CHAPTER III

The Space-Flier Starts

"Three more days and the last work will be done--the space-flier will be finished!"

It was Dr. Marlin who spoke and Whitely beside him, nodded. "Three more days," he said, "and we'll be starting."

We four, Marlin and Whitely and Randall and myself, were standing on the flat roof of the great World Government building, that gigantic cylindrical white structure that looms two thousand feet into the air at the center of the new world-capital, New York. All around us there stretched the colossal panorama of New York's mighty cylindrical buildings, each rearing skyward from its little green park, extending as far away as the eye could reach, many of them rising on great supporting piers out of the waters of the rivers and bay around the island. In the late afternoon sunlight above them there swirled and seethed great masses of arriving and departing aircraft, unfolding their helicopter-vanes from their long hulls as they paused to rise or descend, seeming to fill the air, while away to the south the great Singapore-New York liner was slanting smoothly down toward the great flat surface of the air-docks. Yet it was to none of these things, nor to the masses of humans that swarmed and crowded in the city's streets far beneath us, that we four were giving our attention at that moment, for we were gazing intently at the great object that stood on the roof before us.

That object was a great gleaming metal polyhedron that loomed in a supporting framework beside us like a huge ball-like faceted crystal of metal. This great faceted ball of metal, though, was fully thirty feet in diameter, and here and there in the great, smooth, faceted, plane-surfaces of it were set hexagonal windows of clear glass, protected by thick raised rims of metal around them. There were also set in six of the facets six round openings a foot in diameter, one of these being in the faceted ball's top, one in its bottom, and four at equi-distant points around its equator. In one of the flat facet-sides, also, was a screw-door of a few feet diameter that now was open, giving a glimpse across a small vestibule-chamber inside through a second open screw-door into the great polyhedron's interior. That interior seemed crowded with gleaming mechanisms and equipment, attached to the inner side of the great metal shell.

Marlin was contemplating the great thing intently as we stood there on the roof beside its supporting framework. "Finished--in three more days," he repeated. "Everything's ready for the last generator."

"That will be done in two days more," said Randall, beside me. "Everything else at the World Government's laboratories has been suspended in order to get these generators ready for us."

"They've worked fast to get three of the generators in the flier already," Marlin acknowledged. "Especially since Whitely here, in directing them, had only his own first crude models to work on."

"Lucky we are to get the generators completed and the space-flier finished in the month we estimated!" I exclaimed. "If the whole world hadn't centered its energies on the space-flier's completion we'd never have done it--and even so it's been a tremendous task."

It had, indeed, been a period of tense and toiling activity for Marlin and Whitely and Randall and me, that time of four weeks that had elapsed since Marlin had proposed his great plan to the World Congress. In those weeks all our efforts, and all the efforts of the world too, it seemed, had been concentrated upon the building of that space-flier in which we four, first of all men, were to venture out into the great void, to flash out to Neptune in our attempt to halt the great ray that was spinning our sun ever faster to its destruction and to ours. For each day of those four weeks the rotatory speed of the sun had grown ever greater, its rotatory period decreasing by an exact four hours each day. The instruments of Dr. Whitely, too, showed that the mighty force-ray was still playing unceasingly from Neptune upon the turning sun's edge, spinning that sun ever faster. Already the terrific pressure of that great ray had lowered the sun's rotatory period to 18 days, 4 hours, and in hardly more than a hundred days more, we knew, would have brought the sun's rotatory period down to that critical figure of one hour at which it could no longer hold together, at which it would divide into a double star and plunge Earth to doom and wreck the solar system.

And with that knowledge, all the world had sought to aid in the construction of our space-flier. Dr. Marlin had directed that construction, aided by his assistant, young Randall, whom I had met for the first time and had found a sunny-haired fun-loving fellow of my own age. And it had been Dr. Marlin who, after consultation with the world's greatest engineering authorities, had chosen for the flier the form of a great polyhedron. Such a form, it had been found, could resist pressure from within and without much better than the spherical form that had been at first suggested, and it was realized that this power of resistance would be necessary. For upon venturing out from Earth's gravitation-field into gravitationless space, the very interior stresses of such a space-flier would tend to explode it unless it was braced against those stresses. Also the space-flier was to be shot out through the void and maneuvered in that void by the pushing reaction of its own great force-rays against the Earth or other planets, and though that force would thus hurtle the flier out at terrific speed, it would also crumple the flier itself unless it were strong enough to withstand the force-ray's terrific pressure.

