THE DISCOVERY
I
THE SKY CUBE
The doctor, who was easily the most musical of the four men, sang in a
cheerful baritone:
"The owl and the pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful, pea-green boat."
The geologist, who had held down the lower end of a quartet in his
university days, growled an accompaniment under his breath as he
blithely peeled the potatoes. Occasionally a high-pitched note or two
came from the direction of the engineer; he could not spare much wind
while clambering about the machinery, oil-can in hand. The architect,
alone, ignored the famous tune.
"What I can't understand, Smith," he insisted, "is how you draw the
electricity from the ether into this car without blasting us all to
cinders."
The engineer squinted through an opal glass shutter into one of the
tunnels, through which the anti-gravitation current was pouring. "If you
didn't know any more about buildings than you do about machinery,
Jackson," he grunted, because of his squatting position, "I'd hate to
live in one of your houses!"
The architect smiled grimly. "You're living in one of 'em right now,
Smith," said he; "that is, if you call this car a house."
Smith straightened up. He was an unimportant-looking man, of medium
height and build, and bearing a mild, good-humored expression. Nobody
would ever look at him twice, would ever guess that his skull concealed
an unusually complete knowledge of electricity, mechanisms, and such
practical matters.
"I told you yesterday, Jackson," he said, "that the air surrounding the
earth is chock full of electricity. And--"
"And that the higher we go, the more juice," added the other,
remembering. "As much as to say that it is the atmosphere, then, that
protects the earth from the surrounding voltage."
The engineer nodded. "Occasionally it breaks through, anyhow, in the
form of lightning. Now, in order to control that current, and prevent it
from turning this machine, and us, into ashes, all we do is to pass the
juice through a cylinder of highly compressed air, fixed in this wall.
By varying the pressure and dampness within the cylinder, we can
regulate the flow."
The builder nodded rapidly. "All right. But why doesn't the electricity
affect the walls themselves? I thought they were made of steel."
The engineer glanced through the dead-light at the reddish disk of the
Earth, hazy and indistinct at a distance of forty million miles. "It
isn't steel; it's a non-magnetic alloy. Besides, there's a layer of
crystalline sulphur between the alloy and the vacuum space."
"The vacuum is what keeps out the cold, isn't it?" Jackson knew, but he
asked in order to learn more.
"Keeps out the sun's heat, too. The outer shell is pretty blamed hot on
that side, just as hot as it is cold on the shady side." Smith seated
himself beside a huge electrical machine, a rotary converter which he
next indicated with a jerk of his thumb. "But you don't want to forget
that the juice outside is no use to us, the way it is. We have to change
it.
"It's neither positive nor negative; it's just neutral. So we separate
it into two parts; and all we have to do, when we want to get away from
the earth or any other magnetic-sphere, is to aim a bunch of positive
current at the corresponding pole of the planet, or negative current at
the other pole. Like poles repel, you know."
"Listens easy," commented Jackson. "Too easy."
"Well, it isn't exactly as simple as all that. Takes a lot of apparatus,
all told," and the engineer looked about the room, his glance resting
fondly on his beloved machinery.
The big room, fifty feet square, was almost filled with machines; some
reached nearly to the ceiling, the same distance above. In fact, the
interior of the "cube," as that form of sky-car was known, had very
little waste space. The living quarters of the four men who occupied it
had to be fitted in wherever there happened to be room. The architect's
own berth was sandwiched in between two huge dynamos.
He was thinking hard. "I see now why you have such a lot of adjustments
for those tunnels," meaning the six square tubes which opened into the
ether through the six walls of the room. "You've got to point the juice
pretty accurately."
"I should say so." Smith led the way to a window, and the two shaded
their eyes from the lights within while they gazed at the ashy glow of
Mercury, toward which they were traveling. "I've got to adjust the
current so as to point exactly toward his northern half." Smith might
have added that a continual stream of repelling current was still
directed toward the earth, and another toward the sun, away over to
their right; both to prevent being drawn off their course.
"And how fast are we going?"
"Four or five times as fast as mother earth: between eighty and ninety
miles per second. It's easy to get up speed out here, of course, where
there's no air resistance."
Another voice broke in. The geologist had finished his potatoes, and a
savory smell was already issuing from the frying pan. Years spent in the
wilderness had made the geologist a good cook, and doubly welcome as a
member of the expedition.
"We ought to get there tomorrow, then," he said eagerly. Indoor life did
not appeal to him, even under such exciting circumstances. He peered at
Mercury through his binoculars. "Beginning to show up fine now."
The builder improved upon Van Emmon's example by setting up the car's
biggest telescope, a four-inch tube of unusual excellence. All three
pronounced the planet, which was three-fourths "full" as they viewed it,
as having pretty much the appearance of the moon.
"Wonder why there's always been so much mystery about Mercury?" pondered
the architect invitingly. "Looks as though the big five-foot telescope
on Mt. Wilson would have shown everything."
"Ask doc," suggested Smith, diplomatically. Jackson turned and hailed
the little man on the other side of the car. He looked up absently from
the scientific apparatus with which he had been making a test of the
room's chemically purified air, then he stepped to the oxygen tanks and
closed the flow a trifle, referring to his figures in the severely exact
manner of his craft. He crossed to the group.
"Mercury is so close to the sun," he answered the architect's question,
"he's always been hard to observe. For a long time the astronomers
couldn't even agree that he always keeps the same face toward the sun,
like the moon toward the earth."
"Then his day is as long as his year?"
"Eighty-eight of our days; yes."
"Continual sunlight! He can't be inhabited, then?" The architect knew
very little about the planets. He had been included in the party
because, along with his professional knowledge, he possessed remarkable
ability as an amateur antiquarian. He knew as much about the doings of
the ancients as the average man knows of baseball.
Dr. Kinney shook his head. "Not at present, certainly."
Instantly Jackson was alert. "Then perhaps there were people there at
one time!"
"Why not?" the doctor put it lightly. "There's little or no atmosphere
there now, of course, but that's not saying there never has been. Even
if he is such a little planet--less than three thousand, smaller than
the moon--he must have had plenty of air and water at one time, the same
as the Earth."
