Fletcher Pratt Page 4

  Using the destructive flash, he now punched a large hole through the exact center of the plate and a row of smaller holes around the edges. From the plate he now proceeded to build up sides, arching them in to form a projectile-shaped whole, almost twelve feet tall, and leaving a small doorway through which a man could just crawl conveniently, near the base. Around the top, at the point of the projectile, the steel was reinforced by a row of thin nickel plates, and the big central hole at the base was similarly treated.

  Just below each of the nickel plates, and at one side of the round nickel plate at the base, a little aluminum shelf was welded to the shell. The whole interior of the shell was now lined with aluminum racks, just about big enough to hold the cylinders in which Merrick had shipped the mercury.

  This much completed, I set to work gathering heaps of dead leaves. These were assembled into a couple of goodsized portable bathtubs Merrick had sent up and bathed in chemicals, then treated with the ray tube and given another chemical bath. When the process was finished, a gelatinous, transparent mass remained in the bathtubs.

  "Atotta," Ashembe explained to us. "What you could call artificial rubber, only different in important characters. Is effective insulator against heat, which your rubber is not. Also effective insulator against shock, which your rubber is. The same is produced from juice of plant in my country, but is more easier to manufacture by synthesis."

  He moved off to the shell with a bathtub load of stuff, staggering under the weight.

  Up at the clearing, where the "cometary car" was building, Ashembe was brushing his atotta over the inside surface of the structure, covering it all but the tops of the little aluminum racks. As he brushed it on, it hardened into the same gray, stiff substance Merrick and I had noticed on the inner side of the lid of the car in which he had arrived.

  "Finished," he said finally, laying down his brush.

  "The whole thing finished?" I inquired.

  "Ahno," he said, all one word. "This is only interior-central chamber. Very much more to be made yet."

  I gazed at the fat, glittering shape that towered above us. "But the one you arrived in couldn't have been much bigger than this."

  "Certain—ly. Action of atmosphere caused the destruction of outer chambers. Also, some discarded in coming here from considerable distance."

  I made an inarticulate sound indicating a desire for further enlightenment.

  "I perceive non-comprehension," Ashembe remarked. "Mark you well. The propulsive force of the cometary car is the pleci ray. Incidental, I do not find your word for pleci. In traveling, the car goes long distance. Pleci is very little used up but long distances are so long that it gradually exhausts. Consequential, very large quantities is required—the same being stored in outer shells of cometary car, like this in all respects but larger. You follow?"

  I nodded.

  "Excellent. The next thing is that when pleci in one outer shell is complete exhausted, the shell must be allowed to discard to reduce unnecessary mass. Complete car is made of several shells. You follow?

  "In order to discard properly, explorer must be able to reach outer shells to cast off when pleci contained therein-under is exhaust. Consequential, pleci is carried only in the upper point portion of the shell, the same being partitioned off lightly, and lower portion being fitted for access by the explorer, since pleci has corrosive activity.

  "Now since explorer must have access to lower portions, he may easily have comfort in them also. Lower portions accordingly receive fittings for living. You follow?

  "Last interior shell, but one, is not to discard. Necessary for protection of explorer. Similar to the present instance. Upon arriving at planet with atmosphere, the impact at high speeds maintained by cometary car is very serious. Oxidation of outer shell occurs, and heat would oxidize explorer within unless he had additional protection besides wall of inner shell. I personally was much overcome by heat at the interior of shell on arrival within your atmosphere, and perchance would have suffered complete damage by falling into water or otherwise because unable to rise and steer the cometary car. But I personally had no choice. I had come such long distance that all my shells but one were gone upon arrival. If not encountering your planet, would have failed for lack of materials to eat, "In early days of exploration by our people many did this same, and many more were oxidized or torn apart by solar attractions within space. You follow?"

  Yes, I followed—all too clearly. Before my mind's eye rose a picture of Ashembe's home, that Murashema he mentioned always with an almost religious patriotism. A world like our own, a tiny ball adrift in space; its people harnessing the huge forces of a malign nature through long centuries of development, and as their knowledge grew, faced with the fact that their world was dying, their home surely turning to a ball of ice, within which there can be no life. It would be discussed gravely at meetings of scientific societies, first, as a novel and interesting theory, and then as evidence accumulated, would seep down and down through all the levels of intelligence until the certainty of destruction was ever before all men. Philosopher, scientist and economist would know that death was the only end of their long ages of evolution from the slime, and religion would be asked to explain the fact that man had been created only for the purpose of being extinguished in cold and fear.

  Yes, I followed. I could even picture the bankruptcy of spiritual leadership at such a moment, the decay of all philosophy to a despairing and debased hedonism. And through all a few proud souls would work oh amid the universal wreck; a few stern Puritans of science, fighting their battle for a world which would give them little time. A decade of this, a century perhaps, and the glad tidings that the world was out of danger—saved.

  Saved for how long? The cycle would only begin anew. For it would become apparent that life was measured in the terms of the mercury it could find. There would be anxious conferences, inventions, until one day some bold genius ventured out on the ways of space in the first cometary car, seeking for a new source of the element that would keep the world.