* * * * *

With the space-flier's form decided and the plans for it drafted, work upon it had begun at once. At the World President's suggestion, it was being set up on the great flat roof of the World Government building. From over all Earth had come the world's most brilliant engineers and scientists to aid in its construction, for the world lay still beneath the great shadowing wing of fear that had been cast over it, when the peoples of Earth had learned first of the doom that Neptune and its beings were loosing upon the solar system. So that though the world's first wild panic had subsided, it had been replaced by a waxing realization and dread that had made the peoples of Earth and their representatives offer to us their help in this plan of ours, which alone held out any chance, however slender, of escape from the annihilation that was nearing Earth. Laboring ceaselessly day and night therefore, in picked crews of workers that every few hours replaced each other, Dr. Marlin and Randall and myself and our eager workers had swiftly brought the great space-flier's metal shell into being.

That great crystal-like shell, at Dr. Marlin's suggestion, had been made double-walled, the space between the two walls being pumped to as complete a vacuum as possible so that vacuum might insulate the flier's interior from the tremendous differences in temperature that it would meet in space. For where the sun's heat-radiations struck the flier in space it would be warm, hot even, but those parts in shadow would be subjected to the absolute zero of empty space. Each of these thick double walls, in turn, was itself built up of alternate layers of finest steel and of non-metallic, asbestos-like insulating material, pressed and welded together by titanic forces into a single thickness. And the great faceted wall-sections of the flier, when in place, had been so welded and fused one to the other by the new molecular-diffusion fusing process, that the great ball-like faceted flier might have been and was, in fact, a single and seamless polyhedron, its strength enormous.

In one of the flier's facets was the round screw-door, admitting one through a small vestibule-chamber, and then through a second hermetically-sealing door into the flier's interior. In that interior, all the flier's mechanisms and equipment had been attached directly to the inner side of its great crystal-like ball, with hexagonal windows, made double and of thick unbreakable glass, here and there in the walls, between the mechanisms. Just inside one of those large windows, at what might be called the ball-like flier's front, were ranged on a black panel of several feet in length the space-flier's controls. The most central of these controls were six gleaming-handled levers which controlled the flier's great force-rays, shooting them forth from any one of the six ray-openings in its sides, to send the flier hurtling through space by reaction, or to use against asteroids or other objects as a great weapon. Supported from the wall in front of those levers was a metal chair that swung on pivots and on sliding pneumatic shock-absorbing tubes, a metal strap across it to hold its occupant in it. And the occupant of that chair, with the six force-ray controls before him, thus controlled the flier's flight through space, and could, if necessary, use its great rays as weapons.

To the left of those controls were the recording dials and switches of the four great generators. Those four gleaming cubical generators themselves were attached to the other side of the flier's hollow interior, along with the marvelously compact and powerful Newson-Canetti batteries. Operating from those batteries whose power-stores were almost exhaustless, the generators, when turned on, would generate the great force-vibrations which, of a wavelength higher than that of light vibrations, exerted a terrific pressure or force beside which the pressure of light was as nothing. These vibrations were carried by thick black cables running between the flier's double walls to the projecting-mechanisms inside the six ray-openings, and from those openings the great force-vibrations were released as great force-rays by the operator of the flier's six controls. These great force-rays, we had found, almost equalled the speed of light itself in the velocity with which they shot out from the flier's ray-openings.

In front of the generators' recording dials and switches was suspended a metal chair like that of the control-operator, while between those two was a third chair before which, on the control-panel, were ranged the instruments recording the space-flier's conditions of flight. There was a space-speed indicator, working by means of ether-drift, a set of dials that accurately recorded the gravitational pull of celestial bodies in all directions, inside and outside temperature recorders, inside and outside air-testers, and beside others the controls of a number of the necessary mechanisms attached at different points inside the hollow faceted ball of the flier. Among these were the controls of the flier's air-renovator, which automatically removed the carbon-dioxide from the flier's breathed air by atomic dissociation and replaced it with oxygen from the compact tanks of compressed liquid-oxygen; the controls of the heating-mechanism, which beside its own heating coils was to utilize the heat of the sun on the flier's side in space; and the control of the hooded lights set above the flier's control-panel and mechanisms.

