A Honeymoon in Space
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A HONEYMOON IN SPACE
by
GEORGE GRIFFITH
Author of "Valdar the Oft-Born," "The Virgin of the Sun," "The Rose of
Judah," &c., &c.
Illustrated by Stanley Wood and Harold Piffard
London
C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.
Henrietta Street
1901
Arno Press
A New York Times Company
New York--1975
Reprint Edition 1974 by Arno Press Inc.
Reprinted from a copy in The Library
of the University of California, Riverside
A Honeymoon in Space
Contents
PROLOGUE--The First Cruise of the _Astronef_
Chapter I.
Chapter II.
Chapter III.
Chapter IV.
Chapter V.
Chapter VI.
Chapter VII.
Chapter VIII.
Chapter IX.
Chapter X.
Chapter XI.
Chapter XII.
Chapter XIII.
Chapter XIV.
Chapter XV.
Chapter XVI.
Chapter XVII.
Chapter XVIII.
Chapter XIX.
Chapter XX.
Epilogue
List of Illustrations
"THE EARTH, THE EARTH--THANK GOD, THE EARTH!"
A HIDEOUS SHAPE ROSE OUT OF THE WATER BEHIND THEM
IT TOOK THE STRANGE-WINGED CRAFT AMIDSHIPS
SNOW PEAKS AND CLOUD SEAS
CAME FORWARD TO MEET THEM WITH BOTH HANDS OUTSTRETCHED
WHOLE MOUNTAIN RANGES OF GLOWING LAVA WERE HURLED UP MILES HIGH
WITHOUT ANY APPARENT EFFORT HE RAISED HER ABOUT FIVE FEET FROM THE FLOOR
THE HUGE PALELY LUMINOUS EYES LOOKED IN UPON THEM
PROLOGUE
THE FIRST CRUISE OF THE _ASTRONEF_
About eight o'clock on the morning of the 5th of November, 1900, those
of the passengers and crew of the American liner _St. Louis_ who
happened, whether from causes of duty or of their own pleasure, to be on
deck, had a very strange--in fact a quite unprecedented experience.
The big ship was ploughing her way through the long, smooth rollers at
her average twenty-one knots towards the rising sun, when the officer in
charge of the navigating bridge happened to turn his glasses straight
ahead. He took them down from his eyes, rubbed the two object-glasses
with the cuff of his coat, and looked again. The sun was shining through
a haze which so far dimmed the solar disc that it was possible to look
straight at it without inconvenience to the eyes.
The officer took another long squint, put his glasses down, rubbed his
eyes and took another, and murmured, "Well I'm damned!"
Just then the Fourth Officer came up on to the bridge to relieve his
senior while he went down for a cup of coffee and a biscuit. The Second
took him away to the other end of the bridge, out of hearing of the
helmsman and the quartermaster standing by, and said almost in a
whisper:
"Say, Norton, there's something ahead there that I can't make out. Just
as the sun got clear above the horizon I saw a black spot go straight
across it, right through the upper and lower limbs. I looked again, and
it was plumb in the middle of the disc. Look," he went on, speaking
louder in his growing excitement, "there it is again! I can see it
without the glasses now. See?"
The Fourth did not reply at once. He had the glasses close to his eyes,
and was moving them slowly about as though he were following some
shifting object in the sky. Then he handed them back, and said:
"If I didn't believe the thing was impossible I should say that's an
air-ship; but, for the present, I guess I'd rather wait till it gets a
bit nearer, if it's coming. Still, there _is_ something. Seems to be
getting bigger pretty fast, too. Perhaps it would be as well to notify
the old man. What do you think?"
"Guess we'd better," said the Second. "S'pose you go down. Don't say
anything except to him. We don't want any more excitement among the
people than we can help."
The Fourth nodded and went down the steps, and the Second began walking
up and down the bridge, every now and then taking another squint ahead.
Again and again the mysterious shape crossed the disc of the sun, always
vertically as though, whatever it might be, it was steering a direct
course from the sun to the ship, its apparent rising and falling being
due really to the dipping of her bows into the swells.
"Well, Mr. Charteris, what's the trouble?" said the Skipper as he
reached the bridge. "Nothing wrong, I hope? Have you sighted a derelict,
or what? Ay, what in hell's that!"
His hands went up to his eyes and he stared for a few moments at the
pale yellow oblate shape of the sun.
At this moment the _St. Louis'_ head dipped again, and the Captain saw
something like a black line swiftly drawn across the sun from bottom to
top.
"That's what I wanted to call your attention to, sir," said the Second
in a low tone. "I first noticed it crossing the sun as it rose through
the mist. I thought it was a spot of dirt on my glasses, but it has
crossed the sun several times since then, and for some minutes seemed to
remain dead in the middle of it. Later on it got quite a lot larger, and
whatever it is it's approaching us pretty rapidly. You see it's quite
plain to the naked eye now."
By this time several of the crew and of the early loungers on deck had
also caught sight of the strange thing which seemed to be hanging and
swinging between the sky and the sea. People dived below for their
glasses, knocked at their friends' state-room doors and told them to get
up because something was flying towards the ship through the air; and in
a very few minutes there were hundreds of passengers on deck in all
varieties of early morning costume, and scores of glasses, held to
anxious eyes, were being directed ahead.
