CHAPTER IX
PIONEERS INTO SPACE
June 14, 1957, I set down the date with my recollection that it was for me the most momentous day of my life to that time. And I think, for Dan and Freddie also—the day upon which, after more than sixteen months of activity, we three were ready at last for the trip to Xenephrene. The events of those sixteen months were to me the mere bridging of an interval unimportant save in its consummation.
There were times when we all thought we would fail. I am not of a scientific trend of mind; nor is Dan. Upon Freddie both he and I depended for a complete understanding of father's scientific data.
Even so, there seemed to Dan and me in our impatience and futility at our own lack of scientific training a great deal about father's instructions that Freddie himself but half understood. And this Freddie admitted. We would have failed, I have no doubt, had our government disdained us. But it did not. From the first we had back of us not only government funds, but the full resources of the government's laboratories and technical staff.
The whole enterprise was conducted quietly; and though some inkling of it leaked out, the thing was kept fairly close. During most of this period—these seemingly interminable months—Dan, Freddie and I were in Miami, where in the government shops our vehicle was being built. The government laboratories were there also. In them our mechanisms were assembled; a thousand abstruse chemical and physical problems were solved.
The work progressed steadily, though with occasional maddening holdups. Father had suggested that the outer shell of the vehicle be constructed of alexite—that strange alloy, largely aluminium, after the process perfected in 1943 by the Russ, Alexia. World conditions made it difficult for some of the materials to be quickly obtained in sufficient quantity. But they were obtained, and the shell was cast almost on the date set for it in Freddie's schedule.
The daylight months of 1956, in Miami, brought heat almost intolerable. It is not my plan to describe that now. Weird change from what had always before been the normal! The spring twilight thaws; the brief period of lengthening days until soon the day and night were equal; then, each twenty-four hours, a longer day, a lesser night. Swiftly changing, until soon the sun never set. Blistering summer. Then again the sun touched the horizon; rose; in twenty-four hours dipped a trifle. Night a minute long! Queer cycle! But we were growing used to it already, for human life springs swiftly to adjust itself to environment.
The summer of 1956 dragged itself past. In January, 1957, with the fall twilight days passing and night again upon us, the vehicle shell was cast. Assembling of the mechanism began in February. By April, in the frigid darkness of midwinter, I think we could have been ready to start. But Xenephrene was too far away. Daily now she was overtaking the earth.
We had to await the June conjunction when at her closest point for the year, father's data told us the intervening distance would be some seventeen and a half million miles. His notes named twelve o'clock noon, June 14, as our best starting time. And in this, as in every other detail, we were determined to follow his instructions to the letter.
We had been worried all these months over father's warning concerning the presence on earth of enemies from Xenephrene. Indeed, that first evening in the Cain plantation house when the storage battery of the Reet Catalyst had so nearly been stolen from us, proved that father's fears were fully justified. The precious white metal cube was unharmed; and there was nothing else missing from the cylinder, as we had at first feared.
The intruder had left no trace of himself; but he was a man, human like ourselves, undoubtedly. Dan and Freddie had come to grips with him; I had felt his burning blow upon my face. There was a red, blistered welt there for many days. Dan and Freddie were burned about the hands and face.
Curious marks! I say burned, for perhaps that best describes it. But it was not that. A queer irritation of the skin and flesh where they had been exposed to contact with the crimson radiance. It departed within a week; and the ringing in our ears, which for a day we all feared might presage deafness, was gone in a like period. Our eyes, too, were left smarting and burning. For a day afterward I found my sight queerly blurring at intervals; and any sudden light blinded me momentarily, as one is blinded who steps abruptly from darkness into daylight. But all these unpleasant sensations passed in a few days.
This crimson radiance had been undoubtedly of a very weak intensity. It had not been used as a weapon, but merely as a cloak of invisibility, behind which the intruder had evidently felt he could steal the cylinder and escape. This we realized, though of the nature of the radiance we knew not much more than before; nor was there anything in father's data to enlighten us.
We feared a repetition of this encounter; but none was attempted. All our work was done under guard in Miami; and everywhere in the world the secret service of every government was alert. It was incredible, of course, that upon earth there would be one man of Xenephrene—and no more. We learned afterward that there were many, but at this time no trace of them was found.
It was the 4th of June when at last our vehicle was completely ready—save its provisioning, some earth scientific apparatus which father had bade us bring, and our personal effects. The assembling was complete; the navigating mechanism was installed, tested and in working order.
It was then, but not until then, that success seemed assured. And with the relief of it, we all realized what a strain we had been under. By comparison, what lay ahead seemed simple. But that fancy passed; and, though we never said so, apprehension soon descended upon us again.
For myself a thousand doubts and fears assailed me. Could Freddie successfully navigate us from one whirling world to another? By mathematical formula which to me seemed incredibly abstruse, and mechanisms in our vehicle which even he only half understood? Alone, unaided, a pioneer into trackless space, with only father's complicated notes to guide him!