  I could picture the lonely men in those cars, like the one before me, gradually discarding shell after shell on their journeys from their island homes, driven from apartment to apartment within them, searching perhaps vainly for some place to land. Many of them would never land at all, would spin forever in the vast loneliness of space, fuel-less and dark. Many more would land on strange planets peopled by fearful monsters or filled with noxious gases, or so massive that the very gravitational forces would crush the explorers, before they put foot on land. Only a few, a very few, would ever return, and of those few, fewer still would bring back any encouragement. Does such a future hang before our own world, I wonder?

  "Come," Ashembe said, "I am hungry."

  Four automobile jacks were Ashembe's means of getting the inner chamber of his cometary car off the ground to place the plates for the base of the next shell beneath it, a system of fine arches carrying the weight of the inner projectile not more than two feet above the base of the outer.

  The outer shell was oval in section. A small living chamber about four feet each way and-about eight feet high was located in the longer axis of the oval and was partitioned off from the upper section of the projectile. In the large space above (which extended some five or six feet beyond the inner chamber) the fuel was to be carried. From this space a complex series of tubes led down to the base of the inner chamber by way of the narrow space between the shorter axis of the oval and the outside of the inner shell.

  Like the inner chamber, the outer was provided with nickel plates at point and base, Ashembe taking the greatest care to fit them to the inner layer of plates. At the very point of the inner projectile a stout duralumin (or some similar metal) column, which spread out into a heavy capital, carried the peak of the outer shell. This much done, Ashembe lined the interior of the new living chambers with atotta as he had the inner ones, and set to work on a third shell.

  This was constructed on the same lines as
the second, save that its section was circular, thus bringing the whole projectile again to a circular shape, and providing two more chambers of considerable size at the points where the short axis of the oval second chamber had fallen. The tubes leading down from the points of the two outer shells were now carried to the space below the inner chamber, where they were led into an arrangement of valves that cost Ashembe several days' work. When he had finished there was a rod with a key attached, which ran up through every other one of the series of holes he had punched in the base of the inner shell.

  "This is the propulsive force of the Shoraru," he explained as I watched him forging one of the delicate little keys. "Pleci is admitted to small chambers underneath, also small amount of hydrogen. Violent reaction ensues, giving propulsive force under mercury ray. The slight additional reaction is obtained by bringing in small amount of fresh pleci to displace that spent in the previous reaction. Entire process is controlled from the central chamber. You comprehend?" *

  * It seems proper, at this point, to give the observations of Professor Francis X. McGreevy late of the New Jersey State University's Department of Chemistry, to whom this manuscript was submitted, on the nature of Ashembe's mercury tube and "pleci ray."

  "According to J. H. Jeans," Professor McGreevy writes, "there is only one force adequate to explain the immense amount of energy expended in solar (and stellar) radiation. This is the total annihilation of matter. He points out that if the energy of the stars were supplied from any other source, they would long since have burned out; our own sun would long since have become a blackened cinder (from the amount of time we know the Earth to have been circling around it) if its energy had any other source. He gives the striking illustration of the several thousand tons of coal consumed in driving an ocean liner across the Atlantic; whereas the total annihilation of the matter contained in only a few grams of coal would drive the same ship several times around the world.

  "It seems, from the evidence presented in the manuscript, that the Murashemans have discovered some means of annihilating matter in the mercury tube. This would explain the immense supplies of energy they derive from a small amount of mercury; it would also explain why they must continually search through the universe for more supplies of this metal, as their stocks become exhausted. I am aware that Mr. Schierstedt gives his opinion that the mercury is used as a catalytic agent. This must be inaccurate; one is to remember that Mr. Schierstedt time and again emphasizes the fact that he is not a chemist.

  "As to the pleci ray; this seems to me to present no particular difficulties. Since the discovery that hydrogen is a mixture (composed of two substances, called for convenience, orthohydrogen and parahydrogen) there has been no difficulty in recognizing the existence of chemical elements of less atomic weight than 1. That one of these elements possesses immense stores of energy under the influence of the annihilating mercury ray is perfectly logical."

  Ashembe exhibited a dexterity in modeling the parts of his machine at which I never ceased to marvel, but by the time he had begun work on a third outer shell (like the first, oval in shape) it was already November and threatening days and frosty nights warned us that winter was at hand. As for myself, I was unremittingly busy aiding Ashembe and trying to transform a summer shack into a house, which would be habitable throughout an Adirondack winter.

  It was one evening during the early part of December, as I recall it, that the first event in the series that broke the calm serenity of our plans occurred. Ashembe, who had nearly finished the third outer shell, was seated by the fire reading Stratton's "Astronomical Physics," while I was absorbed in a report from the office. I was suddenly startled by a whoop from our interplanetary visitor.

  "Oh, hell!" he cried, leaping from his chair.

  "For Heaven's sake, what's the matter?" I asked.

  "Pleci! Oh, hell! It is coronium. What to do!" He began to pace the floor in sudden and uncontrollable excitement.

  "Can't you use—" I began, but he waved me to silence, and without another word seized a sheet of paper and a pencil, and seating himself at the table, began to make mathematical calculations. I could not draw him from his silent labors, so I went to bed.