To the right of the control-operator's chair, too, there was a fourth similar chair before which were ranged on the control-panel a compact but extremely efficient battery of astronomical instruments. There was a ten-inch refracting telescope, its lens set directly in the big hexagonal window over the control-panel, the tube of the telescope, thanks to the new "re-reflecting" principle, being but a score or so of inches in length. There was also a small but efficient spectroscope similarly mounted, a micrometric apparatus for accurate measurements of celestial objects, and a shielded bolometer for ascertaining the radiated heat of any celestial body.

These four metal chairs, suspended there in front of the long control-panel and with the big hexagonal window before and above them, were mounted all upon special shock-absorbing tubes of pneumatic design which would enable us to withstand the pressure of our flier's acceleration upon starting, and the pressure also of its deceleration upon slowing and stopping. Seated in them, we would be able to look forth over the space-flier's controls into the void before us, and since gravitation would be lacking in the flier, once out in space, metal straps across them would hold us in them. Here and there among the mechanisms that lined the ball-like flier's interior, too, were hand-grips by which we could float without harm among the mechanisms and equipment, while the metal bunks attached at one point to the flier's interior were provided with metal straps to hold us in them during sleep.

* * * * *

Ranged among the mechanisms, that lined the flier's interior, were the cabinets that held our stores and special equipment. Among these were ample stores of food in thermos-cans, kept hot thus and obviating all necessity of cooking, the tanks of compressed water, and the extra liquid-oxygen tanks. Also attached to hooks on the walls were the four space-walkers that had been constructed for us to enable us to venture outside of the flier into airless space, if necessary. These space-walkers were cylindrical metal structures seven feet or more in height and three in diameter, tapering at the top to a smooth dome in which were small vision-windows. Each held a small generator of force-vibrations, and an equally small air-renovator. There were two hollow metal jointed arms that extended from the upper part, and on entering the cylinder and closing its base-door one thrust his own arms inside those hollow metal ones. They ended in great pincer-claws that could be actuated by one's own hands inside, while the space-walker itself was moved through the void by its generated force-vibrations being shot out from a small ray-opening in the cylinder's bottom.

Standing inside the hollow, ball-like polyhedron of the flier, therefore, its mechanisms and equipment extended all about and above and beneath one, attached rigidly in every case to the flier's inner surface. That equipment, those mechanisms, indeed, had taxed all the powers of the great World Government laboratories to provide in the short time that was ours, but by a miracle of effort it had been done. And now, as we four gazed up toward the great gleaming faceted thing, resting beside us there in its framework of metal girders, we knew that there remained only the last of the four great generators to be completed, and that in two days more, as Randall had said, that too would be completed and installed and the space-flier would be ready for its final tests and for the start of our great trip. Looking up at the great thing towering there beside us in the waning afternoon sunlight, I was struck with a sudden realization of the stupendousness of the task that we had set ourselves; of the thing that lay before us.

"To go out in that from Earth to Neptune--_to Neptune!_--it seems impossible," I said.

Marlin nodded, his hand on my shoulder. "It seems strange enough," he assented, "but to Neptune in three more days we're going, Hunt. For no other chance is there to save Earth from the doom marching upon it."

"But _can_ we save it?" I exclaimed. "Can we four really hope to contend against beings who, whatever their nature, have power enough to reach across the solar system and speed our spinning sun on to its doom and ours?"

Marlin looked gravely at me, and at Whitely and Randall beside me. "A chance there is--must be," he said solemnly, "even though little time now remains to us. And with that chance--with Earth's chance--in our hands, we must strike out to the last with all our power for Earth!"

