A Honeymoon in Space
unto the day is the Armageddon thereof. Now I suppose we'd better say
goodbye and be off."
"And what a goodbye," whispered Zaidie, with an upward glance into the
starlit ocean of Space which lay above and around them. "Goodbye to the
world itself! Well, say it, Lenox, and let us go; I want to see what the
others are like."
"Very well then; goodbye it is," he said, beginning to jerk the switch
backwards and forwards with irregular motions, sending short flashes and
longer beams down towards the earth.
The Empire City read the farewell message.
"Thank God for the peace. Goodbye for the present. We shall convey the
joint compliments of John Bull and Uncle Sam to the peoples of the
planets when we find them. _Au revoir!_"
The message was answered by the blaze of the concentrated searchlights
from land and sea all directed on the _Astronef_. For a moment her
shining shape glittered like a speck of diamond in the midst of the
luminous haze far up in the sky, and then it vanished for many an
anxious day from mortal sight.
A few moments later Zaidie pointed over the stern and said:
"Look, there's the moon! Just fancy--our first stopping place! Well, it
doesn't look so very far off at present."
Redgrave turned and saw the pale yellow crescent of the new moon
swimming high above the eastern edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
"It almost looks as if we could steer straight to it right over the
water--only, of course, it wouldn't wait there for us," she went on.
"Oh, it'll be there when we want it, never fear," he laughed, "and,
after all, it's only a mere matter of about two hundred and forty
thousand miles away, and what's that in a trip that will cover hundreds
of millions? It will just be a sort of jumping-off place into Space for
us."
"Still, I shouldn't like to miss seeing it," she said. "I want to see
what there is on that other side which nobody has ever seen yet, and
settle that question about air and water. Won't it just be heavenly to
be able to come back and tell them all about it at home? But just fancy
me talking stuff like this when we are going, perhaps, to solve some of
the hidden mysteries of Creation, and, may be, look upon things that
human eyes were never meant to see," she went on, with a sudden change
in her voice.
He felt a little shiver in the arm that was resting upon his, and his
hand went down and caught hers.
"Well, we shall see a good many marvels, and, perhaps, miracles, before
we come back, but why should there be anything in Creation that the eyes
of created beings should not look upon? Anyhow, there's one thing we
shall do I hope, we shall solve once and for all the great problem of
the worlds.
"Look, for instance," he went on, turning round and pointing to the
west, "there is Venus following the sun. In a few days I hope you and I
will be standing on her surface, perhaps trying to talk by signs with
her inhabitants, and taking photographs of her scenery. There's Mars
too, that little red one up yonder. Before we come back we shall have
settled a good many problems about him, too. We shall have navigated the
rings of Saturn, and perhaps graphed them from his surface. We shall
have crossed the bands of Jupiter, and found out whether they are clouds
or not; perhaps we shall have landed on one of his moons and taken a
voyage round him.
"Still, that's not the question just now, and if you are in a hurry to
circumnavigate the moon we'd better begin to get a wriggle on us as they
say down yonder; so come below and we'll shut up. A bit later I'll show
you something that no human eyes have ever seen."
"What's that?" she asked as they turned away towards the companion
ladder.
"I won't spoil it by telling you," he said, stopping at the top of the
stairs and taking her by the shoulders. "By the way," he went on, "I may
remind your Ladyship that you are just now drawing the last breaths of
earthly air which you will taste for some time, in fact until we get
back. And you may as well take your last look at earth as earth, for the
next time you see it it will be a planet."
She turned to the open window and looked over into the enormous void
beneath, for all this time the _Astronef_ had been mounting swiftly
towards the zenith.
She could see, by the growing moonlight, vast, vague shapes of land and
sea. The myriad lights of New York and Brooklyn were mingled in a tiny
patch of dimly luminous haze. The air about her had suddenly grown
bitterly cold, and she saw that the stars and planets were shining with
a brilliancy she had never seen before. Redgrave came back to her, and
laying his arm across her shoulder, said:
"Well, have you said goodbye to your native world? It is a bit solemn,
isn't it, saying goodbye to a world that you have been born on; which
contains everything that has made up your life, everything that is dear
to you?"
"Not quite everything," she said, looking up at him--"at least I don't
think so."
He lost no time in making the only reply which was appropriate under the
circumstances; and then he said, drawing her close to him:
"Nor I, as _you_ know, darling. This is our world, a world travelling
among worlds, and since I have been able to bring the most delightful of
the daughters of Terra with me, I, at any rate, am perfectly happy. Now,
I think it's getting on to supper time, so if your Ladyship will go to
your household duties, I'll have a look at my engines and make
everything snug for the voyage."
The first thing he did when he left the conning-tower was to
hermetically close every external opening in the ship. Then he went and
carefully inspected the apparatus for purifying the air and supplying it
with fresh oxygen from the tanks in which it was stored in liquid form.
Lastly he descended into the lower hold and turned on the energy of
repulsion to its fullest extent, at the same time stopping the engines
which had been working the propellers.