"What's become of the air?" Van Emmon wanted to know. Kinney eyed him in
reproach. He said:
"You ought to know. Mercury has only two-fifths as much gravitation as
the earth; a man weighing a hundred and fifty back home would be only a
sixty-pounder there. And you can't expect stuff as light as air to stay
forever on a planet with no more pull than that, when the sun is on the
job only thirty-six millions miles away."
"About a third as far as from the Earth to the sun," commented the
engineer. "By George, it must be hot!"
"On the sunlit side, yes," said Kinney. "On the dark side it is as cold
as space itself--four hundred and sixty below, Fahrenheit."
They considered this in silence for some minutes. The builder went to
another window and looked at Venus, at that time about sixty million
miles distant, on the far side of the sun. They were intending to visit
"Earth's twin sister" on their return. After a while he came back to the
group, ready with another question:
"If Mercury ever was inhabited, then his day wasn't as long as it is
now, was it?"
"No," said the doctor. "In all probability he once had a day the same
length as ours. Mercury is a comparatively old planet, you know; being
smaller, he cooled off earlier than the earth, and has been more
affected by the pull of the sun. But it's been a mighty long time since
he had a day like ours; before the earth was cool enough to live on,
probably."
"But since Mercury was made out of the same batch of material--"
prompted the geologist.
"No reason, then, why life shouldn't have existed there in the past!"
exclaimed the architect, his eyes sparkling with the instinct of the
born antiquarian. He glanced up eagerly as the doctor coughed
apologetically and said:
"Don't forget that, even if Mercury is part baked and part frozen, there
must be a region in between which is neither." He picked up a small
globe from the table and ran a finger completely around it from pole to
pole. "So. There must be a narrow band of country where the sun is only
partly above the horizon, and where the climate is temperate."
"Then--" the architect almost shouted in his excitement, an excitement
only slightly greater than that of the other two--"then, if there were
people on Mercury at one time--"
The doctor nodded gravely. "There may be some there now!"
II
A DEAD CITY
From a height of a few thousand miles Mercury, at first glance, strongly
reminded them of the moon. The general effect was the same--leaden disk,
with slight prominences here and there on the circumference, and large,
irregular splotches of a darkish shade relieved by a great many
brilliantly lighted areas, lines, and spots.
A second glance, however, found a marked difference. Instead of the
craters, which always distinguished the moon, Mercury showed ranges of
bona fide mountains.
The doctor gave a sigh of regret, mixed with a generous amount of
excitement. "Too bad those mountains weren't distinguishable from the
earth," he complained. "We wouldn't have been so quick to brand Mercury
a dead world."
The others were too engrossed to comment. The sky-car was rapidly
sinking nearer and nearer the planet; already Smith had stopped the
current with which he had attracted the cube toward the little world's
northern hemisphere, and was now using negative voltage. This, in order
to act as a brake, and prevent them from falling to destruction.
Suddenly Van Emmon, the geologist, whose eyes had been glued to his
binoculars, gave an exclamation of wonder. "Look at those faults!" He
pointed toward a region south of that for which they were bound; what
might be called the planet's torrid zone.
At first it was hard to see; then, little by little, there unfolded
before their eyes a giant, spiderlike system of chasms in the strange
surface beneath them. From a point almost directly opposite the sun,
these cracks radiated in a half-dozen different directions; vast,
irregular clefts, they ran through mountain and plain alike. In places
they must have been hundreds of miles wide, while there was no guessing
as to their depth. For all that the four in the cube could see, they
were bottomless.
"Small likelihood of anybody being alive there now," commented the
geologist skeptically. "If the sun has dried it out enough to produce
faults like that, how could animal life exist?"
"Notice, however," prompted the doctor, "that the cracks do not extend
all the way to the edge of the disk." This was true; all the great
chasms ended far short of the "twilight band" which the doctor had
declared might still contain life.
But as the sky-car rushed downward their attention became fixed upon the
surface directly beneath them, a point whose latitude corresponded
roughly with that of New York on the Earth. It was a region of low-lying
mountains, decidedly different from various precipitous ranges to be
seen to the north and east. On the west, or left-hand side of this
district, a comparatively level stretch, with an occasional peak or two
projecting, suggested the ancient bed of an ocean.
By this time they were within a thousand miles. Smith threw on a little
more current; their speed diminished to a safer point, and they scanned
the approaching surface with the greatest of care. The architect, who
was a New Yorker, was strongly reminded of the fall aspect of the
Appalachians; but Van Emmon, who was born and raised on the Pacific
coast, declared that the spot was almost exactly like the region north
of San Francisco. "If I didn't know where I was," he declared, "I'd be
trying to locate Eureka right now."
The engineer smiled tolerantly. He had spent several years in Scotland,
and he felt sure, he obligingly told the others, that this new locality
was far more like the Ben Lomond country than any other spot on earth.
He was so positive, he made the doctor, a New Zealander, smile quite
broadly.
"It is just like the hills near my home," he stated, with an air of
finality which made further discussion useless.
"There's a river!" the architect suddenly exclaimed, pointing; then
added, before the others could comment, "I mean, what was once a river."
They saw that he was right; an irregular but well-defined streak of
sandy hue trickled down the middle of their chosen destination--a long,
L-shaped valley, surrounded by low hills.
"That's the most likely place, outside of the twilight zone, for life to
be found," remarked the doctor. "Neither mountainous nor dead level."
He added: "The spectroscope has plainly shown that there's water vapor
in what little air there is. Must be precious little. If the air was as
humid as the earth's, we couldn't see the surface at all from this
height."
The inviting-looking valley was now less than a hundred miles below.
Inviting, however, only in outline; in color it was a grayish buff,
scorched and forbidding. The hills were yellower, and an alkali white on
their summits.
"Do either of you fellows see anything _green_?" demanded the engineer,
a little later. They were silent; each had noticed long before, that
not even near the poles was there the slightest sign of vegetation.
"No chance unless there's foliage," muttered the doctor, half to
himself. The builder asked what he meant. He explained: "So far as we
know, all animal life depends upon vegetation for its oxygen. Not only
the oxygen in the air, but that stored in the plants which animals eat.