Freddie, during these last days, was very pale and silent. Not for anything would Dan or I have voiced our fears; but Freddie was aware of them, for they matched his own. Thin-lipped and solemn he sat for hours each day within the vehicle; and sometimes he would slip away from Dan and me during the hours of sleep, and we would find him there, poring over father's data, or working at seemingly endless calculations.
Spring twilight was mounting during the first two weeks of June. The spring thaws were at hand. On June 13 we made our final inspection of the vehicle to be sure its equipment was complete. It was a small affair—as small as the one in which Zetta had arrived. And similar in shape—a flattened globe twenty-one feet in vertical diameter and thirty feet across its middle width.
The thin shell of alexite gave it a dull gleaming white color. The exterior was reinforced with a thick, rolled belt of alexite like an equator around the globe's bulging middle.
There were two vertical reinforcing circular bands; passing through its poles they divided its surface into four equal segments. Into each of these segments two small bull's-eye windows were set, one directly above the other. And in one segment, near the bottom, was a small, narrow door. The top and bottom of the globe were flattened to a level area some six feet square, as though a section had been neatly sliced off, to form a small lower floor and a small roof. Each was set with a bull's-eye glass windowpane.
Such was the exterior aspect of our vehicle. I chanced to stand alone for a moment a few hours before our start, regarding it as it lay in the small stone room which had been built to house it. A tiny little world! Little white globe, so soon to be whirling through space with its three human inhabitants! And I was to be one of the three!
The globe's interior was reinforced with a lining of alexite ribs, and a brittle wire mesh cast into the alexite shell. It was tested for pressure; in the vacuum of space the outward pressure of our air content would have exploded a shell less strongly built. Father had calculated all this; his calculations proved correct; we had a wide margin of safety.
The globe inside was divided by two horizontal floorings into three compartments. The lowest one, to which the narrow doorway gave entrance, had a floor six feet square, bulging concave walls, and a ceiling some seven feet above the floor.
This compartment was our instrument room, and observatory. It had four side windows, and the lower window which comprised its floor. Between the side windows, the instruments were fitted in racks. The control table was here, and a portion of the navigating mechanism.
The middle story—much the largest of the three—contained our sleeping cots, our meager cooking arrangements, our food stock, and most of the mechanical apparatus for the navigating of the globe. The upper compartment, in size and shape like the lower, held our personal effects, our water supply, heating instruments, and the Regnalt-Dillon air purifiers, with the pumps, fans and distributors. In flight, this would always remain the upper segment of the globe; we would turn over after leaving the earth and fall toward Xenephrene.
I fear I give too much space to this pedantic description. The means to which an end is attained are always less important than the attainment itself. Certainly Dan and I, with our unscientific trend of thought, were only interested in this little globe that it might transport us safely to our destination.
The last day came. June 14, with its raw, thawing chill in the air; its twilight at noon which almost promised a sunrise. Dan and I had not slept for twenty-four hours, in the fever of our excitement. Nor had Freddie. He had not left the globe; just sat there in the lower compartment with the control buttons on his little table and a sheaf of father's instructions, which over and over, he was studying. Once, when I bade him sleep, he turned upon me so sharply that I retreated in haste. I brought him a cup of coffee later.
"Here, Freddie." I held it out, a peace offering. He glanced up with his white face and tired eyes.
"Oh, thanks, Peter—very much."
An emotion swept me—between man and woman comes the human emotion most strongly tempestuous, undoubtedly; but there can be between a man and his friend an emotion wholly dissimilar, but of equally powerful bond. I felt it then as I laid my hand upon Freddie's shoulder.
"Thanks," he repeated. "Sorry I snapped at you, Peter."
Men are most inarticulate with each other when deeply stirred. I nodded.
Three hours later we left the earth. There was a pathos to our leaving, mingled with the excitement of it. Any unusual adventure in life seems to bring into play the whole gamut of human emotions.
There stood Dan's old father and mother! Not for them did Xenephrene hold any lure! They were giving their only son to what must have seemed a mad tempting of fate. They had said little.
What passed between them and Dan, I never knew. Indeed, with the preoccupation of my own thoughts, I scarcely considered it. But they came to the little stone house to see us start. They stood in a far corner of the room, apart from the few government officials who were there to speed us.
A brief, strangely dramatic scene, our leaving!
We stood there at the small doorway to our tiny world. Attendants rolled back the roof of the room; the stars gleamed down upon us. The room was dim. With my pounding heart, it seemed full of vague, moving shadows—people I must hastily bid good-by now and leave—perhaps forever.
Some one called out: "Eleven fifty-four! Better get inside, Smith."
Freddie glanced at his watch. "Yes. Well—good-by. Good-by, everybody—wish us luck." His tone was queerly stilted.
Abruptly men's hands were shaking mine; men were clapping me on the back. And then I found myself with Dan before his parents. Trembling old man and woman; a pity for them swept me.
"Good-by, Peter."
"Good-by," I said. Mrs. Cain kissed me. I added: "We'll be back soon. Good-by."
Freddie's voice was calling: "Hurry up, there!" I turned away. But Dan lingered. From the doorway I had a glimpse of him as with his big arms he caught his mother up to kiss her good-by, while his father clung to him. Then Dan was with us. The small heavy door swung closed and locked upon us.
