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- Author: Roy Rockwood
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another trip through space.”
“Not much will have to be done, I fancy,” remarked the German
scientist. “But I want to make a few improvements in the Cardite motor,
which I will use in place of the Etherium one, that took us to Mars.”
A little later there came a knock on the rear door of the rambling old
house where the professor lived and did much of his experimental work.
“I’ll go,” volunteered Jack, and when he opened the portal there stood
on the threshold a small boy, Dick Johnson, one of the village lads.
“What is it you want, Dick?” asked Mark.
“Here’s a note for you,” went on the boy, passing over a slip of paper.
“I met a man down the road, and he gave me a quarter to bring it here.
He said it was very important, and he’s waiting for you down by the
white bridge over the creek.”
“Waiting for who?” asked Jack.
“For Mark, I guess; but I don’t know. Anyhow, the note’s for him.”
“Hum! This is rather strange,” mused Mark.
“What is it?” asked Jack.
“Why, this note. It says: ‘It is important that I see you. I will wait
for you at the white bridge.’ That’s all there is to it.”
“No name signed?” asked Jack.
“Not a name. But I’ll just take a run down and see what it is. I’ll not
be long. Much obliged, Dick.”
The boy who had brought the note turned to leave the house, and Mark
prepared to follow. Jack said:
“Let me see that note.”
He scanned it closely, and, as Mark was getting on his hat and coat,
for the night was chilly, his chum went on:
“Mark, if I didn’t know, that we had left Axtell, the crazy machinist,
up on Mars, I’d say that this was his writing. But, of course, it’s
impossible.”
“Of course—impossible,” agreed Mark.
“But, there’s one thing, though,” continued Jack.
“What’s that?” asked Mark.
“I don’t like the idea of you going off alone in the dark, to meet a
man who doesn’t sign his name to the note he wrote. So, if you have no
objections, I’ll go with you. No use taking any chances.”
“I don’t believe I run any risk,” said Mark, “but I’ll be glad of your
company. Come along. Maybe it’s only a joke.” And the two lads started
off together in the darkness toward the white bridge.
PREPARING FOR A VOYAGE
“Seems like rather an odd thing; doesn’t it?” remarked Jack, as he and
his chum walked along.
“What?”
“This note.”
“Oh, yes. But what made you think the writing looked like that of the
crazy machinist who tried to wreck the projectile?”
“Because I once saw some of the crazy letters he sent us, and he wrote
just like the man who gave Dick this note. But come on, let’s hustle,
and see what’s up.”
In a few minutes they came in sight of the white bridge, which was
about a quarter of a mile down the road from the professor’s house. The
two boys kept well together, and they were watching for a first sight
of the man in waiting.
“See anything?” asked Jack.
“No; do you?”
“Not a thing. Wait until we get closer. He may be in the shadow. It’s
dark now.”
Almost as Jack spoke, the moon, which had been hidden behind a bank of
clouds, peeped out, making the scene comparatively bright. The boys
peered once more toward the bridge, and, as they did so, they saw a
figure step from the shadows, stand revealed for an instant in the
middle of the structure, and then, seemingly after a swift glance
toward the approaching chums, the person darted off in the darkness.
“Did you see that?” cried Jack.
“Sure,” assented Mark. “Guess he didn’t want to wait for us. Why, he’s
running to beat the band!”
“Let’s take after him,” suggested Jack, and, nothing loath, Mark
assented. The two lads broke into a run, but, as they leaped forward,
the man also increased his pace, and they could hear his feet pounding
out a tattoo on the hard road.
The two youths reached the bridge, and sped across it. They glanced
hastily on either side, thinking possibly the man might have had some
companions, but no one was in sight, and the stranger himself was now
out of view around a bend in the highway.
“No use going any farther,” suggested Jack, pulling up at the far side
of the bridge. “There are two roads around the bend, and we couldn’t
tell which one he’d take. Besides, it might not be altogether safe to
risk it.”
Mark and Jack, on their return, told Professor Henderson and the German
scientist something of their little excursion.
“But who could he have been?” asked Mr. Roumann. “Perhaps if you ask
the boy who brought the note he can tell you.”
“We’ll do it in the morning,” decided Mark.
“It’s peculiar that he wanted Mark to meet him,” spoke Amos Henderson.
“Have you any enemies that you know of, Mark?”
“Not a one. But what makes you think this man was an enemy, Professor?”
“From the fact that he ran when he saw you and Jack together. Evidently
he expected to get Mark out alone.”
They discussed the matter for some time, and then the boys and the
scientists retired to bed, ready to begin active preparations on the
morrow, for their trip to the moon.
