A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future by John Jacob Astor (novels for beginners TXT) 📖

the tail of a fish, the great bay formed thereby being filled with islands, which also extended about half of the distance across. The western extremity shelved very gradually, the sand-bars running out for miles just below the surface of the water.

After this the travellers flew northward at great speed in the upper regions of the air, for they were anxious to hasten their journey. They found nothing but unbroken sea, and not till they reached latitude eighty-seven was there a sign of ice. They then saw some small bergs and field ice, but in no great quantities. As their outside thermometer, when just above the placid water--for there were no waves here--registered twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit, they accounted for this scarcity of ice by the absence of land on which fresh water could freeze, and by the fact that it was not cold enough to congeal the very salt sea-water.

Finally they reached another archipelago a few hundred miles in extent, the larger islands of which were covered with a sheet of ice, at the edges of which small icebergs were being formed by breaking off and slowly floating. Finding a small island on which the coating was thin, they grounded the Callisto, and stepped out for the first time in several days. The air was so still that a small piece of paper released at a height of six feet sank slowly and went as straight as the string of a plumb-line. The sun was bisected by the line of the horizon, and appeared to be moving about them in a circle, with only its upper half visible. As Jupiter's northern hemisphere was passing through its autumnal equinox, they concluded they had landed exactly at the pole. "Now to work on our experiment," said Cortlandt. "I wonder how we may best get below the frozen surface?" "We can explode a small quantity of dynamite," replied Bearwarden, "after which the digging will be comparatively easy."

While Cortlandt and Bearwarden prepared the mine, Ayrault brought out a pickaxe, two shovels, and the battery and wires with which to ignite the explosive. They made their preparations within one hundred feet of the Callisto, or much nearer than an equivalent amount of gunpowder could have been discharged.

"This recalls an old laboratory experiment, or rather lecture," said Cortlandt, as they completed the arrangements, "for the illustration is not as a rule carried out. Explode two pounds of powder on an iron safe in a room with the windows closed, and the windows will be blown out, while the safe remains uninjured. Explode an equivalent amount of dynamite on top of the safe, and it will be destroyed, while the glass panes are not even cracked. This illustrates the difference in rapidity with which the explosions take place. To the intensely rapid action of dynamite the air affords as much resistance as a solid substance, while the explosion of the powder is so slow that the air has time to move away; hence the destruction of the windows in the first case, and the safe in the second." When they had moved beyond the danger line, Bearwarden, as the party's practising engineer, pressed the button, and the explosion did the rest. They found that the ground was frozen to a depth of but little more than a foot, below which it became perceptibly warm. Plying their shovels vigorously, they had soon dug the hole so deep that its edges were above their heads. When the floor was ten feet below the surrounding level the thermometer registered sixty.

"This is scarcely a fair test," said Cortlandt, "since the heat rises and is lost as fast as given off. Let us therefore close the opening and see in what time it will melt a number of cubic feet of ice."

Accordingly they climbed out, threw in about a cart-load of ice, and covered the opening with two of the Callisto's thick rugs. In half an hour all the ice had melted, and in another half hour the water was hot.

"No arctic expedition need freeze to death here," said Bearwarden, "since all a man would have to do would be to burrow a few feet to be as warm as toast."

As the island on which they had landed was at one side of the archipelago, but was itself at the exact pole, it followed that the centre of the archipelago was not the part farthest north. This in a measure accounted for the slight thickness of ice and snow, for the isobaric lines would slope, and consequently what wind there was would flow towards the interior of the archipelago, whose surface was colder than the surrounding ocean. The moist air, however, coming almost entirely from the south, would lose most of its moisture by condensation in passing over the ice-laden land, and so, like the clouds over the region east of the Andes, would have but little left to let fall on this extreme northern part. The blanketing effect of a great thickness of snow would also cause, the lower strata of ice to melt, by keeping in the heat constantly given off by the warm planet. "I think there can be no question," said Cortlandt, "that, as a result of Jupiter's great flattening at the poles and the drawing of the crust, which moves faster in Jupiter's rotation than any other part, towards the equator, the crust must be particularly thin here; for, were it as thin all over, there would be no space for the coal-beds, which, judging from the purity of the atmosphere, must be very extensive. Further, we can recall that the water in the hot spring near which we alighted, which evidently came from a far greater depth than we have here, was not as hot as this. The conclusion is clear that elsewhere the internal heat is not as near the surface as here." "The more I see of Jupiter," exclaimed Bearwarden enthusiastically, "the more charmed I become. It almost exactly supplies what I have been conjuring up as my idea of a perfect planet. Its compensations of high land near the equator, and low with effective internal heat at the poles, are ideal. The gradual slope of its continental elevations, on account of their extent, will ease the work of operating railways, and the atmosphere's density will be just the thing for our flying machines, while Nature has supplied all sources of power so lavishly that no undertaking will be too great. Though land as yet, to judge by our photographs, occupies only about one eighth of the surface, we know, from the experience of the other planets, that this is bound to increase; so that, if the human race can perpetuate itself on Jupiter long enough, it will undoubtedly have one fourth or a larger proportion for occupation, though the land already upheaved comprises fully forty times the area of our entire globe, which, as we know, is still three-fourths water." "Since we have reached what we might call the end of Jupiter, and still have time," continued Ayrault, "let us proceed to Saturn, where we may find even stranger things than here. I hoped we could investigate the great red spot, but am convinced we have seen the beginning of one in Twentieth Century Archipelago, and what, under favourable conditions, will be recognized as such on earth."