  I emerged from the bunk room in the morning to find a worn and drawn Ashembe still seated by a table now covered with papers bearing the queer symbols of his mathematics. He looked up wanly as I entered.

  "Ah, the dawn!" he declared. "Give me some of your slightly stimulating brown liquid."

  "What's the trouble?" I asked.

  "Pleci. The propulsive force of cometary cars depends upon pleci. But I find in your book (he laid his hand on it) what previously terrified my vitals. Pleci is the same as coronium. It has been identified by your scientists in your sun, but does not exist on this globe, being of too high parabolic velocity to be retained by the Earth. Upon Murashema it is in combination, but not here. Do you comprehend?"

  "No," I answered with perfect truth.

  "Attend, fool. Molecules of any gas are continually flying about in all directions, colliding and rebounding. You understand? Velocities with which molecules fly about are less for the heavy gases, also less at lower temperatures. Velocities are the higher for lighter gases, also for gases at higher temperatures. Each planet exercises certain attraction on gases, due to gravitation. If velocity of gas molecules is higher than attraction of planet, it will seep off into space one molecule at a time because of velocity, comprehend?"

  "Ye-es."

  "Oh, hell. Now velocity at which this earth lets go of gases is 11.188 kilometers per second in your measurement. Such is called the parabolic velocity. Velocity of hydrogen, which is lightest gas retained, is about 2. Therefore your earth retains hydrogen, except for small quantity which escapes out from upper atmosphere in extreme warm spots where heat of sun raises temperature and also velocity of hydrogen. But pleci—coronium—has velocity of 11.104. Therefore, when a little heat is applied to the same, it bounces out of Earth away. Consequential, even if you once had much coronium here, all is now disappeared. But coronium is hitherto necessary to propulsion of cometary car, or how shall I return to Murashema? Therefore, I calculate whether any other substance can be subjected to required atomic vibrations to carry the cometary car to another planet, perchance to find coronium. You comprehend?"

  "I think so," I said. "It's like this, isn't it? The Earth is so small that gravity has no effect on coronium on it. In other words, if you had coronium here, it would fly right off the Earth, making a big disturbance as it went. So you're going to try making something else."

  "That is well-nigh exact," said Ashembe, "except big disturbance upon departure of coronium. No such results would appertain. You will make the scientist someday. I advise continued study."

  "Have you found anything else that will do?"

  He shrugged. "Perchance helium can be made to perform the necessary function. I have not completed computations in this regard. But send to your friend of New York for one small cylinder of helium and we will make the attempt."

  I began to fill the coffee pot. A thought occurred to me. "Look here." I said. "How is it if you came from a planet about the size of this one that you have coronium there and we do not?"

  "That I am not quite sure," said Ashembe. "Coronium exists in Murashema in combination with other elements.

  The combination must have taken place at high temperatures not now existing, at period when our sun was a nova. You understand?"

  "I do not," I smiled.

  "Never mind. I will demonstrate at future date. Further, Murashema is nearer to our sun than Earth is to yours. Coronium exists very large in upper atmosphere of the sun in region called chromosphere. Large disturbances in the sun, accompanied by sun spots, cause small portions of it to rise very far out in very rarefied condition. Some of this it is possible to collect from Murashema, not from Earth, because of greater distance of your planet from the sun."

  Well, that was that. Ashembe spent the day as he had the night—in m
aking computations, and after his one brief outburst of speech, was not to be drawn from a busy silence. Seeing there was nothing more to be got from him, I hauled out the canoe and went in to Fort Ann. And there, to climax our chapter of misadventure, I found an ominous letter from my friend.

  "... You know, I've been taking the gold to the U.S. Assay office," he wrote. "They accept it there and pay you for it in an equal weight of coin, with no questions asked. But I think they're beginning to suspect I'm some sort of a criminal. The clerks there are always polite, but they have taken to quizzing me—oh, very unofficially, of course, and in the gentlest manner possible. No questions asked, you understand, but any information is very welcome. I wouldn't have noticed it even then, probably, but yesterday afternoon, when I made my usual deposit, I noticed a fat johnny with big feet, leaning over my shoulder. He followed me out, and though I lost sight of him later, I'm sure I saw the same chap standing across the street in front of the house this morning, gazing at the milk on the doorstep as though he thought it contained gold in solution. You couldn't miss the size of those feet —why do all policemen wear size 14? That doesn't mean that I want you to quit sending me the root of all evil or anything. But, it's rather curious and might become annoying."

  IV

  GETTING A cylinder of helium, or a supply of it in any other form, Merrick wrote me, was a troublesome job. It was deep in December, the snow lay thick on the ground, and Ashembe had completed a fourth and final outer shell to the cometary car, with all its complex arrangement of tubes, valves and sheathing, before Merrick reported victory in the helium hunt, and a small iron cylinder of the precious gas was delivered at Fort Ann. By this time the lake was nearly impassable for a canoe, so congested it was with slush and ice, and every shipment of materials meant a long trek through the woods around the shore with a heavy load packed on one's back. I was glad the cylinder was no larger. Fortunately five months in the woods had made me hard as nails.