It was Brett who began their narrative; began it with the slow,
careful, precise phrasing of the scientist anxious to avoid error of
memory; to be exact of every fact and detail. On his lap he held a book
of notes, and another book of the many dial recordings. He consulted it.
"Our recorded time of starting was four minutes past midnight. Sixteen
days ago, wasn't it, Father? Sixteen!"
He gave a queer laugh but did not comment upon his thoughts. "I had
determined to start slowly. Martt would have rushed us, but I thought
that caution was best until we were quite sure of the workings of these
mechanisms new to us.
"I did not record our passing above the earth's atmosphere. But the
vehicle was inordinately hot from the friction of our passage. Perhaps
I took it too fast--at all events we did not bother with refrigeration
since in Space we would so soon need the heaters. We sat sweltering at
the main instrument table with the dials before us.
"I think, Father, that I followed your instructions carefully. The
dials were all set and operating. The size-dials stood motionless at
unit 1. Our relative Time-dials were motionless at the original unit of
earth Time; and the earth dial-chronometers ticked off the passing of
your seconds and minutes. On the Space-dials--when first I chanced to
notice them--we had gone some 900 miles. Our velocity then had picked
up to 1,500 miles an hour and was swiftly accelerating. The Time was 1
a.m.
"It is slow getting through the atmosphere, but now we were fairly on
our way. As you suggested, Father, I was heading just a point off Mars
where I could hold Jupiter and Saturn almost in a line ahead of us.
They were all there visible through our floor window--we had turned
over and were falling toward them. I was using a fraction only of the
earth's repulsion, and holding steady with the selective attraction of
Mars and the star-field behind it."
"We saw your aural ray," Martt put in. He was earnestly intent upon
Brett's narrative. "We saw it--I saw it--through the spectrometer. The
swing of it was apparent even at that near distance. And we saw the
Martian Mail coming in--they landed in Eurasia that night, I suppose.
Say, they move in a hurry, don't they? And stop in a hurry when they
get down close."
Brett went on: "We were still within the lower cone of the earth's
shadow. But presently we emerged and came into the sunlight. The
brilliant blackness of Space; and the cold by now had penetrated so
that very soon we were glad enough to use the heaters.
"You know the details of a Martian voyage, Father. And you, Frank? This
was no different except that having no necessity of stopping I reached
a greater velocity than they generally obtain. A forty-hour trip, isn't
it, Frank?"
"There's nearly always one of the minimum-distance trips at about
that," I answered. "But you had some sixty million miles for yours.
That's a lot longer than a minimum distance."
He nodded. "Yes. We came abreast of Mars--I suppose about a million
miles away. Our Space-dials showed about sixty-two million miles
traveled. We had been gone from you thirty-nine hours. Our average
velocity had been something over a million and a half miles an hour,
and with steadily increasing acceleration had reached then nearly three
million an hour.
"That was as quick a trip as you anticipated, Father? But even so, we
found it irksome. We alternated at the instrument board. Martt prepared
most of the meals--beyond that and sleeping there was little to do.
Except to watch for asteroids; but the mails have reported the region
through there remarkably free of them this season. We saw none inside
the Martian orbit closer than a million miles, which to such a low
velocity as ours held no danger."