Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 290, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1910 — A Columbus of Space [ARTICLE]

A Columbus of Space

By Garrett P. Serviss.

Copyright by Frank A. Munsey Co. CHAPTER 111. The Planetary Limited. But Edmund had seen the meteor and quicker than thought, with a turn of the knob, he swerved the car and threw us all off our feet again! But we would have been thankful to him even if he had broken our heads, for he had saved us from instant destruction. The danger was not yet gone, however. Scarcely had the hugh dumbbell (which Edmund assured us afterward must have been composed of solid iron, from Its effect on his magnetic needles) passed before there came from outside a blaze of lightning so fierce and penetrating that it closed our eyes as if the lids htd been slapped shut! “A collision!” exclaimed Edmund. “The thing has struck another big meteor, and they are exchanging redhot compliments.”-, He threw himself flat on tjm floor and stared out of the forward peephole. Then, immediately, he jumped to his feet and gave us another tumble. He had changed the course once more. “They’re all about us,” he said. “We’re like a boat in a raging spring freshet, with rocks, tree trunks and tossing cakes of ice threatening it on every hand. But we’ll get out of it. The car obeys its helm as if charmed Why, I got away from that last fellow by setting up an atomis reaction against it, as a boatman pushes his pole against an ice floe.” In the midst of our terror we could not but admire our leader. His resources seemed boundless, and our confidence grew with every escape. We watched the meteors out of the windows while Edmund kept guard at the pfeep-hole. We must have come almost within striking distance of a thousand in the course of an hour, but Edmund decided not to diminish his speed, for he said that he found he could control the car quicker when it was under full headway. So on we rushed,- dodging the things like a crow in a flock of pestering jays, and after a while we began to enjoy the excitement, It was better sport than shooting rapids in an open skiff, and we got so confident at last in the powers of our car and its commander that we were rather sorry when the last meteor was passed and we found ourselves once more in clear, open space. After that the time passed quietly. We ate our meals and slept as regularly as if we had been at home. There was no night for us, because the sun shone in at one window or the other all the time. Yet, as I have said, the sky was jet black and the stars glittered everywhere round us. When we wanted to sleep we put up the shutters, keeping watch only' through the peephole, which, as.it did not face the sun, admitted little light. We kept count of the days by the aid of a calendar clock. There seemed to be nothing that Edmund had forgotten. Once the idea suddenly came to me that we had net all been smothered with bad air, breathing the atmosphere of the car over and over again as we were doing, and I asked Edmund about it. He laughed. “That’s the easiest problem of all,” he said. “Look here.” And he threw open a little grating in the side of the car. “In there,” he explained, “there’s an apparatus which absorbs the' carbonic acid and renews the air. ft is good to work for at least a month, which will be more time than we need for the expedition.” “There you are again,”, broke in Jack. “I was asking you about that when we ran into those pesky meteors. What is this expedition? Where are we going T' Well, since you have become pretty good qhipmates,” replied Edmund, “I don’t see any objection to telling you. We are going to Venus!” “Going to Venus?” we all cried in a breath. “To be sure. Why not? We’ve got the proper sort of conveyance, haven’t we?"

There was no denying that. Ab we knew that we had left the earth far behind and had already traveled some millions of miles, it didn’t, after all, seem to be a very crazy idea that we might actually go to Venus. But how far Is it?” asked Jack. “When we quit the earth,” Edmund replied, “Venus was rapidly approaching inferior conjunction. You know what that is Albert,” addressing me. “It’s when Venus comes between the ?un and the earth. The distance beween the two is not always the same at such a conjunction, but I figured out that on this occasion, allowing for the circuit that we should have to make, there would be just 27,000,000 miles to travel. At the average speed of 20 miles a second, we could do that distance in 15 days, 14>4 hours. “But, of course, I had to lose some time going slow through the earth’s atmosphere, for otherwise the car would have caught fire by friction, like a meteor, and I shall have to slow up again when we enter Venus* atmoing on Venus in less than 16 days

sphere, so that I don’t count on landfrom the time of our departure. “We’ve already been out five days, so eleven more remain before*! hope to introduce you to the inhabitants of another world.” The inhabitants of another world! This idea took us all aback. “Do you believe there are any such inhabitants?” asked Henry. “I know there are,” said Edmund. “Otherwise I wouldn’4 have taken the trouble to come.” “Of course,” said Jack, stretching his legs and pulling at his pipe. “Who would go 27,000,000 miles if he didn’t expect to see somebody?” “Then that’s what you put the arms aboard for?” I remarked. “Yes, but-I hope we shall not have to use them.” “Strikes me this is sort of a pirate ship,” said Jack. “But What kind of arms have you got?” For answer Edmund threw open a locker and showed us an array of automatic guns, pistols and some cutlasses. “Decidedly practical!” cried Jack “But see here, Edmund. With all this interatomic energy that you’ve got under control, why in the world didn’t you construct something'new—something that would just knock the Venustlans sill/ and blow their old planet up, if it became necessary? It seems to me that automatic arms, though pretty good at home, are rather small pumpkins for invading a foreign world wlh.” “I didn’t prepare anything else,” said Edmund. “In the first place, because I hadn’t time, and, in the second place, because I didn’t really anticipate any fighting. I hope that we can get along without that.” “You mean to try moral suasion, I suppose,” drawled Jack. “Well, anyhow, I hope they’ll be glad to see us, and since it’s Venus we’re going to visit, I expect that the ladies will be perfect houris for beauty. I’m glad you made it Venus instead of Mars, Edmund, for, from all I’ve heard about Mars, with its 14-foot giants, I don’t think I should care to go there.” We all laughed at Jack’s fancies, but there was something thrilling in the idea, too, for here we were (unless we were dreaming) actually on the way to Venus! I tried every way I could think of to test whether it was a dream or not, but Ao what I would I came always to the conclusion that I had never been more wideawake in my life. Both Jack, and I were sufficiently romantic to find a great charm in the thought of visiting another world, but Henry was different. He always looked at the money in a thing.

“Edmund,” he said, “I 1 think you have made a fool of yourself. What good will it do you, or us, to go to Venus? Here you have got an invention that will revolutionize mechanics. You might, if you had exploited it as you ought, have made the greatest millionaire look like the smallest kind of an atom. But instead of developing the thing in a business-like way, you rush off into space on a harebrained adventure.” “That depends upon the point of view and the mental make-up,” replied Edmund, calmly. , “To me Venus is infinitely more interesting than all the wealth that ypu could pile up between the North Pole and the equator. Am I not the Columbus of space—and you my lieutenants?” he added, smiling. “Besides, just wait until we return to the earth. I don’t promise to give my attention to money-getting then, but I may revolutionize a good deal more than mechanics.” “Yes, if we ever do return,” said Jack, a little lugubriously. Poor Jack! None of us knew then what was in store. The time ran on, and we watched the day hand on the calender clock. Soon it had marked a week; then 10 days; then a fortnight. We were getting pretty close, but up to this time we had not yet seen Venus. Edmund had seen Ijt, he said, but to do so he had been obliged to alter course, because the planet was almost in the eye of the sun, and the light of the latter, streaming into the peep hole, blinded him. / In consequence of the change of course, he told us, we were now approaching Venus from the east—flanking her, in fact—and she appeared in the form of an enormous shining crescent. I shall never forget my first view of’her. (To be continued.)