Those words of Marlin, I think, steadied us all in the whirling rush of activities that was ours during the next, the last, three days. For in those three days, as the last generator approached completion and was completed and installed, we four were ceaselessly busy with the last preparations for our start. Whitely, who had designed and was to have complete charge of the space-flier's great generators, was busy inspecting and testing those generators. Randall and I were familiarizing ourselves with the flier's controls, for we two were to alternate in controlling its flight through the void. Marlin, who would not only command our little party but would have charge of the astronomical equipment in it, and would chart our course out through the trackless gulf, was occupied beside numberless other tasks in plotting, with the assistance of some of the world's foremost astronomers, that course that we must follow now. So that as there came upon us the last day of June 16th, that day upon whose night we were to start our momentous journey, it found us working still upon our last preparations.

By the time that day and night had come, too, it found the excited expectation of the world keyed up to an agonized point. For days, indeed, great crowds had swirled about the base of the huge World Government building, on whose roof we worked, and, as the last hours approached, it seemed that all the world's thoughts, indeed, were concentrated upon that roof, upon the great gleaming space-flier on it. For all knew that upon that flier and upon the mission which we four were attempting in it depended the one chance of escape for Earth. For steadily, remorselessly, the sun was spinning still ever faster, the great pushing force-ray from Neptune still stabbing across the solar system to spin the sun on and on with greater and greater rotatory speed, until it divided and doomed Earth and its sister-planets. So that those last days, those last hours, seemed to all the world as to ourselves to pass with nerve-tearing slowness.

There came at last, however, the night of the 16th, the night of our start, with the space-flier complete and ready in its framework at last. The last work of Marlin and Whitely had been to check over the construction-plans of the flier, which were to be left behind so that a great fleet of space-fliers, as the World President had said, could be constructed. Were we to return from Neptune with knowledge of the position and nature of the great doom-ray's source there, that fleet of space-fliers would be ready to sally out and attempt to bring an end to the great ray. But that knowledge, if we gained it, we must bring back ourselves, since there was no method of communication from our space-flier to Earth, the well-known "Heaviside layer" surrounding Earth being impenetrable to all radio and communication vibrations and making such communication impossible. With this last preparation completed, however, we four stood ready upon the night of the 16th for the start of our great venture.

* * * * *

It was an hour after midnight that we were to start, and it was not until some minutes past midnight that Marlin and Whitely and Randall and I left our quarters in the World Government building and ascended to its roof. As we emerged upon that roof we stopped involuntarily. For the great roof itself and all the surrounding colossal city of New York were lit now with brilliant white suspended lights, and beneath them upon the roof and in the streets far beneath were masses upon masses of waiting men and women. Those upon the roof were the twelve hundred members of the great World Congress, assembled there to see our start out into the void on our desperate venture. At their center was a clear, roped-off space on the roof in which there towered the framework that held our great space-flier, gleaming in the brilliance of the lights about it, and just inside that clear space stood the World President, a half-dozen officials beside him.

As we paused there for that moment, Marlin's face grave and intent with purpose, Whitely coolly looking about him, and Randall and I endeavoring to conceal the excitement that pounded at our hearts, the whole scene was imprinted indelibly upon my brain. The crowds and brilliant lights about and beneath us, the great space-flier's faceted bulk looming into the darkness, the colossal buildings of the great world-capital that stretched away in the darkness in all directions, a great mass of shining lights among which swirled a packed sea of humanity gazing up toward our flier--these formed a mighty panorama about us, but in that moment we turned our gaze up from them, up toward the great constellations of summer stars that gleamed in the black skies overhead. Away in the southern skies, not high above the horizon, burned the equatorial constellations, Scorpio and Sagittarius and Capricorn, with the calm white light-globule of Jupiter moving in Scorpio and the bright red dot of Mars and yellow spark of Saturn in Capricorn. But it was toward Sagittarius that we were gazing, for among that constellation's stars there shone also Neptune, invisible to our unaided eyes but almost seen by us, it seemed, in that tense moment.

Then we four were moving across the roof toward the looming framework that upheld the space-flier, pausing inside its clear space to face the World President. It was a moment of cosmic drama, that moment in which Earth and the silent peoples of Earth, that had gathered in millions there to watch us, were sending forth four of themselves into the trackless void for the first time, sending them forth with Earth's one chance for life in their hands. The World President, facing us, did not speak, though; did not break the thick silence that seemed to lie over all the mighty city. He reached forth, gripped our hands with his own, grasped them tightly, silently, his steady eyes upon ours, and then stepped back. And then Marlin leading, we were clambering up the framework to the flier's screw-door, passing silently inside and then screwing that great door hermetically shut behind us. That done, we passed across the little vestibule-chamber and through the second screw-door, closing it likewise behind us.

