Читать книгу Beyond the Stars - Raymond King Cummings - Страница 5

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We were to leave at dawn, and during that night a thousand details ended our attention: Jim’s resignation from the service, which he gave to the superior through verbal traffic department without so much as a word of explanation; my own resignation, leaving the post of Commander 3 of the 40 N temporarily to Argyle.

Temporarily! With what optimism I voiced it! But there was a queer pang within me, an exaltation—which I think was as well a form of madness—was upon us all. This thing we were about to do transcended all our petty human affairs.

I was standing at the door of the workshop, gazing at a tree. Its leaves were waving in a gentle night breeze, which as I stood there fanned my hot, flushed cheeks with a grateful coolness. I found Alice beside me.

“I’m looking at that tree,” I said. “Really, you know I’ll be sorry to leave it. These trees, these hills, the river—I wouldn’t like to leave our earth and never come back, Alice. Would you?”

“No,” she said. Her hand pressed mine; her solemn blue eyes regarded me. She was about to add something else, but she checked herself. A flush rose to her cheeks; it mantled the whole column of her throat with red.

“Alice?”

“No,” she repeated. “We’ll come back, Len.”

Dr. Weatherby called us. And Jim shouted, “This infernal checking! Len, come here and do your share. We’re going at dawn. Don’t you know that?”

I shall not forget the first sight I had of the vehicle. It lay in the great main room of the workshop. A hundred feet long, round like a huge cigarro, a dead white thing, lying there in the glow of the blue tubes.

Even in its silent immobility, there seemed about it a latent power, as though it were not dead, but asleep—a sleeping giant, resting quiescent, conscious of its own strength.

And there was about it too, an aspect almost infernal in its sleek, bulging body, dead-white like bloodless flesh, in its windows, staring like bulging, thick-lensed eyes. I felt instinctively a repulsion, a desire to avoid it. I touched it finally; its smooth side was hard and abnormally cold. A shudder ran over me.

But after a time these feelings passed. I was absorbed in examining this thing which was to house us, to bear us upward and away.

Within the vehicle was a narrow corridor down one side. Corridor windows opened to the left. To the right were rooms. Each had a window opening to the side, a window in the floor beneath, and in the roof above.

There was a room for Jim and me, another for Dolores and Alice, and one for Dr. Weatherby. An instrument and chart room forward, with a tower room for keeping a lookout, and a galley with a new Maxton electronic stove, fully equipped. And other rooms—a food room, and one crowded with a variety of apparatus: air purifiers, Maxton heaters and refrigerators, piping the heat and cold throughout the vehicle. There was a score of devices with which I was familiar, and another score which were totally strange.

Dr. Weatherby already had the vehicle fully equipped and provisioned. With a tabulated list of its contents, he and Jim were laboriously checking the items to verify that nothing had been overlooked.

“I don’t want to know how it works,” Jim had said. “Not ’til after we start. Let’s get going. That’s the main idea.”

Then Alice took the list. She and Jim went from room to room. Dolores stood a moment in the corridor, as Dr. Weatherby and I started for the instrument room.

“Jim! Oh Jim, where are you?”

“He and Alice are farther back, Dolores,” I said. “In the galley, I think. Don’t you want to come forward with us?”

“I guess not. I’ll go with Jim.”

She joined them and I heard her say, “Oh, I’m glad to find you, Jim. I was a little frightened, just for a moment. I thought something was wrong here on board.”

I turned and followed Dr. Weatherby to the instrument room.

We stood before an instrument board of dials and indicators, with wires running upward to a score of gleaming cylindrical tanks overhead. A table was beside us, with a switchboard less complicated in appearance than I have seen in the navigating cages of many small liners.

There were chairs, a narrow leather couch across the room, and another table littered with charts and star-maps. And above it was a shelf, with one of the Grantline comptometers, the mathematical sensation of some years back. It was almost a human mathematical brain.

