.
A towering, crimson mountain loomed above the mists below. I dropped
toward it, increasing the power a little. At last I hovered motionless
above a narrow, irregular plateau, near the peak, that seemed covered
with soft scarlet moss.
Slowly I cut down the power. With hardly a shock, the machine settled
in the moss.
I was on the moon! The first of my race to set foot upon an alien
planet! What adventures might await me?