Then, clambering up to the four suspended chairs in front of the control-panels, we took our places in them; Marlin in the right chair, his telescope and astronomical equipment before him, I in the next one, with the six controls of the space-flier's movements before me, Randall in the third chair, the recording dials and minor controls of the flier before him, and Whitely in the fourth or left chair, the dials and switches of the generators before him. Seated there, the constellation of Sagittarius and the other southern stars were full before us in our big window, for our space-flier was so supported in its framework that by turning on its great force-ray from the lower ray-opening we would be shot out by the terrific repulsive force straight toward Sagittarius, toward Neptune, slanting out tangent-wise from Earth's surface. And now Marlin was peering through the short, strange-looking tube of the telescope, was touching its focusing wheels lightly, peering again, and then turning to me.

"Neptune," he said quietly. "We'll start when it reaches the center of this telescope's field of view--when the flier is pointed directly toward it."

"But we can maneuver the flier in any direction in space, could head out from Earth and then toward Neptune," Randall commented, as I applied my own eye to the telescope, and Marlin nodded.

"We can, but by starting straight toward Neptune we'll use less of our generators' power."

While he spoke I was gazing through the telescope, and though I had gazed upon Neptune many times before it was never with such feelings as gripped me now. Like a little pale-green spot of calm light it was, floating there in the darkness of the great void, its single moon not visible to me even through the powerful telescope. Then as I straightened from the telescope's eye-piece Marlin had taken it again, gazing intently into it now, to call out to me the moment when the planet reached the center of its field of view, when our space-flier would be headed straight toward it. For it was then, as Marlin had said, that we planned to hurtle out toward the planet with all the power of our great force-rays, not only reacting but pushing against Earth as light pushes. But since we must necessarily change our course once in space, to allow for Neptune's own movement among other things, we would use less power by making our first start straight toward it.

Now, as we sat tensely there, I had turned, nodded to Whitely, and he had thrown open the switches before him that controlled the great generators, their throbbing suddenly sounding behind us as they went into operation, generating the force-vibrations that in a moment would be released backward from our flier as mighty force-rays. As Whitely moved the switches, the throb of the generators died to a thin hum, then rose to a tremendous drone, and then slowly sank to a smooth throbbing beat at which he rested the switches. And now Marlin, beside me, was calling out to us the divisions of the specially-designed telescope's field, as Neptune passed across them to the zero mark at which we would hurtle outward.

"--45--40--35--30--"

As his steady voice sounded periodically beside me I sat as though a poised statue, my hand upon that lever among the six lever-switches before me that would send the power of our throbbing generators stabbing out with colossal force from the flier's ray-opening behind us, that would send that flier hurtling outward. "--25--20--15--." As the calm voice of Marlin broke the silence beside me I felt my heart racing with excitement, saw that Randall, and even Whitely, beside me, had hunched tensely forward as the moment approached. I glanced out a moment through the flier's windows, seeing in a blurred impression the breathless, watching crowds, the brilliant lights. "--10--5--_zero_!" And as that last word sounded I threw open in one swift motion the lever-switch in my grasp!

The next instant there was a colossal roaring about us, we seemed pressed down in our chairs with titanic, crushing force, and saw crowds and lights and great buildings vanishing from about our flier with lightning-like swiftness as a great pale ray of light, of colossal force, stabbed down and backward from the flier's ray-opening behind us! In a split-second all about us was blackness and then the great roaring sound about us had ceased, marking our passage out past the limits of Earth's atmosphere! Now through the windows before and about us, as we clung there, we saw the heavens around us brilliant with the fierce light of undimmed hosts of stars, while as our great flier reeled on at mounting speed into the great gulf, we saw behind and beneath us a great gray cloudy ball that was each moment contracting in size. Earth was receding and diminishing behind us as we flashed out through the void toward distant Neptune, to save that Earth from doom!

[Illustration: _We sat again in our chairs before the control-panel, Whitely to my left, gazing through the big window before us ... soaring past the limits of Earth's atmosphere._]