Pharaoh's Broker<br />Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner by Ellsworth Douglass (thriller books to read txt) 📖

your course to see part of the illuminated surface of the Earth. That was the real danger light. And if it began to assume the umbrella shape, detached from the Earth, that was due to atmospheric refraction of sunlight. This great shadow we are travelling in has an illuminated core, which we shall encounter when we have proceeded a little further. I tell you of it now, so it may not give you another shock. Have you ever noticed the small bright spot which illuminates the centre of[106] the shadow cast by a glass of water? That is partly the same as the core of light which exists in the heart of this shadow. Rays from the sun, passing on all sides of the Earth, are refracted through the atmosphere and bent inward. You must have steered over into some of these rays just now, and then turned back from them. Somewhat farther on all these refracted rays will meet at a common centre, which they will illuminate, and we shall have an oasis of rainbow-tinged sunlight in this great desert of shadow. The sun will then appear to us to be an enormous circle of dull light entirely surrounding the Earth."

"I don't fancy running into that at all," said I. "Can't we avoid it by steering out?"

"Avoid it!" exclaimed the doctor. "We must investigate it, and photograph the peculiar appearance of the sun. Light seems to have more terrors for you than anything else just now. You must get over your rush-and-do tendency; you must stifle your emotions and impulses, and learn to think of things in a more calm and scientific manner."

"But that is not so easy for me, Doctor. Whenever I am left alone, a feeling of dread possesses me. I am used to having many people, bustling noises, and confused movement all about me. The silence of Space stifles me, and the loneliness of the ether oppresses and overcomes me strangely."[107]

"I prescribe a change of air for you," answered the doctor. "You will do better in a rarer atmosphere. Let us send what we have been breathing back to Whiting, and make a new one to suit ourselves."

[108]

CHAPTER X The Twilight of Space

"Shall I come up into your compartment for the operation?" I asked.

"No; for this first time we will pump out my compartment, as I wish to observe from the rear port-hole the action of the air which we set free."

The bulkhead, with its bevelled edge, was therefore fitted into the opening between the compartments, and I took the first turn at the lever handle of the air-pump, while the doctor observed from the window. I had given the handle less than a dozen vigorous strokes when the doctor suddenly exclaimed,—

"Stop! Wait a moment;" and he began pulling at the bulkhead, which was already rather tightly wedged in by the air pressure. "I have left the rabbit inside," he said, when he found breath to speak. And poor little bunny's heart was beginning to beat fast when he was rescued.

Then we began again. The doctor watched the escaping air for some time, evidently forgetting that I was at all interested in it.[109]

"All quite as I expected," he said at last. "Only I had forgotten about the snow."

"Nothing will ever be very new or interesting to you," I put in; "but pray remember I am here, and rapidly getting empty of breath and full of curiosity."

Then he relieved me at the pump handle, and this is what I saw from the port-hole: The air escaping from the discharge pipe of the air-pump was visible, and looked like dull, grey steam. Immediately on being set free it swelled and expanded greatly, and sank away from us slowly. But at the instant of its expansion the cold thus produced froze the moisture of the air into a fine fleecy snow, which lasted but a second as it sank away from us and melted in the heat, which the thermometer showed to be close upon ninety-five degrees. This miniature snowstorm was seen for an instant only after each down motion of the pump handle.

"Where is this air going?" I inquired. "The little clouds of it seem to drop away from us like lead; but that must be because of our speed."

"It is falling back to the Earth, to join the outer layer of rare atmosphere there. If we had a positive current instead of a negative one, the air would not leave us, but we should gradually be surrounded by an atmosphere of our own, which we should retain until some planet, whose gravitational attraction is vastly stronger than ours, stole it from us. When we begin to fall into Mars,[110] we shall acquire such an enveloping atmosphere; and we can draw upon it and re-compress it if our inner supply should become exhausted."

"If this air is falling home to earth," said I, "we could send messages back in that manner."

"We can drop them back at any time, regardless of the air," he answered, and then added suddenly, "but it will make a beautiful experiment to drop out a bottle now."

He ceased pumping, and opening a bottle of asparagus tips, he placed them in a bowl, and prepared to drop out the bottle. I took my pencil and wrote this message to go inside,—"Behold, I have decreed a judgment upon the Earth; for it shall rain pickle bottles and biscuit tins for the period of forty days, because of the wickedness of the world, unless she repent!" And I pictured to myself the perplexity of the poor devil who should see this message come straight down from heaven!

In order to make his experiment more successful, the doctor put in half a dozen bullets from one of the rifles, to make the weight more perceptible. Then he put the bottle into the discharging cylinder, and preparing to push it out he stooped over the port-hole. At a signal from him I gave the pump handle several quick, successive motions, and at the same instant he let drop the bottle. At once he cried out,—

"Beautiful! and just as I thought."[111]

"But I didn't see it!" I protested. "What was it?"

"The instant the bottle was released the discharged air was immediately attracted toward it, and gradually surrounded it entirely. It was like a little planet with an atmosphere of its own, as they fell back to the Earth together."

"But I couldn't see it; I had to pump," I complained. "We must do it again."