Eleven fifty-nine! Freddie sat at his table, his fingers on the row of buttons. In the gloom, the only light was a glow upon the chronometer face with its second-hand making the last circle. Noon! There was a vague hum as the Reet current went on. The floor beneath my feet stirred slightly, then steadied. Through the windows I caught a glimpse of the room outside. It was silently slipping downward!
We had started!
Had our voyage been an adventure unique in modern history, I should be constrained to describe it here in detail. But since these few stirring years which I am describing, Interplanetary voyaging has become a common thing. Father and Hulda were the first to leave the earth; Freddie, Dan and I were next. Pioneers!
We afterward gave the secret to our world; the history of Interplanetary travel will make that plain. Space-voyaging soon will no longer seem an extraordinary thing; already, the mere account of an uneventful trip is not worth the reading. But an account of Xenephrene? Ah! That is a different matter. I doubt if any world will ever be found comparable to Xenephrene.
As every one knows now, Mars is nothing like it; nor Venus; nor Mercury. They talk already of going to Jupiter; to Uranus; to Neptune. It is possible, of course. And in a few lifetimes beyond my own, they will be striving to reach the distant stars, for the spirit of adventure in man is insatiable.
Our voyage to Xenephrene was remarkable only that we were pioneers in Space-travel. To lay stress upon it here would be out of place. Those days upon earth when the climate changed were more extraordinary. And Xenephrene herself! The Wanderer unique! And those other terrible days when we returned to earth—our world harried, wounded, bleeding, all but beaten! But with spirit unbroken, fighting—
So I hasten on.
Our voyage was unmarked by any untoward incident. Our sensations at first, the novelty of it, stirred us all as we had never been stirred before. The first plunge into the dead blackness of space with the stars and the sun and all the worlds blazing like torches, is an experience never to be forgotten.
The first look backward upon a dull-red crescent earth!
Ah, the man or the woman who has had that look will feel very differently ever afterward! A humbleness of spirit; a sense of our own infinite unimportance in the great plan of the Universe! The traveler broadens; it is only the man who revolves his mind in its own humdrum little rut who thinks that he and what he stands for is the sum-total of real importance and goodness in the Universe! What differs from himself, from his own standards of thought and living, he thinks must of necessity be inferior. The traveler knows it is not so. Distant places, distant worlds, distant people—are different. Not necessarily worse. Other races have different standards, different modes of thought from our own; not better perhaps; not worse—just different. Our earth poet once wrote: "Though patriotism flatter, still shall wisdom find an equal portion dealt to all mankind." The traveler knows that it is true.
I come now to that time when in our tiny voyaging world we found ourselves, according to Freddie's calculations, at a distance of no more than two hundred and fifty thousand miles from Xenephrene. As close as our own moon is to the earth.
Our vehicle had turned over soon after starting. The earth lay in the star-field above us—a glittering red-white point, not very different from a million others! Beneath us, seen through the lower window, we were falling toward Xenephrene. It hung there amid the stars; to the naked eye now it was a tremendous, moon-like crescent. Purple-red on its lighted area. The shadowed part of its circle could be faintly seen—a dull-red shadow.
We sat in the lower compartment, Freddie, as usual, by his table, with Dan and me beside him. Freddie was thoroughly rested now. At the start he had worn himself to the verge of exhaustion. But once we were well away from earth he found confidence in the verified correctness of his calculations.
We were upon our course. All was going well; and to our voyage, with the novelty dulling, came that monotony which is the chief characteristic of Space-travel. There was little to do, save sleep, prepare our meals, and keep watch that no asteroid or meteor crossed our path with dangerous nearness. Freddie's calculations were, from then on, his only labor. Dan and I did the rest.
We sat now with Freddie, who had called to us. The quarter of a million mile point from Xenephrene was an objective to which we all three had looked forward with keenest interest.
"We're there," called Freddie. We came down to find him with sparkling eyes and flushed face. "Two hundred and fifty thousand eight hundred odd miles." He shoved his papers away from him. "I brought us, didn't I? I did it!"
We clapped him on the back. We all felt as though the Rubicon were crossed. "Now," said Freddie, "we can open Professor Vanderstuyft's last instruction sheet."
Father had sent us in the cylinder one bulky envelope which expressly he had stated was not to be opened until we were within two hundred and fifty thousand miles of our destination.
He called it "Landing Instructions." He had mentioned it several times in a way almost ominously mysterious. Everything concerning Xenephrene itself father had omitted from his other notes, as though not to confuse our minds with details not then necessary. But now, we felt, as we neared the other world, the mystery that clung to it would have to be unfolded.
The prospect made our hearts pound; for there clung always to our thoughts of this other world a sense of the uncanny—we were plunging, very soon now, into something weird, gruesome perhaps. But I thought of little Zetta and I knew it would be a strange world; weird, perhaps bizarre, but hardly gruesome.
Freddie was holding father's envelope. "Here it is—we're entitled to open it now. It's addressed to you, Peter—you read it to us."
I took the envelope, broke its seal with fingers that were trembling in spite of all my efforts to steady them.