A Honeymoon in Space
little strange to them, certainly, but still they welcomed us as
friends. They had no suspicions of us; they didn't try to poison us or
blow us up as those wretches on Mars did. They're just like a lot of
grown-up children with wings on. In fact they're about as nearly angels
as anything we can think of. They've taken us into their palaces,
they've given us, as one might say, the whole planet. Everything was
ours that we liked to take. You know we have two or three hundredweight
of precious stones on board now, which they would make me take just
because they saw my rings.
"We've been living with them ten days now, and neither you nor I, nor
even Murgatroyd, who, like the old Puritan that he is, seems to see sin
or wrong in everything that looks nice, has seen a single sign among
them that they know anything about what we call sin or wrong on Earth.
There's no jealousy, no selfishness. In short, no envy, hatred, malice,
and all uncharitableness; no vice, or meanness, or cheating, or any of
the abominations of the planet Terra, and _we come from that planet_. Do
you see what I mean now?"
"I think I understand what you're driving at," said Redgrave; "you mean,
I suppose, that this world is something like Eden before the fall, and
that you and I--oh--but that's all rubbish you know. I've got my own
share of original sin, of course, but here it doesn't seem to come in;
and as for you, the very idea of _you_ imagining yourself a feminine
edition of the Serpent in Eden. Nonsense!"
She got up out of her chair and, leaning over his, put her arm round his
shoulder. Then she said very softly:
"I see you understand what I mean, Lenox. That's just it--original sin.
It doesn't matter how good you think me or I think you, but we have it.
You're an Earth-born man and I'm an Earth-born woman, and, as I'm your
wife, I can say it plainly. We may think a good bit of each other, but
that's no reason why we might not be a couple of plague-spots in a
sinless world like this. Surely you see what I mean, I needn't put it
plainer, need I?"
Their eyes met, and he read her meaning in hers. He put his arm up over
her shoulder and drew her down towards him. Their lips met, and then he
got up and went down to the engine-room.
A couple of minutes later the _Astronef_ sprang upwards from the midst
of the delightful valley in which she was resting. No lights were shown.
In five minutes she had passed through the cloud-veil, and the next
morning when their new friends came to visit them and found that they
had vanished back into Space, there was sorrow for the first time among
the sons and daughters of the Love-Star.
CHAPTER XIV
"Five hundred million miles from the Earth, and forty-seven million
miles from Jupiter," said Redgrave as he came into breakfast on the
morning of the twenty-eighth day after leaving Venus.
During this brief period the _Astronef_ had recrossed the orbits of the
Earth and Mars and had passed through that marvellous region of the
Solar System, the Belt of the Asteroides. Nearly a hundred million miles
of their journey had lain through this zone in which hundreds and
possibly thousands of tiny planets revolve in vast orbits round the Sun.
Then had come a world less void of over three hundred million miles,
through which they voyaged alone, surrounded by the ever-constant
splendours of the heavens, and visited only now and then by one of those
Spectres of Space, which we call comets.
Astern the disc of the Sun steadily diminished and ahead the grey-blue
shape of Jupiter, the Giant of the Solar System, had grown larger and
larger until now they could see it as it had never been seen before--a
gigantic three-quarter moon filling up the whole heavens in front of
them almost from zenith to nadir. Three of its satellites, Europa,
Ganymede, and Calisto, were distinctly visible even to the naked eye,
and Europa and Ganymede, happened to be in such a position in regard to
the _Astronef_ that her crew could see not only the bright sides turned
towards the Sun, but also the black shadow-spots which they cast on the
cloud-veiled face of the huge planet. Calisto was above the horizon
hanging like a tiny flicker of yellowish-red light above the rounded
edge of Jupiter, and Io was invisible behind the planet.
"Five hundred million miles!" said Zaidie, with a little shiver; "that
seems an awful long way from home--I mean America--doesn't it? I often
wonder what they are thinking about us on the dear old Earth. I don't
suppose any one ever expects to see us again. However, it's no good
getting homesick in the middle of a journey when you're outward bound.
And now what is the programme as regards His Majesty King Jove? We shall
visit the satellites of course?"
"Certainly," replied Redgrave; "in fact, I shouldn't be surprised if our
visit was confined to them."
"What! do you mean to say we shan't land on Jupiter after coming nearly
six hundred million miles to see him? That would be disappointing. But
why not? don't you think he's ready to be visited yet?"
"I can't say that, but you must remember that no one has the remotest
notion of what there is behind the clouds or whatever they are which
form those bands. All we really know about Jupiter is that he is of
enormous size, for instance, he's over twelve hundred times bigger than
the Earth and that his density isn't much greater than that of
water--and my humble opinion is that if we're able to go through the
clouds without getting the _Astronef_ red-hot we shall find that Jupiter
is in the same state as the Earth was a good many million years ago."
"I see," said Zaidie, "you mean just a mass of blazing, boiling rock and
metal which will make islands and continents some day; and that what we
call the cloud-bands are the vapours which will one day make its seas.
