The Roof of Waters
The next thing I knew I was lying on the floor, with a torrent of icy
water falling on my face. I sat up, sputtering. Sam was bending over me
with a relieved grin on his face.
"Care for any more?" he asked, emptying the pail.
"That's quite enough, thanks," I sputtered. "Where are we?"
"Right here."
"Talk sense," I pleaded, trying to get up, and rubbing the bump in my
head.
"Really, I hardly know," he said, soberly. "It's rather queer. We're
afloat on a smooth, warm sea! The sky is red!"
I stared at him stupidly.
"It's a good thing we had the rockets! If we hadn't used them, we'd
have hit this water like a concrete pavement!"
"Queer, you say! My eye! We're both crazy! It can't be!"
"You might get up and see for yourself."
"You say we've fallen through the Pacific and into another sea?"
"I only know what I can see."
"We did seem to come out of the water into a red mist."
"So it seemed."
"But the Pacific Ocean overhead! We must have come through six miles of
water! And water won't float on air!"
"We have several interesting questions before us."
I got uncertainly to my feet, walked past the calm old scientist, and
climbed out on the narrow deck. Indeed it was a weird and incredible
sight that met my eyes. Overhead arched a great dome of crimson fire.
In all directions it reached down to the dark, warm sea on which we
were floating. Nothing in sight but red sky and dark waves! There was a
light, hot breeze, but the strange sea was very still. Its color was a
blue-black, splashed weirdly with the reflected light of the crimson
sky. It stretched out on every hand to where the red sky rose, utterly
lifeless--lonely and dead.
We had fallen into an unsuspected and incredible world! Miles of water
lay between us and our fellow men. Suddenly I felt an absurdly great
loneliness, a vast homesickness for the world we had left--even if my
fellow men had never meant very much to me! I felt an ineffably intense
desire for the sunshine, for blue skies and green plains, and for the
busy, cheerful cities of men! In fact, I almost burst into tears.
It was not so much that I was afraid. But the place seemed so strange,
that even after I was dead my soul could not find a way out!
If there had been a rock, or an island to break the monotony of the
ghostly, silent sea, it would not have been so bad. But there were
none. The strange dark desert of waters stretched out as far as my eye
could reach! The eerie, scarlet radiation of the sky beat down with
intense heat, and the wind was damp and sultry.
Abruptly Sam stepped out beside me. There was almost a grin on
his lean, tanned face, and he looked somehow very confident and
resourceful. I felt a great wave of faith in him and in the wonderful
machine beneath our feet, rocking silently in the strange, smooth sea.
Impulsively I reached out my hand to him, and he took it with a smile.
"I know how you feel, Mel. But we're still kicking!"
"But the ocean?" I asked again. "What could hold it up?"
"I've been doing some pretty stiff thinking along that line. I have a
theory that might help you, even if I have missed the point. You know
we came through the red gas that makes the curious sky we see. The gas
was just below the water. It's evidently radioactive, or it wouldn't be
luminous. Its emanations might change the gravity of the water above!"
"Negative gravity or levitation?"
"Something of the kind. You know that science has held for a long time
that there is no reason, _per se_, to doubt the existence of substances
that would repel instead of attracting one another. In fact, the mutual
repulsion of the like poles of a magnet is, in a way, an illustration
of that very thing. Even assuming the existence of substances of
negative gravity, they would not be found on the surface of the earth,
for they would escape into space as fast as liberated. The phlogiston
of the old alchemists, by the way, was supposed to be such a substance.
"But suppose the gravity of the water is negatived by the gas. Water,
you know, has the property of becoming radioactive after it has been
exposed to radium emanations, and it is logical enough for it to assume
the qualities of the gas. The water next to the gas may support that
above."
"But it looks as if the gas would bubble out, like air under water," I
said.
"That was the principal objection to the theory. But we know from our
pressure readings that the water is not resting heavily on the gas.
If it is supported by the negative gravity of its lower stratum, the
equilibrium is very delicate, but it would be naturally maintained.
"Suppose the roof of water is lifted. The gas and atmosphere below,
being given more room, would expand. Consequently the gas would be
brought less intimately into contact with the water, the negativing
effect would be reduced, and the balance would be restored. Conversely,
a sinking would compress the gas, increase its effect, and bring back
the balance. Even if the water sank in one place and was lifted in
another, the difference in the density of the gas at various altitudes
would maintain the equilibrium."
"Yes. Yes, I believe I see. A thousand thanks! It makes me feel a
lot better to see how it could be," I said, admiring the wonderful
readiness with which he had formulated his theory. "But can you say how
the gas came to be here, and how there happens to be breathable air
beneath it?"
"Both might have been manufactured by the intelligences we have
come to investigate. More likely, however, the gas comes from the
disintegration of the radium in the earth, and has been rising out of
fissures in the ocean floor and collecting here for ages. The oxygen
of the air may have come from the decomposition of rocks--the earth's
crust is nearly fifty per cent oxygen. This place may be as old as the
sea. That alien power may have been growing up in here through all the
ages that man has been developing outside!"
"You think there may be living things here?"
"No reason why not. In fact, this is the logical habitat for your Green
Girl. Red and green are complementary colors. If there are people
here, green would be the natural color for the protective pigmentation
against this red light!"