Unless there's greenery--"
He paused at a low exclamation from Smith. The engineer's eyes were
fixed, in wonder and excitement, upon that part of the valley which lay
at the joint of the "L" below them. It was perhaps six miles across; and
all over the comparatively smooth surface jutted dark projections.
Viewed through the glasses, they had a regular, uniform appearance.
"By Jove!" ejaculated the doctor, almost in awe. He leaned forward and
scrubbed the dead-light for the tenth time. All four men strained their
eyes to see.
It was the architect who broke the silence which followed. The other
three were content to let the thrill of the thing have its way with
them. Such a feeling had little weight with the expert in archeology.
"Well," he declared jubilantly in his boyish voice, "either I eat my hat
or that's a genuine, bona fide city!"
As swiftly as an elevator drops, and as safely, the cube shot straight
downward. Every second the landscape narrowed and shrunk, leaving the
remaining details larger, clearer, sharper. Bit by bit the amazing thing
below them resolved itself into a real metropolis.
Within five minutes they were less than a mile above it. Smith threw on
more current, so that the descent stopped; and the cube hung motionless
in space.
For another five minutes the four men studied the scene in nervous
silence. Each knew that the others were looking for the same thing--some
sign of life. A little spot of green, or possibly something in motion--a
single whiff of smoke would have been enough to cause a whoop of joy.
But nobody shouted. There was nothing to shout about. Nowhere in all
that locality apparently was there the slightest indication that any
save themselves were alive.
Instead, the most extraordinary city that man had ever laid eyes upon
was stretched directly beneath. It was grouped about what seemed to be
the meeting-point of three great roads, which led to this spot from as
many passes through the surrounding hills. And the city seemed thus
naturally divided into three segments, of equal size and shape, and each
with its own street system.
For they undoubtedly were streets. No metropolis on earth ever had its
blocks laid out with such unvarying exactness. This Mercurian city
contained none but perfect equilateral triangles, and the streets
themselves were of absolutely uniform width.
The buildings, however, showed no such uniformity. On the outskirts of
this brilliantly tan mystery the blocks seemed to contain nothing save
odd heaps of dingy, sun-baked mud. On the extreme north, however, lay
five blocks grouped together, whose buildings, like those in the middle
of the city, were rather tall, square-cut and of the same dusty,
cream-white hue.
"Down-town" were several structures especially prominent for their
height. They towered to such an extent, in fact, that their upper
windows were easily made out. Apparently they were hundreds of stories
high!
Here and there on the streets could be seen small spots, colored a
darker buff than the rest of that dazzling landscape. But not one of the
spots was moving.
"We'll go down further," said the engineer tentatively, in a low tone.
There was no comment. He gradually reduced the repelling current, so
that the sky-car resumed its descent.
They sank down until they were on a level with the top of one of those
extraordinary sky-scrapers. The roof seemed perfectly flat, except for a
large, round, black opening in its center. No one was in sight.
When opposite the upper row of windows, at a distance of perhaps twenty
feet, Smith brought the car to a halt, and they peered in. There were no
panes; the windows opened directly into a vast room; but nothing was
clearly visible in the blackness save the outlines of the opening in the
opposite walls.
They went down further, keeping well to the middle of the space above
the street. At every other yard they kept a sharp lookout for the
inhabitants; but so far as they could see, their approach was entirely
unobserved.
When within fifty yards of the surface, all four men made a search for
cross-wires below. They saw none; there were no poles, even. Neither, to
their astonishment, was there such a thing as a sidewalk. The street
stretched, unbroken by curbing, from wall to wall and from corner to
corner.
As the cube settled slowly to the ground, the adventurers left the
deadlight to use the windows. For a moment the view was obscured by a
swirl of dust, raised by the spurt of the current; then this cloud
vanished, settling to the ground with astounding suddenness, as though
jerked down by some invisible hand.
Directly ahead of them, distant perhaps a hundred yards, lay a
yellowish-brown mass of unusual octagonal shape. One end contained a
small oval opening, but the men from the Earth looked in vain for any
creature to emerge from it.
The doctor silently set to work with his apparatus. From an air-tight
double-doored compartment he obtained a sample of the ether outside the
car; and with the aid of previously arranged chemicals, quickly learned
the truth.
There was no air. Not only was there no oxygen, the element upon which
all known life depends, but there was no nitrogen, no carbon dioxide;
not the slightest trace of water vapor or of the other less known
elements which can be found in small amounts in our own atmosphere.
Clearly, as the doctor said, whatever air the astronomers had observed
must exist on the circumference of the planet only, and not in this
sun-blasted, north-central spot.
On the outer walls of the cube, so arranged as to be visible through the
windows, were various instruments. The barometer showed no pressure. The
thermometer, a specially devised one which used gas instead of mercury,
showed a temperature of six hundred degrees, Fahrenheit.
No air, no water, and a baking heat; as the geologist remarked, how
could life exist there? But the architect suggested that possibly there
was some form of life, of which men knew nothing, which could exist
under such circumstances.
They got out three of the suits. These were a good deal like those
worn by divers, except that the outer layer was made of non-conducting
aluminum cloth, flexible, air-tight, and strong. Between it and the
inner lining was a layer of cells, into which the men now pumped
several pints of liquid oxygen. The terrific cold of this chemical made
the heavy flannel of the inner lining very welcome; while the oxygen
itself, as fast as it evaporated, revitalized the air within the big,
glass-faced helmet.
Once safely locked within the clumsy suits, Jackson, Van Emmon, and
Smith took their places within the vestibule; while the doctor, who had
volunteered to stay behind, watched them open the outer door. With a
hiss all the air in the vestibule rushed out; and the doctor earnestly
thanked his stars that the inner door had been built very strongly.
The men stepped out on to the ground. At first they moved with great
care, being uncertain that their feet were weighted heavily enough to
counteract the reduced gravitation of the tiny planet. But they had
been living in a very peculiar condition, gravitationally speaking,
for the past three days; and they quickly adapted themselves. After
a little shifting about, the three artificial monsters gave their
telephone wires another scrutiny; then, keeping always within ten feet
of each other, so as not to throw any strain on the connections, they
strode in a matter-of-fact way toward the nearest doorway.
