The Man Who Rocked the Earth, Robert Williams Wood [the two towers ebook .TXT] 📗

otherwise. At the top of a short ladder a trapdoor opened inward, and Bennie found himself in a small compartment scarcely large enough to turn around in, from which a second door opened into the body of the Ring proper.

"It's all right—to-day," said the man hesitatingly. "I fixed—the air-lock—yesterday, sir. The leak—was here—at the hinge—but it's quite tight—now." He pointed at the door.

"Good," remarked Bennie. "I'll look around and see how things are."

This seemed to him to be eminently safe—and allowing for a program of investigation absolutely essential at the moment. Once he could master the secret of the Ring and be sure that the part of the fellow's brain which controlled the performance of his customary duties had not been injured by the shock of the night before, it might be possible to carry out the daring project which had suggested itself.

Passing through the inner door of the air-lock he entered the chart room of the Ring, followed stumblingly by his companion. It was warm and cozy; the first warmth Hooker had experienced for nearly a month. It made him feel faint, and he dropped into an armchair and pulled off his Glengarry. The survivor of the explosion, standing awkwardly at his side, fumbled with his cap. Ever and anon he rubbed his head.

Bennie sank back into the cushions and looked about him. On the opposite wall hung a map of the world on Mercator's Projection, and from a spot in Northern Labrador red lines radiated in all directions, which formed great curved loops, returning to the starting-point.

"The flights of the Ring," thought Bennie. "There's the one where they busted the Atlas Mountains," following with his eyes the crimson thread which ran diagonally across the Atlantic, traversed Spain and the Mediterranean, and circling in a narrow loop over the coast of Northern Africa turned back into its original track. Visions came to him of guiding the car for an afternoon jaunt across the Sahara, the gloomy forests of the Congo, into the Antarctic, and thence home in time for afternoon tea, via the Easter Islands, Hawaii, and Alaska. But why stop there? What was to prevent a trip to the moon? Or Mars? Or for that matter into the unknown realms outside the solar system—the fourth dimension, perhaps—or even the fifth dimension——

"Excuse me," said the machinist suddenly, "I just forgot—whether you take—cigars or cigarettes. You see I only acted as—table orderly—once—when Smith had that sprain." His hands moved uncertainly on the shelves, beyond the map. The heart of Professor Hooker leaped.

"Cigars!" he almost shouted.

The man found a box of Havanas and struck a match.

The bliss of it! And if there was tobacco there must be food and drink as well. He began to feel strangely exhilarated. But how to handle the man beside him? Pax would certainly never ask the questions that he wished to ask. He smoked rapidly, thinking hard. Of course he might pretend that he, too, had forgotten things. And at first this seemed to be the only way out of the difficulty. Then he had an inspiration.

"Look here," he remarked, rather severely. "Something's happened to you. You say you've forgotten what occurred yesterday? How do I know but you have forgotten everything you ever knew? You remember your name?"

"My name, sir?" The man laughed in a foolish fashion. "Why—of course I remember—my name. I wouldn't—be likely—to forget—that: Atterbury—I'm Atterbury—electrician of the Chimaera." And he drew himself up.

"That's all right," said Bennie, "but what were we doing yesterday? What is the very last thing that you can go back to?"

The man wrinkled his forehead. "The last thing? Why, sir, you told us you were going—to turn over the pole a bit—and freeze up Europe. I was up here—loading the condenser—when you cut me off from the alternator. I opened the switch—and put on the electrometer to see—if we had enough. Next—everything was clouded, and I went—over to the window to see—what was going on."

"Yes," commented Bennie approvingly, "all right so far. What happened then?"

"Why, after that, sir, after that, there was the Ray of course, and er—I don't seem to remember—oh, yes, a short circuit—and I ran—out on the platform—forgot all about the danger! After that, everything's confused. It's like a dream. Your coming up—the ladder—seemed—to wake me up." The machinist smiled sheepishly.

The plan was working well. Professor Hooker was learning things fast.

"Do you think that the two of us can fly the Chimaera south again?" he asked, inspecting the map.

"Why not?" answered Atterbury. "The balancer is working—better now—and—doesn't take—much attention—and you can lay the course—and manage—the landing. I was going to put a fresh uranium cylinder in the tractor this morning—but I—forgot."

"There you go, forgetting again!" growled Bennie, realizing that his only excuse for asking questions hung on this fiction. And there were many, many more questions that he must ask before he would be able to fly. "You don't seem quite right in your coco this morning, Atterbury," he said. "I think we'll look things over a bit—the condenser first."

"Very well, sir." Atterbury turned and groped his way through a doorway, and they passed first into what appeared to be a storage-battery room. Huge glass tanks filled with amber-coloured fluid, in which numerous parallel plates were supported, lined the walls from floor to ceiling.

An ammeter on the wall caught Bennie's attention. "Weston Direct Reading A. C. Ammeter," he read on the dial. Alternate current! What were they doing with an alternating current in the storage-battery room? His eyes followed the wires along the wall. Yes, they ran to the terminals of the battery. It dawned upon him that there might be something here undreamed of in electrical engineering—a storage battery for an alternating current!

