A Trip to Venus: A Novel, John Munro [best novel books to read txt] 📗

Carmichael tried to make her father understand the difficulty in hopes that he would suggest a remedy, but all her efforts were in vain. Carmichael lay with his eyes closed in a kind of lethargy or paralysis.

"Perhaps, when we are falling through the planet's atmosphere," said I, "if we open the scuttles and let the cold air blow through the room, it will cool the engines."

"I'm afraid there will not be time," replied Gazen, shaking his head; "we shall fall much faster than we rose. The friction of the air against the car will generate heat. We shall drop down like a meteoric stone and be smashed to atoms."

"We have parachutes," said Miss Carmichael, "do you think we shall be able to save our lives?"

"I doubt it," answered Gazen sadly. "They would be torn and whirled away."

"So far as I can see there is only one hope for us," said I. "If we should happen to fall into a deep sea or lake, the car would rise to the surface again."

"Yes, that is true," responded Gazen; "the car is hollow and light. It would float. The water would also cool the machines and we might escape."

The bare possibility cheered us with a ray of hope.

"If we only had time, my father might recover, and I believe he would save us yet," said Miss Carmichael.

"I wonder how much time we have," muttered Gazen.

"We can't tell," said I. "It depends on the height we had reached and the speed we were going at when the engines stopped. We shall rise like a ball thrown into the air and then fall back to the ground."

"I wonder if we are still rising," ejaculated Gazen. "Let us take a look at the planet."

"Don't be long," pleaded Miss Carmichael, as we turned to go. "Meanwhile, I shall try and bring my father round."

On getting to the observatory, we consulted the atmospheric pressure gauge and found it out of use, a sign that we had attained an altitude beyond the atmosphere of Mercury, and were now in empty space.

We turned to the planet, whose enormous disc, muffled in cloud, was shining lividly in the weird sky. At one part of the limb a range of lofty mountain peaks rose above the clouds and chequered them with shadow.

Fixing our eyes upon this landmark we watched it with bated breath. Was it coming nearer, or was it receding from us? That was the momentous question.

My feelings might be compared to those of a prisoner at the bar watching the face of the juryman who is about to deliver the verdict.

After a time—I know not how long—but it seemed an age—the professor exclaimed,

"I believe we are still rising."

It was my own impression, for the peak I was regarding had grown as I thought smaller, but I did not feel sure, and preferred to trust the more experienced eyes of the astronomer.

"I shall try the telescope," he went on; "we are a long way from the planet."

"How far do you think?"

"Many thousand miles at least."

"So much the better. We shall get more time."

"Humph! prolonging the agony, that's all. I begin to wish it was all over."

Gazen directed his instrument on the planet, and we resumed our observations.

"We are no longer rising," said Gazen after a time. "I suppose we are near the turning-point."

As a prisoner scans the countenance of the judge who is about to pronounce the sentence of life or death, I scanned the cloudy surface underneath us, to see if I could discover any signs of an ocean that would break our fall, but the vapours were too thick and compact.

Every instant I expected to hear the fatal intelligence that our descent had begun.

"Strange!" muttered Gazen by-and-by, as if speaking to himself.

"What is strange?"

"We are neither rising nor falling now. We don't seem to move."

"Impossible!"

"Nevertheless, it's a fact," he exclaimed at the end of some minutes. "The focus of the telescope is constant. We are evidently standing still."

His words sounded like a reprieve to a condemned man on the morning of his execution, and in the revulsion of my feeling I shouted,

"Hurrah!"

"What can it mean?" cried Gazen.

"Simply this," said I joyfully. "We have reached the 'dead-point,' where the attraction of Mercury on the car is balanced by the attraction of the sun. It can't be anything else."

"Wait a minute," said Gazen, making a rapid calculation. "Yes, yes, probably you are right. I did not think we had come so far; but I had forgotten that gravitation on Mercury is only half as strong as it is on the Earth or Venus. Let us go and tell Miss Carmichael."

We hurried downstairs to the engine room and found her kneeling beside her father, who was no better.

She did not seem much enlivened by the good news.

"What will that do for us?" she enquired doubtfully.

"We can remain here as long as we like, suspended between the Sun and Mercury," replied Gazen.

"Is it better to linger and die in a living tomb than be dashed to pieces and have done with it?"

"But we shall gain time for your father to recover."

"I am afraid my father will never recover in this place. The heat is killing him. Unless we can get further away from the sun he will die, I'm sure he will."

Her eyes filled with tears.

"Don't distress yourself, dear Miss Carmichael, please don't," said Gazen tenderly. "Now that we have time to think, perhaps we shall hit upon some plan."

An idea flashed into my head.

"Look here," said I to Gazen, "you remember our conversation in your observatory one day on the propelling power of rockets—how a rocket might be used to drive a car through space?"

"Yes; but we have no rockets."

"No, but we have rifles, and rifle bullets fired from the car, though not so powerful, will have a similar effect."

"Well?"

"The car is now at rest in space. A slight impulse will direct it one way or another. Why should we not send it off in such a way that in falling towards Mercury it will not strike the planet, but circle round it; or if it should fall towards the surface, will do so at a great slant, and allow the atmosphere to cool the engines."