Under its keys the most intricate problem of calculus was automatically resolved, as surely as an ancient adding machine did simple arithmetic.

Dr. Weatherby began to show me the workings of the vehicle. “I need only give you the fundamentals, Leonard. Mechanically my apparatus here is fairly complicated. But those mere mechanics are not important or interesting. I could not teach you now, in so short a time, how to rectify anything which went mechanically wrong. I shall do the navigating.

“Indeed, as you will see presently, there is very little navigating involved. Mostly at the start—we must only be sure we collide with nothing and disturb nothing. When once we are beyond these planets, these crowding stars, there will be little to do.”

I shook my head. “The whole thing is incomprehensible, Dr. Weatherby. That flight of your little model was almost gruesome.”

“Sit down, Leonard. I don’t want it to be gruesome. Strange, yes; there is nothing stranger, God knows, than this into which, frankly, I stumbled during my researches. I’ll try to make the fundamentals clear. It will lose its uncanny aspect then. You will find it all as coldly scientifically precise as your navigation of the Fortieth North parallel.”

He lighted my cigarro. “This journey we are about to make,” he resumed, “involves but two factors. The first is the Eltonian principle of the neutralization of gravity. Sir Isaac Newton gave us fairly accurate formulae for the computation of the force of gravity. Einstein revised them slightly, and attempted to give an entirely different conception of celestial mechanics.

“But no one—except by a rather vague theory of Einstein’s—has ever told us what gravity really is. What is this force—what causes this force—which makes every material body in the universe attract every other body directly in proportion to the mass and inversely as the square of the distance between them?

“Leonard, I think I can make it clear to you. There is passing between every material body, one with another, a constant stream of minute particles. A vortex of rotating particles loses some on one side, which fly off at a tangent, so to speak, and perhaps gains some upon the other side.

“Seventy-five years ago—about the time I was born, Leonard—they were talking of ‘electrons’, ‘radiant energy’, ‘positive and negative disembodied electricity.’ All different names for the same thing. The same phenomenon.

“All substance is of a very transitory reality. Everything is in a constant state of change. A substance builds up, or it breaks down. Or both simultaneously; or sometimes one and then the other.”

“Electricity—” I began.

“Electricity,” he interrupted, “as they used to know it, is in reality nothing but a concentrated stream of particles—electrons, intimes, call them what you will—moving from one substance to join another. Lightning is the same thing. Such a stream of articles, Leonard, is a tangible manifestation of gravitational force. They had it right before them, unrecognized. They called it, ‘magnetic force,’ which meant nothing.

“How do these streams create an attractive force? Conceive the earth and the moon. Between them flow a myriad stream of infinitesimal particles. Each particle in itself is a vortex—a whirlpool. The tendency of each vortex is to combine with the one nearest to it.

“They do combine, collide, whirl together and split apart. The whole, as a continuous, violently agitated stream, produces a continuous tendency toward combination over all the distance from the earth to the moon. The result—can’t you see it?—must be a force, an inherent tendency pulling the earth and moon together.

“Enough of such abstract theory! A while ago, I charged that little model of this building with an Elton ray. The model, and this building itself, are built of an ore of electrite, the one hundred and fortieth element, as they called it when it was isolated a few years ago.

“You saw the model of the building glow? Electrons and intimes were whirling around it. The force communicated to the tiny projectile lying inside. In popular language, ‘its gravity was destroyed.’ Technically it was made to hold within itself its inherent gravitation and the gravitation of everything else was cut off. It was, in the modern sense, magnetized, in an abnormal condition of matter.”

I said, “There was a red ray from the little building. The projectile seemed to follow it.”

“Exactly,” he exclaimed. “That was the Elton Beta ray. It is flung straight out, whereas the Alpha ray is circular. The Beta is a stream of particles moving at over four hundred thousand miles a second. More than twice the speed of light!”

