THE PLANETEER

Originally published in All-Story Weekly, March 9, 1918.

Massachusetts City,

July 3, 427 N. E.

To the People of Conserve Island, Greeting:

The Editors wish to congratulate you upon having decided to learn what the rest of the world is doing. We hope that this book will be of help, and have taken unusual pains with the following rather free translation. However, we do not intend to thereby reflect upon your ancestors’ action in completely isolating themselves at the time of the Great Change; we wish merely to urge that you master the world’s language as quickly as possible. It is now two hundred years since Universo replaced all others, including your “English.”

The University of Dead Languages.

No. 11, North America.

CHAPTER I

DANGER!

About half a mile below us and soaring steadily up in our direction, a white triplane caught our attention with a display of the red and green “trouble” signal. I turned the controls over to Ray, and she spiraled down until we were within a few yards of the stranger. A man thrust his head from the nearest port-hole.

“Hello! Aren’t you Forbes, of the commissary?”

“Yes,” puzzled. “What’s up?”

“Bad news from California. Just heard it. Take me aboard.” At that instant I recognized John Babcock.

Three minutes later the world’s most famous inventor climbed down his transfer ladder into my cabin. Ray glanced at him and nodded instantly; I wondered when he returned the salute, for I didn’t know they were acquainted. But then he never did wait for formalities.

“What’s the matter with your wireless?” Without pausing for an answer: “Had you been listening you’d have heard that an earthquake struck California shortly after thirteen o’clock, and the entire Sacramento Valley dropped below sea level! San Francisco Bay covers it now!” Ray and I stared in momentary stupefaction. I thought—the heart of the State—thousands of people—millions—

Then Ray caught her breath quickly. “Did any escape?” to Babcock. He shook his head mutely. She turned abruptly and fled into the other compartment, sobbing as she closed the door behind her.

But this is what I was thinking: Why had John Babcock stopped us to give us this news? The loss of life was probably staggering, but what did that mean to him? There must be something worse. I waited.

“The water is as far north as Redding. The fault-lines seem to be along the foothills on both sides. The station on Mount Shasta—”

A shout from outside took us to the window. His companion was calling from the triplane. “Fresno reports three feet of water. It has stopped rising. No reports from south of there. That means the San Joaquin is safe.”

I caught an exclamation of relief from the other room. Ray had heard.

John went on quietly. “You will change your course for New York?”

“Let us take your machine. We’ll transfer my fuel to your tank and make better time.”

He thoughtfully helped me with my luggage as I climbed up into the triplane. “How about Miss Abbott?” he smiled grimly after me. I had forgotten her for a moment. In the midst of my confusion he helped her up the ladder.

“You’re a nice one to desert me like that,” she declared indignantly. But I saw that she was scolding to hide her emotion; moreover, curiosity was getting the better of her. She could see that John was adjusting my plane’s parachute, while the tank was rapidly emptying. In a moment she broke out.

“What’s wrong, Bob? You aren’t going to run for the flooded district, are you?” She had glanced at the compass. I waited until John was aboard before replying.

The three of us watched the trim little cruiser floating, automatically controlled, softly down to the Indian Ocean two miles below. “Ray, I must ask you not to judge too hastily when I say perhaps it is just as well that so many people were drowned this afternoon.” I waited, not daring to look into her eyes. There was worse to tell.

John helped me out. “You see, Miss Abbott, the Sacramento Valley was something more than the headquarters of a big population. It is their occupation we have in mind.”

“Their occupation!” repeated the girl wonderingly. “They are farmers, aren’t they? I forget what is raised there.”

“Wheat,” I answered. A quick light came into Ray’s eyes. “Two billion people use the wheat that is produced by a few million farmers. A tenth of the world’s crop comes from there, and this catastrophe has struck at a very awkward time. Harvesting was to have begun next month.”

Ray was grasping it now. “And you mean that the world needs this wheat very badly,” she mused. Then she looked up sharply. “Just how badly?” she demanded. She did not see as yet that that land could never be used for wheat again. But I had to answer her. I turned to John.

“Babcock, how are we to make this situation clear to Miss Abbott? You know her education has been so largely musical. She wouldn’t understand the usual technical terms.”

John turned from the window. My plane was out of sight. He started the wireless and transmitted a warning to shipping below before answering my question. His round face was very serious.

“I suppose you know, Miss Abbott, the world is facing overpopulation. Last year’s census was twelve billion. That is six times the accepted estimate at the beginning of the last war. Right, Forbes?”

“Close enough,” I replied. “Needless to say, although the people have increased, the Earth has remained the same size. A century ago there was plenty and to spare. Today it is very different. Fact is, the past four centuries of unbroken peace have had exactly the bad effect that many predicted. Without wars to keep up the death-rate and with no industrial worries to hinder, most people have done little but to raise big families.”

“I don’t understand at all!” protested the girl. “Are you trying to tell me that this alarming situation is due to the peacefulness of today, to the very qualities which we find so pleasant?”

“Yes and no,” John, hurried to explain. “No, because Forbes is wrong. According to actual figures, people do not raise such offensively large families. There is another reason for the big population. Are you really interested?”

Ray nodded quickly and John went on. “At the end of the last war, then, the various governments faced the problem of explaining to their peoples why they had fought and bled and starved for years. Lies could not fool them as in the past; the people of the Central Powers now saw that their governments were mere parasites, while the Allies finally realized that the ‘democracy’ for which they had struggled was no democracy at all; it was little more than ‘each for himself and the devil take the hindmost.’ They had won a victory for their democracy, but it left the poor poorer and the rich richer. In short, every nation became a republic at once.”

John sighed, as though in longing for those strenuous times. “Well, the great change came soon after that. The war had shown everybody that if a government could conduct warfare better than individuals or corporations, perhaps it would also operate things more efficiently in times of peace. There was a great deal of experimenting, of course. They had to set a new standard of incentive.”

“But what was gained by the great change?” the girl wanted to know.

The inventor hesitated helplessly, then asked: “Do you know what is the average income today, and what is the average workday, in hours? What do you pay for sugar?”

Ray was nonplused. “Sugar is two cents now, I think. Nearly everybody works three hours a day. The average per diem is between eighteen and nineteen dollars, isn’t it? But why?”

“Just this,” returned John. “Before the change, four-fifths of the people were working long hours at very low pay. Eight hours and five dollars were considered excellent at a time when sugar was eight or nine cents a pound.”

“Are you sure?” from Ray incredulously. She appealed to me, and I spoke up enthusiastically. This was more along my line.

“Efficiency, that’s the answer. You’ve no idea how wasteful the world was before the change. They built two railroads where one was enough. Millions of people were engaged in advertising, legal business, and the police system, all of which became utterly unnecessary. Therefore these same people could work in really useful industries and thereby reduce labor for all.”

“But that doesn’t explain why we have so much more income now.”

John answered this. “Because cooperation is far more productive than competition. We have no idle people, either poor or rich; no idle land, no idle machinery of any kind. Everything is being used to the best advantage. Is that clear?

“Well, in those days a man was continually pressed to make a living, continually tempted to shorten his days with a ‘strenuous’ life; whereas today our welfare is guaranteed for life. We work because we like to. Do you know what was the average lifetime before the change?”

I saw that Ray did not know, so answered: “Thirty-eight years.”

“What!” she gasped in intense astonishment. “That—that’s unbelievable. Are you sure?”

“Entirely. Men who lived to be over a hundred were a greater rarity than men of two hundred are today. Our average last year was eighty-four.”

But I hastened to add, “John shouldn’t give economic conditions all the credit. Much of this longevity is due to Fulgrath’s solvent.”

“The treatment that keeps the arteries soft?” said Ray. “My great-grandfather uses it; he’s a hundred and fifteen. And that’s why the world is so densely populated!”

“Exactly,” came from John. “You can’t blame people for wanting to raise a few children, and for caring to live in this agreeable world as long as they feel young. At the same time, try as we may, we cannot make the Earth produce enough to feed any more. And the spring crop of babies is as large as usual—half a billion.”

Ray thought this over for a minute or two, looking down at Abyssinia as we passed at a height of three miles to avoid the Madagascar traffic. The people down there had probably heard of the wheat catastrophe. My bureau would be swamped with anxious inquiries. At length the girl turned to me, her face now very grave.

“You haven’t answered my question, Bob. Just how badly off are we, anyway?”

I caught a grim glance from John and faced the girl squarely. “The world must go on short rations tomorrow.”

CHAPTER II

THE COLLISION

A steady stream of tourists could be seen on the lower levels, following the course of the Nile to the Nyanzas. Shortly we were out over the dreary wastes of the desert; and I stood at a south porthole and thought of the situation, revolving schemes in my mind until I was mentally weary. In reaction I turned to—John’s remarks on the great change.

What was the use, thought I bitterly. What had it all come to, this wonderful ideal in its realization? The world had made astonishing strides, only to stumble against its own heels. Starvation in the midst of plenty, merely because we were living according to the highest possible standards!

It occurred to me that before the change Ray Abbott and I could not have taken this little Melbourne-to-Cairo jaunt without arousing talk that would ruin the girl’s reputation. But today, thanks to good mothers and earnest teachers, men are just as jealous of their chastity as women. A young couple can be trusted anywhere alone; society has long recognized that.

Of course, as John would point out, economic conditions do have some bearing here, too. The world is enjoying far greater ease and comfort; but instead of turning to sensuality we are using our time and money for higher pleasures than those of the body. Come to think of it, even before the change it was the poor, not the rich, who had big families.

There is improvement also in the standards of being a “gentleman.” Formerly his pet ambition was to tell some heroic lie to save a woman’s tender feelings. Today he is expected to live his life for humanity; a good deal better than the old standard of living off the labor of others.

Again, I thought of the astonishing progress of invention since the agreement. This triplane was good for four hundred miles per hour, could be brought to a standstill in mid-air, guided straight down to the ground without a jar, and rise straight up afterward. The early specimens in the museums could not exceed a hundred and fifty miles an hour, and had to start on the run on the ground. In landing they occasionally smashed the outfit and spoiled the aviator.

John would contend that these improvements are the result of improved conditions. Naturally, each adult being able to own one, the planes have been highly developed. Considering that the early models were so expensive that not a man in ten thousand owned one, no wonder they were inefficient.

But our engines are as far ahead of the old ones, as they outclassed the ancient steam-engines. Our fuel is another marvel which was to be expected with the progress of so many years. I was not yet ready to admit that spectacular advances could ever equal the influence of steady improvement.

To me the great change is a very natural phenomenon, and a constant wonder that the ancients were so slow to look for it. It was such a simple step. Big money, as it was then called, was steadily outgrowing little money. It was only a question of time before the few great “trusts” would become one giant trust; people only needed to see that the difference between owning the trust and being owned by the trust was a matter of actually controlling the government instead of leaving the job to a few obliging party leaders.

As a result of it all, here were the three of us hurrying to New York to help solve the riddle which had come up. Ray Abbott, for several years a favorite photophone soprano and now busy with a class, all of which promise to do as well as she, was the younger. I was nearly forty and John three years my junior; but Ray was not quite thirty, a graceful, vigorous girl just under six feet in height. Her features would be considered too large in a woman of ancient height; but the only real beauty in nature—the glow of perfect health—diffused her skin. Dark-blue eyes, widely separated by a slightly upturned, though perfectly straight, nose, reflected every thought that passed through her mind with the most fascinating changes of light.

I never could decide which I liked best, those eyes or her wonderful hair, a blond heap which seemed always struggling to burst its bounds and become a cloud. We were not engaged—although I certainly wished we were—or I’d have kissed that hair a hundred times a day.

She was wearing a simple one-piece aviation costume, rather striking as to color scheme. Aside from that I can’t describe the gown. Ever since women gave up following “styles” altogether, and each adopted a design to become herself, it has been admittedly easy to distinguish individuals, but a discouraging task to analyze the decoration itself. I can only assure you that all of Ray’s creations suited her physique perfectly.

Everybody knows how John looks. His round, cheerful face, with its great play of expression, varying from boyish innocence to intense shrewdness, is as familiar to each of us as our own. Any man who falls short of the six-foot-six standard of the day consoles himself by reflecting that Babcock is only six feet and, to be frank, inclined to the stout rather than the trim standard.

I have never ceased to marvel at his astonishing progress. Given a complete technical education, he swiftly developed a practical edition of his father’s artistic temperament. The greatest inventor of the world’s most inventive century, John gave me the impression, when I met him for the first time, of a boy just beginning to mature. How I saw him become great before my very eyes you may read as I go further.

Of myself, the less said the better. Rather above the average in height and below in weight, I am remarkable chiefly for an ascetic cast of countenance, inherited from a long line of such folks. In other times I would have been called an aristocrat; but the present situation found me where my overdeveloped talents for efficiency would naturally lead. I had already realized one ambition: I had become the head of the American division of the Commissary Bureau.

Our pilot was Harry Mapes, a youngster with a tremendous admiration for John, which had led to his being selected from among thousands to work with the inventor. His specialty was heat analysis; so he got the most out of our craft.

Before night fell we were above the Atlantic. In response to my message with John’s outfit, an official fuel balloon was waiting for us at the Cape Verde Islands. We were continually interrupted by aerograms from the bureau, as well as from various officials, including the chairman himself. But even to him we replied that nothing could be done until after a conference in New York. We did not eat dinner until nearly midnight.

Afterward we sat in the rear cabin and kept a studied silence. John was poking a small prism glass toward the Milky Way; and Ray idly kept tab on the purple lights of the mail planes on the next level, comparing their flights with the schedule. I remember she broke into my thoughts with some mention that “the Antarctic plane is ten minutes late,” and I was just getting my mind to working again when John gave an astonished exclamation.

“Look at Saturn!” he was saying, and thrust his glass into my hands. Next second Ray had another, and John was showing us where to look. I expected, of course, to see the famous rings of the great planet, but was astounded to observe a tremendous yellowish-white cloud behind the familiar disk. The rings were greatly distorted, and even as I watched, the strange cloud grew in size and the rings began to break up.

Ray was speaking excitedly. “What can it be, John? Did you just notice it?”

“It happened within the past half-hour, I am sure,” he declared. “I saw nothing of it earlier. Can’t be that the old fellow has burst!”

The truth had occurred to me as he spoke. There could be only one adequate cause for such a catastrophe. “We are seeing something big, comrades; the biggest event since our moon was formed. Saturn has collided with a dark star.”

We little dreamed what far-reaching effects this phenomenon was destined to produce.

CHAPTER III

ON SHORT RATIONS

It turned out that I was not quite right. Before we reached New York the observatories announced that the collision was due to a slightly luminous star which had been under observation for two or three hours before the event. Apparently it was one of those countless irresponsibles of space which are continually falling into the sun’s influence. This one, which might be termed a planetoid, had drawn the one chance in billions and taken a slap at our distant and unobtrusive neighbor.

Within a few hours Saturn was enveloped by an incandescent cloud, five or six times his former size. Clearly the wandering blunderer must have had a much greater velocity than the planet, to produce such terrific results; but it was not until several days later that the astronomers learned that the planetoid was a double one, a “binary,” traveling as fast as a comet. Striking Earth’s big brother squarely on the right cheek, the impact of one of the two stars had turned the planet into white-hot gas and almost brought him to a stop. The other half of the binary was continuing sunward, unchecked.

After the excitement had died down, we made ourselves as comfortable as possible in our chairs and dozed until dawn. Once we slowed down alongside a relay plane, bringing another pilot to relieve Harry and John. Ordinarily, I would have driven, but I needed to be fresh for the conference.

By seven-thirty, the Delaware coast coming into view, we finished a rather pleasant breakfast and watched our pilot gingerly feel his way down through the traffic. Even with the best of regulations, it is a heroic task to come down from the high-speed levels in the vicinity of New York. We should have descended a hundred miles back but for our haste. Bad news seems to draw planes as efficiently as a celebration.

You will appreciate that the California wheat disaster was somewhat too delicate a matter to be handled in the usual way over the photophone. That system is excellent for general affairs, such as elections; but in a case which might require quick and drastic treatment, with explanations later, nothing but a closed conference would do. It was held in the south wing of the central chambers, and only the chairman, the council, the chiefs of the various bureaus, and my eight directors were present.

Not waiting to even state the problem, the chairman informally urged me to suggest a remedy. I simply pointed out what you already know, that with every available inch of land put to the best possible use, the world was nevertheless in dire need of the wheat which had been lost. I said that perhaps the people could be induced to relinquish land now used for other purposes, and the surest way to make everybody see how serious the matter stood, would be to cut down the distribution of flour. This, I argued, would also provide a margin in case of accident to any other harvest.

The chief of transportation wanted to know if his department could do anything to reduce the pressure. I assured him that he was handling his end perfectly. The Asiatic chief of my bureau said that all precaution was being taken to prevent accidents within his field; and for a few minutes silence ruled.

It was broken by the judiciary chief. His great age made him a compelling figure as he paused for a moment, tall and erect, before speaking.

“There is nothing in the regulations to prevent the step which Comrade Forbes recommends,” he stated in his booming, resonant bass. “But my judgment is that the people will criticize the administration. Such a restrictive measure is not in accord with current ideals. It flavors of antiquity.”

But the Italian chairman rose to my support. “On the other hand, your honor,” he declared, “we have a double responsibility. We must not only prevent any drain on our supplies, but we must firmly impress every one with the necessity for a radical change of some sort.”

Others indicated their approval, and a vote was taken; and so in secret session we acted in what we believed to be the best interests of all when we ordered the now famous retrenchment of the year of the new era, 410.

Of the public attitude toward the action, but little needs be told now. For the first few hours after the announcement the phone wires were kept hot with indignation meetings; but the only actual intimation of anger came from four or five widely separated spots in Africa and Asia, where folks had grown to hope that famines were no more. But by the next day all trouble had blown over, and we knew that the world would wait patiently to hear our next proposal.

In the meanwhile I was busy receiving suggestions from thousands of sources. My bureau gave them the closest attention; but of the many remedies proposed, few were worth considering at all, and these had already been discarded by us after careful investigation. I concluded that, to use a phrase which was very popular with an ancestor of mine, it was “up to me to make good.”

One afternoon Ray called in person to sympathize and to advise, after a glance at my face, that I take some mysterious treatment for the nerves. I obediently followed her to take to the lake, where I found she had brought an antique rowboat, no doubt a copy of some museum relic. The ridiculous notion struck me at a weak place in my dignity, and I allowed her to row me out into the middle of the water, while my assistants stood on the bank and fumed.

Ray had the wonderful good sense to say nothing, and I lay back in my seat and nearly fell asleep, so quickly did the soothing motion of the boat take effect. And then, in one of those semiconscious moments of inspiration, the big idea came to me. Not full-fledged like the melody of a song, but the basic notion of a remedy for the threatened disaster.

Ray again showed a powerful sense of fitness by controlling her curiosity as I excitedly grabbed the oars. I hurried out of the boat, intent on the scheme in mind, and rushed away to my laboratory without another glance at the poor girl. It was not until the next day that I recalled this, and at once got Ray over the phone.

The photophone was not as handy, of course, as the portable visiphone which we now use. One stepped into a small booth, and, facing the mosaic mirror which filled one side of the room, adjusted the calling dials on the right wall. As soon as the party answered the call, one immediately saw a full-length reflection of the interior of the other booth, complete in natural colors, lighting and all; so that it was much the same as a face-to-face conversation. A similar mirror on the left made it possible for three parties to talk at once. Of course there were more elaborate booths for official business.

One talked in his natural tones, there being no need to place receiver to ear or to keep near a mouthpiece. The diaphragms were conveniently located at the right. Conversation was distinct and of natural strength; so that there was all the value of a personal visit, minus only the actual bodies themselves.

By this time Ray had returned to her home in California and was at work with her pupils. She would not let me apologize. “I was too gratified to be offended,” she smiled; “I knew my treatment had worked.” There was a peculiar tremor in her voice which I often catch in my mother’s, a kind of solicitous nervousness which always seems to come from a full heart. It encouraged me greatly; I made up my mind to propose at the first opportunity.

But during the next few months I was exceedingly busy with the working out of my idea. I judged that I owed first allegiance to my office; personal affairs must wait. Besides, there were many devices to be tested in the most thorough manner imaginable. My scheme was to solve a great problem; it should be worked out with appropriate care.

Through it all I kept my own counsel. I pledged my assistants to secrecy, and am sure that no outsiders learned of my plan. Perhaps I was wrong here; we might have made quicker progress with more advice. But I reasoned that, since we had displeased the people in secret, we should remedy matters in like fashion.

During this time I heard little of John Babcock, knowing vaguely that he was at work in his Venezuela laboratories, perfecting several inventions. But I was not surprised when the photophone director one day announced that the inventor wished to “acquaint the people with a bit of good news.” John was always behaving unconventionally; besides, his remarkable success gave him the photophone wires whenever he wished. People liked Johnnie, and admired and respected him as well. I stepped into my booth knowing that it would be well worth while.

John’s booth was evidently right in his workshop, for he had left his door open and part of his apparatus was in sight. He was dressed in full-length overalls, which at that moment were badly soiled. But for that matter, his face and hands also indicated that in his eagerness he had not stopped to clean up. His haggard face showed that he had probably worked for days without rest.

“I’ve found it, folks!” he jubilated. (I dare say half the waking population was listening to him as he talked.) “Don’t worry about food. There will be plenty for all and to spare. Take my word for it—I can’t go into details now—bound to work out all right! Gee, but I’m glad!” And the boy, as he now appeared, grinned happily and dodged out of the booth, to return in an instant with a curious cone-shaped object, of some aluminum alloy; apparently a model of some kind, small enough to be held in the hands.