For a moment or two they stood outside the queer, peaked archway, their
glimmering suits standing out oddly in the blinding sunlight. Then they
advanced boldly into the opening; in a flash they vanished from the
doctor's sight, and the inklike blackness of the opening again stared at
him from that dazzling wall.
III
THE HOUSE OF DUST
The geologist, strong man that he was, and by profession an investigator
of the unknown--Van Emmon--took the lead. He stalked straight ahead into
a vast space which, without any preliminary hallway, filled the entire
triangular block.
Before their eyes were accustomed to the shadow--"Pretty cold," murmured
the architect into the phone transmitter; it was fastened to the inside
of the helmet, directly in front of his mouth, while the receiver was
placed beside his ear. All three stopped short to adjust each other's
electrical heating apparatus. To do this, they did not use their fingers
directly; they manipulated ingenious non-magnetic pliers attached to the
ends of fingerless, insulated mittens.
Before they had finished, the builder, who had been puzzling over the
extraordinary suddenness with which that cloud of dust had settled,
received an inspiration. He was carrying note-book and camera. With his
pliers he tore out a sheet from the former, and holding book in one hand
and the leaf in the other, he allowed them to drop at the same instant.
They reached the ground together.
"See?" The architect repeated the experiment. "Back home, where there's
air, the paper would have floated down; it would have taken three times
as long for it to fall as the book."
Smith nodded, but he had been thinking of something else. He said
gravely: "Remember what I told you--it's air that insulates the earth
from the ether. If there's no air here--" he glanced out into the
pitiless sunlight--"then I hope there's no flaw in our insulation. We're
walking in an electrical bath."
They looked around. Objects were pretty distinct now. They could easily
see that the floor was covered with what appeared to be machines, laid
out in orderly fashion. Here, however, as outside, everything was coated
with that fine, cream-colored dust. It filled every nook and cranny; it
stirred about their feet with every step.
The geologist led the way down a broad aisle, on either side of which
towered immense machinery. Smith was for stopping to examine them one by
one; but the others vetoed the engineer's passion, and strode on toward
the end of the triangle. More than anything else, they looked for the
absent population to show itself.
Suddenly Van Emmon stopped short. "Is it possible that they're all
asleep?" He added that, even though the sun shone steadily the year
around, the people must take time for rest.
But Smith stirred the dust with his foot and shook his head. "I've seen
no tracks. This dust has been lying here for weeks, perhaps months. If
the folks are away, then they must be taking a community vacation."
At the end of the aisle they reached a small, railed-in space, strongly
resembling what might be seen in any office on the earth. In the middle
of it stood a low, flat-topped desk, for all the world like that of a
prosperous real-estate agent, except that it was about half a foot
lower. There was no chair. For lack of a visible gate in the railing,
the explorers stepped over, being careful not to touch it.
There was nothing on top of the desk save the usual coat of dust. Below,
a very wide space had been left for the legs of whoever had used it; and
flanking this space were two pedestals, containing what looked to be a
multitude of exceedingly small drawers. Smith bent and examined them;
apparently they had no locks; and he unhesitatingly reached out, gripped
the knob of one and pulled.
Noiselessly, instantaneously, the whole desk crumbled to powder.
Startled, Smith stumbled backwards, knocking against the railing. Next
instant it lay on the floor, its fragments scarcely distinguishable from
what had already covered the surface. Only a tiny cloud of dust arose,
and in half a second this had settled.
The three looked at each other significantly. Clearly, the thing that
had just happened argued a great lapse of time since the user of that
desk officiated in that enclosure. It looked as though Smith's guess of
"weeks, perhaps months," would have to be changed to years, perhaps
centuries.
"Feel all right?" asked the geologist. Jackson and Smith made
affirmative noises; and again they stepped out, this time walking in the
aisle along the outer wall. They could see their sky-car plainly through
the ovals.
Here the machinery could be examined more closely. They resembled
automatic testing scales, said Smith; such as is used in weighing
complicated metal products after finishing and assembling. Moreover,
they seemed to be connected, the one to the other, with a series of
endless belts, which Smith thought indicated automatic production. To
all appearances, the dust-covered apparatus stood just as it had been
left when operations ceased, an unguessable length of time before.
Smith showed no desire to touch the things now. Seeing this, the
geologist deliberately reached out and scraped the dust from the nearest
machine; and to the vast relief of all three, no damage was done. The
dust fell straight to the floor, exposing a brilliantly polished streak
of greenish-white metal.
Van Emmon made another tentative brush or so at other points, with the
same result. Clean, untarnished metal lay beneath all that dust. Clearly
it was some non-conducting alloy; whatever it was, it had successfully
resisted the action of the elements all the while that such presumably
wooden articles as the desk and railing had been steadily rotting.
Emboldened, Smith clambered up on the frame of one of the machines. He
examined it closely as to its cams, clutches, gearing, and other details
significant enough to his mechanical training. He noted their
adjustments, scrutinized the conveying apparatus, and came back carrying
a cylindrical object which he had removed from an automatic chuck.
"This is what they were making," he remarked, trying to conceal his
excitement. The others brushed the dust from the thing, a huge piece of
metal which would have been too much for their strength on the earth.
Instantly they identified it.
It was a cannon shell.
Again Van Emmon led the way. They took a reassuring glance out the
window at the familiar cube, then passed along the aisle toward the
farther corner. As they neared it they saw that it contained a small
enclosure of heavy metal scrollwork, within which stood a triangular
elevator.
The men examined it as closely as possible, noting especially the
extremely low stool which stood upon its platform. The same unerodable
metal seemed to have been used throughout the whole affair.
After a careful scrutiny of the two levers which appeared to control the
thing--"I'm going to try it out," announced Smith, well knowing that the
others would have to go with him if they kept the telephones intact.
They protested that the thing was not safe; Smith replied that they had
seen no stairway, or anything corresponding to one. "If this lift is
made of that alloy," admiringly, "then it's safe." But Jackson managed
to talk him out of it.
When they returned to the heap of powdered wood which had been the desk,
Smith spied a long work-bench under a nearby window. There they found a
very ordinary vise, in which was clamped a piece of metal; but for the
dust, it might have been placed there ten minutes before. On the bench
lay several tools, some familiar to the engineer and some entirely
strange. A set of screw-drivers of various sizes caught his eye. He
picked them up, and again experienced the sensation of having wood turn
to dust at his touch. The blades were whole.
