_WHEELING ON THE BIG RING OF SATURN_
"Hadn't we better go a little higher?" asked Jimmieboy. "There's a lot
of these tall steeples about here, and it wouldn't be any fun if we
pricked a hole in one of these tires on a weather vane."
"We are going higher all the time," said Bikey. "There isn't a steeple
in the world can touch us now. What we want to keep away from now are
eagles and snow clad Alps."
"Ho! snow clad Alps," laughed Jimmieboy. "There aren't any Alps in
America, they're all in Europe."
"Well, where are you? You don't suppose we've been standing still all
this time, do you? If you'd studied your geography lessons as well as
you ought to you'd be able to tell one country from another. You are
wheeling directly over France now. In ten minutes we'll be over Germany,
and in fifteen, if you turned to the south, you'd simply graze the top
of Mont Blanc."
"Let's," said Jimmieboy. "I want to see a glazier."
"A what?" asked Bikey.
"A glazier," answered Jimmieboy. "It's a big slide."
"Oh, you mean a glacier," said Bikey, shaking all over with laughter. "I
thought you meant a man to put in a pane of glass, and it struck me that
Mont Blanc was a curious place to go looking for one. Shall we turn
south?"
"If you don't mind," said Jimmieboy. "Seems to me we might coast down
Mont Blanc, and have a pretty good time of it."
"Oh, if that's what you're after, I won't do it," said Bikey. "Coasting
isn't a good thing for beginners like you, particularly on the Alps.
Take a hill of your own size. Furthermore, we haven't come out to
explore the earth. I was going to take you off to the finest bicycle
track you ever saw. I never saw it either, but I've seen pictures of it.
It's a great level gold road running about another world called Saturn.
We call it Saturn's ring down home, but I've ideas as to what it is."
"Seems to me I've heard papa speak of Saturn. It's got eight moons, I
think he said. One for every day of the week, and two for Sunday," said
Jimmieboy.
"That's the place," said Bikey. "You don't need a lamp on your wheel
when you go out at night there. They've got moonlight to burn. If
you'll pedal ahead now as hard as you can we can get there in time for
one turn and then come back; and I tell you, my boy, that coming back
will be glorious. It will be down grade all the way."
"How far off is Saturn?" asked Jimmieboy.
"I don't know," returned Bikey, "but it's a long walk from your house.
The ring is 18,350 miles from Saturn itself. That's why I think it's a
good place for bicycling. Nobody'd take an ice cart or a furniture truck
that far just to get in the way of a wheelman, and then as it doesn't go
anywhere but just round and round and round, they're not likely to have
trolley cars on it. It doesn't pay to run a trolley car nowheres."
It all seemed beautifully reasonable, and Jimmieboy's curiosity grew
greater and greater as he pedalled along. Up and on they went, passing
through huge fleecy masses of clouds, now and again turning to one side
to avoid running into strange little bits of stars, so small that they
seemed to be nothing but islands in the ocean of the sky, and far too
small to be seen on the earth.
"We can stop and rest on one of those if you want to, Jimmieboy," said
Bikey; "are you tired?"
"Not at all," Jimmieboy answered. "Seems to me I could go on this way
forever. It's easy as lying down and going to sleep."
Bikey chuckled.
"What are you laughing at?" said Jimmieboy.
"Nothing," said Bikey. "When you said it was easy as sleeping I thought
of something--that was all."
"Dear me," said Jimmieboy, ruefully. "I am awake, ain't I? This isn't
like all the other experiences, is it?"
"Not at all," laughed Bikey. "Your other adventures have been quite
different. But, I say, we're getting there. I can see five moons ahead
already."
"I can see six," cried Jimmieboy, quite elated. "Yes, six--and--one
more."
"You've got nearly the whole set, as the boy said when he came to the
other boy's Nicaragua page in the stamp album. There are only eight
altogether--only I think your seventh is Saturn itself."
"It must be," said Jimmieboy. "It's got a hello around it."
"What's that?" asked Bikey.
"I forgot," said Jimmieboy. "You never went to Sunday school, and so of
course you don't know what a hello is. It's a thing like a gold hoople
that angels wear on their heads."
"I'll have to get one," said Bikey. "I heard somebody say I was an angel
of a bicycle. I don't know what she meant, though. What is an angel?"
"It's a--a--good thing with wings," said Jimmieboy.
"Humph!" said Bikey, "I'm afraid I'm not one of those. Don't they ever
have wheels? I'm a good thing, but I haven't any wings."
"I never heard of an angel with wheels," said Jimmieboy. "But I suppose
they come. Angels have everything that's worth having."
Bikey was silent. The idea of anything having everything that was worth
having was too much for him to imagine, for bicycles have very little
imagination.