He chuckled. “When they discovered that, Leonard, the Einstein theories held good no longer. The ray bombarded and passed through the electric wall of the room, and the projectile went with it, drawn by it, sucked along by the inherent force of the flying whirlpools. The projectile with its infinitely greater mass than the mass of the flying particles of the ray, picked up speed slowly. But its density was lessening.

“As it gained velocity, it lost density. Everything does that, Leonard. I intensified the rapidity of the changes, as I told you. We shall take it slower. Hours, for what you saw in minutes.”

He tossed away his cigarro and stood up over the instrument table. “When we start, Leonard, here is exactly what will happen. Our gravity will be cut off. Not wholly, I have only gone to extremes in describing the theory.

“With a lessened attraction from the earth, the moon will draw us. And passing it, some other planet will draw us onward. And later, the stars themselves.”

He indicated his switches. “I can make the bow or the stern, or one side or the other, attractive or repulsive to whatever body may be nearest. And thus, in a measure, navigate. But that, Leonard, will be necessary for a few hours only, until we are well out beyond the stars.”

He said it quite quietly. But I gasped. “Beyond the stars ... in a few hours?”

“Yes,” he said. “In our case, differing from my experiment with the model, we carry the Elton Beta ray, the ‘red ray,’ with us. The gravity principle we use only at the start, to avoid a possible collision. With the red ray preceding us, we will follow it. Ultimately at four hundred thousand miles a second.

“But the source of the ray, being with us, will give the ray constant acceleration, which we in turn will attain. Thus an endless chain of acceleration, you see? And by this I hope to reach the high speeds necessary. We are going very far, Leonard.”

“That model,” I said, “grew larger. It spread—or did I fancy it?—over all the sky.”

He smiled again. “I have not much left to tell you, Leonard. But what there is—it is the simplest of all, yet the most astounding.”

Jim’s voice interrupted us. “We’ve finished, Dr. Weatherby. Everything is aboard. It’s nearly dawn. How about starting?”

The dawn had not yet come when we started. Dr. Weatherby’s workmen were none of them in evidence. He had sent them away a few days before. They did not know his purpose with this vehicle; it was thought among them that he was making some attempt to go to the moon. It was not a startling adventure. It caused very little comment, for since Elton’s discovery many such projects had been undertaken, though all had not been successful.

Dr. Weatherby’s activities occasioned a few daily remarks from the National Broadcasters of News, but little else.

There was, however, one of Dr. Weatherby’s assistants whom he trusted with all his secrets: a young fellow called Mascar, a wordless, grave individual, quiet, deferential of manner, but with a quick alertness that bespoke unusual efficiency.

He had been on guard in the workshop since the workmen left. When Jim and I arrived, Dr. Weatherby had sent Mascar home for his much needed sleep. But he was back again, now before dawn, ready to stand at the Elton switch and send us away.

Dr. Weatherby shook hands with him, as we all gathered by the huge bull’s-eye lens which was swung back to give ingress to the vehicle.

“You know what you are to do, Mascar. When we are well outside, throw off the Elton switch. Lock up the workshop and the house and go home. Report to the International Bureau of News that if they care to, they can announce that Dr. Weatherby’s vehicle has left the earth. You understand? Tell them they can assume, if they wish, that it will land safely on the moon.”

“I will do that,” said Mascar quietly. He shook hands with us all. And his fingers lightly touched Dolores’ head. “Good-bye, Miss Dolores.”

“Good-bye, Mascar. Good-bye. You’ve been very good to Grandfather. I thank you, Mascar. You wait at home. We will be back soon.”

“Yes,” he said. He turned away, and I could see he was striving to hide his emotion.

He swung on his heel, crossed the room, and stood quiet, with a firm hand upon the Elton switch.

Jim called impatiently, “Come on, everybody. Let’s get away.”

For one brief instant my gaze through the forward opened end of the building caught a brief vista of the peaceful Hudson countryside. Hills, and trees in the starlight, my own earth—my home.

The huge convex door of the vehicle swung ponderously closed upon us.