Still searching, the engineer found a square metal chest of drawers,
each of which he promptly opened. The contents were laden with dust, but
he brushed this off and disclosed a quantity of exceedingly delicate
instruments. They were more like dentists' tools than machinists', yet
plainly were intended for mechanical use.
One drawer held what appeared to be a roll of drawings. Smith did not
want to touch them; with infinite care he blew off the dust with the aid
of his oxygen pipe. After a moment or two the surface was clear, but it
offered no encouragement; it was the blank side of the paper.
There was no help for it. Smith grasped the roll firmly with his
pliers--and next second gazed upon dust.
In the bottom drawer lay something that aroused the curiosity of all
three. These were small reels, about two inches in diameter and a
quarter of an inch thick, each incased in a tight-fitting box. They
resembled measuring tapes to some extent, except that the ribbons were
made of marvelously thin material. Van Emmon guessed that there were a
hundred yards in a roll. Smith estimated it at three hundred. They
seemed to be made of a metal similar to that composing the machines.
Smith pocketed them all.
It was the builder who thought to look under the bench, but it was Smith
who had brought a light. By its aid they discovered a very small
machine, decidedly like a stock ticker, except that it had no glass
dome, but possessed at one end a curious metal disk about a foot in
diameter. Apparently it had been undergoing repairs; it was impossible
to guess its purpose. Smith's pride was instantly aroused; he tucked it
under his arm, and was impatient to get back to the cube, where he might
more carefully examine his find with the tips of his fingers.
It was when they were about to leave the building that they thought to
inspect walls and ceiling. Not that anything worth while was to be seen;
the surfaces seemed perfectly plain and bare, except for the inevitable
dust. Even the uppermost corners, ten feet above their heads, showed
dust to the light of Smith's electric torch.
Van Emmon stopped and stared at the spot as though fascinated. The
others were ready to go; they turned and looked at him curiously. For a
moment or two he seemed struggling for breath.
"Good Heavens!" he gasped, almost in a whisper. His face was white; the
other two leaped toward him, fearful that he was suffocating. But he
pushed them away roughly.
"We're fools! Blind, blithering idiots--that's what we are!" He pointed
toward the ceiling with a hand that trembled plainly, and went on in a
voice which he tried to make fierce despite the awe which shook it.
"Look at that dust again! How'd it get there?" He paused while the
others, the thought finally getting to them, felt a queer chill striking
at the backs of their necks. "Men--there's only one way for the dust to
settle on a wall! It's got to have air to carry it! It couldn't possibly
get there without air!
"That dust settled long before life appeared on the Earth, even! It's
been there ever since the air disappeared from Mercury!"
IV
THE LIBRARY
"I thought you'd never get back," complained the doctor crossly, when
the three entered. They had been gone just half an hour.
Next moment he was studying their faces, and at once he demanded the
most important fact. They told him, and before they had finished he was
half-way into another suit. He was all eagerness; but somehow the three
were very glad to be inside the cube again, and firmly insisted upon
moving to another spot before making further explorations.
Within a minute or two the cube was hovering opposite the upper floor of
the building the three had entered; and with only a foot of space
separating the window of the sky-car and the dust-covered wall, the men
from the earth inspected the interior at considerable length. They
flashed a search-light all about the place, and concluded that it was
the receiving-room, where the raw iron billets were brought via the
elevator, and from there slid to the floor below. At one end, in exactly
the same location as the desk Smith had destroyed, stood another, with a
low and remarkably broad chair beside it.
So far as could be seen, there were neither doors, window-panes, nor
shutters through the structure. "To get all the light and air they
could," guessed the doctor. "Perhaps that's why the buildings are all
triangular; most wall surface in proportion to floor area, that way."
A few hundred feet higher they began to look for prominent buildings.
Only in forgetful moments did either of them scan the landscape for
signs of life; they knew now that there could be none.
"We ought to learn something there," the doctor said after a while,
pointing out a particularly large, squat, irregularly built affair on
the edge of the "business district." The architect, however, was in
favor of an exceptionally large, high building in the isolated group
previously noted in the "suburbs." But because it was nearer, they
maneuvered first in the direction of the doctor's choice.
The sky-car came to rest in a large plaza opposite what appeared to be
the structure's main entrance. From their window the explorers saw that
the squat effect was due only to the space the edifice covered; for it
was an edifice, a full five stories high.
The doctor was impatient to go. Smith was willing enough to stay behind;
he was already joyously examining the strange machine he had found. Two
minutes later Kinney, Van Emmon, and Jackson were standing before the
portals of the great building.
There they halted, and no wonder. The entire face of the building could
now be seen to be covered with a mass of carvings; for the most part
they were statues in bas relief. All were fantastic in the extreme, but
whether purposely so or not, there was no way to tell. Certainly any
such work on the part of an earthly artist would have branded him either
as insane or as an incomprehensible genius.
Directly above the entrance was a group which might have been labeled,
"The Triumph of the Brute." An enormously powerful man, nearly as broad
as he was tall, stood exulting over his victim, a less robust figure,
prostrate under his feet. Both were clad in armor. The victor's face was
distorted into a savage snarl, startlingly hideous by reason of the
prodigious size of his head, planted as it was directly upon his
shoulders; for he had no neck. His eyes were set so close together that
at first glance they seemed to be but one. His nose was flat and African
in type, while his mouth, devoid of curves, was simply revolting in its
huge, thick-lipped lack of proportion. His chin was square and
aggressive; his forehead, strangely enough, extremely high and narrow,
rather than low and broad.
His victim lay in an attitude that indicated the most agonizing torture;
his head was bent completely back, and around behind his shoulders. On
the ground lay two battle-axes, huge affairs almost as heavy as the
massively muscled men who had used them.
But the eyes of the explorers kept coming back to the fearsome face of
the conqueror. From the brows down, he was simply a huge, brutal giant;
above his eyes, he was an intellectual. The combination was absolutely
frightful; the beast looked capable of anything, of overcoming any
obstacle, mental or physical, internal or external, in order to assert
his apparently enormous will. He could control himself or dominate
others with equal ease and assurance.
