Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 74, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 March 1911 — A Columbus of Space [ARTICLE]

A Columbus of Space

By Garrett P. Serviss.

This dreadful scene may have lasted an hour, or it may have lasted not more than twenty minutes, but it seemed endless. The change came with great suddenness. One moment we were rolling and pitching as usual and the next —it was all over. The car seemed to have been struck dead, it was so absolutely motionless. At the same instant the howling of the wind passed away in a dying scream. My ears rang still with the echo, and I was too dizzy to stand straight. In a few moments it became evident that the motionlessness of the car was only apparent. We were still rising. Edmund geiitly placed Ala on, a bench and went to the controllers. After turning & couple of knobs he faced about with a cheering smile. “We are out of it,” he said. “There is not more danger. The only thing there was to do was to keep on rising. We are now above the denser part of the atmosphere, and the cyclones are whirling far beneath us. I Will bring the car to rest, and if I am not mistaken you will look down upefn a scene that you will not soon forget “I cannot open the air-tight glass shutters,” he continued, “because at the elevation where we now are the air is too rare—especially for Ala and her friends—but by inclining the car a little to one side we can have a good view.”

There was an arrangement of movable weights sliding upon bars to produce an inclination toward one side or the other, and in a few minutes Edmund had the car, which was now practically at rest, so canted that one of the large windows afforded a view almost directly downward. The spectacle beneath drqve the memory of an awful experience for the moment from minds of all. The sun was shining brilliantly overhead, and its light fell upon a raging sea of clouds, which, except at their edges, where they were torn into flying sdud, looked as dense as white molten metal. A hundred tornadoes appeared to be whizzing at once, all turning in the same direction with sickening velocity, and where these whirlwinds came together, their peripheries moving opposite ways, it was as if two gigantic buzzsaws had met, each plowing the other to pieces and whirling the fragments round in the wildest confusion. The play of lightning was fierce and incessant, but when we were in the midst of it it had passed unnoticed, the thunder being -blended with the roar of the wind. “Good Heavens!” cried Jack, holding himself painfully erect at the window. “Did we come through that?” “Indeed we did,” replied Edmund, “and I don’t mind saying that I shouldn’t like to venture such a trip again.” “But what does it all mean?” I asked. “It’s meaning is clear enough. In penetrating toward the torrid circle, where the unsetting sun is forever in the zenith, we have entered the zone tempests that surrounds it. The, heated air is always rising above the area inclosed in the central circle and flowing off above on all sides. “Colder air rushes in below to take its place, and at a certain distance from the center, .which we have reached, the contending currents come together with the results that you see.” Ala, who had resumed all of her usual self-command, was one of the most eager of the watchers of this spectacle, and Edmund and she communed together for a long time, pointing out and discussing the marvelous features of the scene. At last I asked Edmund: “What do you mean to do next? Go back?” “No,” he replied. “At least, we’ll not go back the way we came. Having got so far, I think we’ll circumnavigate the planet and take a bird'seye look at it Jack seems to be getting along pretty well, and by keeping near theyffipper limit of the atmosphere we can travel so fast that the whole trip will not occupy more than 24 hours. “That’s it,” cried Jack. “That suits me exactly. To go back the way we came would look as if we had been beaten.” The talk of going back set my mind once more on the dangers that were probably gathering for us at the capital, and I could not refrain from saying quietly to Edmund: “You know you ought to get tfeck as soon as possible, for I am sure

there are plots hatching that may have terrible consequences. Remember that the eaglebeak on the black throne is against us, and our absence with Ala leaves him a free field. Ingra, too, is at liberty.” But Edmund only smiled at my gloomy forebodings. “You borrow too much trouble,” he said. But neither he, in his buoyant optimism, nor I, with my half-defined suspicions, foresaw what was coming. '(To be continued.)