Space Fever

: Secrets of Space
: Pharaoh's Broker

We counted seven successive returns of the peaks of the Andes, and being

by that time certainly six million miles from the Earth, we could

distinguish them no longer. Then followed what I remember as a very long

and unspeakably monotonous period, without any adequate method of

marking the time. Our days became a full week long, for the only way we

could guess at the time was by the quarterings of the Moon. We could

sti l see her about the size of a marble in the telescope, and as her

crescent began to wane, and finally her light entirely disappeared, we

knew she was then just between us and the Earth, and shining upon that

planet as a Full Moon. This was due to occur fifteen days after our

departure. Then we watched her grow from a thin crescent to a bright

quarter, and we knew another week had elapsed.



"We shall soon be able to determine one date with absolute certainty," I

said to the doctor, when we must have been some twenty days out. "I have

been reading up your almanack, and I find there is a total eclipse of

the Sun by the Moon on June 29th."



"You might as well try to eclipse him with a straw-hat, as far as we are

concerned," he replied. "The Moon will necessarily be on the further

side of the Earth when that occurs, and the eclipse will barely reach

the Earth. It will fall short of us by a matter of some thirty million

miles!"



It was soon after this that we gave up observing the Earth as a planet,

put on our darkened lens, and proceeded to hold her as a spot in the Sun

a little to the left of his centre. The Moon remained a tiny spot of

light outside for a few days; but finally she entered the Sun also, and

was seen as a faint spot travelling toward the Earth-spot.



Although the dazzling quality of the light, into which we had emerged

after the second day, was finally beginning to wane and pale a little,

Mars was still invisible. In fact, no stars or planets were visible;

only the gleaming Sun with the Earth-spot upon it. Our thermometer was

poorly placed in the glare of the Sun at the rear; but it showed the

heat was decreasing, and from a temperature of thirty-five degrees,

observed at the end of the second day, it had now fallen to twelve, and

was diminishing regularly about two degrees daily as nearly as we could

reckon.



Our appetites were steadily failing, and for two very good reasons: the

unsuitable foods and the impossibility of getting any exercise. There

was no such thing as getting any healthy actions of the body. Nothing

had any weight, and such a thing as physical labour was impossible on

the face of it. I attempted to go through regular courses of gymnastics

at frequent intervals; but as my body and its members weighed nothing,

my muscles found nothing whatever to expend their force upon. I thought

myself worse than Prometheus bound upon his rock, for he could at least

struggle with the birds of prey and pull upon his chains! I might as

well have been utterly paralyzed, and I actually began to fear that I

should lose all my strength, and that my muscles would forget their

cunning.



And our foods could not have been more unsuitable. The light vegetable

diet which this lack of exercise called for was impossible. We had never

had any fresh vegetables or fruits, and our tinned and canned supplies

of these had been rapidly exhausted. We had plenty of solid, meaty foods

and beef essences; but our systems did not require these, and at last

absolutely refused to have them. I lived for days at a time upon beer

and biscuits, and looked longingly at my cigars. I believed I could have

existed comfortably and luxuriously upon smoke alone. My dreams were

filled with visions of ripe, luscious fruits and fresh, crisp

vegetables. When I awoke, I loathed the only foods we had.



I believe I should finally have given up eating, had I not hit upon a

method of exercise at last. It was a sort of rowing or pulling machine,

which I rigged up by running a bar through one end of the doctor's

spring scales, and fastening the other end to the foot of my bed. I

pulled vigorously against this spring for hours at a time, and was

delighted to find that my strength had not left me, and that I could

easily lift as much as these scales had been made to weigh. I remember

the returned appetite with which I enjoyed potted meat and a tinned

pudding, after the first hour of as vigorous exercise as our rarefied

air would permit.



The Moon-spot had disappeared and gone to her eclipse behind the Earth,

when an incident occurred to vary the monotony of our existence a

little, and to suggest to me a diversion that had been hitherto

forbidden. Our supply of water in the outer tank had long ago boiled

away, and I had lighted the gas to heat water for the doctor's coffee. I

had taken the cup up to him and remained chatting with him, when

presently I smelled something burning from the compartment below. I

descended quickly, and saw that my light bedclothes, which now weighed

less than a feather, and often floated from their place, had been drawn

into the flame by the draft of the burning gas. They were floating about

the compartment now, all aflame and threatening to set fire to

everything. We had not a drop of water to spare; but for once I thought

of the right thing to do without hesitation. I pushed out the

ventilating cylinder, hurried back to the doctor's compartment and

thrust in the bulkhead. Within two minutes all the air had escaped from

my room, and the fire had died for lack of oxygen. I waited a few

minutes longer for the smoke to escape, and then we admitted condensed

air, but only to the remarkably low pressure of eighteen. Within five

minutes the compartment was ready again, and there was not a trace of

smoke or smell of fire to be perceived.



"I congratulate you on your quick perception and prompt action," said

the doctor when it was over.