"It can't be that he was drawn from life," said the doctor, with an
effort. It wasn't easy to criticize that figure, lifeless though it was.
"On a planet like this, with such slight gravitation, there is no need
for such huge strength. The typical Mercurian should be tall and flimsy
in build, rather than short and compact."
But the geologist differed. "We want to remember that the earth has no
standard type. Think what a difference there is between the mosquito and
the elephant, the snake and the spider! One would suppose that they had
been developed under totally different planetary conditions, instead of
all right on the same globe.
"No; I think this monster may have been genuine." And with that the
geologist turned to examine the other statuary.
Without exception, it resembled the central group; all the figures were
neckless, and all much more heavily built than any people on earth.
There were several female figures; they had the same general build, and
in every case were so placed as to enhance the glory of the males. In
one group the woman was offering up food and drink to a resting worker;
in another she was being carried off, struggling, in the arms of a
fairly good-looking warrior.
Dr. Kinney led the way into the building. As in the other structure,
there was no door. The space seemed to be but one story in height,
although that had the effect of a cathedral. The whole of the ceiling,
irregularly arched in a curious, pointed manner, was ornamented with
grotesque figures; while the walls were also partially formed of squat,
semi-human statues, set upon huge, triangular shafts. In the spaces
between these outlandish pilasters there had once been some sort of
decorations, A great many photos were taken here.
As for the floor, it was divided in all directions by low walls. About
five and a half feet in height, these walls separated the great room
into perhaps a hundred triangular compartments, each about the size of
an ordinary living room. Broad openings, about five feet square,
provided free access from one compartment to any other. The men from the
earth, by standing on tiptoes, could see over and beyond this system.
"Wonder if these walls were supposed to cut off the view?" speculated
the doctor. "I mean, do you suppose that the Mercurians were such short
people as that?" His question had to go unanswered.
They stepped into the nearest compartment, and were on the point of
pronouncing it bare, when Jackson, with an exclamation, excitedly
brushed away some of the dust and showed that the presumably solid walls
were really chests of drawers. Shallow things of that peculiar metal,
these drawers numbered several hundred to the compartment. In the whole
building there must have been millions.
Once more the dust was carefully removed, revealing a layer of those
curious rolls or reels, exactly similar to what had been found in the
tool chest in the shell works. A careful examination of the metallic
tape showed nothing whatever to the naked eye, although the doctor
fancied that he made out some strange characters on the little boxes
themselves.
His view was shortly proved. Finding drawer after drawer to contain a
similar display, varying from one to a dozen of the diminutive ribbons,
Van Emmon adopted the plan of gently blowing away the dust from the
faces of the drawers before opening them. This revealed the fact that
each of the shallow things was neatly labeled!
Instantly the three were intent upon this fresh clue. The markings were
very faint and delicate, the slightest touch being enough to destroy
them. To the untrained eye, they resembled ancient Egyptian
hieroglyphics; to the archeologist, they meant that a brand-new system
of ideographs had been found.
Suddenly Jackson straightened up and looked about with a new interest.
He went to one of the square doorways and very carefully removed the
dust from a small plate on the lintel. He need not have been so careful;
engraved in the solid metal was a single character, plainly in the same
language as the other ideographs.
The architect smiled triumphantly into the inquiring eyes of his
friends. "I won't have to eat my hat," said he. "This is a sure-enough
city, all right, and this is its library!"
Smith was still busy on the little machine when they returned to the
cube. He said that one part of it had disappeared, and was busily
engaged in filing a bit of steel to take its place. As soon as it was
ready, he thought, they could see what the apparatus meant.
The three had brought a large number of the reels. They were confident
that a microscopic search of the ribbons would disclose something to
bear out Jackson's theory that the great structure was really a
repository for books, or whatever corresponded with books on Mercury.
"But the main thing," said the doctor, enthusiastically, "is to get over
to the 'twilight band.' I'm beginning to have all sorts of wild hopes."
Jackson urged that they first visit the big "mansion" on the outskirts
of this place; he said he felt sure, somehow, that it would be worth
while. But Van Emmon backed up the doctor, and the architect had to be
content with an agreement to return in case their trip was futile.
Inside of a few minutes the cube was being drawn steadily over toward
the left or western edge of the planet's sunlit face. As it moved, all
except Smith kept close watch on the ground below. They made out town
after town, as well as separate buildings; and on the roads were to be
seen a great many of those octagonal structures, all motionless.
After several hundred miles of this, the surface abruptly sloped toward
what had clearly been the bed of an ocean. No sign of habitations here,
however; so apparently the water had disappeared _after_ the humans had
gone.
This ancient sea ended a short distance from the district they were
seeking. A little more travel brought them to a point where the
sun cast as much shadow as light on the surface. It was here they
descended, coming to rest on a sunlit knoll which overlooked a small,
building-filled valley.
According to Kinney's apparatus, there was about one-fortieth the amount
of air that exists on the earth. Of water vapor there was a trace; but
all their search revealed no human life. Not only that, but there was no
trace of lower animals; there was not even a lizard, much less a bird.
And even the most ancient-looking of the sculptures showed no creatures
of the air; only huge, antediluvian monsters were ever depicted.
They took a great many photos as a matter of course. Also, they
investigated some of the big, octagonal machines in the streets, finding
them to be similar to the great "tanks" that were used in the war,
except that they did not have the characteristic caterpillar tread;
their eight faces were so linked together that the entire affair could
roll, after a jolting, slab-sided, flopping fashion. Inside were curious
engines, and sturdy machines designed to throw the cannon-shells they
had seen; no explosive was employed, apparently, but centrifugal force
generated in whirling wheels. Apparently these cars, or chariots, were
universally used.
The explorers returned to the cube, where they found that Smith,
happening to look out a window, had spied a pond not far off. The three
visited it and found, on its banks, the first green stuff they had seen;
a tiny, flowerless salt grass, very scarce. It bordered a slimy, bluish
pool of absolutely still fluid. Nobody would call it water. They took a
few samples of it and went back.
And within a few minutes the doctor slid a small glass slide into his
microscope, and examined the object with much satisfaction. What he saw
was a tiny, gelatinlike globule; among scientists it is known as the
_amoeba_. It is the simplest known form of life--the so-called "single
cell." It had been the first thing to live on that planet, and
apparently it was also the last.