“This is what’ll do it!” he shouted at the door of his booth. “Don’t ask me how—I’ll give you the particulars as soon as it’s all worked out. By-by!” And he rang off, leaving a very puzzled world to wonder what he meant, and to smile to itself and say: “Wasn’t it just like Johnnie?”

For my own part, I had no doubt as to his sincerity. I also believed that he would accomplish what he promised to do, for his record was so far unbroken. The only possibility of failure was some flaw in materials for which he could not make allowance. I was decidedly relieved by his announcement; but of course did not let up in my own work. The problem was serious enough for the greatest of effort.

I merely renewed my attention to every detail. There would be no flaw in my work. And meanwhile people made little objection to two-thirds of a loaf.

CHAPTER IV

THE DOUBLE PROPOSAL

At intervals the observatories reported on the progress of Saturn, the onetime planet whose collision with a double star had turned it into a sun, just like old Sol on a very small scale. The big wanderer was to be seen every night, and his increasing size caused us some alarm. But the astronomers assured us that the course he was taking was far from our vicinity.

They figured that this new sun would seek a new path very near that of Jupiter. In fact, even to the naked eye Saturn was rapidly approaching the round ball of his nearest neighbor. Each night a decidedly perceptible change in position could be noted, and before long the two great bodies were separated by proportionately the same distance as existed between Earth and moon.

So we really anticipated the announcement that Jupiter and the new sun had formed a combination. Held by mutual gravitation, they formed a couplet, revolving around one another like the ends of a dumb-bell with an invisible handle. It was a queer sight. One night Saturn would be visible on Jupiter’s right; the next, behind him; but of course both planets were mutually disturbed. Jupiter danced just as much as his flaming companion.

I had several conversations with Ray via phone, but still refrained from visiting her. The result was, in time, an uneasy feeling which soon amounted to an obsession. I must call on Ray and learn my fate. Things could not go on like this much longer. I was hopelessly in love; uncertainty did not improve matters one bit. So, when the Christmas holidays gave me an excuse to close my desk, I called up Ray and asked if I might come for a day or two. She was far from surprised. “I was almost sure you would call. What’s your great scheme in leaving me alone all this time? Trying to make the heart fonder with a dose of absence?”

Now, I was entirely accustomed to the prevailing frankness of women, but somehow I fancied an undertone in what she said that made my heart leap. Could it be? I wondered, dizzily. And then she calmly remarked: “Johnnie Babcock is coming, too. We’ll have a chance to renew our peculiar acquaintance.”

I stepped out of the booth with an assortment of feelings which would be hard to classify. I had not thought of Johnnie! And yet, when I put my memory to it, I recalled that he scarcely took his eyes off the girl all the while we were in his plane.

Not that he stared, but his glance kept coming back to her as a bird, just learning to fly, periodically returns to the nest.

I felt somewhat like an ancestor of mine who had half his fortune in one “bank.” The bank failed. It spoiled his faith in banks and he invested what was left in government bonds. Well, thought I, a faith like mine—and I had never considered any other girl—ought to be invested where it would be appreciated. I would try my very best to interest Ray in my security.

The day after Christmas found me flying to the Yosemite, where Ray’s home and studio were located. There is no denying the advantage of quick transit through the air. One’s work is located at home, unless one is engaged in manufactures. There is but little loss of time in the system; yet I often wish we could have preserved one of our great business cities in its entirety. For instance, Broadway was once a brilliant thoroughfare, noted throughout the world for its bustle and extravagance. Now, its quiet, factory-lined course offers a marked contrast.

I reached the place ahead of John, who had lost some time getting fuel en route. So, although Ray assigned me to the choicest room, I could not take much credit for that. When John arrived, it was twenty-one o’clock, and both he and I were eager for bed. Nothing of consequence was said during the little meal our friend had ready for us; and I made up my mind before I fell asleep to make some headway with my suit the next day.

John and I ate breakfast alone, Ray having gone out, said her folks, to test the snow. We wandered into the empty studio and amused ourselves on some of the instruments. In a few days the place would be alive with returned pupils, making the rooms ring with the voices Ray was training. The girls came from all parts of the globe.

Ray came in shortly to suggest a good old-fashioned snow-shoe trip. Her house being located on a knoll on the plain above Yosemite Falls, we quickly made our way down to the brink, where we watched the famous cataract plunging from its icy bed, and wished we could stay until a big storm came up. Ray glanced at the sky and judged that our wish might come true.

After a while we started back up the stream, pausing at a score of points to admire the various villas along the route. It seems incredible that our forefathers could have overlooked this beautiful home spot; but of course it is the final perfection of our aeroplanes which makes it possible for folks to live where the air is pure and God’s inspiring beauty right at hand. Today we take it all as a matter of course.

We selected an eastern branch of the creek and soon reached higher ground. From here we could overlook a portion of the wonderful canon itself, catching sight of a solitary pedestrian making his way over the otherwise deserted road. By this time we were getting hungry; and John and I spread out the contents of a lunch-case which we had carried by turns.

We were in a small hollow on the lower edge of a group of dwarf firs, sheltered from a wind which was becoming stronger every minute. But the warm food took off the chill, and soon we were in a talkative mood.

“Last year at this time I would have prophesied almost anything but this combination just now,” I said at last. “Remember how we got acquainted, John?”

“Ridiculous interrogation,” he came back. “My life has taken a fresh start since then.” Unconsciously his head turned so that he could see Ray… And suddenly I caught the girl looking at me, whereupon she burst into a rollicking laugh. I am no good at taking a joke, as a rule; but I saw that my face had given me away. The cat was out of the bag; I laughed with her.

“Oh, what’s the use of ignoring the facts?” I exclaimed. “John, you’re head over heels in love with Ray, and so am I. Draw, and defend yourself!” And I involuntarily smiled at him. The likable boy!

Ray was in no wise disturbed; her face showed actual relief. As for Johnnie, he was startled for an instant; then grinned as usual, reached for a sandwich, and after a dark pretense of poisoning it from an imaginary vial, guilelessly handed it to me.

“When shall we be married, Ray?” he inquired nonchalantly, ignoring me. We all tittered nervously, and I could see what an effort it cost him. As for myself, I could not control the violent beating of my heart, and I know my face grew pale and tense as I listened for Ray’s answer.

The girl was looking out over the snow, smiling for a moment and then becoming very serious and grave. But when she spoke, it was lightly. “If it would settle matters, I’d marry you both,” she declared: “although that would be contrary to—to everything. Fact is, I’m not decided at all. I want to marry, and it would be one of you two; but which one, I wish somebody else would decide for me.”

“I’m a champion decider,” I proclaimed.

But she shook her head. “You’re prejudiced. I could tell almost in advance which way you’d decide. No, it’s for me to do, of course. I feel something like the girl in the story, who put off her suitors so long that at last each of them got tired waiting and married another girl. I’m afraid not to decide, for fear I get left.”

John broke in eagerly: “I’ll give you an option on the next forty years.”

But Ray turned him down. “You’d want me to deposit a kiss for that option,” and she blushed slightly. Then she was silent for a good many minutes.

When she spoke again: “Bob, I’ve known you almost all my life. If there’s anything in a good inheritance, you’ve got it. You are a decided success in your work, and a big credit to the Commonwealth. But the very steadiness of your development has handicapped you; it is not easy for you to make any great advance. Your reserve and dignity, while conserving a lot of power, also make you less approachable than John.

“I’ve known him only since last summer, yet I like him immensely.” And she colored a little, yet smiled easily and went on: “Oh, hundreds of girls would say the same. You are easy to like. You are so frank and boyish—full of life and energy. I’ve often wondered that some forward girl didn’t land you when you were very young.” This rattled Johnnie a bit, but Ray kept right on:

“At the same time, you also are successful. You’re even more prominent in your field than Bob, but of course his work is the more indispensable. I’ve been over this ground again and again, and I can’t decide. I know all too well that it makes me appear very egotistical to be picking and choosing in this fashion; but a girl ought to do the best she can, not because of her own pride, but because of what she wants to do for her children.” And when she said this, she looked us straight in the eyes and did not blush.

We were silent for a while, and I had a vivid picture of a similar situation in ancient times. Impossible! you would declare, were you living four hundred years ago; impossible for a girl to honorably love more than one man. You would talk of the “great passion” and pronounce Ray immoral. But today we know that passion is largely a matter of propinquity. Reason is dominant.

What I said was: “John Babcock, from now henceforth we are bitter, bitter enemies.” I scowled at him darkly; he glared at me ferociously. I continued: “Ray is going to marry the one of us who makes the greatest effort within—shall we say, two or three years?” She looked at John inquiringly, and he nodded vigorously.

“Then it’s time I told you something new. I also have a surprise coming soon.” And they looked at me with fresh interest. “We won’t beg Johnnie to divulge his discovery until he gets good and ready; although it’s barely possible that we have the very same idea. You propose to remedy the food shortage? So do I.”

Ray jumped in delight. “Well, now we have got a working basis. I’m to marry the one who does the most to—to prevent famine, am I?” She giggled in her excitement. “That’s fair enough. My, but I’ll be a proud wife!” Then she added: “And right now, a conceited soprano.”

The first new flakes of snow put an abrupt end to further talk. We hurried back to the house, and there passed the evening quietly while the storm raged outside; then got a few hours’ sleep and arose before dawn. We ate breakfast and were ready to start by the time it was light enough to fly through the snow.

Ray did not mention our problem, but silently watched us get into our coats. Then she went to the door with us; and there very simply kissed us, first John, then me, and saying nothing but her quaint Californian “Adios, señors,” she smiled confidently into our eyes and softly closed the door behind us.

We walked toward our machines. I was mighty sorry to go, and I looked at Johnnie. His face was a study. Suddenly he looked up, and held out his hand. “Good luck, Bob,” he murmured; and I gripped his hand hard as I wished him the same. Never were rivals friendlier.

We started off nicely; and first, as planned, swept out over the falls and dropped down until we were opposite the water. There we held the machines stationary with our horizontal propellers while we watched the astonishing force of the up-valley wind as it blew the mighty cataract first to one side, then to the other. Then the storm divided the falls in half; and once, such was its power, it held back the entire flow for several seconds, damming up the water like an embankment. It was an exciting thing to watch this in midair from a distance of a few yards, considering the danger of being blown into the falls.

But we volplaned safely down toward the east until we got a fresh start, and soon crossed the crest of the great mountains. Here John turned to the south, while I kept on east; and the last I saw of him for the time was a fluttering handkerchief from a window.

I reached my side of the continent in ten hours.

CHAPTER V

GETTING OFF THE EARTH

The new understanding filled me with a determination to not only succeed, but also to do it soon. I put in from fourteen to sixteen hours at my work. Most of my routine affairs were handled by assistants; the great scheme filled my mind. It had passed the experimental stage, and I was now at work on the estimate of its huge cost. It was an immense task.

John must have been similarly inspired, for in about a month it was announced that he would make a preliminary report. It was easy to understand how, with so many friends to place their incomes at his disposal, he was able to rush his plans to completion. In fact, his speed disappointed me. How could he have accomplished so great a thing in so short a time?

At the appointed hour I, like most of the public, was in my booth. The connection was made on schedule, and showed Babcock on the floor of his laboratory. He was wearing an ordinary aviation suit. Harry Mapes and several assistants were in the background.

Johnnie came right to the point. “First I am going to disappoint you by admitting that I am not yet ready to tell my big idea. But perhaps you’ll be interested in this fact: in ten minutes we start for Mars, to see how they do it there.”

He paused, well knowing that a thrill of surprise ran over the world as he made this astonishing statement. Then he went on, visibly controlling his excitement: “It’s a comparatively simple matter. Do you remember Thauber’s experiments with centrifugal force, in 255? If you’ve forgotten, I’ll explain briefly.

“Centrifugal force is in proportion to the square of the speed. For instance, if the Earth rotated nineteen times a day instead of once, an object on the equator would have no weight. Its centrifugal force would balance the force of gravitation. Now, at ordinary speeds this force acts only within the limits of the object which is in motion, but Thauber proved that when a wheel of sufficient strength was revolved at extremely high speeds, centrifugal force went outside the rim of the wheel and actually repelled small articles dropped toward the wheel, several inches before they reached the rim.

“Well, I have merely adapted this principle on a large scale. All that was needed was a steel strong enough to stand the strain. Now we’ll take a look at the apparatus.”

At this signal the assistants opened the big door to the proving grounds. It was the world’s first glimpse of the Cone.

Imagine a gleaming metallic building with a diameter of almost exactly fifty yards, and each side the same. Standing on its base, then, it formed a perfect equilateral cone. Along its visible surface were placed a number of windows; and about three feet from the ground, directly opposite, a wide door. John paused for a minute while we took it in, then came close to the mirror and said:

“You remember that I’ve been working on a wireless photophone for years. That also is ready for use, and there are two booths inside the Cone. I’ll connect you with the ground floor,” and with that he threw a switch. Next instant I was looking at the inside of the great sky-car.

By the time my eyes became accustomed to the dimmer light, John had opened the broad door and entered from the yard, followed by Harry and two others. The inventor eyed us questioningly and asked: “Can you see and hear the same as usual?” You can imagine the chorus of “Ayes!” that came to him. Of course, the image in his mirror was a composite one; a characteristic portrait of the combined peoples of the Earth.

But he was busy pointing out details. In the middle of the floor of the Cone was a gigantic machine of peculiar yet simple design. It consisted of three tremendous fly-wheels, each direct-connected to an electric motor. The lowest wheel was a horizontal one, set in a depression in the floor; while a massive framework supported the other two, both of which were then vertical. That is to say, these three wheels “pointed” in as many different directions. At the moment they were all revolving, silently save for the subdued hum of the motors themselves.

“The source of current,” explained John, “is a compound battery of Burgess-Ames static cells. They are located in the upper part of the Cone. Any electrician can explain to you how we control the discharge from these cells, as well, as the theory of their unlimited capacity. These have been charging for the past ten days from a fifty-thousand kilowatt generator, running continuously.”

He pointed out the switches and other controlling devices located on the framework of one of the upright wheels. “The operation is, as you will see, quite simple. By varying the speed of these wheels we can produce any desired degree of centrifugal force in any desired direction. The speed is limited only by the ultimate strength of the material in the wheels. I used Kent’s formula for the platina-steel, refined with nitrogen in a Ball furnace and heat-treated in the mercury vapor arc. I can count on a peripheral speed of one hundred and fifty thousand miles per hour, although a third of this is all I really need.”

While the inventor was talking, Harry was operating the controllers on the opposite side of the big floor. The hum of one motor grew a little sharper, while the others seemed more subdued; and I saw that one of the vertical wheels was spinning much faster. The thing was dawning on me now.

“You see,” explained Johnnie, “the vertical wheel is now developing a force which is so placed as to oppose the gravity of the Earth beneath our feet. Before it spins any faster, I’ll cross the floor.” He ran past the whizzing wheel, and as he did so I noticed that he leaned heavily toward it. Yet, so great was the invisible force already produced, he lost his balance and staggered against the wall of the Cone. The hum grew to a pronounced whine, and John quickly closed a small switch. Apparently this exhausted the air from the motor, for the whine instantly subsided into a mere murmur.

“And now, comrades,” smiled the inventor in our direction, “if you see us appear to be a little anxious, kindly remember that we are about to do something that has never been done before. We are going to leave the atmosphere.” As he spoke, he was moving the handle of a controller, while one of his friends went down a long line of switches, methodically closing them one by one. Johnnie eyed an indicator on the frame of the motor, and spoke again.

“Twenty-five thousand miles now—Comrades, let me introduce you to Harry Mapes, Theodore Parker, and H. E. Robertson. Harry is an expert gas analyst, Parker an electrical engineer, Robertson a mathematician.

“We four figured that you good people might try to deter us with well-meant objections. We have plenty of food, an immense quantity of compressed air in the upper compartment, plenty of reserve oxygen, and neutralizing apparatus to purify the air of carbon dioxide. The walls are double and separated by vacuum space, on the same principle as a hot-and-cold bottle. We aren’t afraid of the interplanetary cold; anyhow, we have electric heaters. The Cone itself is made of the same material as the wheels, so that the centrifugal force cannot damage its construction.

“Wherever the force sends that wheel, the whole Cone must go, obviously enough—twenty-nine thousand. We are now considerably lighter than air and would float in it the same as a cork in water; but I have provided anchors on the underside of this floor to hold us fast to the Earth. The idea is to insure a fast start.”

He was silent for a minute, and I could hear my heart pounding. Jove, what an adventure! Off on a jaunt which would make a circumnavigation of the globe look like a Sunday stroll! I envied the boy and his companions, envied their wonderful nerve—“We’ll not say good-by or even Adios,” smiled Johnnie. I knew whom the last word was intended for. “You can see just as well as though we were at home. Thirty-two thousand; ready, boys?” Each man had taken the safety-clasp off a large three-pole switch.

I judged that they would control electromagnets connected with the anchors. Johnnie turned to a window straight ahead of our mirror and opened its shutter. A flood of sunlight bathed the floor.

“All right, then; one-two-three, pull!” Each man gave a sharp jerk; the Cone twitched sharply, and I saw the ground receding through the window. I had a slight feeling of nausea, exactly as though an elevator had started too swiftly. The Cone was going at great speed. The four men were staggering with the effect. Harry had stumbled to his knees.

Johnnie managed to get to the switchboard. His voice was muffled and strained, but it did not hide his pride and triumph.

“I’ll connect you with the booth on the grounds,” he shouted, glancing toward us; and as he snapped a thumbpiece the view instantly changed to the solid Earth again. It was a startling effect; I clung to the side of the booth to steady myself.

The new outlook was directly toward the laboratory. Slowly it panoramed to the zenith (operated by Harry’s father, I afterward learned) until the blue sky filled the view. Then I caught sight of a round, black disk, rapidly diminishing in size. It was the base of the Cone, shooting away from Mother Earth.

A moment later it had faded to a tiny dim spot in the brilliant blue. Next second it was gone.

CHAPTER VI

MEN ON THE MOON

When Johnnie restored the connection to the Cone, we saw that a railing had been put up to keep the voyagers away from the dangerous force. Harry was distributing hot chocolate. They next opened several windows, and by means of levers panoramed our mirror to get the various views.

They were already beyond the atmosphere limits, and no details of the Venezuelan topography were distinguishable. The Earth was covered with a haze: only the general outline of the northern coast and the deeper shade of the Caribbean could be made out. The Cone was now going incredibly fast.

Two peculiarities certainly should be recorded. The sunlight was intensely bright, disagreeably so; in fact, our friends had already fitted snow glasses to their eyes. Now I could see why the floor and walls of the Cone were colored black. Even then, enough light was reflected to damage the eyes of all who were watching from Earth, had not Johnnie thrown a lever and thus swung a dark glass screen over our mirror, smilingly saying as he did so, “Didn’t I tell you we had arranged for everything?”

The other oddity was the absolute blackness of the sky itself. All of the stars were visible, appearing much brighter than we had ever seen them before. Johnnie gave us a connection to the other mirror, near the top of the Cone, and we had a fine view of the Milky Way. If we had ever thought it contained millions of stars, now it seemed to have billions—all this difference because there was no atmosphere to hinder our sight; and this fact also accounted for the brilliance of the sun. It is hard to realize that air is not perfectly transparent; but it is merely less opaque than water, and otherwise much the same.

Johnnie was talking when he restored the connection to the other mirror. “There will be little to see for a couple of hours. Better go back to work, or to sleep, or whatever you are doing. I’ll call you later.” Our view immediately jumped back to the laboratory. Johnnie’s father and brother were in the booth, having evidently been watching the mirror as we were. The younger man spoke: “We have the sender and receiver in an adjoining building. They are automatic and will respond to any call.”

My first thought, on stepping from the booth, was of Ray. Without doubt she had witnessed this extraordinary adventure. What did she think now? Would this spectacular affair weigh heavily in John’s favor? Every woman is supposed to admire this kind of courage; many of them would marry a man for this quality alone. I was decidedly down in the mouth.

And then she called me to the phone.

“Discouraged?” she laughed, with her disconcerting way of reading my thoughts. “Don’t worry, Bob; Johnnie has done a big thing and perhaps will do bigger; but I have any amount of confidence in you. Are you ready yet with your idea?”

“I can’t show off for two or three months,” I responded gloomily, although I must admit that her manner lifted my feelings several notches. Then I perked up a smile and added, “My hated rival has outstepped me. Revenge!”

“That’s the spirit! Now get busy and show us what you are made of.” I took her at her word, ran to my desk and worked nine hours without a break.

In this way I missed Johnnie’s next call, and so did not get to see the Earth at full. They told me it was a wonderful yet disappointing sight. The immense globe filled nearly a third of the heavens with its luminous, decidedly curved surface. Fancy the moon brought down until she nearly filled the sky from one side to the other! But on the other hand, the details so familiar to anyone who has studied a school globe were almost entirely lacking. The atmosphere is like a window curtain: the people inside can look out, but people outside cannot see in. Only the deep blue of the oceans and the tips of the highest mountains were clearly visible. The rest was yellowish-white, tinged with reds, browns, and greens.

When I did finally respond to one of Johnnie’s calls, I saw that he and his friends had rigged up hand-rails along the switchboard and across the “safe” portion of floor. Moreover, the men were clinging to these rails almost continuously. Johnnie had already explained this, and so it took me a few moments to guess the reason.