"We shall soon have our bottled things all emptied out on plates to dry up and spoil," he objected. So I emptied a biscuit tin this time, and delaying for no message, I put it in the discharging cylinder. Then I bent over the port-hole and gave the signal for the pumping. As I thrust out the tin I was astonished to see the lid pop off the first thing. The quick expansion of the air inside it did that. This air, as well as the air from the discharge pipe, seemed to flee from it instead of surrounding it, as the doctor had said. I continued watching so long that he finally said,—

"Hasn't it fallen out of sight yet?"

"No; it is not falling away swiftly as the air does. It is following the projectile! It is not gathering any air about it as you said it would. It does not quite keep up with us; but considering our speed, it is doing remarkably well!"

The doctor was not inclined to believe me until he had looked for himself. He watched and pondered for a minute or two. Then his surprise[112] ceased, and he spoke in that assured way which always irritated me.

"Quite natural, after all," he said. "That biscuit can is made of thin sheet-iron with a surface coating of tin. The iron has become magnetized by induction, and the Earth repels the can just as it repels us. It will follow us to the dead-line, and probably on to Mars, unless the sheet-iron loses its polarization. If we had cast out a thing of solid iron, it would rush ahead of us, instead of falling a little behind, as this does, for it would have no dead weight to carry. But we could not put such a thing out of the rear end, for no force would make it fall that way. If we put it out of the forward port-hole, it would beat us in the race toward Mars."

I remarked to the doctor that the air-pump seemed to be incorrectly built, for its action was strangely difficult in the reverse manner that it should have been. The down strokes went by themselves with a quick snap, but the up strokes were as if against pressure, and the moment the handle was released it flew down again. He had not tested the pump at the surface, as it was of a well-known make, but it certainly seemed to work backwards. Moreover, the more nearly we had a compartment emptied of air, the more difficult the pumping should become, but here again the reverse seemed to be the case, for the longer we worked the easier the up strokes became.[113]

The temperature of the projectile was still fairly comfortable, and the doctor allowed the condensed air to issue very slowly into the partial vacuum in his compartment until it produced a barometric pressure of twenty-seven. Then we pulled back the bulkhead, and when the new atmosphere had mixed with the old in my compartment, a pressure of twenty-eight resulted.

"That is about the way the barometer stands during tempests at sea," remarked the doctor. I could not notice much difference from the air we had previously had. Possibly it was fresher and slightly more exhilarating.

The effort at the pump had made us both hungry again, and I prepared from meat extracts a warm and rather thick gravy to put over the asparagus tips. I attempted to pour it, but it was so light that its sticky consistency prevented it from running. We had a hundred such examples daily of the changes which lack of weight caused in the simplest operations. With sandwiches made of biscuits and condensed meat, we eked out a luncheon. This must have been about noon, for when it was over I remember noticing that we no longer needed the gas in the compartment, for there was a gradually increasing mellow light outside.

"Are we already emerging from the shadow?" I inquired eagerly.

"No, not yet," replied the doctor. "But we are[114] now entering its illuminated core. I must prepare to photograph the strange appearance of the Sun that we shall see presently."

I hastened to the port-hole, and did not leave until it was all over. What I then saw was one of the most beautiful things of the whole trip. The light outside was not bright, but soft and dreamy, like the first twilight after a rich day of summer. The great corona all around the outer edge of the Earth was the most magnificent appearance I have ever seen. It was not at all dazzling, but had the melting shades, first of a sunrise and then of a gorgeous sunset. We had missed the gradual appearance of the phenomenon, but we had a good view of its highest splendour. The colours were continually but slowly changing, and finally the darker hues gradually suffused and dyed the pinks and crimsons.

The Earth was now about three times the diameter of a rising Full Moon, and the corona was about a quarter her width, and looked as if twenty shell-pink suns were set one against the other and overlapping all about the edge of the dark orb.

"How do you know that is not really the extending edge of the Sun?" I asked the doctor. "Perhaps we are already far enough away to see it all about the Earth like that."

"If that were really the Sun, the light from his extending edge would illuminate the surface of the Earth towards us. The planet's outline would be[115] irregular and partly glowing, but you see it is quite dull and dark, and the outline is most plainly visible."

In rapt attention I watched the delicate shell-pink change to a deeper hue of orange, and then our twilight waned a little and turned a sombre grey. Presently the corona glowed a rich maroon, gradually dying to a luminous purple, which slowly deepened and darkened, and finally melted into the general blackness. And lo! we were in the shadow again, and the dreamily beautiful panorama was over.

"It must have lasted nearly an hour," said the doctor. "I am sorry we did not notice the beginning, but it must have commenced with the same dull shades we saw at the end, and gradually changed to brighter colours. I secured three negatives when the glow was most intense."

"Then we have had a waxing and a waning twilight coming together in the middle of our night. And the corona was like a sunrise, followed immediately by a sunset," I exclaimed.

"And why shouldn't it appear so?" said the matter-of-fact doctor. "Twilight is the commonest phenomenon of refraction with which we are acquainted, and sunrise and sunset are merely a mixture of