V
THE CLOSED DOOR
As they neared Jackson's pet "mansion" each man paid close attention to
the intervening blocks. For the most part these were simply shapeless
ruins; heaps of what had once been, perhaps, brick or stone. Once they
allowed the cube to rest on the top of one of these mounds; but the
sky-car's great weight merely sank it into the mass. There was nothing
under it save that same sandy dust.
Apparently the locality they were approaching had been set aside as a
very exclusive residence district for the elite of the country. Possibly
it contained the homes of the royalty, assuming that there had been a
royalty. At any rate the conspicuous structure Jackson had selected was
certainly the home of the most important member of that colony.
When the three, once more in their helmets and suits, stood before the
low, broad portico which protected the entrance to that edifice, the
first thing they made out was an ornamental frieze running across the
face. In the same bold, realistic style as the other sculpture, there
was depicted a hand-to-hand battle between two groups of those half
savage, half cultured monstrosities. And in the background was shown a
glowing orb, obviously the sun.
"See that?" exclaimed the doctor. "The size of that sun, I mean! Compare
it with the way old Sol looks now!"
They took a single glance at the great ball of fire over their heads;
nine times the size it always seemed at home, it contrasted sharply with
the rather small ball shown in the carvings.
"Understand?" the doctor went on. "When that sculpture was made, Mercury
was little nearer the sun than the earth is now!"
The builder was hugely impressed. He asked, eagerly: "Then probably the
people became as highly developed as we?"
Van Emmon nodded approvingly, but the doctor opposed. "No; I think not,
Jackson. Mercury never did have as much air as the earth, and
consequently had much less oxygen. And the struggle for existence," he
went on, watching to see if the geologist approved each point as he made
it, "the struggle for life is, in the last analysis, a struggle for
oxygen.
"So I would say that life was a pretty strenuous proposition here, while
it lasted. Perhaps they were--" He stopped, then added: "What I can't
understand is, how did it happen that their affairs came to such an
abrupt end? And why don't we see any--er--indications?"
"Skeletons?" The architect shuddered. Next second, though, his face lit
up with a thought. "I remember reading that electricity will decompose
bone, in time." And then he shuddered again as his foot stirred that
lifeless, impalpable dust. Was it possible?
As they passed into the great house the first thing they noted was the
floor, undivided, dust-covered, and bare, except for what had perhaps
been rugs. The shape was the inevitable equilateral triangle; and here,
with a certain magnificent disregard for precedent, the builders had
done away with a ceiling entirely, and instead had sloped the three
walls up till they met in a single point, a hundred feet overhead. The
effect was massively simple.
In one corner a section of the floor was elevated perhaps three feet
above the rest, and directly back of this was a broad doorway, set in a
short wall. The three advanced at once toward it.
Here the electric torch came in very handy. It disclosed a poorly
lighted stairway, very broad, unrailed, and preposterously steep. The
steps were each over three feet high.
"Difference in gravitation," said the doctor, in response to Jackson's
questioning look. "Easy enough for the old-timers, perhaps." They
struggled up the flight as best they could, reaching the top after over
five minutes of climbing.
Perhaps it was the reaction from this exertion; at all events each felt
a distinct loss of confidence as, after regaining their wind, they again
began to explore. Neither said anything about it to the others; but each
noted a queer sense of foreboding, far more disquieting than either of
them had felt when investigating anything else. It may have been due to
the fact that, in their hurry, they had not stopped to eat.
The floor they were on was fairly well lighted with the usual oval
windows. The space was open, except that it contained the same kind of
dividing walls they had found in the library. Here, however, each
compartment contained but one opening, and that not uniformly placed. In
fact, as the three noted with a growing uneasiness, it was necessary to
pass through every one of them in order to reach the corner farthest,
from the ladderlike stairs. Why it should make them uneasy, neither
could have said.
When they were almost through the labyrinth, Van Emmon, after standing
on tiptoes for the tenth time, in order to locate himself, noted
something that had escaped their attention before. "These compartments
used to be covered over," he said, for some reason lowering his voice.
He pointed out niches in the walls, such as undoubtedly once held the
ends of heavy timbers. "What was this place, anyhow? A trap?"
Unconsciously they lightened their steps as they neared the last
compartment. They found, as expected, that it was another stairwell. Van
Emmon turned the light upon every corner of the place before going any
further; but except for a formless heap of rubbish in one corner, which
they did not investigate, the place was as bare as the rest of the
floor.
Again they climbed, this time for a much shorter distance; but Jackson,
slightly built chap that he was, needed a little help on the steep
stairs. They were not sorry that they had reached the uppermost floor of
the mansion. It was somewhat better lighted than the floor below, and
they were relieved to find that the triangular compartments did not have
the significant niches in their walls. Their spirits rose perceptibly.
At the corner farthest from the stairs one of the walls rose straight to
the ceiling, completely cutting off a rather large triangle. The three
paid no attention to the other compartments, but went straight to what
they felt sure was the most vital spot in the place. And their feelings
were justified with a vengeance when they saw that the usual doorway in
this wall was protected by something that had, so far, been entirely
missing everywhere else.
It was barred by a heavy door.
For several minutes the doctor, the geologist, and the architect stood
before it. Neither would have liked to admit that he would just as soon
leave that door unopened. All the former uneasiness came back. It was
all the more inexplicable, with the brilliant sunlight only a few feet
away, that each should have felt chilled by the place.
"Wonder if it's locked?" remarked Van Emmon. He pressed against the
dust-covered barrier, half expecting it to turn to dust; but evidently
it had been made of the time-defying alloy. It stood firm. And to all
appearances it was nearly air-tight.
"Well!" said the doctor suddenly, so that the other two started
nervously. "The door's got to come down; that's all!" They looked
around; there was no furniture, no loose piece of material of any kind.
Van Emmon straightway backed away from the door about six feet, and the
others followed his example.
"All together!" grunted the geologist; and the three aluminum-armored
monsters charged the door. It shook under the impact; a shower of dust
fell down; and they saw that they had loosened the thing.