Since cutting loose from the Earth, the Cone and everything it contained were free from the effects of gravity. They no longer had weight, in the usual sense of the term; the Cone was now a little independent planet in itself. The rails were needed to keep the men from floating—yes, that’s the right word—floating through the air toward the Cone’s center of gravity.

There was a ladder leading from the floor to the ceiling above. One of the men appeared at the opening, and to my alarm jumped down without touching the rungs. But he did not fall—he gently sank through the air, and landed softly. Had he not caught the ladder he would have rebounded to the ceiling—Johnnie and Parker were then at work on a calculation. In a moment they had finished, and began adjusting the controllers to correspond with their figures. John explained as they did so. “We are now at such a height that the moon, which you in the longitude of New York can see rising in the east, is on a level with the floor of the Cone. The centrifugal force in the vertical wheel is still acting against the Earth’s attraction, but the moon is pulling vigorously to the side. It is just behind your mirror.”

He thought of the other mirror and quickly connected us.

I saw the moon as it had never appeared before. With no atmosphere between it and my eyes, its sharp features stood out like print. It was almost new, of course, the eastern side being very slightly illuminated. This was in accord with the well-known law that Earth and moon show opposite phases.

Even as I watched, the moon’s disk grew steadily larger. Johnnie was at my elbow, so to speak. “The horizontal wheel is barely in motion. I am letting the moon pull all it will. As soon as we get up enough speed I’ll use that wheel as a brake. See?”

He explained that he would not stop the vertical wheel, but would allow it to turn slowly so that it might act as a gyroscope to counteract the tendency of the Cone to turn around the horizontal wheel.

And so from time to time I watched the growing size of the satellite, inspecting its well-known features with fresh interest. After a few days it appeared larger than in Earth’s most powerful instruments, the narrow line of sunlight on its eastern edge filling the entire width of our window. We appeared to be heading for the middle of this match, a spot just between Mare Crisium and the crater of Langrenus.

I saw that we—of course I mean “they”—would not land for a few hours; so went to bed after giving word to be called at six. The day had been voted a holiday, so probably everyone on Earth got a view of the event. The moon was now, at a guess, about ten miles away, and the edge of the Cone was still at right angles to the surface. I wondered how the inventor was going to get its base downward.

He pointed out the third of the great wheels, which thus far had taken no part in the operations. “I call that the steering wheel,” he explained. “You notice that its framework is like a gigantic set of gimbals, such as are used to support a mariner’s compass. We can point that wheel in any direction, while it is not running; and as soon as it is started its gyroscopical force will keep it in place.”

By means of levers they directed this wheel toward the further edge of the moon, and soon the rim was revolving swiftly. At the same time the other two wheels were slowed down. Watching through our window, we could see the bright crust move slowly out of sight; and then the black night of the universe took its place. We could not see what was happening underneath, and for a while I was very nervous. What if the steering wheel could not stop the sky-car as it dropped?

But soon light appeared through the deadlight in the floor. Johnnie was watching progress, with every other man at a switch, ready to throw on more current if needed. But shortly the inventor saw that he was using too much power; the Cone was not dropping quickly enough, and they slowed the wheel a bit.

The light grew steadily brighter—of a sudden, I caught sight of the tip of a crater through the window—a mountain-top in the distance. Johnnie signaled for a bit more power; and with his eyes glued to the deadlight, waited a moment and then signaled for power off. There was a shivering jolt, and next, instant Johnnie snapped open every window-shutter. The Cone was flooded with light. It had landed on the moon!

CHAPTER VII

—AND IN IT!

Johnnie turned toward the mirror and smiled easily, while the others began throwing off the power; and every one of them was grinning, and finally they all began to bow. Suddenly it struck me that everybody on Earth was applauding as vigorously as I. The world was congratulating them.

“It will take several minutes for the wheels to stop. Recess!” and the inventor threw a switch. I put in the time wondering what would be found. Of course, the world’s best telescopes, especially those of the compound-reflecting type, had brought the satellite very near. Any object the size of a man would have been seen long ago. But the actual material of which the moon was made—the secret of its puzzling lightness as compared with the Earth, was now to be told. There were no sleepy scientists that night.

Johnnie was completing the connections for the other mirror when next we saw him. He had placed the device so as to fill one of the window openings.

I saw the great plain which stretches south toward Langrenus. I knew better than to expect any extraordinary sight, but was nevertheless disappointed. The utterly barren, featureless waste of desert that met my eyes was absolutely devoid of vegetation. Its surface was broken into irregular mounds and ridges of lava, but aside from this it might have been one of the gravelly wastes of southwestern America. The surface was scarcely worth looking at.

Soon we were back in the Cone. The men had brought down several cages from the “loft”; and now I saw, as I had expected to see, a number of pigeons and rabbits, together with a few chipmunks. Johnnie was at work in the vestibule of the big outer doors, adjusting the fastenings and levers. By simply closing the inner door of the vestibule he obtained an air-tight compartment about eight feet square. Into this he placed one each of the animals and closed the double glass door upon them.

Meanwhile the other mirror was so placed as to command a view of the interior. We were now to see whether there was enough air on the moon to support life. Johnnie cautioned us first. “If you’re at all squeamish, don’t watch this.” Then he moved the levers in the walls which opened the outer door—

Well, I do not need to go into details. The poor beasts died, the first to be sacrificed to the advance of human science for two centuries. I was glad when we were switched to the other mirror. Johnnie was reading some instruments.

“Two hundred degrees below, centigrade,” from the thermometer. “The barometer is away down at the bottom of the scale. It will not register negative pressures. There’s no air at this particular spot; that’s certain.”

He stifled a yawn. “I see nothing to be gained by staying here any longer. We ought to go to bed for a while, however, before looking any further. But—just a moment.” Shortly he had us looking out of an upper window.

We saw an immense reddish globe, several times the apparent size of the moon. For a moment. I was puzzled, then gasped as I recognized the Earth—I had a very weird sensation, such as a disembodied spirit might feel on gazing at the human shell which was once its home—we could make out no details whatever.

About nine hours later the call came again. There was now a big change in the appearance of things. Night had come on the moon—the fourteen-day night of intense cold, void even of twilight or dawn. The travelers were making preparations for departure; all the wheels were going, the adjustable one the faster. Shortly Johnnie gave the order to cast off. The anchors let go, and with a jerk the Cone flew off at an angle.

Using the other wheels as levers, Johnnie threw the Cone in a new direction. Watchers on Earth, through scopes, saw it disappear around the eastern edge of the moon. As the inventor explained, “We all want to know what is on the other side. We’ll go up high enough to see the whole of it.”

The next time I looked, the mirror had been placed over a deadlight, looking straight down. The Cone was hovering over the center of the great disk, at a height of perhaps a hundred miles. The surface was brilliantly light, except for a strip of shadow on the western edge. The moon was, as seen from the Earth, just approaching her first quarter—the most striking feature was its apparent flatness. There was much less of the characteristic globular appearance than on the other face.

I learned that the travelers had gotten a good profile view of the moon shortly before. “This bears out the theory, held by many astronomers,” commented Johnnie, “that the moon, having always the same face turned toward the Earth, is not a globe but more or less egg-shaped, with the sharp end Earthward. If we accept the nebular hypothesis, then certainly the moon was at one time molten, and Earth’s gravitation could have had this effect—but look at the craters.”

I most certainly was looking at them. This face of the moon was simply filled with craters. There were thousands of eruptions of various sizes on the side we knew so well, but here were five times as many. There was nothing else to be seen. No plains, no seas, no ridges such as distinguished the other side. This surface—have you ever seen a snap-shot of a pool of water in a heavy rainstorm? Like that, the rims of the craters looked as though gigantic raindrops had fallen on the moon, and splashed.

I watched at intervals of half an hour, as Johnnie purposely descended very slowly. They minutely examined every section of the surface, and soon were competent to declare that there was no sign of human existence, or even plant life. When within a mile of the ground, I watched with the keenest interest.

The Cone settled down within the great circle of a crater about a hundred and fifty miles in diameter. The rim rose to a height of perhaps ten miles, jagged and rocky, enclosing a central basin composed of lava-like formations. Great fissures ran everywhere; and a little to one side of the center vas a pit, perhaps a quarter of a mile in its greatest diameter. From above it was perfectly black, indicating a great depth.

“We could learn nothing by landing among those fissures,” remarked Johnnie to his friends. “I propose that we drop down that pit a little way and see what we can see. Are you game?”

Harry looked disgusted. “Of course, there’s nothing at all game about lying around in space with a wild inventor; oh, no. Go as far as you like.” The other two men snorted in agreement, and Johnnie steered for the pit.

The Cone sank smoothly into the center of the huge space. The sunlight was almost, but not quite, straight down; the light continued unabated. Johnnie held the pace slow, and yard by yard the Cone dropped silently into the moon—nobody spoke for several minutes, and the tension became severe. My nerves were on edge. It was an uncanny proceeding!

Suddenly, without any warning, the light went out. My mirror was absolutely black. I involuntarily shouted in dismay and horror—what could have happened?

When came Johnnie’s voice, a little strained but still matter-of-fact. “We passed into the shadow. I should have warned you.” As he spoke he turned on the lights in the Cone; and a world breathed freely again.

They had stopped the Cone. Johnnie operated the steering wheel enough to bring the car over to one wall and stopped it in mid-space at a distance of a couple of feet. Then, going into the vestibule, the inventor rigged up some queer apparatus, came out, and closed the inner door tightly. Then he opened the outer door, and operated several levers.

We could not see what he had done, but after he had closed the outer door he went into the vestibule and returned with a large pair of tongs grasping a big fragment of crumbly rock—a portion of the very heart of the moon. Only Parker’s presence of mind prevented Johnnie, who was strangely excited, from taking the specimen in his bare hands. Had he done so, his skin would have welded fast to the stone, cold as it was with the terrible cold of the universe.

Johnnie’s hands fairly shook in his eagerness as he flipped the stopper from a small bottle. Carefully separating a tiny fragment from the stone, he allowed a drop from the bottle to fall upon it. Instantly the specimen disappeared! Johnnie and his friends began to sneeze and to cough violently; Harry rushed the big stone to the vestibule and closed the door upon it. When he returned, Johnnie was exclaiming exuberantly.

“I knew it! I knew it! That’s why the moon was so light!—and my scheme will work!” He grabbed Harry by the shoulders and danced him around like a schoolboy. In a moment he thought of explaining.

“Don’t worry about this gas; the neutralizers will take care of it—and listen, you on Earth: I’m not going off at half-cock by telling you part of my plan before I’m sure of the whole thing. We’ve got to go to Mars first. Excuse me, please?”

CHAPTER VIII

ON TO MARS

The Cone made a very auspicious start for our next planetary-neighbor, first finding a level spot approximately in line with Mars and then, with the steering wheel, laying a perfectly straight course. When the anchors were finally released the sky-car started from the moon at the highest safe velocity. At the same time the vertical wheel’s speed was greatly increased, and shortly the Cone was flying at an unprecedented rate.

Johnnie reminded us that the communication apparatus required a great deal of power, all of which might be needed later; and so we heard from them only once daily for a few minutes at a time. On these occasions we learned little that was not already known of interplanetary space. The four men, when not reading or enjoying limited acrobatics, indulged in a great variety of games to kill time. By means of a simple receiving device they enjoyed the more important daily news as transmitted by a powerful machine operated at Babcock’s plant.

One day Robertson came down from the loft carrying some peculiar instruments. Johnnie examined them curiously, explaining meanwhile that, in his hurry, he had merely asked a museum to send him four of the least ancient of their repeating rifles. I recalled an almost forgotten bit of history.

Firearms were once very common throughout the world. During the last war, the rank and file were armed with them, although most of the actual damage was done with large machines, called cannon, for throwing huge projectiles. It is astonishing how much ingenuity the ancients displayed in these devices for destroying life, and what little thought they gave to conserving it.

Clearly our friends could not make out the action of these weapons. Johnnie consulted some literature sent by the museum, but said, “The curator writes that the method of using these rifles is a lost art. All he knows is that the fuel for them will be found in this carton.” Johnnie tore open the container and displayed some tarnished brass cylinders, each having a rounded plug at one end—evidently the ancient bullet.

“Can anybody tell me how to operate this thing?” he appealed to the world at large. “Here! Don’t all speak at once. I don’t want suggestions: does anybody know?”

There was not a single reply. Think of it! Twelve billions of people, and not one knew how to manipulate a specimen of the old world’s most deadly hand weapon. As a comment on the efficacy of the great change, in having removed the causes of the situations which called for force, nothing more needs be said.

But here was a problem, and Johnnie met it by gingerly fingering the weapon. To make it short, between them the travelers discovered the way to use the devices without serious accident. However, one rifle did become accidentally discharged (I believe this is the correct word) but the bullet flew harmlessly across the room. That is, it started across, but was caught by the force and flung away at right angles to its path. From the great dent it made in the steel wall, it was believed to be quite powerful. They were very careful in handling the things.

Each time we saw and talked to them we were also shown the steadily growing disk of Mars. Of course this renewed everybody’s study of the planet. Recent work with compound telephotoscopes had added immensely to our knowledge. The much-discussed canals, whose relationship to the changing seasons of Mars was once disputed, became as familiar to us as the rivers of America. The great cities, once called oases, were studied intently for fresh proof of a still-existent life. Our instruments brought us within fifty miles; there was little doubt that intelligent beings of some kind once lived there, and perhaps—The new combination called by some “Jupiturn,” which had formed when the now white-hot Saturn had come within Jupiter’s influence, was also watched with great interest. It will be remembered that Saturn was actually falling toward the sun when it was attracted to and held by its big brother. But that doesn’t mean that Jupiter stopped the stumbling planet: gravitation is a mutual affair.

Think of it this way: Jupiter’s velocity and Saturn’s were now combined inseparably. The sun was no longer pulling on the one alone—it was pulling on the pair of them, because they were revolving around one another. So you see that, although Jupiter’s speed in his path around the sun had not increased or decreased, Saturn’s sunward motion had brought him much nearer. He was no longer able to hold to his old orbit, but was steadily swinging in toward the sun, his path describing a giant spiral in space.

There was some slight apprehension on Earth when this was announced. Several feared that the giant planet might come so near as to get the Earth into its power.

But the astronomers laid this bogy. Jupiter was doomed to take up an orbit between us and Mars, and, although our next-door neighbor, would be a ruly one. It was easy to figure; the Newtonian law showed that every heavenly body will find a path in space where its centrifugal force will balance with the existing gravitational influences.

Mars would not be affected by this sunward motion, although Jupiter would pass just ahead of him. The distance would be just enough to insure Mars’s safety from disturbance. It would be a couple of years before the change took place.

I am going somewhat into detail on these points, because they have a very important bearing on what follows. You ought, also, to know that the remaining half of the double star, or planetoid, which had caused the original mischief, was now speeding for the sun. They found that it was following a hyperbolic path, and thus, after swinging around the sun, would fly off into space again, never to return. On its outward way it would pass near the Earth, but not dangerously close.

I had finished my estimate, and was now at work on a life-size model. It was spring; the approaching harvest promised to be the same as usual over all the world. People seemed reconciled to short rations, and I felt safe in delaying my announcement until I was perfectly sure. Had there been any signs of discontent, I would have taken chances and placed the scheme before the public at once. But I was ambitious to win the only girl I had ever loved. Can you blame me for wanting to be sure?

I kept my plans as secret from the world as I am withholding them now from you. With the exception of a few reliable assistants, nobody knew of the station on the coast of Brazil where I was trying out my scheme. There was a time when an enterprising “reporter” would have spoiled it all for me; but people have acquired a vast respect for the experimenter and a wonderful ability to mind their own business. Score again for the change.

Ray and I had a few photophone visits, and from each I gained a fresh inspiration to do my best. I longed to call in person, but I thought it unfair to Johnnie, under the circumstances. Most certainly he would never have taken advantage of my absence. Ray understood, and did not invite me.

Time dragged heavily in the Cone until Mars’s gravitation began to be felt. Then there was rapid progress; the day soon came when Johnnie tipped the Cone until its base was “down,” and set the vertical wheel going to brake their terrific coast. And when Deimos, Mars’s outer moon, was passed at a distance of about twenty miles, the whole world was on hand to wonder at the tiny black satellite and gaze at its mysterious parent.

Obscured as always with its film of thin air, Mars’s surface was more or less indistinct. The south polar cap was still visible, this being the planet’s spring season in its southern hemisphere. As we approached, the nearly circular patch called Hellas appeared a light yellowish-green in color, while the pointed expanse of Syrtis Major was a rusty blue. As for the canals, they ran straight through Syrtis, as well as in the surrounding regions; so if the “sea” ever held water, assuredly it contained none now, if the canals were really canals.

As we watched the planet revolved beneath us, Johnnie purposely using his steering wheel to offset the effect of gravity. Thus the Cone hovered stationary, and soon several double canals came into sight: I recognized Euphrates and the two great cities to the east. We constantly drew nearer, and soon lost the globular effect as the surface flattened out. Johnnie was steering for latitude 40 in the south temperate zone.

By this time we were near enough to make out Mars’s only mountain system, the chain on the plateau south of Fastigium Aryn. To the west of this was the great “gardens,” as they had been called for centuries. Johnnie used his glasses continually, and informed us that there was every sign of cultivation in this vast district. He could make out no forms of growth, but the great diversity of coloration, laid out in definite patches, showed that somebody had planted something methodically. I was in my booth for hours.

Judge of our excitement when Solis Lacus appeared at our left. This tremendous oval, once thought to be a mere patch of vegetation, all now knew to be the capital city of Mars. In fact, the more recent textbooks call it Marsopolis. We were less than thirty miles high when it came into sight, and by the time it was directly below us we were only five miles away. Johnnie had connected us to the deadlight, but we knew that he and the others were watching with powerful glasses. Suddenly Harry broke out:

“Flying machines!” And billions of eyes strained to see. But we could make out nothing with our unaided sight. Johnnie had stopped his braking wheel, and we were now carried along by the gravity, thus accompanying the city. A little farther down, and all of a sudden, so swiftly that the mere thought sends the blood jumping through my veins even now, an aerial machine darted across my vision not a hundred feet below the Cone!

Soon we could make out hundreds of them. Peculiar flapping arrangements, with wings arranged in stories like an ancient multiplane; some of them were so fragile that I could see light through them as though they were almost transparent. At first we could make out nothing of their operators.

Then our attention was attracted to the surface. The atmosphere was clearer now. We could easily define the streets, which ran with the utmost exactitude in parallel lines. There were no cross streets: the buildings appeared to completely fill all the spaces. At a rough glass, the structures stretched for ten miles without a break. Evidently the streets were merely to give access to sunlight.

This idea was borne out by the multitude of aircraft. They darted here and there like flocks of birds. I had thought that the Earth’s supply was hopelessly confused, but here it was infinitely worse. For several minutes I did nothing but marvel that there were no accidents. It occurred to me that the Cone’s arrival must have been observed, and that probably we were looking upon all the planet’s machines.

The excitement was too severe for anyone to speak here on Earth, but Johnnie was coolly examining the instruments. “Pressure about the same as on Mount Everest,” he commented, and “Ten above zero, centigrade. If the air is the same as we have at home, we can stretch our legs, boys.”

Harry was already placing three animals in the vestibule. The mirror was not shifted, so the world waited in anxiety for several minutes. Could we live in that air? At last Johnnie closed the outer door, opened the inner one, and took out the rabbit. It was still alive, though panting feverishly; but the pigeon and chipmunk were both very active, as though they enjoyed the change of air.

“Good. We’ll touch bottom in a few moments. I’m going to shift the mirror to one of the windows, so that you can see all that happens.” Johnnie suited the action to the word, and I was soon gazing out over Marsopolis at a height of about a hundred yards.

There were no very tall buildings. Apparently they were all factories, with the exception of a group of reddish structures about three miles distant, set up on a slight eminence. These had already been seen from Earth, and long ago styled “the Capitol.” But I was looking eagerly for the Martians themselves.

I had my own theory as to their probable characteristics. My idea was the small amount of air, and the necessity for lots of breathing to get enough oxygen, would require the Martians to develop extra-large lungs. Again assuming that they were constituted similarly to us, the very slight gravity would permit them to grow to immense heights. But the same reason would make it unnecessary for them to have much bulk. In short, they would resemble the greyhound type, long, big-chested, fragile as to limb.

I could have shouted aloud for joy when I saw, not a hundred yards away, one of the machines come to a swift, fluttering landing in the large, open space or plaza toward which we were settling. For in a moment a Martian stepped out of the machine. He proved my theory.

He was looking up at us, and meanwhile signaling rapidly to others who were out of sight. His height was simply astonishing: he was all of twenty feet. His head was exceedingly long and tall, but I could not then make out the features. His chest was, exactly as I had guessed—immense as compared with the rest of him. The torso and arms and legs were preposterously thin; he was nothing more or less than my greyhound, standing erect. Otherwise he was an anthropoid mammal—a man!

Harry was operating the controls, and succeeded in landing with scarcely a jar. But our eyes were glued on the buildings surrounding the plaza, and the vast crowd of people under the walls. From the distance they made a confused mass, all moving in an excited fashion that made it impossible to distinguish details.

I heard Johnnie unlatching the inner door of the vestibule. He and Harry were preparing to step out immediately. There were no preliminaries; you would have thought these two were about to take a stroll along the seashore, for all the care they took. I could not see, but heard Robertson come up to them and speak quietly.

“You’d better take these.” I guessed that he was offering the rifles. “I don’t like the looks of that crowd. Maybe they’re armed. Better take them.”

There was a moment’s silence; then Johnnie£ impatiently exclaimed: “Oh, I suppose so. ‘Safety first,’” he added, quoted a saying which has come down from our ancestors of four hundred years ago. We heard the inner doors close; then there was a pause. Next instant men stood for the first time on Mars.

CHAPTER IX

WERE THEY HUMAN?

As I gazed I heard Johnnie reminding Harry to step carefully, because the light gravity would change a hasty stride into a veritable leap. It seemed ages before they appeared in front of our window. Both were panting violently, their faces suffused; they took very cautious steps, but smiled at us reassuringly.

Johnnie said it was their intention to merely show themselves; and then faced the crowd.

And what a crowd! Their aspect was astonishing, to put it mildly. They were near enough now for us to see that none were less than thrice the usual height of a man, and apparently all of far less weight. Had they six limbs, I might describe them as spidery. Their bulging chests helped that impression.

They were about fifty yards away, and we could hear them faintly. Whatever they were saying, it had a most unpleasant minor undertone which filled me with uneasiness. If these people were not actually hostile, they were certainly very sour about something else. I know most of the world got that idea.

The fellow whom I had first seen, together with half a dozen others, came from the center of the group and stepped toward us. Their enormous strides brought them at hand in two seconds. They stopped twenty feet away, while our two representatives faced them in the immediate foreground. It was the most dramatic moment since the creation itself: interplanetary diplomacy was about to take place. Can you conceive of a greater chance for Johnnie to pose?

But he was making a rather poor showing, panting violently as he was. Harry was equally distressed; but the Martians were perfectly composed. And what extraordinary beings! You are probably familiar with the kinemagraphs which Parker and Robertson brought back, but they do not give the full impression. I shiver every time I revisualize those terrible faces.

Picture a head as tall as a half-grown boy, and as slender! The upper three-fourths was forehead, if I may call such a hideous malformation by so plain a name. The eyes, set one on each side like a bird’s, accentuated the depth of the head and called striking attention to the complete absence of a nose, unless the small central orifice served that purpose. But the mouth! Could any nightmare have devised a worse object than that grim slit, set as it was just below those unwinking eyes? It perfectly belonged to the thin, pointed chin which jutted out half a foot in front of the rest of the “face.”

When I examined the eyes closely, I saw one reason for my feeling of uneasiness. No trace of emotion could be seen in those large, staring pupils. No ancient vulture ever had half that cruel, hard expression. They were examining Johnnie and Harry with the same coldly scientific interest you might give to an insect.

Suddenly the leader opened his hideous mouth and began to speak. I cannot describe the sound adequately, but it resembled a far-off rumbling more than anything else. At first I thought that some machine had started in the distance, but our friends were listening intently. I tried to catch definite sounds.

It was impossible to divide the sounds into word groups. The Martian spoke for a few seconds, waited, and then spoke again. When he did this the third time, I saw that he was repeating the same thing. Yet there was no hint of question, declaration, or command in his voice. It was flat and colorless, with the minimum of modulation. On the other hand, terrifying.

Apparently they had no teeth, for the dental consonants were entirely absent. The gutturals seemed to predominate. The rumbling was so devoid of resonance that it had almost wholly timbre quality. Harshness was its greatest element.

Johnnie came to the conclusion, expressed for our benefit at the cost of much breath, that the men wanted to know their immediate desires. Accordingly the inventor went through a prearranged pantomime with Harry. First Johnnie made motions, illustrating with a pencil that he wanted a similar object from Harry. Harry nodded extravagantly, at the same time producing another pencil and handing it over. Having thus established the nod for “yes,” Johnnie then asked if he wanted the pencil returned; and when Harry vigorously shook his head, Johnnie forthwith pocketed the pencil.

When they paused, there was a lot of rumbling among the stilt-like men. They imitated the nodding and shaking of the head, and then watched Johnnie in grim silence. He offered the pencil to one of the group, who unhesitatingly reached out with his preposterously long, thin arm and grasped the thing in his disgusting excuse for a hand. It was like feeding an octopus to thrust the pencil into that writhing mass of wormlike fingers.

The group examined the pencil with every indication of having never seen such a thing. Finally the leader handed it back with that same peculiar certainty of movement which added to the horror of his aspect. Johnnie produced a pad of paper, rapidly outlined a globe with a tiny Cone on its surface, and showed this to the Martians. They inspected it, whereupon Johnnie made a tentative nod. Instantly they all fell to nodding violently—

Next Johnnie made another sketch, starting with a large, glowing orb and placing concentric circles of various sizes at the approximate locations of the various planets in the solar system. Having drawn a tiny Cone on the fourth of these globes, Johnnie pointed to the third, and indicated that he and Johnnie came from there. Then he handed the paper to the Martians. They rumbled monotonously over it.

“If they are as intelligent as they are supposed to be,” said Johnnie, “they’ll know enough astronomy to make that out.” I knew he was thinking of the biological theory which assumes that Mars, being a smaller planet than the Earth, cooled off sooner, and thus became fit for life sooner. Therefore the Martians would have progressed farther, all other things being equal.

Suddenly the leader of the stilt-men began experimenting with the pencil. In a moment he had drawn a tiny oval next to the sphere which Johnnie had designated as the Earth!

“He’s drawn the moon!” jubilated the inventor for our benefit. So they knew—I forgot to say that the mirror was so connected that, while we could hear and see what was happening, the Martians could not see or hear us. So they could not know that we knew.

With the foregoing experiments as a basis, Johnnie and the Martians between them worked out a fairly effective sign language. Neither made any attempt to master the other’s enunciation: it was a matter of physical difference, and perhaps impossible to overcome. Instead, they relied upon eye and brain alone… I cannot fill these pages with the details; they have been published in the etymological journals, and also duplicated by the kinemagrams.

Johnnie stuck to his policy of not going away from the Cone. “If they want us to go to see their high muck-a-muck,” he chuckled, “I’ll tell ’em to bring him here. I guess the first men to cross from the Earth are as important as their chairman, or whatever they call him.”

So the first day passed with considerable progress made. The two adventurers scarcely moved from the door of the Cone, even eating a pocket lunch outside; and by nightfall were more or less inured to the rare atmosphere. They made the Martians understand about sleep, and reentered the Cone without ceremony.

The four men ate heartily, the while exchanging notes with the chairman and other intercontinental officers. What had been learned was too disconnected to form any conclusions upon as yet; and shortly our friends retired. The Martian night being almost the same length as the Earth’s, all enjoyed an excellent rest; nevertheless, they divided the time into watches, and each kept one for safety’s sake.

CHAPTER X

MARS’S DILEMMA

I was disappointed that they did not try to learn something of the Martian night life, for this was a disputed point; but appreciated their weariness and went to sleep myself-. The following morning Johnnie met the “committee” within an hour after the tiny sparkling sun, its rays only half as strong as on Earth, rose in the east in the good old way. He and Harry kept up the show of being the only passengers.

During the day they patiently worked out their scheme of communication. In some places the work was very tedious, and not many citizens followed it throughout. Harry summarized it for us that night.

“The canals are, as ye felt sure, waterways connecting the frozen polar caps with the irrigation districts. Their northern and southern hemispheres have their alternate summer and winter, just as we do; but their winter must be a terrible thing. They are warm-blooded, just as we are; they all migrate from one hemisphere to the other as the seasons change, to avoid the cold.

“The population is the same today as it was thousands of years ago. I know this sounds extraordinary, but it seems to be the truth. The people are divided into two distinct classes: the rulers, with some of whom we were talking; and the workers, whom they exhibited to us.”

I was at the phone when this exhibit was brought forth. The workers appeared to be of the same general type, but not so tall. They were slightly more bulky, but flabby in make-up; each wore a uniform. Their heads had less height and more width than their masters’; their chins not nearly as prominent, and their eyes infinitely milder. I never saw a greater exemplification of gentleness and patience than in the expression of their dovelike pupils.

“Apparently this condition has existed for countless centuries,” Harry went on. “There appears to have been several revolutions long before humans appeared on our Earth; but they were put down ruthlessly. Since then a group of approximately three thousand families has kept the rest of the population, numbering millions anyway, in subjection. There are occasional outbreaks, but never wide-spread.”

The chairman put in this question: “How do you account for this lack of progress, Babcock?”

Johnnie said there was only one way. “Everybody knows that Mars is a lightweight planet. Did it ever occur to you that iron, and all the heavier ores, would be very scarce here? Well, iron is as rare as platinum on Earth. I would trace it all to the scarcity of mountains and the volcanic activity which is responsible for ores.

“Anyhow, this lack of iron means a lack of machinery. They do nearly everything by hand, like the ancient Chinese. The rulers own every bit of the metal, and use most of it in their fliers. This gives them the advantage over the workers, being able to keep close watch on them without danger to themselves. Apparently progress stopped here at about the stage represented by the year 1700 a.d. on Earth.”

Harry broke in: “Without machinery to do their work for them, the workers have never had a really good argument for revolting. There was little to be gained—work would have to be done in the old way, regardless.”

“The canals serve a double purpose,” pursued Johnnie. “They not only irrigate, but transport workers from field to field as they are needed. The manufacturing is all done in these cities. Of course, there is no idea of a wave-motor here, because these tiny moons would not cause a tide even if there was enough water; so they still get their power from below the surface. I can’t make out whether the fuel is liquid or solid; possibly it’s gas.

“And that’s all we learned today, except one thing: they have powerful instruments here, likely more efficient than ours; they know that our moon keeps one face always toward the Earth, and that Mercury and Venus behave the same toward the sun. But they know almost nothing of the surface of the Earth. Our atmosphere accounts for that.” And with this the report came to an end for that day.

I called up Ray and talked over these facts, to which she had also been listening. “How can Johnnie possibly learn anything of value to us in such a God-forsaken world?” I wondered. “Did he tell you anything of his plans, Ray?”

“He called me up just before he started,” she replied hesitatingly. “Said that his plans were automatic, in a sense, because his discoveries would decide each new step for him. That is nearly his exact words. I got the notion that he is going somewhere else after visiting Mars; I don’t know why, but I did.”

“Wherever he goes, I hope he makes a discovery that will solve our food problem,” I answered.

Ray looked worried. “Aren’t you satisfied with your own scheme?” she asked.

“It looks all right to me now, but I’d feel better if I knew there was a handy alternative in case of failure. It’s too serious a matter not to be sure of success.”

Now, I’ve never been able to recall Ray’s next words, exactly; but they heartened me up immensely. There must have been more in her tone than in her phrases. But I left the booth convinced that if I failed it would be my own fault; and if I won—I shut my eyes to stop dreaming about the prize. I busied myself with the details of my model during the most of that night.

The next day Johnnie startled us with this news: they had been awakened in the middle of the night by a strange noise. They decided it was tapping, as though some one wanted to get into the Cone; they examined the outside thoroughly by the light of the reddish glow’ from the surrounding city. But they found nothing, and were on the point of giving it up when Robertson chanced to look at the deadlight.

Two Martians were staring up into the Cone. From their faces and uniforms, Johnnie knew them to be of the working group; and both he and Harry instantly surmised that these men wanted some sort of help. It was impossible to remove the deadlight, but that did not hinder the sign language. Evidently these two men had watched the working out of this system from a distance, and with little difficulty made our friends understand what they wanted.

The rulers were harsh and cruel, they said. Evidently they did not give the workers enough to eat, and especially were they lacking in something else, not so easy to make out, but, Johnnie thinks, fuel for warmth. He gathered that a secret rebellion was being planned, but was at a loss to understand what he could do about it until one of the Martians, by a clever bit of acting, indicated that the Cone would make an excellent fortress with which to storm and capture the food warehouses.

Harry’s sympathies were instantly aroused; these men were so simple and guileless that it angered him to think of oppressing them. Moreover, their enterprise in tunneling to the Cone was proof of their sincerity. But Johnnie put his doubts in these words: “If we help overthrow this overbearing government, it may be that these poor fellows will suffer in the end through being unable to manage things. We don’t know.”

So he decided to await further knowledge, and told the visitors he would let them know later. They were keenly disappointed, and went away sulky, like children. After they left a number of others came up and peered suspiciously into the Cone from time to time, until the thing got on Parker’s nerves, and he covered the glass.

“I’m going to get at the bottom of this,” Johnnie told us as he and Harry prepared for another day’s conference. The “delegates” were already at the door. “These tall-domed fellows give me the creeps; and if they aren’t doing the right thing under the circumstances, I’m going to chastise them.” And he grinned as he changed our mirror connections.

There was double the number of Martians on hand this morning. Also, unless my fancy deceived me, they had an even more cold-blooded look about them; I got an uneasy feeling that they were planning mischief. But the “talk” proceeded without any irregularities for a couple of hours; and I gradually forgot to watch for something to happen.

CHAPTER XI

THE BATTLE

We learned that the little planet was in a very bad way. Crops were exceeding poor, due to the fast-diminishing supply of water. Instruments on Earth had long ago shown us that the canals were not as prominent near the equator as formerly, but it was hardly supposed that Mars was drying up. The stilt-men declared that the sun evaporated the water faster than the ground could soak it up.

And now I come to the disagreeable part. Apparently the rulers had for centuries systematically put the workers to death upon reaching a certain age of inefficiency. Food could not be spared for the unproductive. But what shocked us most, the rulers had recently decided to sterilize half the workers, to provide against new births!

It was hard for me to conceive of such a barbaric condition of human affairs. We on Earth thought ourselves badly off when our bread allowance was slightly reduced; but here was a vast group of unfortunates who were to be surgically unsexed, all because a few thousand rulers insisted upon being parasites. You will agree that had not the rulers decided against progress in the earlier days, a genius would inevitably have sprung up from among the workers to devise a remedy for their predicament.

I reflected that, at one time in the Earth’s history, there were people who stoutly maintained that we must always have caste and class; my own ancestors were of that mind. I shuddered to think of what would have become of Earth’s humans had these ancient aristocrats continued to govern. And I thanked God again that workers had been encouraged on our planet; and because of their progress we now had a single glorious class, with peace and security for all.

It was not quite noon when Robertson, inside the Cone, saw a Martian looking at him through the deadlight. The fellow darted out of sight; and Robertson, thinking it queer, hid behind the machines and kept watch on the glass. Shortly the fellow returned, peering cautiously; and Robertson saw that he was not a worker, but one of the others. The tunnel had been found.

Johnnie was immediately notified by means of a tattoo code. He and Harry reentered the Cone, and quickly decided that the situation was very grave. Looking out of the window, they saw that the news had reached the “delegates,” and messengers were flying everywhere.

Johnnie excitedly restored our connection to the inside mirror. “If there is really a rebellion in the air,” he exclaimed, “these bosses may spring a surprise on us that I haven’t allowed for. Keep your eyes open.”

The four men swiftly barred the vestibule and unrolled the coiled shutters which Johnnie had provided on the outside of each window. These shutters were of metal slats affording an outlook but good protection. Johnnie reconnoitered through them all and reported that the square was being filled with a great crowd of Martians, mostly rulers. The flying machines had been removed; queer-looking apparatus like enormous catapults had been set up all around the edge.

Johnnie was puzzled. “I can’t make out their purpose,” he said, and pondered for a while. Suddenly he gave an exclamation. “Boys! They must have seen these wheels and guessed what they’re for. They haven’t enough iron to make them here. Understand?” and he shouted in his excitement. “They’ll destroy the Cone, if necessary, rather than let us take it away!”

And as he spoke he leaped for the controllers. He took some risk of burning the armatures, so swiftly did he start the motors. But time was needed for the great wheels to reach their effective speeds, and meanwhile the world waited in dread for the offensive. Would it be some new and dreadful chemical, which could flux the walls of the Cone and overwhelm our friends? Or would it be some subtle gas, like a nitrogenous ether, which could penetrate the shell and kill the travelers?

In the midst of these conjectures the original group of rulers appeared at the door and rapped for attention. They had with them a new figure, which Harry afterward described as “the ugliest, meanest-looking stilt of them all.” Concluding that they had brought their chief at last, and optimistically hoping that a peaceable understanding might be reached, Johnnie finally decided to face the delegation. However, Harry insisted on going with him; and, as it afterward turned out, remained hidden in the vestibule, armed with one of the ancient repeating rifles.

Parker watched the conference through the shutters: “They’re trying to induce Johnnie to be one of them, I think. They’re making him some sort of a big offer. Perhaps they’re offering him a moon,” grimly. Suddenly the electrician muttered savagely: “Confound the skinny devils! Arc they hypnotizing the boy?”

Johnnie afterward said that he had a feeling that he was being mesmerized, a drowsy, contented sensation that required all his will-power to shake off. He roused from it to realize that these cruel monsters were simply gaining time for their plans, and without apology turned and darted into the vestibule.

Even as his feet touched the floor, he felt the hand of the chief ruler on his shoulder. Think of that bunch of tentacles writhing in your face! No wonder Johnnie dreams of it at times. He broke loose, though, and turned to find three of the fiends trying to crowd into the doorway. Parker was ready to open the inner door, but feared to do so before the outer one was closed. The Martians barred the way.

Then Harry used the rifle. His first trial resulted in spattering the sides of the vestibule with the contents of one Martian’s skull. His second struck another squarely in his bulging chest, and neatly divided that Martian into five sections. But he completely missed the chief himself, who had followed the main group at a galloping run for the edge of the plaza.

Next moment the two men were safely inside. And then the bombardment began. Evidently the machines were designed for throwing stones, and though probably made of wood, were of great power. Immense masses of rock, weighing several tons, were hurtled against the Cone. Each impact crashed above our heads like a clap of thunder. The Cone shook and crackled with the strain; the reverberations threatened to burst our ear-drums.

“The Cone can’t stand this!” shouted Johnnie above the uproar, as he reached to throw more current into the wheels. “More juice for the prime vertical!” he yelled to Parker. But the electrician shook his head and mutely pointed to the horizontal wheel. For a moment Johnnie stared, uncomprehending.

Then I also caught the idea. They were going to use the sidewise force to dislodge their antagonists. I watched the increasing velocity excitedly, listening in dread to the smashing thuds on the Cone. No structure could long withstand such a bombardment. The racket was diminishing a bit. “Fifty thousand miles a minute on the rim,” read Johnnie from an indicator; then ran to a window and peered out.

“Good God, what a sight!” he stammered. He backed away from the window. The last of the stones descended, and for a second there was only the hum of the motors. Then Johnnie threw open a shutter directly opposite our mirror.

We could hear no sound, but I have always had a mental image in my mind of the roar that must have come up around that square. I could see a confused mass of Martians, fliers, and catapults, churning and grinding together like the contents of a concrete mixer as the fearful force rolled them away from the Cone. Back they swirled at an awful speed, a dense cloud of dust arising. In an instant the seething wave smashed against the walls of the surrounding buildings as they in turn crumbled and collapsed under the strain.

The chairman’s voice finally crossed to the Cone. “Stop it!” he shouted with such vigor that Johnnie heard above the din. In a moment the lower wheel was slowing and the power running into the prime vertical. Harry slammed the shutters to cut off the sight, and all four men wiped their foreheads shakily.

The Cone tugged at its anchors. Johnnie waited until he could be sure of a good start. The instant he was ready to cast off, Parker discovered two Martians at the hole under the deadlight. They had some sort of a contrivance with them. Parker stuttered in consternation and stumbled away from the glass.

I could get a one-sided view of the fellows. They were on the point of discharging their apparatus when Johnnie cast off. Up flew the Cone, and at the same instant a large projectile was emitted from the tunnel. It rushed straight for the glass.

CHAPTER XII

THE M-RAYS

Such was the great speed of the Cone that the projectile from the tunnel never reached its mark. For the first second or two it gained, then lost speed, slackened, and finally dropped completely behind.

But no sooner was it lost sight of than an exclamation from Robertson drew attention to the windows. They told us afterward that the Cone was absolutely surrounded by fliers. The one which we could see was a gigantic affair, flimsily but delicately designed; and apparently manned by only one aviator. At its bow was the M-ray machine.

Now you will appreciate that I, like other humans, can only guess as to the nature of these rays. My guess would be no better than yours; but I was at least a first-hand witness. There was only a fleeting glimpse, and the blinding radiance of those crimson beams prevented seeing much else. The path of the rays was distinctly visible in broad daylight, like the beams from a search-light at night.

In less time than it can be told, the nearest of the fliers approached to within a few hundred yards. As it came on, the Cone flew straight up. I saw the rays being aimed, and their path steering in our direction. I was not afraid; I did not know, then, what they were. I saw the rays from this machine swinging in a giant arc. In a moment they would have struck the Cone, but its terrific speed took it above the path of the light. Had it not done so, the whole world would now be vastly changed.

This is what happened. Looking through the deadlight, our friends saw the converging crowd of fliers trying to stop their headlong flight toward the spot where the Cone had been. For the most part skillful driving prevented damage, but they could not keep the rays from striking. Whenever the crimson light hit a flier, the flier vanished. It passed into vapor instantaneously. One second there would be a giant flapping machine, the next a pinkish cloud of smoke, and it was gone. The M-rays worked that quickly.

There were two machines which approached one another at right angles. To avoid colliding with others, both drivers turned aside; and to avoid one another, they dodged under and over. But the rays could not be turned—there was no time. Then there were two swift puffs of the pinkish steam, and in another instant these were dissipated into thin air. Not a vestige remained of either huge machine!

Johnnie busied himself with the machinery to regain his composure. In a few moments he turned to us and spoke very solemnly. “We have escaped from what is probably their most efficient weapon. Until we can devise some way to neutralize it, it will not be safe for men to visit Mars again. Nice, amiable people!”

Such was the first and last visit of man to Mars. Johnnie admitted that the journey was practically wasted. “Like an old-time excursion to a penitentiary,” he put it. They watched the planet’s receding disk with few regrets.

The Cone had started off in a direction which would have carried it to the sun, had not the steering wheel been so adjusted as to get the benefit of Deimos, Mars’s outer moon. Johnnie exerted all possible pressure with his wheels, and the resulting thrust was enough to almost dislodge the little satellite from its orbit. But it gave the Cone a fresh start in another direction. Going faster than any comet, it was headed straight for Jupiter.

During the next few hours Johnnie was besieged with objections to this new flight. Astronomers and physicists declared that the giant planet, the most brilliant object short of the moon, was still in a semi-molten condition. They called it rank folly to visit a place too hot to—There is no use of my going into these arguments. Johnnie turned them all aside by counter-claims, pointing out that no man had ever seen Jupiter’s surface, because of the veil of air. He said that the Cone’s insulated construction would protect them; they’d be careful. Anyhow, they were going, and on their way.

The Cone’s trip to Jupiter was considerably shortened by reason of the recent changes which had occurred in the big planet’s orbit. He and Saturn were steadily gliding nearer and nearer the Earth’s path, so that the Cone had less distance to travel. Moreover, Johnnie’s practice with his apparatus had shown him how to get tremendous speed, such as could only be attained in space, where no air exists to impede progress.

The inventor was in constant communication with the small group of scientists who agreed with him about Jupiter, and was advised by them of the approach of various asteroids. He used each as a fresh lever, and within six weeks was within sight-seeing distance.

Through telescopes on Earth, Jupiter seemed a terrible object to visit. Saturn’s flaming mass, less than two million miles from the planet, seemed altogether too near for comfort. What if the Cone should become entangled in its powerful attraction? The old notion of the hereafter would come true.

But the vast distances which at all times separated the Cone from Saturn and the dozen satellites made its approach to the great planet comparatively easy. That is, it looked easy to us who were given frequent glimpses through various windows; but I noted that Johnnie and Harry relieved one another frequently in the operation of the giant car, and continually checked their figures with those of the astronomers. We afterward learned that they more than once narrowly escaped being smashed on one of the many moons.

And so, feeling their way with the steering wheel and frequently testing the power of the prime vertical to make sure that it could break their fall, the Cone dropped swiftly toward Earth’s big brother, the biggest of the sun’s whole family. Have you any idea what it means when I remind you that Jupiter has eleven times Earth’s diameter? For one thing, it means that he has one hundred and twenty-two times as much surface. One might say that an acre on Jupiter is nearly a quarter section, as compared to one on Earth. Or, if streets were relatively as wide in a Jovian city (suppose there were a city), it would take about five minutes to walk across.

As the sky-car neared the great disk, people on Earth kept constant watch for glimpses of the unknown surface, but the varicolored atmosphere was as yet too dense. We had to be content with a close-range inspection of the various satellites.

Of the five which occupy the space between Saturn and the planet, one at least was thought by some to be habitable. However, you can get all these details from the records.

When Fidus, the smallest and nearest of all the moons, was passed, I figured that there should soon be indications of the Jovian atmosphere. You will recall that a planetary giant like this has everything to correspond; his air is nearly twenty-five thousand miles deep.

The first sample was hurriedly analyzed; and Harry exuberantly announced that it was practically the same as that of the Earth, except that hydrogen was present in considerable quantity and carbon dioxide hardly at all. A few thousand miles down showed a bigger percentage of oxygen; and the farther the Cone proceeded the denser the air became.

Of course, air is subject to the same laws as any other gas. On Earth, at sea level, air pressure is about fourteen pounds to the square inch, but only a third of that much on top of Mount Everest. On the other hand, at the bottom of deep mines the pressure mounts up quite high.

The Cone was now near enough that the reddish tint, which of late years had come to appear conspicuously in the planet’s yellow glow, had all but disappeared. Clouds now definitely interfered with any direct observations. At first these clouds moved with inconceivable swiftness, carried along by the planet’s amazingly swift rotation, which gives him a fresh day every ten hours. But Johnnie adjusted the Cone to follow the surface and soon was traveling with the clouds, dropping slowly so as to avoid friction.

Of course the barometer was useless, but the thermometer was of value in showing a steadily increasing heat. Johnnie purposely steered clear of the hot middle zone, planning to land in about forty-five degrees latitude, south. Instruments on Earth had long ago shown that the poles were frigid, although the equator is hot.

Passing through several strata of clouds, none of which actually obscured the sunlight, but rather pleasantly diffused it, the Cone steadily sank lower and lower, and finally emerged into the actual surface air. Johnnie speeded up the vertical; and hovering thus, at a height of two miles, we were given a place at the deadlight, and gazed downward.

Men looked for the first time on the soil of Jupiter.

CHAPTER XIII

AN AMAZING WORLD

The entire population turned out to see which was right—the majority of scientists who claimed that the big planet was a kind of semi-sun, still molten if not actually glowing with heat; or the minority, who maintained that the crust of Jupiter, as a whole, was solid.

Well, the first thing that caught my eye was a volcano at the extreme edge of my vision. The next thing I saw was a genuine, unmistakable river directly below.

I rubbed my eyes, but it was there; on its banks were grass and trees; green stuff, everywhere!

There was life beneath us! Even though the crater was smoking and a gleam of lava showed red on one side—life! The idea was wildly exhilarating. We were merely disappointed when our belief in Mars’s habitability was so rudely verified, but we rejoiced as though we had found something long lost to know that Earth’s big brother was habitable.

“And why not?” Johnnie was arguing with Robertson. “Granted that all the planets were formed from a common nucleus, each should be practically as livable as the Earth. Why, we may even find bipeds here.”

“But this spot may be the only oasis in a desert of lava,” objected the mathematician.

Johnnie only laughed. “Strange that we should hit upon the only oasis, isn’t it? No; if part of Jupiter is like this, probably most of him is the same.”

And they guided the Cone gently down toward the west side of the river. I bore in mind that, since all the planets revolve in the same direction around the sun, as the Earth does, also revolve on their axes in the same fashion, the points of the compass are the very same as on Earth. Meanwhile I kept my eyes open for signs of life.

“Do you notice that the trees appear to be about the same height as those at home?” remarked Johnnie as the Cone hovered just about the surface of the stream.

I had already marked this item, because I had assumed that vegetation would all be dwarfed by the effect of gravity, which is nearly three times as great as on Earth. But Johnnie had hit upon the explanation.

“The air pressure accounts for their normal size. This enormous amount of air has the same effect upon these trees, apparently, as ordinary air pressure has upon a balloon. It reduces their weight: it balances the gravity, at least to some extent.”

Harry was analyzing another sample of the air. He declared that, aside from its great density and the presence of a few unknown gases in small quantities, it was practically the same as that in the Cone. It would sustain life.

The Cone came to a gentle halt upon an immense sandbar at a turn in the river. There was nowhere else to land. Both banks were thickly grown with a dense tropical forest, very like those of equatorial Africa or Brazil. The river, perhaps a mile wide, ran with remarkable swiftness through a boulder-strewn bed a few steps away. The water seemed quite clear—that is, if it indeed were water. Looking up at the current we could see, in the distance, a great range of mountains; on the summit of the highest—a veritable Mount Whitney—was the undeniable white cap of snow.

“After a while, I’ll show you the view from another window,” said Johnnie. We looked toward the south. No wonder we doubted our eyes. The mouth of the stream was but a few miles away, emptying into the rippling waters of a bay. And beyond that the horizon; but between it and the bay was the everlasting, glorious blue of an unmistakable ocean!

Had not astronomers followed the Cone so carefully with their instruments, certain folks would contend to this day that Johnnie had played a tremendous joke on us. The thing was so much like Mother Earth.

It was midday when the Cone landed. The temperature was then a hundred and fifteen in that particular region. Of course, it was neither summer nor winter, for Jupiter has no seasons. The reason is, his polar axis is almost straight, while the Earth’s is decidedly slanted. And also remember that nightfall was only two and a half hours away, because of the planet’s ten-hour day.

“We’ll have to hurry if we want to explore before dark,” urged Johnnie as he placed the livestock in the vestibule. A moment later the air of Jupiter was exposed to the beasts; and we noted with elation that, aside from panting quickly as might be expected, there were no ill effects. One of the rabbits made quickly for the bank and began nibbling at a blade of grass with every indication of enjoyment.

Nevertheless the men used the vestibule so as to keep the Cone at its usual pressure; and Harry and Robertson stayed behind while the other two explored. The mirror was right behind them as they took their first steps.

We could see that it was somewhat of an effort for them to move their legs, and of course they breathed with difficulty, but on the whole were far less convenienced than on Mars. “It isn’t so bad,” offered Johnnie after a while. “I could run if I had to,” and he broke into an easy trot down the sand. But he quickly turned about and came back, shouting with what seemed unnecessary loudness. But of course the heavy air carries sound very easily. “It’s like running in water,” he panted. “No wonder it’s warm; this is like a tank of compressed air.”

They stepped to the river and returned shortly with a sample of the water. Harry was ready with his chemicals and soon pronounced the liquid “rich in free carbon dioxide and slightly alkaline, but otherwise it’s plain H2O. It ought to be filtered if used in large quantities.” Without any further delay they drank to Jupiter’s health in his own natural beverage.

Then Johnnie sprang his surprise. “The spot where we got this sample,” casually, “is evidently the watering place of many animals. We found a beaten path leading down across the sand, just beyond that bend.”

Our interest was intense. For, if there were animals, why not other beings? Johnnie said they could not make out what type of creation from the tracks, except that in one or two soft places the tracks were very large and strangely shaped. Harry and Robertson were eager to learn more; and soon left, each armed with a rifle and provided with camping articles for use in case darkness overtook them.

We watched them go down to the stream’s edge, after which they followed the path Johnnie mentioned, disappearing from sight in the heart of the jungle. I could not see ten feet in that tangle of greenery.

During their absence Johnnie made tests of the earth on the neighboring bank, announcing later that it was rich in nitrogen and other valuable elements. “I see no reason why cultivated plants wouldn’t grow here as well as anywhere,” and he began to plant an assortment of seeds, also a clipping or two which he had thought to bring along.

Shortly, twilight began. As might be imagined, the dense atmosphere reflected so much light that the day lasted much longer than five hours. It offered a strong contrast to Mars and the moon, where there was practically no twilight at all, due to the lack of air. However, it was soon dark enough for us to distinguish a new type of radiance in the air; Saturn’s yellow glow was not predominating. We could make out his wispy flaming mass on the opposite side of the sky from the sunset.

Suddenly there came the sound of an explosion. Johnnie leaped to a northern window and looked out anxiously. As he did so, we heard four more shots. Almost instantly these were followed by five in swift succession. A ghastly silence. Nobody spoke or moved, but stood waiting for further sounds. Johnnie strained his eyes at a window. Before long, “I’m going to see what happened,” he blurted out; and was on the point of loading another rifle when the two explorers came into view, sauntering coolly down the path in the twilight. They cut across the sand to the vestibule and entered leisurely.

“What did you see? Did you kill something? Was it beast, bird, fish, or man?” The questions were fired at them before they could get their breath. They were decidedly surprised. “I didn’t suppose you could hear the shooting,” said Harry. “We thought we’d have a surprise to spring on you in the morning.”

He hesitated a moment. “Perhaps you had better wait till then anyhow. You wouldn’t believe us if we told you.” And no more could be gotten from them.

They were very hungry, however, and, after eating, became enthusiastic about the beauties of the country. Among the souvenirs they brought with them were odd lemon-colored fruits, shaped like our peaches but with seeds of the plum type. They said that they could not place a single variety of all they saw growing. It was all foreign to the Earth.

“The astonishing thing is that we found all stages of growth going on at the same time,” said Harry. “A tree would be in full bloom right alongside of another of the same species, leafless. And we would pick fruit from another. It is more than I can explain.”

But Robertson guessed it. “There are no seasons here, that’s why. The sap runs as it pleases. You know how fig-trees behave, with several crops a year. Evidently all forms of Jovian vegetation follow entirely independent cycles.”

Saturn continued above the horizon most of the night, giving an effect of arctic twilight which made artificial light unnecessary save for reading or writing. Two of the moons were in the sky, as well.

“This explains why the surface keeps so warm regardless of the distance from the sun,” remarked Johnnie. “The night is so short, the heat does not get lost by radiation. I suppose it never frosts here. Of course, the density of the air acts like a blanket, to keep the heat in. I had the idea, at first, that there would be a fresh cycle of vegetation every day, but these warm nights prevent that.”

Toward dawn the air was full of strange noises. Evidently the larger beasts preferred these hours in which to roam. Some of the bellow that came from the watering-place would have rattled windows less tightly fastened. The population was filling up for another day.

The thermometer was still high—a hundred and one—when our friends arose from a nap to find the sun just rising. “If we want more temperate weather, we’ll have to move nearer the pole,” said Johnnie.

One of the mirrors was mounted upon a small carriage; wires were run from it to the big apparatus in the loft. Parker stayed behind, and the other three crossed the sand-bar and carried the mirror over to the water’s edge.

The ground was literally churned with fresh foot-prints. Some of the marks indicated elephants or other animals equally large; while others gave me the impression of hogs about eight feet high. In places there was a well-defined hoof-mark such as only a horse would make. But nowhere was there a sign of humanity.

The trail was beaten four feet wide, and worn deep into the ground. On either side rose the rank, steaming undergrowth and the typical parasite-covered trees of the Amazon jungle. Of course we on Earth could not get the odors or the damp hothouse heaviness of the air, but the mirror did absorb an absolute wilderness of sound. Shrieks, twitterings, mucous howls, and deep-throated grunts came from all directions; while the bird-life kept the upper branches in a constant flutter. It was astonishing that so much life could be crowded into so small a space.

After fifteen minutes travel he turned a bend and came upon Harry’s surprise. It barred the trail completely and loomed before us like a huge blue boulder. Johnnie cleared a path around the carcass, and returned to express his belief that the animal was some land-roving variation on the sea-cow. It was all of twenty-five feet long, and would have been a formidable thing, indeed, had not its hide been so comparatively soft. Apparently in confusion, it had charged our two explorers; they had fired to avoid being run down.

There was little to be learned by going further. The trail went on for miles through similar jungle, said Harry, and aside from glimpses of the mountains, would show us nothing new. Accordingly our friends collected a quantity of specimens on the spot.

An hour later “we” left the sand-bar.

CHAPTER XIV

THE TWO SCHEMES

From what had been learned so far, Jupiter appeared to be an unattainable haven of refuge for the Earth-bound crowds. Of course it was idle to think of migrating to the planet; the immense cost of the Cones made such a plan unthinkable. Even though they were built at the highest possible speed, we could not make them a tenth as fast as the population would increase.

So people gave a sigh of regret and wondered all the more why Johnnie’s party remained for about three weeks, making rapid excursions to every part of his surface. Few but scientists followed their wanderings closely. But we asked them again and again about humans; and they continually replied “no,” although there was proof of every other kind of life save anthropoids. Finally Johnnie steered his car slowly, so as to avoid friction, out of the great air blanket, passed the satellites and, using Saturn as a “base,” hurtled back toward the Earth. He announced that, upon his arrival, he would state the proposition he had promised. “In the meanwhile if anybody else has a plan dealing with food shortage, I suggest that he prepare it so that the voters can take their choice.”

This idea was adopted by the council, the chairman hinting that certain parts of the Earth were showing signs of unrest and impatience. By this time, however, I was positive that my scheme would succeed; and spent the interval in working out the best form in which to present it. But Johnnie, I afterward learned, spoke his piece absolutely off-hand: a good example of the fundamental difference between us.

Thus it came about that, in less than a year after Ray and Johnnie and I had come to our memorable understanding on the heights above the Yosemite, the Cone arrived safely on the terrestrial spheroid within three and a half seconds of the time scheduled by the astronomers, who had calculated the car’s path with their usual precision. At the behest of the general council, a committee had first passed on the several hundred plans which had been offered, and had come to the same conclusion as I—they were all impracticable.

And so, when the people took a recess the next day at six o’clock, New York time (to make it convenient to the largest number of people), it was to hear only two speeches: that of the world’s greatest inventor, and that of the man whose department was fundamentally responsible for the situation. At half past five I called up Johnnie and surprised him at breakfast.

“I was thinking that we have been rather childish in not confiding in one another,” I had to say. “What if we have the very same scheme in mind? One of us is going to look rather foolish.”

He shook his head smilingly. “Not likely, Bob. You and I were cast in different molds. Anyhow, your seniority gives you the first place on the program, so don’t worry.” He walked to the table, picked up his bowl of cereal, and resumed eating in a way which showed that he wasn’t worrying, anyhow.

“I was chuckling over something else,” he added, as though there was a great joke on someone somewhere. “Did it occur to you that my temporary popularity could be made to turn the vote in my favor? In this way, I mean: suppose I were to tell that Ray is going to marry the winner?”

I was thunderstruck. It had never occurred to me. Of course it was true; sympathy for the hero of the hour would influence opinion. And Johnnie had harbored such an idea! For an instant I felt my respect for him waning; then I caught his twinkling eye and realized that here was a stronger character than my own. For he, knowing how to be a sneak, refused to use this knowledge. Suddenly I felt very discouraged; for, in the bottom of my heart, I wanted Ray to have the best man.

The boy’s uncanny intuition broke into my thoughts. “Don’t let it worry you, old man,” in all sympathy. “There are two measures of a man: his personal stature, and what the world gets from him. Too many details for us to work out alone. Let’s leave it to the people.”

Then I rang off; and for the tenth time I wished that Johnnie had been my younger brother, rather than my rival.

At six the chairman introduced us with a brief account of the situation, describing generally the shortage of wheat, the work of the committee, and the hitherto undisclosed schemes which were now to be presented. Without any delay—for the entire world’s time was being used—I stepped into focus and began:

“Fellow citizens: I have been at work ever since the Sacramento Valley earthquake to devise this plan; so you may be sure it is a mature one. On the other hand, before bringing up this new notion I first made sure that all existing means were being utilized to the most efficient extent.

“For instance, by making use of several hundred thousand acres of roof surfaces in various parts of the globe, I have been able to add nearly one per cent to the wheat output. Several rocky ranges in Hindustan, Peru, and Western America, which were once given up as sterile, have been partially converted into stepped farms, conveying the soil from near-by valleys. I have also made several fruit orchards into combined fruit-and-vegetable ranches, by replanting the trees; in this way adding a little to the spare land for wheat.

“I have also used a new crop-intensifying spray with good results. Of course, super-fertilization, artificial ozone, and weather regulation have been utilized to the limit. I say all this to convince you that nothing, absolutely nothing, short of a revolutionary plan will deal with the problem.”

At this time I reminded them that the world’s surface is about four-elevenths land, and the remainder covered with water. I pointed out that we already utilized the tides for power, and used the surface of the water for freight transportation, but that the ocean’s great irrigating power had not been touched.

“So I propose that we grow our wheat on the ocean.” I paused exactly the right length of time to let this idea soak in. “I need not point out the vast field which this opens up; you want only to be told how it can be done.

“My experiments were conducted on the coast of Brazil. To be very brief, I used (after a great deal of study and experiment), flat-bottomed scows of a half-acre in extent. These scows, filled with earth ‘mined’ from selected localities, I planted and cultivated in the usual manner and towed out to sea. I found that comparatively little power is needed to convey a whole fleet of these scows.

“The crop yield, if anything, was even better than that obtained on land. It is due to several reasons. First, I had absolute and instant control over the irrigation. Second, I was able to place the scows where they could have the best effect of the sun, when desired, or of the rain when needed.

“Finally, I built warehouses for these scows, which complete the solution of our problem. These warehouses are arranged with elevators and traveling cranes, so that the scows, during inclement weather, can be stored in tiers or stores in perfect safety. The same buildings are equipped with the planting, cultivating and harvesting machinery.

“In harvesting, the scows are simply towed under a reaper, which extends the full width of the boat. The grain is immediately conveyed by endless belts to the threshing machines. And so on, through all the details, the crop is handled in half-acre units. You can imagine the advantages in the saving of time, while the care of the scows costs less than we sometimes lose by fire on land.

“Let me point out that grain grown on the sea is very clean. Also, the salt water in no way impairs the flavor. I scattered this particular crop over all the world, and you have all eaten of it without detecting any difference.

“Now, as to cost: the maintenance will be slightly less than the present rate, so we need consider only the initial expense. There are three distinct items: the mining and transportation of the soil, the making of the scows, and the building of the warehouses, together with their machinery.

“Of course it is not necessary to supply any great amount of equipment at first, since it can be added to from time to time as the population increases and other demands are made upon the land. Nevertheless I have calculated the total cost to produce as much wheat as will be needed to support us a generation hence; for it has been calculated that the population will then be so large as to require all the land surface for other purposes. This total cost will have to be borne sooner or later, and we don’t want the next generation to accuse us of extravagance.

“The entire cost, then, will be eight hundred billions of dollars. At the present rate of increase, the population will have to spend about twenty billion a year. I could go into a great deal of detail, but think you will be practically satisfied to know that the committee has gone over my plan very thoroughly and approves of it at every point. For one example, however, I aim to manufacture the scows from sheet metal, stamped in one piece in a huge press. All other items would be carried out in the same wholesale fashion.”

And with that I thanked them, bobbed my head and stepped away from the mirror. But I could not escape the applause. It was very embarrassing; I had never heard such a thing before, that is, on such a scale. There were so many people clapping at one time, the resultant sound was a single bass note, of trombone quality and especially cheery.

Then the chairman dryly remarked that a stranger from another world would have something to say. Johnnie immediately stepped into view and began as I did, without preamble and, I noted with petty satisfaction, without brushing his hair.

He said:

“I propose that we move to Jupiter.”

CHAPTER XV

“DO IT NOW!”

“It’s not as hard as it looks,” Johnnie I remarked calmly as soon as the excitement had somewhat abated. “We can really move to Jupiter and do it with uncommon ease; but before I tell you how, I’d like to point out a serious flaw in what Mr. Forbes has proposed, in order that you may be the more seriously interested in what I have to offer.

“First, I admit that the scow idea is first rate. I see no reason why it shouldn’t work perfectly, neither does the estimate look especially forbidding to me. But, I insist, it has its limitations. It is quite true that there is far more water than land on this globe, but a vast proportion of this water lies in ice-covered regions. Therefore there is a practical limit to the life of this scheme.

“Without doing some very elaborate calculating, I can only guess that the Forbes plan will serve the world for three or four generations. What will we do then? Of course it’s a long-way ahead; nevertheless, time goes right along, and in the meanwhile the human race will miss its only opportunity to claim a bigger planet.

“Now, I warn you that the question of ‘how’ cannot be answered quickly. It calls for a lot of explanation. But I’ll be as brief and yet as exact as possible. To begin with, I’ll state that the Cones themselves will not solve the problem, except indirectly.”

Then he rapidly summarized the events leading up to Jupiter’s present position. He began with the advent of the double star, one element of which, striking Saturn, had nearly stopped him in his course and caused him to fall, a flaming sun, toward Jupiter. By mutual gravitation the two had then combined to form a new couplet, while the other half of the blundering planetoid had continued sunward.

Thus Jupiter, partaking of Saturn’s great fall, but retaining his own velocity, was now swinging steadily inward on his orbit; and the astronomers had announced, as you will recall, that this great spiral would ultimately become a nearly circular orbit just outside the Earth’s.

“Remember that Jupiter is immensely larger than the Earth. His atmosphere is three times as deep as our entire diameter. Another thing: his new orbit will in no way interfere with the Earth, where she now is.

“Now, the Universal Astronomical Society has aided me in calculating the details of what I am going to propose. It is this: let’s move the Earth to Jupiter!”

Had he suggested an ice-pack for the sun he would have created a smaller sensation. The world held its breath in amazement. In a moment Johnnie was smiling and saying: “Before you call me crazy, hear me to the bitter end. Remember, the society has verified all my figures.

“You realize that the whole solar system owes its stability to the nice balance which exists between the sun’s pull and each planet’s centrifugal force. The one just offsets the other; so that a planet can neither fall into the sun nor fly on indefinitely in a straight line. For instance, the Earth is traveling at eighteen and a half miles per second in its three hundred and sixty-five day orbit around the sun; yet this orbit is, practically, a circle, instead of a straight line, simply because of the sun’s gravitation.

“Here’s the point. If in any way we could increase the Earth’s speed, we would thereby cause it to seek a wider and larger path. The greater the speed, the greater the centrifugal force; whereas the gravitational effect would be unchanged.

“My whole proposition is based on this law of Newton’s. So long as the Earth’s velocity remains what it is now, we will continue in this orbit. But let that velocity be increased, and the orbit is enlarged. Jupiter’s new orbit is to be just outside ours; so that, if we can increase our speed enough, we can take up a fresh position in about the same region as he.

“I spoke a moment ago of the double star, the remaining half of which is now nearing the sun. This planetoid is being constantly observed. It is a small affair, a trifle less than two thousand miles in diameter; probably its mate was of a similar size, and its damage to Saturn was due wholly to its speed, which is several hundred miles per second.”

He quoted the astronomers’ declaration that the planetoid, upon leaving the sun, would cross the Earth’s path on March 5. The crossing would be at quite a distance and without endangering the Earth.

“Now, I propose that we tamper a bit with that star. You remember how, when the Cone used Deimos as a starting-place, the rebound of the centrifugal force nearly threw the little moon out of its path. Well, there are forty Cones nearing completion, and their combined power will be enormous.

“My plan is to go out and meet that star just as it leaves the sun. By lining up the Cones on one side of the thing, we can exert enough force to change its orbit slightly. Of course this effect will be very small on a body with such great momentum as this speeder has; but that is my very idea in setting to work at once. A tiny displacement at that distance will become a large one by the time it reaches the Earth.

“On March 5, then, the planetoid will cross behind the Earth, outbound, at an angle of about forty-five degrees. If we alter its course by exactly the right amount we can bring it near enough to the Earth to draw us out of our orbit!” Johnnie paused for a moment, well knowing what a staggering thing he was proposing.

“The planetoid’s gravitational effect would be very small indeed,” he resumed quietly; “but for the fact that we shall bring it quite near. You know that gravitation is in inverse proportion to the square of the distance. That is to say, bringing the star to within a thousand miles will make it four times as effective as at two thousand, and so on.

“To make it short, we have calculated that the Cones can readily make this alteration in the star’s path, steering it near enough to have the desired effect upon the Earth; which is, to add to our velocity. Passing us at an angle of forty-five degrees, it will cause us to exceed twenty-one miles per hour as against our present eighteen and a half; and thereby take us far enough out to get into Jupiter’s path.

“It is only a matter of delicate figuring. By steering the planetoid to exactly the right distance, at exactly the right longitude and latitude, figured to the ten-thousandth part of a degree, we can adjust our destination to a nicety. We need not actually touch Jupiter. Our velocity will be enough to keep us from succumbing to his gravitation; but we must aim so as to strike well within the limits of that wonderful atmosphere. The Earth will then become a new satellite, revolving around Jupiter for the rest of her existence. Of course, once in that magnificent air, our planes will do the rest.

“There is really only one problem: the moon must be eliminated. Revolving around us as she does, she would certainly collide with the big planet, and spoil it all for us. You know, of course, that such a collision would turn them both into another Saturn.”

Johnnie paused to take a long breath. Harry entered the booth with a small refrigerator case, from which the inventor quickly removed, with a pair of forceps, a small piece of stone. I recognized at once the grayish substance which he secured from the wall of the crater in the moon.

“This material is in the same condition as when I found it—frozen. If I allow it to become as warm as this booth, it will turn to a muddy liquid, which some of you would recognize. It is nothing more or less than crude chloride of nitrogen.

“The moon is made of it.” Johnnie returned the specimen to its case. “I had a theory to that effect years ago. There was no other way to account for the moon’s lightness. Of course, this chloride is not pure. It is two-thirds adulterated with almost every known element, but their presence does not alter the character of this chemical.

“Chloride of nitrogen is an extremely powerful explosive. When pure it is very dangerous, decidedly unsafe to handle. As found on the moon, it is almost inert because of the adulteration. That is why the moon, from the beginning, has escaped all harm.

“You see my drift. All we have to do is to upset our satellite’s smug complacency. The Cones can readily carry enough chemicals there to refine this chloride, after which it is only a matter of apparatus to explode it. The moon would be blown into fragments. These would have terrific velocity, and anything traveling faster than a mile and a half a second would never return. It would be done after the planetoid passed.

“Now as to Jupiter himself. Our explorations showed that the two polar regions extend nearly to latitude seventy-five, while the torrid zone is about twenty-five degrees wide. The remainder is now fit to live upon. As the planet gradually becomes cooler, in time nearly all of it will be habitable. As for becoming acclimated, we felt far less discomfort than we would in going to Africa today. The district between fifty and sixty degrees, either hemisphere, is ideal.

“The soil is rich beyond belief. There are about equal parts of land and water. There is room enough for the human race for hundreds of generations. Some of us have complained that our present civilization has become monotonously tame. Well, there is plenty of excitement on Jupiter. Another race of pioneers will be needed to clear those jungles. There are enough prehistoric animals to satisfy the most adventurous soul. But above all, remember that there is one hundred and twenty-two times the surface of the Earth.

“Finally, I have only this to say. March fifth is not only the first chance the Earth will get to make this leap for a new life: it’s the last chance. There is no likelihood whatever of such means being offered us again. This planetoid solves our problem.

“In short, if we move to Jupiter we must do it now!”

CHAPTER XVI

WE VOTE ON IT

During the next few days the world was in a state of excitement such as even the great change did not arouse. People discussed the two plans during every spare moment. Of course the detailed data in both cases had been scattered broadcast in pamphlet form.

My proposition did not get much attention. It could wait; Johnnie’s scheme could not. It was “yes or no” before March fifth, and everybody knew it. They bombarded the scientists for verification of Johnnie’s theories and figures, and had to be assured over and over again.

Many did not appreciate the exactness of modern mathematics. The old story of Leverrier and Adams, the two ancient astronomers who figured out the location of an unknown planet, was revived. People marveled again at the intelligence which could calculate, from certain irregularities in Uranus’s orbit, that some other planet was causing these disturbances; moreover, the location of Neptune was thus prophesied with such accuracy that the observers had only to point their telescopes where the mathematicians directed and within an hour the planet was found.

And since that day progress had of course carried the science much farther. The two spiral orbits of Jupiter and the Earth, as described by John Babcock, were calculated within extremely narrow limits; but even though a small error should occur it could not make a serious difference in the result. The Earth was sure to glide into the limits of Jovian air.

The planetoid’s orbit insured this. Its path made a great loop around the sun, never coming nearer our orbit than seventy million miles. Thus, on its outward trip it would not cut squarely across our orbit, but at a decided angle. The Cones’ operations would cause it to actually follow and overtake the Earth. The power of the Cones, together with the star’s inertia, were easily and minutely calculated. The planetoid could be steered as nicely as any plane.

Fresh samples of the ore were brought from the moon, and experiments proved Johnnie’s theories. The chloride would do all that was expected of it. Of course it was only necessary to explode the outer crust of the moon, not the entire mass; the force of the explosion would disintegrate the whole and dissipate it into space.

Some fear was felt that these fragments might strike the Earth. But we were shown a plan for so placing the “mines” as to form a cross over the center of the face. By causing the explosion to follow’ these lines, the moon would be separated into sections, each of which would fly away from the center. Thus we would be protected.

Johnnie produced hundreds of photographs to prove to the skeptical regarding Jupiter’s habitability. He explained how the tremendous gravity had held captive so much air; but that this very density of atmosphere offsets the gravity and also holds in the heat which, on Earth, was largely lost by radiation during our comparatively long-nights. Johnnie showed that the big planet is in a stage corresponding to our recent Pleistocene age; mankind should have appeared long before, in the ordinary course of evolution.

These and several other questions were disposed of without difficulty. The public interest in Johnnie led to many popular articles about him and his work. One writer enthusiastically bestowed the title, “Doctor of Dangers”; it struck the people’s fancy and became Johnnie’s nickname.

When the election day arrived, a week later, there was no doubt that the public was sufficiently well informed to cast an intelligent vote. We had perfect faith in mathematics; we had seen for ourselves via the phone. It was too momentous a matter to be left to a representative vote.

Of course you know how it turned out. The balloting was completed in a few hours, thanks to the photophone, which made every booth a polling-place. There could be no false voting. And so it was by a fair, honest, intelligent vote of the whole people which, by more than two to one majority, elected on January tenth to move the Earth.

The first Cone took flight three hours later.

About this time a remarkable thing occurred on Mars. He grew a pair of tails. They were brilliant streams of pale red light, emitted from what appeared to be a volcano about five degrees south of Marsopolis. It was all the more puzzling because of the well-known scarcity of mountains. The beams were nearly as long as the planet’s diameter; and instead of spreading out, formed in parallel lines, like a pencil. From the color they were generally supposed to be the dreadful M-rays, which had so nearly put an end to the Cone.

We called it only a coincidence; we did not know, then, how closely they would be intimately related with our own affairs. We went about our usual business, putting in our spare time in astronomical study. Of course there were numbers of skeptics, including a few religious enthusiasts who gathered small crowds to protest against “this defilement of nature, this competition with God.” It is curious how the trend of progress provokes lapses toward superstition and faith-worship. We shall probably never entirely outgrow these outbursts.

Johnnie was exceedingly busy with the details of the great steering. The Cones were all en route within a week, each heavily charged with power, and carrying four men. Johnnie superintended the journey toward the sun, to insure their taking care to avoid its enormous pull.

They met the planetoid when it was almost exactly on the opposite side from the Earth. The Cones gathered on the sunward side of the star; and thanks to the photophone, we were all able to watch the operations.

All three wheels were used in the work. The horizontal one was kept revolving so that its gyrostatical force might hold the Cone in place. Then, both the vertical and steering wheels were brought into line with the sun and planetoid. Their force was raised to the highest point by the swiftest safe speed; and thus, pressing against the star in one direction, and the sun in another, they tended to separate the two orbs.

Something had to give. Nothing could withstand the terrific push of those wheels. Bit by bit the planetoid shied from its orbit; at first it amounted to only a few yards per hour. But the unremitting pressure, together with the unbreakable laws of inertia, increased this variation in geometrical progression. By the time the star had come half-way, it was thousands of miles out of its course.

As originally calculated, the planetoid would have passed somewhat beneath as well as behind the Earth. So the Cones operated against its southern hemisphere, forcing it up as well as to the side. Moreover, it was necessary that the Earth be carried a little higher, if it were to jibe precisely with Jupiter’s orbit—a painstaking bit of trigonometry.

When February passed and March fifth grew near, folks began to get a little nervous. We were not told just how near the star would be brought; we only knew that it must pass quite close to be effective. But we were not afraid of March fifth, itself. We were in the same state of mind as when we mail an important letter.

The act is unimportant; the significance enormous. No; we were nervous because of what March fifth might lead to.

CHAPTER XVII

THE STAR-MOVER

The puzzling phenomenon on Mars still excited our curiosity, especially as of late the flaming tails had become considerably larger. Soon it was clear that they were directed toward the two little moons, Phobos and Deimos. All told, it was but three weeks before the rays reached their goals.

It was a wonderful sight, and only credible to those who had seen the M-rays work. No sooner had the light touched the moons than they were turned into fire. They collapsed, flattened, then spread out in an exploding puff of pinkish-flame. It was the destruction of those living machines on a gigantic scale. Few saw Phobos die, but the world watched when Deimos was struck. It was all over in a few minutes. Absolutely nothing whatever was left of what had once been two solid satellites, save two great clouds of fire, which quickly spread and faded until, after a few days, even this evidence disappeared. Clearly it was a deliberate act of the Martians, but none the less a baffling mystery.

On the night of March fourth, the red planet showed up quite close to Jupiter and Saturn. Of course millions of miles actually intervened. You will recall that the astronomers figured that the big planet’s slanting path would cross just ahead of Mars and without disturbing him vitally. But the distance from the Earth was so great that the two could hardly be distinguished.

Mars’s tails had all but disappeared. However, to add to our bewilderment, a new outbreak of the same nature was taking place at the planet’s north pole. It bid fair to become larger than the first displays. First two tails, and now a plume. We gave it up in disgust.

The planetoid was scheduled to pass the Earth the next day. Its path would carry it over a spot on the Pacific Ocean southwest of Chile. Several photophone stations were erected aboard freight liners at this point, to insure that all should have a clear view. Fortunately it would be moonlight—seven-thirty o’clock—when the passage should occur.

Have I mentioned the star’s velocity? Travelling at nearly three hundred miles per second, its advent would be a brief one. I confess to a personal uneasiness at that time. I did not know just how near it would come, and I did not like to think of the consequences should some slight mistake be made. A collision—not pleasant to contemplate.

At seven o’clock we were called to the phone. “There are a few Cones at the disposal of any nervous citizens,” was the announcement. These had already been promised. It is noteworthy that several hundred elderly folks, of rather unimaginative dispositions, had applied for space in the sky-cars; but it is far more remarkable that curiosity, or pluck, or both combined, kept every last soul from making any use of them. When it came to the test, we were all true to our modern training.

At seven-fifteen the planetoid became visible to the naked eye. Of course, I was in my booth through it all, and saw the passing as well as though I had been aboard the ship in person. The tiny black globe appeared low on the southwestern horizon, growing momentarily larger in appearance. As it approached, the director of the central observatory made an announcement.

“It will be necessary for the star to pass within a very few miles,” he stated. “Its mass is so small, its pull will be just barely enough for our purposes. There will be no danger to our atmosphere, much less to the Earth itself.”

This reassured us somewhat. We watched with unmixed curiosity as the star grew steadily nearer. Before long we could make out its revolving motion, which was peculiar in that it was retrograde; that is, from east to west. Its brown, irregular surface, entirely devoid of any interesting detail, was a disappointment compared with that of our beautiful moon. As it came nearer, it mounted a little higher in the sky.

We had an uncomfortable five minutes. The star gained rapidly, growing always larger and nearer, blotting out one constellation after another with deadly efficiency. Shortly I was hoping that it might pass a good deal higher than it seemed to be going. Its western edge was scarcely above the horizon. Now the big disk, plainly globular in form heretofore, was beginning to flatten out. Then it appeared as the moon did on its opposite face. But no sooner did the star gain one aspect than it assumed a newer and more fearsome one.

Undoubtedly we were to all but graze it! Imagine that black, silent monster rushing over our heads! I was thankful that it was going so fast; it could not stop to make trouble. But there was something nerve-racking about knowing that the thing was actually catching up with us, coolly overtaking us as though our globe were motionless. It made us feel small.

To relieve the tension I left the booth and walked around for a moment, returning at precisely seven-thirty-two, the scheduled time of the passing. At first I was puzzled to account for things. I thought that something had happened to the apparatus; for, lo my alarm, the screen was entirely blank. There was nothing to be seen—the surface was black as jet!

Next second came the voice of the director. “We have turned a searchlight on the planetoid. Just a moment.” And suddenly I realized that the great sphere had cut off the moonlight. I had forgotten that it would cause an eclipse. Afterwards we learned that the star was ninety-odd miles away at the nearest point. Never before had the Earth come so close to a heavenly body, excepting only meteors.

The great white disk of the searchlight played on the black surface. It was too close, and travelling too fast, for us to make out any details. There was nothing but a dull blur to be seen. I wondered that it did not whiz. And then we heard the hum.

You know there is a little air, a very little, even at a hundred miles. Not enough for the planetoid to develop serious friction, but enough to make a sound. It was like a rubber band vibrated by the breath, a faint bass note of very pleasing sound. It grew louder and stronger—a throbbing cadence about it; I forget its pleasing note and began to fear. If it became much louder—too near. Then I recalled that it takes time for sound to travel, and that the star was already passing!

The darkness continued for a few moments, then it began to abate. The rounded edge of the planetoid was approaching; the surface surrounding the searchlight’s beam was grayish now. In a moment the current was turned off; it was starlight.

I had barely time to notice that the hum was dying down, when suddenly the moon flashed into full radiance. But the world did not care.

After a while the world thought to applaud. We gave the Cones a heartfelt cheer. We could not see what had happened to the Earth’s orbit, but we took it for granted that this monster, now rushing on to the east, had done the work. And we were frankly glad it was all over.

Not long after that, came the tide. Of course, the astronomers knew this must happen, but they expected it would occur like the lunar tides, delayed six hours by reason of the water’s inertia. They never guessed that gravitation takes time to operate, and that the nearer the planetoid, the sooner the tide.

Suddenly the director of our mirror exclaimed hurriedly for our benefit. “You must take a look at the horizon.” His voice was vibrant with excitement as he adjusted our mirror.

We saw the wave approaching. It was hundreds of miles away, but its tremendous crest, higher than a chain of mountains, loomed far above the level. It was coming at a terrific rate.

I caught sight of a plane leaving the deck just ahead of the mirror. Then I noted others already in the air. The crew was taking flight. Three seconds later the wave struck.

The mirror began to rise, slowly at first, then with swiftly increasing speed. In a few seconds it was rushing upward as though in a cone. Then it began to toss. We could see the surface of the wave ahead of us, churning and tossing as though in a grip of a hurricane. Up we flew, flung first to one side, then another; the great ship behaved like a chip in a pond. The sea roared and crashed furiously. A great wave surged over the deck and momentarily blotted out our view. But the mirror held fast.

There was an instant’s lull. Next second the ship gave a sickening lurch; the mirror keeled over on its edge, then upside down. There was a deafening rush of water.

Later we learned that the tidal wave, originating in the neighborhood of New Zealand, crossed the Pacific and broke against the shores of Chile and Peru. It gained in height and speed as it proceeded: and when it struck the continent, an unbelievable amount of destruction was done.

But Callao and Valparaiso were completely destroyed, together with about a hundred smaller towns. If there was any loss of life, it was due to stubbornness; and of course every home was in the mountains. Nothing but factories and shipping suffered.

Six hours after the passage of the planetoid the astronomers were able to announce that (1) the Earth was moving at a rate in excess of twenty-one miles per hour, (2) she had been pulled considerably outside her old orbit, (3) she would undeniably and absolutely continue according to schedule, and ultimately become one of Jupiter’s satellites. The star-mover had succeeded.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE RACE IN SPACE

Then came the most terrifying news that had ever been told. Through the director of the central observatory, we learned that the meaning of Mars’s new plume had been deduced. The announcement was made by phone.

“Several weeks ago,” stated the director, “we agreed among ourselves that the two tails which Mars formerly sported were due to a deliberate purpose upon the part of the authorities there. Whatever their control over those amazing M-rays, they were evidently using them, as we have seen lately, to get rid of their two moons. We agreed that their purpose was similar to ours; the moons would be in the way of their future movements. But we could not see what they could accomplish by it.

“Within the past week it has been explained by their display of the plume at their north pole. As you have seen, it points always in the same direction; to their ‘ear,’ with respect to their motion around the sun.

“This plume is an artificial volcano. It is shooting a stream of Mars’ solid mass into space. They undoubtedly knew just how much velocity to give the material, for we have measured its speed and found it to exceed the planet’s critical velocity. None of that tail will ever return to Mars.

“It is a gigantic rocket. Our warlike neighbor is now going slightly faster. Instead of keeping in his usual orbit he, like the Earth, is entering upon a somewhat larger one. By so doing, Mars is going out to meet Jupiter, so to speak; they are planning to get there ahead of us!”

My heart gave a genuine leap of fear; I am not ashamed to admit it. What if the Earth and Mars should collide! There could be only one result, another star like Saturn.

And then the director resumed. “Don’t forget that we knew this a week before our little experiment with the planetoid. There is no danger of the Earth colliding with Mars; we calculated his path and allowed for it, the same as we allowed for Saturn and the satellites. The star was steered so as to give us the proper direction. We shall reach Jupiter in safety.”

But I left the booth in a stupor of despair. I recalled the terrible nature of Mars’s “civilization” and what it might mean to us. Was there room on Jupiter for both races? Could we successfully combat those dreadful rays with centrifugal force? My heart sank as I visualized a Cone, surrounded by a fleet of the ray-machines.

I pictured the race of man, grown peaceful and gentle under centuries of highly developed civilization, taken in hand by these ruthless warriors, these repulsive stilt-men, and kept captive for their benefit. I could imagine a rebellion, glorious in its purpose, failing in a sea of blood—boiling under the heat of the M-ray!

Was this to be the end of the human race? Had we overcome the baser elements in society, developed our intelligence, and put peace and plenty into the everyday life of several generations, only to become the property of these horrible creatures? I could not conceive of them as humans; mere reason and an anthropoid frame do not make a human.

At any rate, I could be thankful that my own theory had been disproved. I had thought it possible that the Martians were planning to destroy Jupiter’s air. Having noted the Cone’s work on the planetoid—their instruments were doubtless capable of this—and having deduced what we were planning to do, they might have taken the attitude of dogs in a manger. They could have determined to keep us away from what was denied to them.

If you will hold your right thumb and forefinger together, you will roughly indicate the two orbits of Mars and Jupiter respectively. Assume the finger to be the big planet’s path; the thumb, Mars’s. Pretend that the sun lies away off to your left.

Now you will see that Mars, which had originally been due to just escape Jupiter’s influence, by merely going a little way farther from the sun would get into the giant globe’s grip. That is just what happened; but such was the nearly equal speed of the two planets that Mars only very gradually reduced the millions of miles which separated him from Jupiter. The little red planet followed the big cream one like a puppy after its mother. It was months before the distance was reduced by half.

The fate of the moon was spectacular in the extreme. Perhaps, however, you will be interested in the means used to destroy her. It was a gigantic task, relatively far more work than the steering of the star.

Every available Cone worked for weeks in carrying chemicals to the moon. It required thousands of tons, and each round trip took a week. Upon reaching the moon a Cone would drop into a crater; and using long cables which carried wiring in their makeup lowered the refining elements into cracks, fissures and pits, as far as possible below the surface. The containers for these chemicals held apparatus for releasing the contents and thus forming the refining compound.

But the refining itself was not done until after the last Cone deposited its load. In this way several hundred craters had been provided with the means for simultaneously producing billions of gallons of chloride of nitrogen. All that was needed was the wireless discharge that would release the chemicals. This was operated from aboard the last Cone; I don’t know whether it was Harry or Johnnie who closed the switch.

It was easy to see that the action really occurred. In theory the refining would result in three separate compounds; a gas which would comprise part of the separated adulterants, a residue of solid matter comprising the other impurities, and a liquid overlaying this. The liquid would be pure chloride. In three hours’ time the moon was covered with a dense fog which could mean only one thing: The chloride was being formed.

The actual firing of the discharge was made quite a ceremony. Many people insisted that Johnnie have the honor, but he would not hear of it. “The chairman is the man to perform that operation,” declared the inventor. “Shooting the moon is like ancient capital punishment. I’ll not have its blood on my hands!”

We laughed at this reference to our poor, dead old moon. All that we cared for was its safe destruction. Of course, we would miss its beauty, especially on summer evenings when we felt sentimental. Did I mention the system of mining the moon? The craters selected for the purpose formed a giant cross upon the face which was turned our way. The intersection was in the center of the disk.

The only essential thing was that the discharge occur when the moon was behind us; that is, to the rear of the Earth as it flew in its orbit. A day was selected when the moon was at her first quarter; we voted it a holiday and flocked to our booths to see.

The chairman spoke a word or two of our confidence in the work of the “moon-killers,” as he called the Cone operators. Then he reminded us that there was no danger whatever, that the loss of the moon would not appreciably alter our motion, and that we should be treated to a remarkable sight. With that he threw the switch.

It required some time for the rays to reach the moon. Then a tiny spark of light appeared in each of the craters. The spark grew rapidly; it became a small bluish flare, spreading rapidly until the entire crater was filled. Before I could decide whether the flare had any well-defined form it had spread across the plains to meet a similar flare from another crater. In an incredibly short time a gigantic cross, outlined in intense flame, was formed across the moon. Its incandescence hurt the eyes.

When next I looked the moon’s surface was changed. It was now decidedly larger and a most terrifyingly brilliant thing. A glance was all I could give it—as well try to gaze at the naked sun.

In short, the moon, which was actually exploding before our eyes, appeared to burn instead. This effect was due to the distance, which reduced the apparent speed of the flames. From close at hand its action would have appeared instantaneous; but from the Earth it was like a huge globe of fire.

And so our satellite burned. The flames grew steadily whiter and brighter; they spread in height until the visible area of the moon was three times its former size. Great irregular flares shot off from the circumference. People with keen vision already reported seeing fissures through the glare. Strange that we could hear no sound! But sound requires air to travel in. At the end of a week the moon nearly filled the eastern heavens. The velocity of the flames and fragments was then figured at five miles per second; but the brilliance had decreased to a whitish glow. The moon was rapidly disintegrating into the space from which it had come. The cloud of fire had broken up into several sections, the nearest four of which were steadily flying toward the Earth from what had been the moon’s center. But, because of the method of placing the “mines,” these four fragments passed safely by us, each bearing away at an angle and, after overtaking the Earth, continuing in straight lines indefinitely. Ultimately they became planetoids.

As time passed we did little else in our spare time but watch these two phenomena: the spreading, waning moon, and the growing Jupiter. The former satellite, after the various fragments had been blown into the heavens, left behind in their stead a cloud of fiery vapor, resembling several well-known nebula. With the naked eye it looked like a rather serious spill on the Milky Way. But Jupiter’s tremendous beauty attracted more attention, our admiration being tempered by the uneasiness we could not avoid whenever we glanced at his red retainer. With his wonderful plume Mars was our bugaboo!

Of course these events did not improve the food situation. Nothing occurred to reduce the population, nor did the crops increase materially. On the other hand, folks were healthier than ever. But there was little complaint, although we had been obliged to reduce the wheat allowance to about one-half what it had been two years before. You will understand that the vast cost of the Babcock project left no funds for trying my plan. We were all looking forward to our new home; we weren’t worrying about the old. A great many people took up Fletcherism with new enthusiasm and excellent reason.

A time came when it was possible to detect a difference in the weight of things by day and by night. This effect of Jupiter’s gravity could also be seen on Mars, who was steadily, though slowly, closing the big gap. At midnight—and each night was now brightened by Saturn—we could get this situation with perfect clearness since sun, Earth, and Jupiter were then in opposition. Rather, the big planet would be seen well to the east, being “ahead” of the Earth at this time. Refer to your finger-and-thumb illustration again, and imagine the Earth located a few inches to the left of the second joint of your thumb. Only by now the forefinger will represent both Jupiter’s and Mars’s orbits.

The event of our reaching Jupiter had been set for December 24, at twenty-two o’clock, central time. During the preceding fall the Earth, because of its superior velocity, steadily gained on its destination in the same proportion as its aspect grew larger. In September Jupiter loomed up in the east like the great pinkish globe that he appeared in the instruments; while Saturn periodically swung between him and the Earth, filling our nights with brilliance. Mars could be spotted nearly at the zenith, a new red moon in appearance, his wonderful markings standing out in all their sinister suggestiveness. He still maintained his rocket.

And this takes us up to the week before our “landing.” On December 17 the marvelous globe of our new habitation filled a large part of the sky. His tremendous girth was out of sight only during the day. Each evening he arose, in his astonishing splendor like a nightmare moon, completely blinding out our view of any fixed stars until dawn. On this date we were so near that Saturn, whose orbit lies at a decided angle with Jupiter’s equator, swung round his circle almost over our heads.

The day before the great event I flew to Ray’s home above the Yosemite.

CHAPTER XIX

THE LAST LAP

“I don’t feel as nervous as I did when the star passed,” remarked Ray. We were standing in her little observatory, listening to the astronomers’ announcements from the other side of the Earth. It was noon and Johnnie had just arrived.

“You are justified,” he retorted in his usual insolent fashion “…As I remember it, you didn’t have two protecting cavaliers on hand then.” But under his banter I caught, for the first time in my acquaintance with him, an undeniable undertone of anxiety.

Ray noted it at the same instant. She watched him constantly after that; and I made a mental note to maintain my own coolness. However, I had such faith in our mathematical science that I felt practically no uneasiness. Why not turn this faith to advantage in my own cause?

“In seventeen hours we are due in our new berth,” the inventor remarked presently. He spoke hurriedly, as though anxious to keep the talk going. “Just now, of course, we can’t see where we’re going; but tonight our mirror will be of service to the very folks who are sending these bulletins.” He paused as the photophone announced, from the Tokyo observatory, that all of the seven outer satellites had been passed in safety.

“There remain only Saturn and the five inner moons,” concluded the astronomer. “Mars is just at the meridian—which means directly opposite us and going in the same direction. He looks a little larger than our old moon. I’ll let you see for yourselves shortly.”

Ray broke the silence which followed. “How much faster does the Earth travel than Mars?”

“Under the old conditions three and a half miles a second,” I was able to answer. “But since the change in our respective speeds his rate is only half a mile less than ours.”

“But you notice,” eagerly Johnnie broke in, “that we have already caught up with him. From now on we shall be in the lead.”

Again I caught the disquieting note in his voice. Was it us he was trying to assure, I wondered, or was it himself? It did not seem possible that he had lost faith in his own calculations.

“Anyway,” Ray put in, having evidently noted the same thing I had seen, “it’s not so important which reaches Jupiter first. The great thing is to get there without bumping into one of these conceited moons.”

“Oh, we’ll get there all right!” exclaimed Johnnie with such confidence that I quickly revised my notion of his uneasiness. On the other hand, was he so good an actor as to fool me with his bravado? No.

Just after lunch we were given photophone glimpses of the sky on the other side of the globe. We marveled as usual over Jupiter’s growing size, and were disappointed that we could make out no details.

“Just wait until we get down into that atmosphere,” reminded Johnnie.

Then we had a look at Saturn, the great flaming sun whose orbit, a million and a half miles from Jupiter, was such as to presently bring him quite close to us. He made a forbidding sight; he was so near that artificial light was unnecessary.

Next the mirror was focused on the vast expanse of space separating Saturn from the great planet. “We are now approaching,” explained the astronomer, “the region of the original five satellites. You can make out Callisto, the outermost one, not far from Saturn. He is destined to cross our path just ahead of our transit.

“It so happens that the other four are at present in eclipse; shortly they will emerge from behind the planet.” We eyed Callisto with some slight misgivings, hoping fervently that nothing would happen to delay his passing; but it was toward Saturn that we turned the more anxious eye.

“I’m glad there’s a wide margin in our favor,” said Ray. “That tremendous ball of fire must have a powerful pull. What if there has been a miscalculation and we should be drawn into it?”

She said it to draw Johnnie out; I could see that, and watched him narrowly.

“I’ll show you the figures, if you like,” he hastily volunteered; and drew a sheaf of papers from his pocket as he spoke. “Even if we should veer five thousand miles too far to the east we should still have enough centrifugal force to counteract Saturn’s gravitation.”

Ray said that she wouldn’t understand the calculations, anyway, and apparently Johnnie considered that she was reassured, for he turned to the mirror again. I noted, however, that he gazed at Saturn; and this involuntary action of his did more to upset my own equanimity than anything else could have done. For an instant I feared for the outcome.

Then I mentally reaffirmed my faith and quietly proposed that we go for a walk. Ray glanced at me quickly, as though to make sure of some former conclusion, and led the way down through the snow-covered villas to the falls.

Later in the afternoon we followed the wall of the cañon toward the west until it became twilight. When we turned back it was seventeen o’clock; but Mars arose in the east and lighted our way with a dull red glow as we trudged through the snow back to the house.

Ray asked Johnnie a good many questions about the Martians. For one thing: “Don’t you think it possible for us humans to devise a complete code of communication with the rulers, as soon as the two journeys are finished, and ultimately come to a peaceable understanding with them?”

Johnnie shook his head energetically. “There is something insurmountable about their brand of intelligence,” he declared. “You have to stand in their presence, as Harry and I did, to get the full impression of them.

“Did you ever seriously consider a horse?” he asked irrelevantly. But Ray had visited few zoos. “Well, a horse is vastly superior to a human in many ways. It is larger, stronger, fleet of foot, and a natural vegetarian. Yet it cannot be made to see our viewpoint without the use of force.”

Johnnie briefly sketched the use of “harness” in ancient times. “The horse needed to be shown that we were superior—and nothing but force would suffice. The same is true of the Martians. Vastly superior to us though they are in many ways, our development is, on the whole, the better. Yet they could not be made to see this unless we dominated them.”

“And so long as they have the M-rays there’s small likelihood of that,” I commented. “Apparently they lack a sense of justice. I could see that they were wholly without humor; how could they be just? Of course there must be some slight trace of righteousness in their makeup—the rebellions prove that; but clearly the quality is deliberately stifled in each newborn ruler.”

Johnnie added that there was still another obstacle which he could not describe; he had gotten a feeling of extreme loathing which was utterly inexplicable.

After supper we hurried to the observatory and kept constant watch on our heavenly neighbors. Mars seemed to have lagged behind his position of the night before, but his apparent size was greater. Jupiter’s edge was already over the horizon.

Ray focused an instrument on this edge and adjusted the clockwork to keep step with our motion. Thus the scope constantly pointed in our general direction of travel. We referred to it from time to time during our inspection of Mars; and about ten o’clock Ray stepped back from its eyepiece with a startled exclamation:

“Did either of you move this scope?” she demanded. When we pleaded not guilty, she pointed out that it no longer centered on the planet’s edge but was decidedly displaced upward and to the left.

Johnnie glanced at once to the north. Creeping up toward the Great Dipper, Saturn’s flaming mass was just beginning to show. His huge body would soon cover the pole star.

“There’s the reason for the change in the scope,” Johnnie said. “We are being led astray by that upstart of a baby sun!”

“Do you mean to say that Saturn has turned us aside that much?” demanded Ray sharply.

“That’s just the beginning. We are going to wobble a good deal more than that before our journey is over.” Johnnie was unconcerned—outwardly; but I fancied that he was bluffing to some extent.

Saturn’s size appeared to grow rapidly as he drifted in from the northeast. We could detect Jupiter’s shifted position with the naked eye, and it was now plain that Callisto would pass ahead of us. At this hour Mars was nearly in the position of the noonday sun. Perhaps I had best remind you again that he was at the Earth’s “right” in the race toward Jupiter.

A little later: “Saturn is certainly much larger than before,” declared Ray, and I caught a trace of that peculiar matronly tremor.

I hurried to comment: “It’s impossible for him to influence us greatly. We are going too fast—and not near enough to him.”

“Fact is,” Johnnie backed me up, “we really need his little pull to carry us safely around back of Callisto.”

He went on to comment upon the absolute silence of the whole affair, saying that it impressed him strangely. He did not say that it was making him nervous. “It didn’t seem odd for the Cone to be noiseless; but for this immense globe to rush through space without sound is—it’s appalling.”

We said but little after that until past midnight. Once I broke the silence when Saturn was at his nearest. Ray was very nervous and making no effort to conceal the fact. I said: “We were always in more danger of colliding with the old moon than we are now in from Saturn. Speed is what does it.”

But the great star was a nerve-racking spectacle. He was a yellowish likeness of the moon about three days after the explosion began, with the added terror of constantly increasing size. We could make out the leaping flames, which at this distance only seemed to crawl. Of the former satellites and the wonderful rings not a trace remained. There was nothing but this awful—I almost said roaring—burst of fire. Queer that we could see so plainly and yet hear nothing!

“The Martians evidently plan to cross ahead of Callisto,” I remarked later. I noticed how the words startled Johnnie, and was alert for fresh indications. “They are far enough to our right to do so, I mean.”

Johnnie replied with a visible effort: “That is the way their orbit appears on the chart. They have the same chance we have.”

Ray noted the change in his confidence at once. His face showed that he was under a very genuine strain. It struck me that he might be considering some new invention, and I carelessly asked him what his next production would be.

“Nothing at all definite in mind,” he answered, surprised. “I’ve thought of nothing but this little jaunt for three years.” Instantly he lapsed into watchfulness.

CHAPTER XX

KAY SINGS

About three o’clock the first of the four eclipsed satellites came into sight. The announcement was to the effect that we should pass over Ganymede; his orbit is nearly in the plane of the planet’s equator, while we were steering for the northern temperate zone. I asked Johnnie about this.

“There is a double reason,” he explained. “We are going into the higher latitude for the benefit of the milder climate; also, because the Earth’s speed, due to the braking effect of Saturn and these satellites, will become reduced to such a point that we must strike Jupiter where his air is moving less swiftly than near his equator.”

“I see,” mused Ray. “If the Earth did not finish her journey in a part of the atmosphere where its speed was about the same we should suffer from friction. Of course the air moves as fast as Jupiter himself, and at the poles is motionless, but on the equator flying extremely fast.”

Johnnie added that there was a further advantage in passing over instead of among the moons. “Watch how Ganymede pulls us down.”

By this time Callisto was near the position which Mars had occupied earlier in the evening, and the red planet was on its way to the northwestern horizon. Johnnie’s eyes were on it constantly.

As for Ganymede, shortly it dropped below the horizon and out of our direct sight. We got into communication with African observatories, and with the phone saw the curiously marked satellite draw steadily nearer and nearer, yet always drifting farther south. The effect was very disconcerting to be looking up at the thing and yet to feel that we were passing over it. Of course we have the habit of assuming that north is up.

“We are much nearer to this moon than we have ever before, with the exception of the planetoid, approached any heavenly body. The distance is much less than that to the old moon; and were it not that our paths are at right angles we might easily form a new couplet from mutual attraction.

“As it is,” concluded the announcer, “Ganymede is pulling us enough out of our otherwise straight path to bring us uncomfortably near the next satellite.”

It was only shortly after that when we again looked “around the Earth” and saw Europa, the middle moon, rapidly climbing the southern horizon. I admit that these directions are a bit puzzling, especially when my narrative skips from one side of the globe to the other in this fashion; but you need only remember that the Earth was threading its way through a veritable labyrinth of moons. It was never done before; it would never be done again.

The instant I caught sight of Europa my heart gave an uncontrollable leap of fright. It was terribly near! Its surface was partly in shadow, so that it resembled the old moon in its first quarter; but there was no denying its steady motion toward us.

“Johnnie—that looks dangerous!” Ray’s voice shook, although she made a violent effort to appear calm. “Are you sure that we shall pass all right?”

He hesitated for a moment, his eyes fixed on Mars, before answering. “Oh, yes; perfectly sure.”

And the look that Ray gave me supported my own fears. What if Johnnie and his astronomer friends had all been wrong? What if those elaborate calculations had been based on some ancient but false premise? If so, did Johnnie now realize that the great adventure was doomed to end in tragedy—and was he deliberately concealing his fears to allay our own?

He quietly broke into my thoughts with: “I’m not worrying about the Earth, Bob.”

I was startled. His tone was so like of old I was taken completely off my guard. Involuntarily I cast about in my mind for an object for legitimate worry. I stepped abstractedly to the mirror and glanced at Europa. What I saw made my heart stand still in its work.

The moon was almost in my face. I gave an exclamation of dismay, noting at the same instant that Europa had scarcely moved at all westward. The Earth was being drawn toward it; we and all its people were in genuine peril.

“My God, Johnnie!” I exclaimed, whirling from the mirror. “You have been playing with us! The whole thing has gone wrong!”

“Bob! Johnnie!” stammered Ray. Her face had gone deathly white, and she clung to the scope for support.

Johnnie faltered for an instant, then dashed to the mirror. Instantly he turned and thundered at us. “Be quiet!” I was stumblingly trying to comfort the girl. “Bob!—I didn’t think you were such a fool! Why, if there was any real danger, I’d have Ray a million miles away in a Cone, by this time!”

The girl rallied suddenly. “And do you suppose for one second that I’d use the Cone?” She eyed him angrily; then as suddenly she softened. She had thought of something. “If you have enough faith, Johnnie, not to keep a Cone for your own use, I’ll stand by your game to the finish.”