"I wish I could be one," he said wistfully, after a moment's silence.
"It must be awfully nice to have everything you want."
Jimmieboy thought so, too, but he was too much interested in getting to
Saturn to say anything, so he, too, kept silent and pedalled away as
hard as he could. Together and happily they went on until Jimmieboy
said:--
"Bikey, what's that ahead? Looks like the side of a great gold cheese."
"That," Bikey answered, "is exactly what you think it is. It's the ring
of Saturn, and, as the saying goes, for biking Saturn is quite the
cheese. In two minutes we'll be there."
And in two minutes they were there. In less, in fact, for hardly eight
seconds had passed before a great, blinding light caused Jimmieboy to
close his eyes, and when he had opened them again he and Bikey were
speeding along a most beautiful road, paved with gold.
"I thought so," said Bikey, "we're on the ring. And isn't it smooth?"
"It's like riding on glass," said Jimmieboy. And then they stopped
short.
A peculiar looking creature had stopped them. It was a creature with a
face not unlike that of a man, and a body like a man's, but instead of
legs it had wheels like a bicycle. If you can imagine a Centaur with a
body like a bicycle instead of a horse you will have a perfect mental
picture of this strange creature.
"Excuse me," said the stranger, "but we have to be very particular here.
Where do you come from?"
"Earth," said Bikey.
"All right," said the stranger. "Move on, I'm a Saturn policeman and so
many wheelmen from the Sun and the Moon and Jupiter have caused
disturbances of late that we have had to forbid them coming. You are the
only Earth people who have been here, and of course are not included in
our rules, but I will have to go along with you to see that you do not
break any of them."
"We're very glad to meet you," said Bikey, "and if you'll tell us your
rules we will be very glad to obey them."
"Well," said the creature with wheels instead of legs, "the first rule
is that nobody shall ride a wheel standing on his head. There was a
person over here from Mars last week who actually put his head in the
saddle and wheeled his pedals with his hands."
"How utterly absurd!" said Jimmieboy.
"Wasn't it?" said the Saturnian; "and my! how mad he got when I
interfered--asked whether this was a free country and if anybody had
rights, and all sorts of stuff like that. Now there's another rule we
have, and that is that coasting backward cannot be permitted. We used to
allow that until a man from Jupiter ran slap bang into another man who
lived at the extreme end of the handle of the Great Dipper, who was
coasting backward from the other direction. They came together so hard
that we couldn't get 'em apart, and we have had to keep 'em here ever
since. They can't be separated, and the Dipper man won't go to Jupiter,
and the Jupiter man won't go to Dipperville--consequently they stay
here. They're a fearful nuisance, and it all came from coasting
backward."
"It's a very good rule," said Jimmieboy, "but in our world I don't think
we'd need a rule like that, because, while our bicycle riders do lots of
queer things, I don't think they'd do that."
"I hope not," said the Saturnian, "because there isn't any use in it,
any more than in that other trick our visiting bicyclists try to play
here. They take those bicycles built for two, you know, and have what
they call tugs of war with 'em. One fellow takes the hind wheel and the
other the front wheel, and each begins to work for all he is worth to
pull the other along. We had to stop that, too, because the last time
they did it the men were so strong that the bar was pulled apart and
both tuggers went flying off on one wheel so fast that they have never
managed to get back--not that we want them back, but that we don't want
people to set bicycling down as a dangerous sport. It means so much to
us. We get all our money from our big ring here; bicyclists come from
all parts of the universe to ride around it, and as they pay for the
privilege why we get millions of dollars a year, which is divided up
among the people. Consequence is, nobody has to do any work and we are
all happy. You can see for yourself that it would be very bad for us if
people gave it up as dangerous."
"Very true," said Bikey, "and now we know the rules I suppose we can go
ahead."
"Yes," said the policeman, "only you must go to the Captain's office and
get a permit. It'll cost you $2,000 for one season."
"Two thousand dollars?" echoed Jimmieboy, aghast.
"That's what I said," said the policeman.
"But," said Jimmieboy, ruefully, "I haven't got more than five cents
with me."
"Then," said the policeman, "you can get a permit for five cents'
worth--that's one-forty thousandth part of a season."
"And how long is a season?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Forty thousand years," said the policeman. "You can ride a year for
five cents."
Bikey laughed.
"That'll be long enough," he said. "And where can I find the Captain?"
"I'm him," said the Saturnian. "Give me the five cents and it will be
all right."
So Jimmieboy handed over his nickel, and in a moment he and Bikey were
speeding along over a beautiful golden road so wide that he could not
see the other side of it, and stretching on and on to the fore for
thousands of miles.