"Once more!" This time a wide crack showed all around the edge of the
door, and the third attempt finished the job. Noiselessly--for there was
no air to carry the sound--but with a heavy jar which all three felt
through their feet, the barrier went flat on the floor beyond.
At the same instant a curious, invisible wave, like a tiny puff of wind,
floated out of the darkness and passed by the three men from the earth.
Each noticed it, but neither mentioned it at the time. Van Emmon was
already searching the darkness with the torch.
Apparently it was only an anteroom. A few feet beyond was another wall,
and in it stood another door, larger and heavier than the first. The
three did not stop; they immediately tried their strength on this one
also.
After a half dozen attempts without so much as shaking the massive
affair--"It's no use," panted the geologist, wishing that he could get a
handkerchief to his forehead. "We can't loosen it without tools."
Jackson was for trying again, but the doctor agreed with Van Emmon. They
reflected that they had been away from Smith long enough, anyhow. The
cube was out of sight from where they were.
Van Emmon turned the light on the walls of the anteroom, and found, on a
shelf at one end, a neat pile of those little reels, eleven in all. He
pocketed the lot. There was nothing else.
Jackson and Kinney started to go. They retreated as far into the main
room as their telephone wires would allow. Still the geologist held
back.
"Come on," said the doctor uneasily. "It's getting cold."
Next second they stopped short, nerves on edge, at a strange exclamation
from Van Emmon. They looked around to see him pointing his light
directly at the floor. Even in that unnatural suit of mail, his attitude
was one of horror.
"Look here," he said in a low, strained voice. They went to his side,
and instinctively glanced behind them before looking at what lay in the
dust.
It was the imprint of an enormous human foot.
* * * * *
The first thing that greeted the ears of the explorers upon taking off
their suits in the sky-car, was the exultant voice of Smith. He was too
excited to notice anything out of the way in their manner; he was almost
dancing in front of his bench, where the unknown machine, now
reconstructed, stood belted to a small electric-motor.
"It runs!" he was shouting. "You got here just in time!" He began to
fumble with a switch.
"What of it?" remarked the doctor in the bland tone which he kept for
occasions when Smith needed calming. "What will it do if it does run?"
The engineer looked blank. "Why--" Then he remembered, and picked up one
of the reels at random. "There's a clamp here just the right size to
hold one of these," he explained, fitting the ribbon into place and
threading its free end into a loop on a spool which looked as though
made for it. But his excitement had passed; he now cautiously set a
small anvil between himself and the apparatus, and then, with the aid of
a long stick, he threw on the current.
For a moment nothing happened, save the hum of the motor. Then a
strange, leafy rustling sounded from the mechanism, and next, without
any warning, a high-pitched voice, nasal and plaintive but distinctly
human, spoke from the big metal disk.
The words were unintelligible. The language was totally unlike anything
ever heard on the earth. And yet, deliberately if somewhat cringingly,
the voice proceeded with what was apparently a recitation. There were
modulations, pauses, sentences; but seemingly the paragraphs were all
short and to the point.
As the thing went on the four men came closer and watched the operation
of the machine. The ribbon unrolled slowly; it was plain that, if the
one topic occupied the whole reel, then it must have the length of an
ordinary chapter. And as the voice continued, certain dramatic qualities
came out and governed the words, utterly incomprehensible though they
were. There was a real thrill to it.
After a while they stopped the thing. "No use listening to this now," as
the doctor said. "We've got to learn a good deal more about these people
before we can guess what it all means."
And yet, although all were very hungry, on Jackson's suggestion they
tried out one of the "records" that was brought from that baffling
anteroom. Smith was very much interested in that unopened door, and Van
Emmon was in the midst of it when Jackson started the motor.
The geologist's words stuck in his throat. The disk was actually shaking
with the vibrations of a most terrific voice. Prodigiously loud and
powerful, its booming, resonant bass smote the ears like the roll of
thunder. It was irresistible in its force, compelling in its assurance,
masterful and strong to an overpowering degree. Involuntarily the men
from the earth stepped back.
On it roared and rumbled, speaking the same language as that of the
other record; but whereas the first speaker merely _used_ the words,
the last speaker demolished them. One felt that he had extracted every
ounce of power in the language, leaving it weak and flabby, unfit for
further use. He threw out his sentences as though done with them; not
boldly, not defiantly, least of all, tentatively, he spoke with a
certainty and force that came from a knowledge that he could compel,
rather than induce his hearers to believe.
It took a little nerve to shut him off; Van Emmon was the one who did
it. Somehow they all felt immensely relieved when the gigantic voice was
silenced; and at once began discussing the thing with great earnestness.
Jackson was for assuming that the first record was worn and old, the
last one, fresh and new; but after examining both tapes under a glass,
and seeing how equally clear cut and sharp the impressions all were,
they agreed that the extraordinary voice they had heard was practically
true to life.
They tried out the rest of the records in that batch, finding that they
were all by the same speaker. Nowhere among the ribbons brought from the
library was another of his making, although a great number of different
voices was included; neither was there another talker with a fifth the
volume, the resonance, the absolute power of conviction that this
unknown colossus possessed.
Of course this is no place to describe the laborious process of
interpreting these documents, records of a past which was gone before
earth's mankind had even begun. The work involved the study of countless
photos, covering everything from inscriptions to parts of machinery, and
other details which furnished clue after clue to that superancient
language. It was not deciphered, in fact, until several years after the
explorers had submitted their finds to the world's foremost
lexicographers, antiquarians and paleontologists. Even today some of it
is disputed.
But right here is, most emphatically, the place to insert the tale told
by that unparalleled voice. And incredible though it may seem, as judged
by the standards of the peoples of this earth, the account is fairly
proved by the facts uncovered by the expedition. It would be but begging
the question to doubt the genuineness of the thing; and if,
understanding the language, one were to hear the original as it fell,
word for word from the iron mouth of Strokor[1] the
Great--hearing, one would believe; none could doubt, nor would.
[Footnote 1: Translator's note--In the Mercurian language, stroke means
iron, or heart.]
And so it does not do him justice to set it down in ordinary print. One
must imagine the story being related by Stentor himself; must conceive
of each word falling like the blow of a mammoth sledge. The tale was not
told--it was _bellowed_; and this is how it ran: