Читать книгу The Cosmic Courtship - Julian Hawthorne - Страница 9

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“NOT a bit what I expected,” murmured Jack to himself: “not the least!”

He looked around him, turning slowly this way and that. On every side stretched out a plain—if it were a plain; but it had no horizons—no curvature. In fact, though solid beneath the feet, it was not easily distinguishable from the medium in which he stood, moved and breathed. It was transparent, too, in all directions, below as well as above and sidewise. It was as if he were walking on water—or in water, like a fish. This medium, however, had a luminousness of its own: not sunlight or moonlight, though sunlight itself was not so bright and clear. Moreover, yonder was what looked like the sun—probably was the sun, indeed; it shone like a white fire, and had no shadowed side, like the other spherical objects that floated at various distances round about it, and which he now surmised must be planets. Yes, planets of the solar system, evidently; and that large one, somewhat below and to the right was our own earth; the masses of north and south America, and part of western Europe, were recognizable, lying lustrous on the dark oceans; and there was the moon, just clear of it on the further side; they must be very far off—several hundred thousand miles. Jupiter—that must be Jupiter, with the belts and the red spot—looked much larger than the earth, although more remote. Jack must have been traveling at a good pace during the few minutes since pushing down that lever in Mme. Faust’s laboratory—if it were a few minutes, and not a few days or years: there was no way of telling. Was he stationary now, or still moving? That too was not easily decided.

Jupiter?—where then was Saturn? His heart began to beat hard; was he on the way? He gazed before, behind, to right and left; nothing that looked like Saturn appeared. Not below him, either. Above, perhaps? Ah, yes, there it was! It hung directly in his zenith, a lovely vision, the ring clearly defined all round it; its hue was a delicate sapphire, not the yellowish tinge that earth’s atmosphere gives it. It was very distant; its apparent size had increased hardly at all. And yet, as Jack gazed at it, it seemed suddenly to grow larger, as if it had been projected directly toward him. But that could not be; rather, he had moved at an inconceivable speed toward it. This was strange!

At this juncture he was acutely surprised to hear a voice—a human voice, a familiar voice, none other than Jim’s, in fact, addressing him in these words: “Slow down a bit, boss: Gee, dat was a dandy jump you made! I ain’t got me sea-leg yet: slow down!”

Jack turned toward the apparent source of this appeal, but at first could see nothing of his attendant, whose existence he had quite forgotten. Presently he discerned a dot in the pathless void, immeasurably remote: could that be Jim? He narrowed his eyes, and now became aware of a new peculiarity in his environment: Jim, though still in seeming size no bigger than a flea, became distinctly visible in his minutest details; nay, he could even hear the tap of his crutch as he exerted himself to bridge the gulf between them. The mere act of attention—a mental process—could have the effect of abolishing space to the senses!

“But the boy can never come that distance in a dozen years!” he murmured half aloud.

“Try anudder t’ink, boss.” replied Jim’s voice, close to his ear; “Watch me!”

While these words were uttering the flea enlarged to the dimensions of a bee, and was still coming. What was it that Mary Faust had said about space? “A difference in mental states?” In other words, thought, on the mental plane was presence!

As he meditated this discover, understanding began to flow in upon his mind from various quarters, like the light of dawn through crevices in a darkened room. He had left his material body on the earth; he was now all mind—spirit, though he could perceive no change in his outward aspect; his garments seemed the same; he was substantial as before; though there was no air in space, he breathed and his heart beat as usual; though space was absolute cold his body had the warmth of summer; though there was no blue sky, the etheric light—if it were that—was intense as the electric flash and iridescent as the rainbow. Upon distant objects it had the effect of a lens of enormous power.

“I’m what is called dead,” said Jack to himself, summing up his ideas. “This is my spirit—my me itself. I’m not dead for good though—my body down there is only asleep. To travel is to pass through a series of thoughts in continuous succession with a fixed end always in view. I once read, ‘As a man thinks, so is he.’ To be in Saturn, I must think myself into a Saturn state of mind. Just how to do that isn’t clear; but I’ll see what wishing myself there will do; wishes may be wings!”

“Dat sort o’ dope is beyond me, boss,” said Jim; “but if hangin’ on to your coattails is any good, count me in!” Jim had arrived.

“You’re not scared, are you, Jim?” said Jack, smiling down on him.

“Nix on scared!” was the reply. “I al’ays t’ought it would be a fine t’ing getting out o’ N’York; but I never t’ought t’would be like this!”

Jack now applied himself to concentrating his mind on his destination, which he figured as Miriam, with a sapphire halo round her head. They were moving through the solid, yet diaphanous medium at a speed which could be estimated only in planetary terms; but with no sense of bodily exertion. All at once Jim cried out:

“Hully Gee! will yer lamp dat, boss!”

Jack looked: the spectacle sent a shock through him, as when one suddenly sees the red glare of an express train bearing close down upon him. A vast red disk covered twenty degrees of the eastern firmament. The planet Jupiter stood revealed in all its details. Raging whirlpools of fiery storms tore its surface, diversified with dark streamings and appalling abysses. Jack fancied he could feel the terrific heat radiating from it; flames hundreds of miles long licked out toward him. Accompanying this paralyzing sight was an awful humming sound, and a feeling as of being drawn into the vortex of an inconceivable red-hot maelstrom. The gigantic disk seemed nearer!

“The sapphire hand!” spoke the quiet voice of Mary Faust, like a whisper in his ear. Had she been observing his progress from her station on the other side of the diameter of the solar system?

He had forgotten the talisman that was to guide him across space: he grasped it, and in the same moment felt the rush past him of an invisible tide of forces; as, when one is being swept down the headlong torrent of a flood, he catches at some stable object, and the wild waters tear at him as they hurtle past. The sapphire hand barely stemmed the rush. As Jack hung there, in doubt whether he were saved or doomed, he seemed to see wild figures racing past him, snatching at him as they flew; fierce, beautiful faces convulsed with passion; contorted bodies of giants; the flaring out of fiery hair like streamers of the northern lights. They gnashed their teeth, the glare of their eyes was as the flashing of torches. But the sapphire hand was cool in his own, and its power prevailed.

“Dere was never no subway rush to beat dat!” was the manner in which Jim expressed his feelings, as the tension abated.

A powerful arm was thrown across Jack’s shoulders, drawing him out into freedom, and a voice like the tones of a mighty harp exclaimed laughingly:

“Those Jovian fellows are always on the lookout to catch people napping. They must be disciplined. If you hadn’t thought of your compass when you did, I should have had quite a struggle getting you free. You are from Faust, are you not?”

Jack nodded; he was panting from his exertions. Then he looked at his new friend.

A superb being he was, quite as tall as Jack, and with a body so beautifully formed that the earth-man, a connoisseur in such matters, could not restrain a cry of admiration; so might the god Apollo have disclosed himself in vision to the sculptor who vainly strove to reproduce him in the Belvedere. He glowed as with an inner light; his features seemed divinity incarnate; his hair, thick and waving, of a golden hue, flowed down upon his Olympian shoulders. There was no excess of muscular development in trunk or limbs, but irresistible power declared itself in every contour and movement. “Who are you?” Jack asked.

“I am called Solarion,” the other replied; “I am stationed in the midway here, to look after travelers from your earth, who are specially liable to kidnaping by these Jovians, who make serfs of them. But, you,” he added, scrutinizing Jack more closely, “belong to a new type: I have only met one other—a girl, bound for Saturn. Our friend Mary Faust has been preparing the route for some while past; but it was not thought that she had yet completed her arrangements. A wise woman, that!”

“You met a girl—who was she?” demanded Jack with devouring eagerness.

“Miriam was her name—a lovely child— Ah, I see! you have come after her! Well, you must expect difficulties; it is much easier to make the trip out than to get back again. The Saturn folks are very agreeable people; but you two are such an attractive pair that I fear they may want to keep you.” He laughed good-humoredly as he spoke, sending a very keen look into Jack’s eyes. “It’s taking a risk, you know,” he added. “I would help you if I could, but my domain is restricted to these outlying regions. I am assuming, of course, that you and she—or either of you—will care to return. Saturn is a pleasant country.”

“Little old N’York is good enough fer us, mister, and don’ you fergit it!” put in Jim earnestly. “We was jest takin’ a look aroun’, dat’s all!”

Solarion smiled amusedly. “You’ll have a good story to tell your friends,” he observed. “Few of them will have traveled so far on one leg.”