The electrician closed a row of switches, brought the two polished brass spheres of the discharger within striking distance, and instantly a blinding current of sparks roared between the terminals. He had been right. This battery not only was charged by an alternating current, but delivered one of high potential. He peered into the cells, racking his brain for an explanation.

"Atterbury," said he meditatively, "did I ever tell you why they do that?"

"Yes," answered the man. "You—told me—once. The two metals—in the electrolyte—come down—on the plates—in alternate films—as—the current changes direction. But you never told me—what the electrolyte was—I don't suppose—you—would be willing to now, would you?"

"H'm," said Bennie, "some time, maybe."

But this cue was all that he required. A clever scheme! Pax had formed layers of molecular thickness of two different metals in alternation by the to-and-fro swing of his charging current. When the battery discharged the metals went into solution, each plate becoming alternately positive and negative. He wondered what Pax had used for an electrolyte that enabled him to get a metallic deposit at each electrode. And he wondered also why the metals did not alloy. But it would not do for him to linger too long over a mere detail of equipment. And he turned away to continue his tour of inspection, a tour which occupied most of the morning, and during which he found a well-stocked gallery and made himself a cup of coffee.[5]

But the more he learned about the mechanism of the Ring the greater became his misgivings about undertaking the return journey alone with Atterbury through the air. If they were to go, the start must be made within a few days, for the condenser held its charge but a comparatively short time, and its energy was necessary for starting the Ring. When freshly charged it supplied current for the thermic inductor for nearly three minutes, but the metallic films, deposited on the plates, dissolved slowly in the fluid, and after three or four days there remained only enough for a thirty-second run, hardly enough to lift the Ring from the earth. Once in the air, the downward blast from the tractor operated a turbine alternator mounted on a skeleton framework at the centre of the Ring, and the current supplied by this machine enabled the Ring to continue its flight indefinitely, or until the cylinder of uranium was completely disintegrated.

Yet to trek back over the route by which he had come appeared to be equally impossible. There was little likelihood that the two Indians would return; they were probably already thirty miles on their way back to the coast. If only he could get word to Thornton or some of those chaps at Washington they might send a relief expedition! But a ship would be weeks in getting to the coast, and how could he live in the meantime? There were provisions for only a few days in the Ring, and the storehouse in the valley had been wiped out of existence. Only an aeroplane could do the trick. And then he thought of Burke, his classmate—Burke who had devoted his life to heavier-than-air machines, and who, since his memorable flight across the Atlantic in the Stormy Petrol, had been a national hero. Burke could reach him in ten hours, but how could he reach Burke? In the heart of the frozen wilderness of Labrador he might as well be on another planet, as far as communication with the civilized world was concerned.

A burst of sunlight shot through the window and formed an oval patch on the floor at his feet. The weather was clearing. He went out upon the platform. Patches of blue sky appeared overhead. As he gazed disconsolately across the valley toward the tower, his eye caught the glisten of something high in the air. From the top of the wreckage five thin shining lines ran parallel across the sky and disappeared in a small cloud which hung low over the face of the cliff.

"The antennæ!" exclaimed Bennie. "A wireless to Burke." Burke would come; he knew Burke. A thousand miles overland was nothing to him. Hadn't he wagered five thousand dollars at the club that he would fly to the pole and bring back Peary's flag—with no takers? Why, Burke would take him home with as little trouble as a taxicab. And then, aghast, he remembered the complete destruction in the valley. The wireless plant had gone with the rest. He ran back into the chart room and called Atterbury.

"Can we get off a message to Washington?" he demanded. "The wires are still up, and we have the condenser."

"We might, sir, if it's not—a long one, though you've always said there was danger in running the engine with the car bolted down. We did it the time the big machine burnt out a coil. I can throw—a wire—over the antennæ with a rocket—and join up—with the turbine machine. It will increase—our wave length, but they ought to pick us up."

"We'll try it, anyway," announced Bennie.

He inspected the chart and measured the distance in an airline from Boston to the point where the red lines converged. It was a trifle less than the distance between Boston and Chicago. Burke had done that in nine hours on the trial trip of his trans-Atlantic monoplane. If the machine was in order and Burke started in the morning he would be with them by sunset, if he didn't get lost. But Bennie knew that Burke could drive his machine by dead reckoning and strike within a few leagues of a target a thousand miles away.

A muffled roar outside interrupted his musings, and running out on the platform again he found Atterbury attaching the cord of the aluminum ribbon, which the rocket had carried up and over the antennæ, to one of the brush bars of the alternator.

"Nearly ready, sir," he said. "We'd best—lock the storm bolts—to hold her down—in case we have—to crowd on the power. We've got to use—pretty near the full lift—to get the alternator up—to the proper speed."

A chill ran down Bennie's spine. They were going to start the engine! In a moment he would be within twenty feet of a blast of disintegration products capable of lifting the whole machine into the air, and