Well, if we can get through these clouds we ought to see something worth
seeing. Just fancy a whole world as big as that all ablaze like molten
iron! Do you think we shall be able to see it, Lenox?"
"I'm not so sure about that, little woman. We shall have to go to work
rather cautiously. You see Jupiter is far bigger than any world we've
visited yet, and if we got too close to him the _Astronef's_ engines
might not be powerful enough to drive us away again. Then we should
either stop there till the R. Force was exhausted or be drawn towards
him and perhaps drop into an ocean of molten rock and metal."
"Thanks!" said Zaidie, with a shrug of her shapely shoulders. "That
_would_ be an ignominious end to a journey like this, to say nothing of
the boiling oil part of it; so I suppose you'll make stopping-places of
the satellites and use their attraction to help you to resist His
Majesty's."
"Your Ladyship's reasoning is perfect. I propose to visit them in turn,
beginning with Calisto. I shouldn't be at all surprised if we found
something interesting on them. You know they're quite little worlds of
themselves. They're all bigger than our moon, except Europa. Ganymede,
in fact, is two-thirds bigger than Mercury, and if old Jupiter is still
in a state of fiery incandescence there's no reason why we shouldn't
find on Ganymede or one of the others the same state of things that
existed on our moon when the Earth was blazing hot."
"I shouldn't wonder," said Zaidie; "I've often heard my father say that
that was probably what happened. It's all very marvellous, isn't it?
death in one place, life in another, all beginnings and endings, and yet
no actual beginning or end of anything anywhere. That's eternity, I
suppose."
"It's just about as near as the finite intellect can get to it, I should
say," replied Redgrave. "But I don't think metaphysics are much in our
line. If you've finished we may as well go and have a look at the
realities."
"Which the metaphysicians," laughed Zaidie as she rose, "would tell you
are not realities at all, or only realities so far as you can think
about them. 'Thinks,' in short, instead of real things. But meanwhile
I've got the breakfast _things_ to put away, so you can go up on deck
and put the telescopes in order."
When she joined him a few minutes later in the deck-chamber the
three-quarter disc of Jupiter was rapidly approaching the full.
Its phases are invisible from the Earth owing to the enormous distance;
but from the deck of the _Astronef_ they had been plainly visible for
some days, and, since the huge planet turns on its axis in less than ten
hours, or with more than twice the speed of the Earth's rotation, the
phases followed each other very rapidly.
Thus at twelve o'clock noon by _Astronef_ time they might have seen a
gigantic rim of silver-blue overarching the whole vault of heaven in
front of them. By five o'clock it would be a hemisphere, and by five
minutes to ten the vast sphere would be once more shining full-orbed
upon them. By eight o'clock next morning they would find Jupiter "new"
again.
They were now falling very rapidly towards the huge planet, and, since
there is no up or down in Space, the nearer they got to it the more it
appeared to sink below them and become, as it were, the floor of the
Celestial Sphere. As the crescent approached the full they were able to
examine the mysterious bands as human observers had never examined them
before. For hours they sat almost silent at their telescopes, trying to
probe the mystery which has baffled human science since the days of
Galileo, and gradually it became plain that Redgrave was correct in the
hypothesis which he had derived from Flammarion and one or two others of
the more advanced astronomers.
"I believe I was right, or, in other words, those that I got the idea
from are," he said, as they approached the orbit of Calisto, which
revolves at a distance of about eleven hundred thousand miles from the
surface of Jupiter.
"Those belts are made of clouds or vapour in some stage or other. The
highest--the ones along the Equator and what we should call the
Temperate Zones--are the highest, and therefore coolest and whitest. The
dark ones are the lowest and hottest. I daresay they are more like what
we should call volcanic clouds. Do you see how they keep changing?
That's what's bothered our astronomers. Look at that big one yonder a
bit to the north, going from brown to red. I suppose that's something
like the famous red spot which they have been puzzling about. What do
you make of it?"
"Well," said Zaidie, looking up from her telescope, "it's quite certain
that the glare must come from underneath. It can't be sunlight, because
the poor old Sun doesn't seem to have strength enough to make a decent
sunset or sunrise here, and look how it's running along to the westward!
What does that mean, do you think?"
"I should say it means that some half-formed Jovian Continent has been
flung sky high by a big burst-up underneath, and that's the blaze of the
incandescent stuff running along. Just fancy a continent, say ten times
the size of Asia, being split up and sent flying in a few moments like
that. Look! there's another one to the north! On the whole, dear, I
don't think we should find the climate on the other side of those clouds
very salubrious. Still, as they say the atmosphere of Jupiter is about
ten thousand miles thick, we may be able to get near enough to see
something of what's going on.
"Meanwhile, here comes Calisto. Look at his shadow flying across the
clouds. And there's Ganymede coming up after him, and Europa behind him.
Talk about eclipses! they must be about as common here as thunderstorms
are with us."
"We don't have a thunderstorm every day--at least not at home,"
corrected Zaidie, "but on Jupiter they must have two or three eclipses
every day. Meanwhile, there goes Jupiter himself. What a difference