“Come to the instrument room,” said Dr. Weatherby.

We sat on the couch, huddled in a group. The bull’s-eye windows, made to withstand any pressure, were nevertheless ground in such a way that vision through them was crystal clear. The one beside me showed the interior of the workshop with Mascar standing at the Elton switch.

He had already thrown it. I could not hear the hum. But I saw the current’s effect upon Mascar. He was standing rigid, tense, and gripping the switch as though clinging. And then, with his other hand, he seized a discharging wire planted near at hand, so that the current left him comparatively unaffected.

Still I could feel nothing. My mind was whirling. What was it I expected to feel? I do not know. Dr. Weatherby had assured us we would undergo no terrifying experience; he seemed to have no fear for the girls. But how could he be sure?

The walls of the workshop now were luminous; Mascar’s motionless figure was a black blob of shadow in the glowing, snapping interior of the room. Sparks were crackling out there. But here in the vehicle there was nothing save a heavy silence; and the air was cold, dank, tomblike.

Then I felt the current; a tingling; a tiny, infinitely rapid tingling of the vehicle. It was not a vibration; the electric floor beneath my feet was solidly motionless. A tingling seemed to pervade its every atom.

Then I realized my body was tingling! A whir, a tiny throbbing. It brought a sense of nausea and a giddiness. Involuntarily I stood up, trembling, reeling. But Dr. Weatherby sharply drew me back.

Alice and Dolores were clinging to each other. Jim muttered something incoherent. I met his smile, but it was a very weak, surprised, apprehensive smile.

I tried to relax. The nausea was passing. My head steadied. But the tingling grew more intense within me. It was a humming now. Not audible. A humming I could feel, as though every minute cell of my body was throbbing.

It was not unpleasant after a moment. A peculiar sense of lightness was upon me. A sense of freedom. It grew to an exaltation. I was being set free! Unfettered at last. The chains that had bound me to earth were dropping away. But the mood upon me was more than an exaltation, an intoxication: a madness! I was conscious that Alice was laughing wildly.

I heard Dr. Weatherby’s sharp command, “Don’t do that! Look there; see the red ray?”

I clung to my reeling wits.

Jim muttered, “Look at it!”

The interior of the workshop was a whirling fog drenched in blood. I could see the red streaming out its open doorway.

“We’re moving!” Alice cried. “Dolores, we’ve started!”

The enveloping room of the workshop seemed gliding backward. Not a tremor of the vehicle. Mascar’s figure moved slowly backward and downward beyond my sight. The workshop walls were sliding past. The rectangle of its open end seemed expanding, coming toward us.

And then we were outside, in the starlit night. A dark hillside was dropping away. A silver ribbon of river was slipping beneath us, dropping downward, like a plummet falling.

The red ray had vanished. Dr. Weatherby’s voice, calm now, with a touch of triumph to it that all had gone so well, said,

“Mascar has extinguished the red ray. We used it only for starting. We must start slowly, Leonard.”

The river had vanished. A huge Polar liner—I recognized its group of colored lights as Ellison’s, flying in the forty thousand-foot lane—showed overhead. But it, too, seemed falling like a plummet. It flashed straight down past our window and disappeared.

Dr. Weatherby went to the instrument table. Time passed. It seemed only a moment or two though.

Dolores murmured, “Are we still moving, Jim? You must tell me. Tell me everything you see.”

The room was stiflingly hot. We were all gasping.

“I’ve turned on the refrigeration,” said Dr. Weatherby, “to counteract the heat of the friction of our passage through the atmosphere. It will be cool enough presently. Come over here. Don’t you want to look down?”

We gathered over the instrument room’s floor window. Stars were down there, white, red, and yellow stars in a field of dead black: a narrow crescent edge of stars, and all the rest was a gigantic dull red surface. Visibly convex! Patches of dark, formless areas of clouds. An ocean, the vaguely etched outlines of continents, the coastline of the Americas.

We were launched into space!