It was just six terrestrial weeks since they had set out, and therefore February 2d on earth.

"It would be best, in any case, to start from Jupiter's equator," said Cortlandt, "for the straight line we should make from the surface here would be at right angles to Saturn. We shall probably, in spite of ourselves, swing a few degrees beyond the line, and so can get a bird's-eye view of some portion of the southern hemisphere."

"All aboard for Saturn!" cried Bearwarden enthusiastically, in his jovial way. "This will be a journey."

Chapter XIV.Contents THE SCENE SHIFTS.

Having returned the rugs to the Callisto, they applied the maximum power of the batteries to rising, closed all openings when the barometer registered thirty, and moved off into space. When Several thousand miles above the pole, they diverted part of the power to attracting the nearest moon that was in the plane of Jupiter's equator, and by the time their upward motion had ceased were moving well in its direction. Their rapid motion aided the work of resisting gravity, since their car had in fact become a small moon, revolving, like those of Uranus or that of Neptune, in an orbit varying greatly from the plane of the ecliptic. As they flew south at a height ranging from two thousand to three thousand miles, the planet revolved before them, and they had a chance of obtaining a thorough view. There were but a few scattered islands on the side of the Northern hemisphere opposite to that over which they had reached the pole, and in the varying colours of the water, which they attributed to temperature or to some substance in solution, they recognized what they had always heard described on earth as the bands of Jupiter, encircling the planet with great belts, the colour varying with the latitude. At about latitude forty-five these bands were purple, farther south light olive green, and at the equator a brown orange. Shortly after they swung across the equator the ocean again became purple, and at the same time a well-defined and very brilliant white spot came into view. Its brightness showed slight variations in intensity, though its general shape remained unchanged. It had another peculiarity, in that it possessed a fairly rapid motion of its own, as it moved eastward across the surface of the ocean. It exhibited all the phenomena of the storm they had watched in crossing Secretary Deepwaters Bay, but covered a larger area, and was far more violent. Their glasses showed them vast sheets of spray driven along at tremendous speed, while the surface was milky white.

"This," said Bearwarden, picking up a book, "solves to my mind the mystery of the white spot described by the English writer Chambers, in 1889, as follows:

"'During the last few years a brilliant white spot has been visible on the equatorial border of the great southern belt. A curious fact in connection with this spot is, that it moves with a velocity of some two hundred and sixty miles per hour greater than the red spot. Denning obtained one hundred and sixty-nine observations of this bright marking during the years 1880-1883, and determined the period as nine hours, fifty minutes, eight and seven tenths seconds (five and a half minutes less than that of the red spot). Although the latter is now somewhat faint, the white spot gives promise of remaining visible for many years. During the year 1886 a large number of observations of Jupiter were made at the Dearborn Observatory, Chicago, U. S., by Prof. G. W. Hough, using the eighteen-and-a-half-inch refractor of the observatory. Inasmuch as these observations are not only of high intrinsic interest, but are in conflict, to some extent, with previous records, a somewhat full abstract of them will be useful: The object of general interest was the great red spot. The outline, shape, and size of this remarkable object has remained without material change from the year 1879, when it was first observed here, until the present time. According to our observations, during the whole of this period it has shown a sharp and well-defined outline, and at no time has it coalesced or been joined to any belt in its proximity, as has been alleged by some observers. During the year 1885 the middle of the spot was very much paler in colour than the margins, causing it to appear as an elliptical ring. The ring form has continued up to the present time. While the outline of the spot has remained very constant, the colour has changed materially from year to year. During the past three years (1884-'86) it has at times been very faint, so as barely to be visible. The persistence of this object for so many years leads me to infer that the formerly accepted theory, that the phenomena seen on the surface of the planet are atmospheric, is no longer tenable. The statement so often made in text-books, that in the course of a few days or months the whole aspect of the planet may be changed, is obviously erroneous. The oval white spots on the southern hemisphere of the planet, nine degrees south of the equator, have been systematically observed at every opposition during the past eight years. They are generally found in groups of three or more, but are rather difficult to observe. The rotation period deduced from them is nearly the same as from the great red spot. These spots usually have a slow drift in longitude of about five seconds daily