The glasses, however, soon became unnecessary, for the passengers had
scarcely got up on deck before the mysterious object to the eastward at
length took definite shape, and as it did so mouths were opened as well
as eyes, for the owners of the eyes and mouths beheld just then the
strangest sight that travellers by sea or land had ever seen.
Within the distance of about a mile it swung round at right angles to
the steamer's course with a rapidity which plainly showed that it was
entirely obedient to the control of a guiding intelligence, and hundreds
of eager eyes on board the liner saw, sweeping down from the grey-blue
of the early morning sky, a vessel whose hull seemed to be constructed
of some metal which shone with a pale, steely lustre.
It was pointed at both ends, the forward end being shaped something like
a spur or ram. At the after end were two flickering, interlacing circles
of a glittering greenish-yellow colour, apparently formed by two
intersecting propellers driven at an enormous velocity. Behind these was
a vertical fan of triangular shape. The craft appeared to be
flat-bottomed, and for about a third of her length amidships the upper
half of her hull was covered with a curving, domelike roof of glass.
"She's an air-ship of some sort, there's no doubt about that," said the
Captain, "so I guess the great problem has got solved at last. And yet
it ain't a balloon, because it's coming against the wind, and it's
nothing of the aeroplane sort neither, because it hasn't planes or kites
or any fixings of that kind. Still it's made of something like metal and
glass, and it must take a lot of keeping up. It's travelling at a pretty
healthy speed too. Getting on for a hundred miles an hour, I should
guess. Ah! he's going to speak us! Hope he's honest."
Everybody on board the _St. Louis_ was up on deck by this time, and the
excitement rose to fever-heat as the strange vessel swept down towards
them from the middle sky, passed them like a flash of light, swung round
the stern, and ranged up alongside to starboard some twenty feet from
the bridge rail.
She was about a hundred and twenty feet long, with some twenty feet of
depth and thirty of beam, and the Captain and many of his officers and
passengers were very much relieved to find that, as far as could be
seen, she carried no weapons of offence.
As she ranged up alongside, a sliding door opened in the glass-domed
roof amidships, just opposite to the end of the _St. Louis'_ bridge. A
tall, fair-haired, clean-featured man, of about thirty, in grey
flannels, tipped up his golf cap with his thumb, and said:
"Good morning, Captain! You remember me, I suppose? Had a fine passage,
so far? I thought I should meet you somewhere about here."
The Captain of the _St. Louis_, in common with every one else on board,
had already had his credulity stretched about as far as it would go, and
he was beginning to wonder whether he was really awake; but when he
heard the hail and recognised the speaker he stared at him in blank and,
for the moment, speechless bewilderment. Then he got hold of his voice
again and said, keeping as steady as he could:
"Good morning, my Lord! Guess I never expected to meet even you like
this in the middle of the Atlantic! So the newspaper men were right for
once in a way, and you _have_ got an air-ship that will fly?"
"And a good deal more than that, Captain, if she wants to. I am just
taking a trial trip across the Atlantic before I start on a run round
the Solar System. Sounds like a lie, doesn't it? But it's coming off.
Oh, good morning, Miss Rennick! Captain, may I come on board?"
"By all means, my Lord, only I'm afraid I daren't stop Uncle Sam's
mails, even for you."
"There's no need for that, Captain, on a smooth sea like this," was the
reply. "Just keep on as you are going and I'll come alongside."
He put his head inside the door and called something up a speaking-tube
which led to a glass-walled chamber in the forward part of the roof,
where a motionless figure stood before a little steering wheel.
The craft immediately began to edge nearer and nearer to the liner's
rail, keeping speed so exactly with her that the threshold of the door
touched the end of the bridge without a perceptible jar. Then the
flannel-clad figure jumped on to the bridge and held out his hand to the
Captain.
As they shook hands he said in a low tone, "I want a word or two in
private with you, as soon as possible."
The commander saw a very serious meaning in his eyes. Besides, even if
he had not made his appearance under such extraordinary circumstances,
it was quite impossible that one of his social position and his wealth
and influence could have made such a request without good reason for it,
so he replied:
"Certainly, my Lord. Will you come down to my room?"
Hundreds of anxious, curious eyes looked upon the tall athletic figure
and the regular-featured, bronzed, honest English face as Rollo Lenox
Smeaton Aubrey, Earl of Redgrave, Baron Smeaton in the Peerage of
England, and Viscount Aubrey in the Peerage of Ireland, followed the
Captain to his room through the parting crowd of passengers. He nodded
to one or two familiar faces in the crowd, for he was an old Atlantic
ferryman, and had crossed five times with Captain Hawkins in the _St.
Louis_.
Then he caught sight of a well and fondly remembered face which he had
not seen for over two years. It was a face which possessed at once the
fair Anglo-Saxon skin, the firm and yet delicate Anglo-Saxon features,
and the wavy wealth of the old Saxon gold-brown hair; but a pair of big,
soft, pansy eyes, fringed with long, curling, black lashes, looked out
from under dark and perhaps just a trifle heavy eyebrows. Moreover,
there was that indescribable expression in the curve of her lips and the
pose of her head; to say nothing of a lissome, vivacious grace in her
whole carriage which proclaimed her a daughter of the younger branch of
the Race that Rules.
Their eyes met for an instant, and Lord Redgrave was startled and even a
trifle angered to see that she flushed up quickly, and that the
momentary smile with which she greeted him died away as she turned her
head aside. Still, he was a man accustomed to do what he wanted: and