It was now no longer necessary or even possible to steer the _Astronef_.
She was directed solely by the repulsive force which would carry her
with ever-increasing swiftness, as the attraction of the earth
diminished, towards that neutral point at which the attraction of the
earth is exactly balanced by the moon. Her momentum would carry her past
this point, and then the "R. Force" would be gradually brought into play
in order to avert the unpleasant consequences of a fall of some forty
odd thousand miles.
Andrew Murgatroyd, relieved from his duties in the wheel-house, made a
careful inspection of the auxiliary machinery, which was under his
special charge, and then retired to his quarters in the after end of the
vessel to prepare his own evening meal.
Meanwhile, her Ladyship, with the help of the ingenious contrivances
with which the kitchen of the _Astronef_ was stocked, had prepared a
dainty little _souper a deux_. Her husband opened a bottle of the finest
champagne that the cellars of Smeaton could supply, to drink to the
prosperity of the voyage, and the health of his beautiful
fellow-voyager. When he had filled the two tall glasses the wine began
to run over the side which was toward the stern of the vessel. They took
no notice of this at first, but when Zaidie put her glass down she
stared at it for a moment, and said, in a half-frightened voice:
"Why, what's the matter, Lenox? look at the wine! It won't keep
straight, and yet the table's perfectly level--and see! the water in the
jug looks as though it were going to run up the side."
Redgrave took up the glass and held it balanced in his hand. When he had
got the surface of the wine level the glass was no longer perpendicular
to the table.
"Ah, I see what it is," he said, taking another sip and putting the
glass down. "You notice that, although the wine isn't lying straight in
the glass, it isn't moving about. It's just as still as it would be on
earth. That means that our centre of gravity is not exactly in line with
the centre of the earth. We haven't quite swung into our proper
position, and that reminds me, dear. You will have to be prepared for
some rather curious experiences in that way. For instance, just see if
that jug of water is as heavy as it ought to be."
She took hold of the handle, and exerting, as she thought, just enough
force to lift the jug a few inches, was astonished to find herself
holding it out at arm's length with scarcely any effort. She put it down
again very carefully as though she were afraid it would go floating off
the table, and said, looking rather scared:
"That's very strange, but I suppose it's all perfectly natural?"
"Perfectly; it merely means that we have left Mother Earth a good long
way behind us."
"How far?" she asked.
"I can't tell you exactly," he replied, "until I go to the
instrument-room and take the angles, but I should say roughly about
seventy thousand miles. When we've finished we'll go and have coffee on
the upper deck, and then we shall see something of the glories of Space
as no human eyes have ever seen them before."
"Seventy thousand miles away from home already, and we only started a
couple of hours ago!" Zaidie found the idea a trifle terrifying, and
finished her meal almost in silence. When she got up she was not a
little disconcerted when the effort she made not only took her off her
chair but off her feet as well. She rose into the air nearly to the
surface of the table.
"Sakes!" she said, "this is getting quite a little embarrassing; I shall
be hitting my head against the roof next."
"Oh, you'll soon get used to it," he laughed, pulling her down on to her
feet by the skirt of her dress; "always remember to exert very little
strength in everything you do, and don't forget to do everything very
slowly."
When the coffee was made he carried the apparatus up into the
deck-chamber. Then he came back and said:
"You'd better wrap yourself up warmly. It's a good deal colder up there
than it is here."
When she reached the deck and took a first glance about her, Zaidie
seemed suddenly to lapse into a state of somnambulism.
The whole heavens above and around were strewn with thick clusters of
stars which she had never seen before. The stars she remembered seeing
from the earth were only pin-points in the darkness compared with the
myriads of blazing orbs which were now shooting their rays across the
black void of Space.
So many millions of new ones had come into view, that she looked in vain
for the familiar constellations. She saw only vast clusters of living
gems of every colour crowding the heavens on every side of her.
She walked slowly round the deck, gazing to right and left and above,
incapable for the moment either of thought or speech, but only of dumb
wonder, mingled with a dim sense of overwhelming awe. Presently she
craned her neck backwards and looked straight up to the zenith. A huge
silver crescent, supporting, as it were, a dim greenish-coloured body in
its arms, stretched overhead across nearly a sixth of the heavens.
Then Redgrave came to her side, took her in his arms, lifted her as if
she had been a little child, and laid her in a long, low deck-chair, so
that she could look at it without inconvenience.
The splendid crescent seemed to be growing visibly bigger, and as she
lay there in a trance of wonder and admiration she saw point after point
of dazzling white light flash out in the dark portions, and then begin
to send out rays as though they were gigantic volcanoes in full
eruption, and were pouring torrents of living fire from their blazing
craters.
"Sunrise on the Moon!" said Redgrave, who had stretched himself on
another chair beside her. "A glorious sight, isn't it? But nothing to
what we shall see to-morrow morning--only there doesn't happen to be any
morning just about here."