"Let me see," said Gazen, drawing a diagram in his note-book, and studying it attentively. "Yes, there is something in that. It's a forlorn hope at best, but perhaps it's our only hope. If we could only get into the shadow of the planet we might be saved."

As delay might prove fatal to Carmichael, and since it was uncertain whether he could right the engines in their present situation, we decided to act on the suggestion without loss of time. Gazen and I calculated the positions of the rifles and the number of shots to be fired in order to give the required impetus to the car. The engine-room, being well provided with scuttles, was chosen as the scene of our operations. A brace of magazine rifles were fixed through two of the scuttles in such a way that the recoil of the shots would urge the car in an oblique direction backwards, so as to clear or almost clear the planet, allowance being made for the forward motion of the latter in its orbit. Needless to say, the barrel of each rifle was packed round so as to keep the air in the car from escaping into space.

At a given signal the rifles were discharged simultaneously by Gazen and myself. There was little noise, but the car trembled with the shock, and the prostrate man opened his eyes.

Had it produced the desired effect? We could not tell without an appeal to the telescope.

"I'll be back in a moment," cried Gazen, springing upstairs to the observatory.

"Do you feel any better, father?" enquired Miss Carmichael, laying her cool hand on the invalid's fevered brow.

He winked, and tried to nod in the affirmative. "Were you asleep, father? Did the shock rouse you?"

He winked again.

"Do you know what we are doing?" Before he could answer the foot of Gazen sounded on the stair. He had left us with an eager, almost a confident eye. He came back looking grave in the extreme.

"We are not falling towards Mercury," he said gloomily. "We are rushing to the sun!"

I cannot depict our emotion at this awful announcement which changed our hopes into despair. Probably it affected each of us in a different manner. I cannot recollect my own feelings well enough to analyse them, and suppose I must have been astounded for a time. A vision of the car, plunging through an atmosphere of flame, into the fiery entrails of the sun, flashed across my excited brain, and then I seemed to lose the power of thought.

"Out of the frying-pan into the fire," said I at last, in frivolous reaction.

"His will be done!" murmured Miss Carmichael, instinctively drawing closer to her father, who seemed to realise our jeopardy.

"We must look the matter in the face," said Gazen, with a sigh.

"What a death!" I exclaimed, "to sit and watch the vast glowing furnace that is to swallow us up come nearer and nearer, second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour."

"The nearer we approach the sun the faster we shall go," said Gazen. "For one thing, we shall be dead long before we reach him. The heat will stifle us. It will be all over in a few hours."

What a death! To see, to feel ourselves roasting as in an oven. It was too horrible.

"Are you certain there is no mistake?" I asked at length.

"Quite," replied Gazen. "Come and see for yourself."

We had all but gained the door when Miss Carmichael followed us.

"Professor," she said, with a tremor in her voice, and a look of supplication in her eyes, "you will come back soon—you will not leave us long."

"No, my darling—I beg your pardon," answered Gazen, obeying the impulse of his heart. "God knows I would give my life to save you if I could."

In another instant he had locked her in his arms.

I left them together, and ascended to the observatory, where Gazen soon afterwards rejoined me.

"I'm the happiest man alive," said he, with a beaming countenance. "Congratulate me. I'm betrothed to Miss Carmichael."

I took his proffered hand, scarcely knowing whether to laugh or cry.

"It seems to me that I have found my life in losing it," he continued with a grim smile. "Saturn! what a courtship is ours—what an engagement—what a bridal bed! But there, old fellow, I'm afraid I'm happier than you—alone in spirit, and separated from her you love. Perhaps I was wrong to carry you away from Venus—it has not turned out well—but I acted for the best. Forgive me!"

I wrung his hand in silence.

"Now let us take a look through the telescope," he went on, wiping his eyes, and adjusting the instrument. "You will see how soon it gets out of focus. We are flying from Mercury, my friend, faster and faster."

It was true.

"But I don't understand how that should be," said I. "The firing ought to have had a contrary effect."

"The rifles are not to blame," answered Gazen. "If we had used them earlier we might have saved ourselves. But all the time that we were discussing ways and means, and making our preparations to shoot, we were gradually drifting towards the sun without knowing it. We overlooked the fact that the orbit of Mercury is very far from circular, and that he is now moving further away from the sun every instant. As a consequence his attractive power over the car is growing weaker every moment. The car had reached the 'dead-point' where the attractive powers of the sun and planet over it just balanced each other; but as that of the planet grew feebler the balance turned, and the car was drawn with ever accelerating velocity towards the sun."

"Like enough."

"I can satisfy you of it by pointing the telescope at a sun-spot," said Gazen, bringing the instrument to bear upon the sun. "You will then see how fast we are running to perdition. I say—what would our friends in London think if they could see us now? Wouldn't old Possil snigger! Well, I shall get the better of him at last. I shall solve the great mystery of the 'sun-spots' and the 'willow leaves.' Only he will never know it. That's a bitter drop in the cup!"

So saying, he applied his eye to the telescope, his ruling passion strong in death. For myself, as often as I had admired the glorious luminary, I could not think of it now without a shudder, and fell a prey to my own melancholy ruminations.

So this was the end! After all our care and forethought, after all our struggles, after all our success, to perish miserably