There was much to be done, but their experience in making other
wonderful trips, particularly the one to Mars, stood the travellers in
good stead. They knew just how to go to work.
To Washington was entrusted the task of preparing the food supply,
since he was to act as cook. Andy Sudds was instructed to look after
the clothing and other supplies, except those of a scientific nature,
while the two young men were to act as general helpers to the two
professors.
As the Annihilator has been fully described in the volume entitled,
“Through Space to Mars,” there is no need to dwell at any length on the
construction of the projectile in which our friends hoped to travel to
the moon. Sufficient to say that it was a sort of enclosed airship,
capable of travelling through space—that is, air or ether—at enormous
speed, that there were contained within it many complicated machines,
some for operating the projectile, some for offence or defence against
enemies, such as electric guns, apparatus for making air or water, and
scores of scientific instruments.
The Annihilator was controlled either from the engine room, or from a
pilot house forward. As for the motive power it was, for the trip to
the moon, to be of that wonderful Martian substance, Cardite, which
would operate the motors.
The projectile moved through space by the throwing off of waves of
energy, similar to wireless vibrations, from large plates of metal, and
these plates were the invention of Professor Roumann.
Perhaps to some of my readers it may seem strange to speak so casually
of a trip to the moon, but it must be remembered that our friends had
already accomplished a much more difficult journey, namely, that to
Mars. So the moon voyage was not to daunt them.
Mars, as I have said, was thirty-five millions of miles away from the
earth when the Annihilator was headed toward it. To reach the moon,
however, but 252,972 miles, at the most, must be traversed—a little
more than a quarter of a million miles. As the distance from the earth
to the moon varies, being between the figures I have named, and 221,614
miles, with the average distance computed as being 238,840 miles, it
can readily be seen that at no time was the voyage to be considered as
comparing in distance with the one to Mars.
But there were other matters to be taken into consideration, and our
friends began to ponder on them in the days during which they made
their preparations.
AN ACCIDENT
Washington White was kept busy getting together the food for the
voyage, and he had about completed his task, while Andy Sudds announced
one morning that his department was ready for inspection, and that he
thought he would go hunting until the projectile was ready to start.
“Well, if you see anything of that queer man who sent me the note, just
ask him what he meant by it,” suggested Mark, for inquiry from the boy
who had brought the message, developed the fact that Dick did not know
the man, nor had he ever seen him before. He was a stranger in the
neighborhood. But, as nothing more resulted from it, the two lads gave
the matter no further thought.
“How soon before we will be ready to start?” asked Jack one day, while
he and his chum, with the two professors, were working over the
projectile, which was soon to be shot through space.
“In about two weeks,” replied Mr. Roumann. “I want to make a few
changes in the Cardite plates, which will replace the ones used on the
Etherium motor. Then I want to test them, and, if I find that they work
all right, as I hope, we will seal ourselves up in the Annihilator,
and start for the moon.”
“Are you going to try to go around it, and land on the side turned away
from us?” asked Mark, who had been studying astronomy lately.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Jack. “Doesn’t the moon turn around?”
“Not as the earth does,” replied his chum; “or, rather, to be more
exact, it rotates exactly as the earth does, on its axis; but, in doing
this it occupies precisely the same time that it takes to make a
revolution about our planet. So that, in the long run, to quote from my
astronomy, it keeps the same side always toward the earth; and today,
or, to be more correct, each night that the moon is visible, we see the
same face and aspect that Galileo did when he first looked at it
through his telescope, and, unless something happens, the same thing
will continue for thousands of years.”
“Then we’ve never seen the other side of the moon?” asked Jack.
“Never; and that’s why I wondered if the professor was going to attempt
to reach it. Perhaps there are people there, and air and water, for it
is practically certain that there is neither moisture nor atmosphere on
this side of Luna.”
“Wow! Then maybe we’d better not go,” said Jack, with a shiver. “What
will we do, if we get thirsty?”
“Oh, I guess we can manage, with all the apparatus we have, to distill
enough water,” said Professor Henderson, with a smile. “Then, too, we
will take plenty with us, and, of course, tanks of oxygen to breathe.
But it will be interesting to see if there are people on the moon.”
“If there are any, they must have a queer time,” went on Mark.
“Why?” asked Jack, who wasn’t very fond of study.
“Why? Because the moon is only about one forty-ninth the size of the
earth. Its diameter is 2,163 miles—only a quarter of the earth’s—and,
comparing the force of gravity, ours is much greater. A body that
weighs six pounds on the earth, would weigh only one pound
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