It was my turn to feel ashamed. I had overlooked this very obvious proof of his sincerity; I was on the point of apologizing when our photophone connection was changed to a station in the Congo region.

“Wild excitement among the native population,” announced the operator. “We will give you a view of the largest mob.” In a moment we were looking into a seething, roaring crowd of blacks in a large open space on some river bank. Lighted only by the reflection from the terror moon, the people impressed us horribly with their weird cries and gesticulations. The negroes had clearly gone out of their senses; thousands of supposedly civilized people, temporarily mastered by fear.

It occurred to me that this sort of thing might be going on everywhere. Not necessarily in mobs, but in each citizen’s soul. Had it not been for Johnnie’s courage, I would have been terrorized myself, At that moment the music began.

I watched the photophone in astonishment. Someone was singing in a ‘clear, ringing soprano; someone who as yet had kept out of focus. The opening notes were in Latin, sharp and staccato like the call of a clarion. It was an order to clear the throne room; the emperor was coming. And then Ray stepped into sight.

I had not missed her. The chairman had given the old right to the system. On went the song, pausing before it took up a much different strain. Somebody was telling the emperor that an heir to the throne was being born. It was a sympathetic narrator; she sang of the patience of mothers—a low, even key. Then she began a lullaby.

We—mothers’ arms. It was deliciously warm and comfortable there; the lights were dim and there was a gentle murmuring undercurrent of friendly voices in the next room. Imperceptibly it all died away, with a sigh at the—asleep.

Suddenly the music burst forth hilariously. We were children now, scampering madly to and fro on a lawn. There were pet animals cavorting with us. I was having a great time! In a moment matters had become serious. I was very thoughtful. There were things more important than play; we must equip ourselves for the world. And then we were out for ourselves, striving for place and honor with the rest of humanity. The strains became energetic, challenging, combatative. They rose to stridence; I must do my best! There was no denying that clanging note of strife.

And now the singer exulted. We had succeeded. We could boast in security. The refrain became a lilting melody, full of laughing sidelights. Life was truly joyous; we had done so very well! The notes swelled with the fullness of a satisfied heart.

Then came the crash. The music stopped with a discordant blare. Something had gone wrong. The singer sobbed as she told the emperor, brokenly, fearfully. It was an accident. We had been hurt; people were hovering over us, murmuring soothing words and bathing our foreheads. Then the hesitating, doubtful notes became stronger; in a moment they were assured, and then confident, and then triumphant. It would be all right; the emperor need not be alarmed. On went the melody; there was a tear of joy behind every note. And now others joined in, to prove the singer right; figures appeared by her side, and the solo became harmony. I recognized some of Ray’s pupils. We were going to keep together, unafraid and comradely. The notes were positive and sweet; they rose and fell evenly and with stately tread. And marching confidently on, they swept out of our hearing, unconquerable and irresistible, as the singers stepped out of focus.

It was a miracle of faith. The world gave a sigh of the most intense relief; and then, from the photophone, came the good, old cheering which always greeted Ray when she used to sing the Marseillaise. Mad people could not cheer like that. She had restored their reason.

After a while the girl returned. We could not speak for emotion, but she was alert. “Is civilization only skin deep?” she asked thoughtfully. Then she turned to me, puzzled. “A fine lesson for us all. You nearly stampeded me, Bob. What started you off, anyway?”

I decided at once to force Johnnie to explain. If not Europa, what then was bothering him? I turned to find him at the scope, which was now pointed toward the northwest and bearing on Mars.

Never again do I want to see such a look on a man’s face. Johnnie had been shaken to his very soul by what he had seen. I took his place, and stared at the red planet for a full minute before I understood.

“Bob; what do you see?” Ray was at my elbow, anxious and peremptory. I let her look, and gazed at Johnnie with a great weight at my heart.

“Well?” she was looking at us in perplexity. And so I told her.

“Ray, Mars has been drawn completely off his course. He has begun to circle around Saturn.”

Still she did not understand. Johnnie broke in hastily, as though to get it over with. “Mars is flying in a spiral!”

“Merciful heavens!” burst from Ray. Then we stood in awestruck silence for a while, each busy with his own thoughts. It was beyond my imagination. That inconceivably immense cloud of fire! Getting closer and closer—the stilt-men—but we had escaped.

I resolutely turned to inspect Europa and was relieved to note that it had drawn away considerably. Johnnie had been right. The Earth’s velocity, augmented by the pull from the next planet, had taken her out of Europa’s influence. We were now approaching Io, heading so as to cross over its north pole, just as in the case of Europa.

“Do we pass very near this one?” I queried Johnnie. He was standing entranced at the scope and did not hear me.

I repeated in a louder tone.

Then he began to speak, in a sorrowful monotone, mechanically, as though he felt he must say it. “Come here, Bob; you too, Ray. We must watch this thing through to the end. No; there is no real danger from Io, although we must go exceedingly close.

“Now look at Mars, Ray.” He spoke in a low tone, entirely devoid of feeling. “He is only about half a million miles from Saturn and gliding rapidly nearer. Is he too near the horizon now? I’ll connect you to the Philippines observatory.”

On he went, in the same sing-song fashion, his face like the face of a bereaved mother. In a moment we could view the planet more directly. We could actually see the change of motion, so rapidly did Mars succumb.

Ray was sobbing, partly in sympathy and partly in excitement. We watched entranced, not noticing the lapse of time. Dawn had passed. It was broad daylight, and still we stood at the mirror.

And Johnnie rambled on. “I’ll tell you how it happened by and by. Just look at that planet. It took millions of years for life to reach the stage we found there. In an hour it will be burned to a crisp.”

After a while Ray made him stop. “Johnnie! You’re getting on my nerves. What makes you talk that way? It’s a dreadful thing, but it can’t be helped.”

To my vast astonishment the inventor suddenly dropped into a chair and burst into a fit of sobbing. His shoulders heaved convulsively, his whole body shaking with the terrible crying that only a man experiences. Ray eyed him in wonder, her face filled with ready sympathy.

I turned hastily to the mirror. Mars was quite near his awful goal; and looking intently at his disk, I saw a brilliant spark of light in the center. As I watched, it grew and spread until it became a triangular patch of scintillating radiance, a pinkish flare against the somber background.

I called the others to inspect it. Johnnie had regained his composure. Hardly had they taken their places at the mirror when the tragedy came, swift and sudden, silent and dreadful as the hand of death.

CHAPTER XXI

THE CATASTROPHE

I saw Mars swing around Saturn until he approached the far side of the flaming sun. There he seemed to pause as though to gather strength for another circle; but the irresistible force of the gigantic star reached out. In an incredibly short time the red disk with its curious pinkish flare dropped down and back, down and back, until first one of Saturn’s flames, then another, intercepted him. Then the planet disappeared into the great fiery mass; a stream of flame appeared at the spot where the entrance occurred, and we knew that in time a great volcanic eruption would mark the funeral pyre of Mars.

When it was all over, we sat down and gathered our faculties as best we could. We had witnessed the world’s greatest tragedy; yet, I am bound to say that my first definite thought was of breakfast. We ate a few bites in silence.

Suddenly Johnnie jumped to his feet and began pacing the room. “I can’t stand it any longer,” he blurted. “I must tell you what really happened. You have got to know.

“You remember that, a week before we steered the planetoid past the Earth, the astronomers finally agreed that Mars’s ‘plume’ was a deliberate effort to intercept Jupiter?”

Johnnie paused and passed his handkerchief over his forehead with a shaking hand. He was laboring under a terrific strain. I racked my brain for a cause of such distress.

He fell to pacing again. “When we calculated the Earth’s path in leaving her old orbit to share Jupiter’s, we took into consideration the influences of every planet and satellite which could affect us. As soon as we were sure of Mars’ purpose, we allowed for him also; and figured out just where to steer the star so as to counteract what disturbance he might make.

“But here’s the point. We knew what Mars had done; they didn’t know what we were going to do. When they discharged their rocket of M-rays, they had calculated only for what was known to them.”

Johnnie raised his voice impatiently, breathlessly. “Don’t you see? We could allow for Mars, but they couldn’t allow for the Earth.”

He dropped into his chair again, but rose in a moment, more agitated than ever. “What happened is this: the Martians figured on slipping in ahead of Saturn the same as we did; but we, being bigger and faster and a little ahead in the matter of time, got by in safety. But you must remember that, if Saturn deflected us, so did we deflect Saturn. Gravitation is mutual; don’t forget that.” His voice trailed off impotently.

“And so,” I finished for him; “Mars came nearer to Saturn than they thought. And we have seen. God, what an awful end!” I paused, and then added, “Well, Johnnie, it’s all over now. Don’t let it bother you.”

“Not bother me!” he fairly shouted, leaping to his feet. “Why—”

At this instant the mirror flashed with an announcement from the chairman. He had taken the center of focus, and spoke with a beaming face that filled my heart with relief and gladness.

“Congratulations, everybody,” he said, quietly but with ill-concealed satisfaction. “We are past every obstacle, and from now on all is clear sailing. There remains only Fidus, the tiny innermost satellite, and we are traveling so as to surely slip in between him and Jupiter.

“Briefly, I must remind you that we are bound for the eastern edge of the big world. We are not aimed directly at his face, of course; the purpose of the calculations was to bring the Earth well within the limits of the Jovian atmosphere, yet far enough from his surface that his gravitation could not overcome our centrifugal force.

“There will be nothing startling about our arrival. Life will go on here just as before, except that we shall experience frequent eclipses whenever we pass through Jupiter’s shadow. In time our air will mingle with the new, but for years it will be hard to detect any difference.”

The chairman mentioned the ease with which our airplanes could make the trip between the two surfaces, and cautioned everybody to go slowly and bear in mind the need for care. “I know you are all anxious to visit the big planet; but don’t forget to take your bearings with great care when you reach the ‘neutral zone.’ I mean, the point where the two gravitations balance. There is the only danger.”

He spoke regretfully of the great disaster which had overtaken Mars; and called attention to the fact that the peculiar triangular flame still remained in the spot where Mars had last been seen. It was very odd.

“I want to keep you another minute, long enough to mention the man whose extraordinary ingenuity and heroic explorations have made this wonderful thing possible. I congratulate the race of man on having produced Johnnie Babcock!” And as the chairman stepped out of focus, he switched the connections so that we heard the applause.

And such an ovation! The world never heard its like before. The composite reflection which smiled and shouted at Johnnie expressed all that is glad and hopeful and buoyant in the human race. I would have been forgiven had I felt envious; but I could not help joining in the chorus.

In a moment the young fellow, flushing to his ears and considerably rattled, stepped into focus and looked shyly at the mirror. Quickly the applause died down, and meanwhile he regained his poise. “I’ll tell you how much I appreciate this,” he stated in a dry, hard voice, “shortly after twenty-two o’clock. We aren’t there yet.”

I stared at him in astonishment as he stepped toward Ray and me. What had made him throw such a damper on their spirits? Ray caught him by the shoulder and shook him as though he were a disobedient child.

“Johnnie, there’s something all wrong, somewhere. Tell us quickly what it is. You shan’t move another step until you do.”

He hesitated, and I put in with “You were on the point of telling, when the chairman began speaking. I had said, not to let Mars’ fate bother you—I think.”

“But it does bother me,” he said mournfully. “You may have forgotten why we three are here together, Bob, but I haven’t—Ray is going to select one of us for her life partner.”

Now, I had made up my mind what to say; for none but a fool would have placed my small efforts alongside Johnnie’s amazing record. I cleared my throat. “Johnnie, I’m out of the race. You’ve beaten me and I admit it. You don’t want me, do you, Ray?”

She did not hesitate now, but looked me sympathetically in the eye. “Johnnie’s the bigger man, Bob. I love him—I always have. If it’s any consolation to you to know that you are far and away the finest character I ever—”

She was interrupted by a groan from Johnnie. “Dear girl, don’t say any more—not until you’ve heard it all.” The boy was trembling in agony; his face was streaked with perspiration.

“Listen.” He clutched the chair spasmodically. “These Martians—we knew their plans and allowed for them. We are safe, and they are dead! My God!”—his voice vibrated wildly—“this is the terrible thing! I—I knew they’d have to be sacrificed! I knew—from the beginning!”

CHAPTER XXII

THE END?

Johnnie slid to the floor, writhing in the torture of his soul. Ray stared at him in growing horror. Her eyes were distended with dread; her lips curved in repugnance. She said nothing; but the despair and fear in the stare she gave her lover, can be compared only to a rabbit’s horror of a rattlesnake.

I could scarcely believe what I had heard. “Great heavens, man, have you hoodwinked yourself into assuming the blame for this? Why didn’t you tell somebody, long ago?”

He got to his feet and walked shakily about the room, twisting his hands together as though in pain and not even raising his eyes from the floor, much less to look at Ray. She had found relief in tears, moaning a little under her sobs.

“These astronomers are an unimaginative lot,” muttered the inventor. “None of them figured on what would happen to the globes we passed, after we had gotten by. They all stopped short at that point. But I went a step further and saw that Mars must fall into Saturn.

“My first idea was to confide in the public; but I remembered that the women’s votes were largely against the enterprise from the outset. I felt sure that, if they knew, they would vote against moving the Earth.

“Don’t you see?” His eyes were fixed on Ray, beseechingly. “In all probability a planetoid would never pass us again. And meanwhile, what would become of the Earth? Don’t you realize that a few generations would witness the breaking down of our civilization? We would either have to put away the old people, or prevent births. That wouldn’t be life: that would be bare existence.

“Ray!” he begged, then turned to me. “I was afraid I couldn’t make her understand. But there was nothing else to be done. It was now or never. It was a fearfully ticklish job to maneuver our orbit, anyhow. We had to steer that star with the utmost delicacy to give the Earth precisely the correct send-off.”

Ray stopped him. She spoke in a low, reproachful voice, full of regret and sorrow, far more terrible than an outright denunciation. “Was our civilization so much more precious than theirs? You allowed them to be sacrificed for our convenience!”

“Don’t!” he pleaded piteously. He began pacing again in desperation. “You will never appreciate how hopeless they were! If you could only have faced them as I did—terrible people! Don’t pity those workers too much—they were not like humans—if they had gotten the upper hand, they’d have been as cruel as the rulers.”

“I understand, Johnnie, if Ray doesn’t. It isn’t as though we sacrificed part of our own race.”

But Ray was crying again. She could not comprehend. There is a peculiar faculty in the male makeup which enables us to detach ourselves at will from a problem and consider it impersonally. Few women have the gift. To the feminine mind, every question is personal.

I hope you’ll not misunderstand my own attitude in this unfortunate situation. I am not an unselfish paragon, thinking only of others and their happiness. I wanted to see Ray and Johnnie reconciled because I was fully convinced that he was the better man. Of course, at the bottom of it all I wanted her to be happy; if I had thought for one instant that she could ever care as much for me as she did for Johnnie, I dare say I’d have done nothing to patch things up.

I regret to say that my efforts were totally without effect. Ray retired to her room, mourning the breaking of her ideal, quite unable to see her lover’s case in its broader light. Johnnie went out for a dismal stroll on the snow, and I was left alone in the observatory.

For want of anything else to do, I called Paris and watched Fidus approaching in the southeast; we were aimed to pass between him and Jupiter. As for the giant himself, he filled half the heavens.

After a while I thought of what Johnnie had said about looking further ahead than the astronomers; and took a sight at the spot in the heavens where Mars disappeared into Saturn. I was amazed to see the triangular pinkish flare immensely larger, so large as to rival Saturn himself.

“We are analyzing it now,” said the astronomer to whom I appealed. “Just a moment.” I waited, and shortly he came running to his mirror in great excitement.

“It’s the M-Rays!” he shouted violently. “Those damned devils fired at us! The thing is coming straight for the Earth!”

I ran from the mirror and found Ray and Johnnie. By this time the astronomers were making the formal announcement that the red planet had loosed a final attempt at revenge. They stated that the rays were traveling at such a rate as to insure their reaching the Earth.

“As to what effect they may have, we can only guess. It is reasonable to suppose that they are capable of overheating our atmosphere. We can do nothing whatever but wait. The impact will occur about twenty-one o’clock, C. T.”

We three had gone through too much recently to be upset by this news, yet we forced ourselves to keep awake until the end. It gave Ray plenty of time to think of her problem in a new light.

The flare increased steadily in size, without in the slightest degree reducing its brilliance. In a short time it rivaled Jupiter in conspicuousness. The world awaited its arrival in feverish anxiety.

It was five minutes of the hour when Johnnie, who was at the mirror, gave a great shout of relief. “Wait!” he cried. “There’s a pleasant surprise in store for us.” He made us wait a couple of minutes before he let us look into the phone.

What I saw was a fitting climax to all that had gone before. Gliding in between the M-Rays and the Earth was Fidus, the tiny satellite which we had all but ignored. Such was the timing of the event, that the little moon struck the rays squarely at the exact moment they reached his orbit. Instantly he burst into flames. There was no slow rise of vapor; it happened so rapidly, because the distance was so short, that the little round orb almost instantaneously changed into a seething, boiling ball of rose-colored fire.

“By Jove, we’ve escaped!” I exclaimed, my voice hollow with awe. It seemed—the Almighty.

But Johnnie was watching closely. “Fidus has absorbed almost all the rays,” he announced suddenly; then glanced up sharply. “There’s a tiny tip of the triangle left, which the disk did not cover. And it’s coming right along!”

There was little time to wait. By some queer chance the rays were pointed toward our own quarter of the globe; we could see that the tip was due to strike somewhere to our west. It was traveling at a terrific rate, and struck in a few seconds.

Looking out over the Yosemite we saw the beam fall on the western horizon. There was no sound, at first, but instantly a dense cloud of vapor arose. “It struck water,” commented Johnnie. After a minute the report came from Lick Observatory that the rays had stopped in the Pacific, a few miles from the coast.

There was another short pause, and then came the storm. I never want to experience such another. I have passed through some extremely violent hurricanes in the East Indies, but none quite as bad as this. It was the intense heat of the rays; they turned a part of the sea into a veritable caldron, and upset the careful balance of pressures.

Considerable damage was done in our immediate neighborhood, to say nothing of an immense amount of destruction along the coast. Ray’s house escaped, however, except for having all her windows smashed. Within half an hour the commotion died down.

We had remained in the observatory because of its substantial construction. I made the first remark.

“I said they would be hounds, and so they were. Martians!—dogs! Dogs in a manger. If that whole discharge had struck us, this wind would have blown fast enough to have taken all the air off the Earth. We would be suffocated. I’m glad they’re gone!”

Johnnie said nothing. He was busy adjusting the mirror, which had been blown over. I glanced at Ray and was startled to see in her face the exact reflection of my own anger and relief. She took a step or two toward Johnnie.

“Mister inventor,” she said tremulously. Her eyes were very big and moist and piteous; but she forced her mouth to twitch at the corners. “I guess you knew more about them than I did—I’ll be good now.” And she put on the air of a child who has asked for candy and doesn’t know whether it will be forthcoming. Only—had it been me, now, I wouldn’t have kept her waiting.

Abruptly Johnnie turned around. His face was suffused with a broad grin, and his voice was boyishly frank again. “If I am approached in the proper manner, I think I can be induced to kiss you!”

But it was he who did the approaching.

I turned away in time to avoid seeing what happened, but I heard the sound. And now I was at a loss to know how to conceal my own feelings. They should not know how my heart ached. The phone came to my rescue. It was the chairman.

“The trouble in the Pacific is little more than local,” he stated. “Fidus is reduced to flames. The Earth is absolutely safe, and just entering the upper atmosphere of Jupiter according to program!”

He was answered by a mighty cheer, the pent-up feelings of billions of relieved and triumphant humans going into the sound. For several minutes the rejoicing continued, then it broke and a word began to make itself heard: In a moment it predominated. “Johnnie!” they were shouting. It became unanimous. “Johnnie! Johnnie!”

He tore himself from Ray and stepped into focus. He began with some trivial joke about the satellite which had become all “light”; I couldn’t make it out in the confusion. But he went on to thank them for their confidence in the scientists whom he represented. He named some of them individually, and disclaimed any personal credit for the enterprise whatever.

“The idea was an inspiration, and inspirations come from a superhuman source.” He hesitated diffidently, and added in a lower tone: “If you feel like praying, now is a fine time to thank God.” He stood for a while with bent head, and the intense silence which followed was the most impressive thing about the whole affair. By and by—“Don’t be too hasty about driving to the surface. Remember how slowly and carefully we had to proceed with the Cone.”

He irreverently gave way to a tremendous yawn. Instantly an answering gasp came from the rest of the world; and then we all laughed. Can you imagine that hilarity? Johnnie started to leave the booth, saying: “I guess we need sleep more than anything else right now,” but Ray stepped up beside him.

Her face was scarlet, but her chin was resolute. “If any of you girls have designs upon this boy, you’ll have to take him from me by main force.” Her eyes sparkled mischievously. “He’s my choice and I’m his.”

There was no mistaking the vociferous response that came from the phone. The world knew Ray and thought it well.

But the chairman saw a chance to badger the inventor. He interrupted in a tone of mock bluster. “You started out to find a place for us to overflow upon. What are you going to do with us when we finally outgrow Jupiter, hey?”

Johnnie desperately stifled a yawn, and assumed an air of indifference. “Here’s your solar system,” and he waved a hand grandiloquently. “And there’s the stars. Every one of ’em means more planets. You’ve got the Cones, haven’t you? Well—help yourselves!”

He yawned until I feared for the worst. Then he smiled apologetically: “Good night!”