"Quick rubbish!" I exclaimed. "I have been a dundering fool for four

weeks by the Moon! I might just as well have been smoking ever since I

contrived this self-ventilating arrangement. The compartment becomes a

perfectly clean vacuum at each operation, yet I had to wait for this bed

clothing to catch fire before I could think of so simple a thing!"



It was at the meal time just preceding the next changing of air that I

opened the last tin of canned peas, as a sort of treat for the doctor to

offset my expected revel in fragrant tobacco. I prepared half the

quantity for him, but left my portion in the tin until I should be

hungrier. With the prospects of a good smoke before me, I had no

appetite for food. I put in the bulkhead to prevent the smoke from

entering his compartment and lighted my Havana. Then I took Two-spot on

my lap and stretched myself for a reverie. On Earth, smoking time had

been my period for reflection. And far back on that distant planet, what

were they doing now? In that one busy corner that had known me, they had

probably wondered at my disappearance for a day or two; but after the

month that had passed I was certainly forgotten. There were few back

there whom I cared for, and not many had much reason to remember me. My

interests, my desires, my hopes were all ahead of me on a new planet.

And what was waiting for me on Mars? Discovery, riches perhaps, and a

measure of fame when I returned. Then I thought of the numberless

problems that the next few weeks must solve for us. Would there be

intelligent inhabitants on Mars? Would they be in the forms of men or

beasts? Would they be civilized or savage? Would they speak a language,

and how could we learn to communicate with them? Would they have foods

suitable to us; indeed, would the very air they breathed be fit to

sustain our lives? Should we find them peaceable, or, if warlike, should

we be able to cope with them?



These thoughts were interrupted by the doctor, who called feebly to me

to come up. "Don't eat any of the peas," he said weakly. "There was a

queer taste about them, and they have made me deathly sick."



He was very wretched, and grew rapidly worse. I immediately saw that it

was a severe case of poisoning, and I did everything I could to relieve

him, but he groaned in agony for several hours. Finally he fell asleep,

but his rest was disturbed by fits of delirium, in which he raved wildly

in German mixed with English. As he slept I had time to think the matter

over carefully. After all, it was a thing which required only simple

remedies, and I had administered them. It was only a question of a

little nursing and a careful diet, and he would be well again.



But his fever increased and his delirium became more frequent, and I

began to appreciate that the derangement incident to the poisoning had

prepared the way for a more serious illness. During his ravings I caught

a glimpse of the struggling and ambitious side of his nature, which he

always so carefully repressed.



Once I heard him mumble this to himself in German: "Kepler perceived a

little, he saw dimly; Newton comprehended the easy half; but Anderwelt,

Anderwelt of Heidelberg, grasped the hidden meaning!"



In spite of all my attentions (I did not then understand the nature of

Space Fever, of course), he was growing steadily worse, and I was

becoming desperate. I could not afford to have him ill long. The

currents would probably continue to work fairly well until it became

necessary to reverse them, and that time was not far off. Unless they

were reversed exactly at the right moment, we might fall into the

neutral spot and be held there for ever. Even if I managed to stop the

negative current, and succeeded in falling towards Mars, I could not

regulate the positive current so as to temper our fall and make a safe

landing. It was equally dangerous to remain fixed in space, or to fall

headlong upon a planet and be smashed, or be buried miles deep if the

projectile did not collapse.



I had no way of telling how much time passed, but it seemed to me a very

long period, and he grew steadily worse as we approached the neutral

point. I tried to rouse him from his delirium. I addressed him

jocularly, then commandingly, then beseechingly. And he answered me

always with reflections from that other side of his nature which one

rarely saw when he was well.



"Hast thou seen red ants crawling upon a cherry? Such are the mere

circumnavigators of a globe! What! Hath not the world forgotten a

Columbus? How long, then, will it remember---- Hast thou no cooler

water? This is tepid and bitter!"



Ever since the last quarter of the Moon, which must have been ten days

ago, there had not been the slightest perceptible evidence of movement.

The standards by which we judge motion on the Earth had failed ever

since we left the atmosphere. There was no rushing or whizzing; we

passed nothing; all the ordinary evidences of speed were absent. When

you lie in the state-room of a smoothly moving steamer, no forward

motion is perceptible. If you see another ship pass near by, you get a

sudden surprising idea of the speed. If you watch the receding water,

you appear to be going forward slowly; and if you watch the spray at the

bow or the wake astern, you appreciate the movement more fully. But if

the waves or the tide happen to be running with the ship, she has

apparently almost stopped, when really her speed has been somewhat

accelerated. If you watch the distant stars, you can scarcely perceive

any motion at all; and if the clouds should be moving in the same

direction as the ship, her motion appears reversed.



We had none of these things by which to judge, and we appeared to be

hanging perfectly still in space, though the doctor had assured me we

were travelling at least five hundred miles a minute. This was rational,

as it agreed with the diminishing size of the Earth; but it required an

effort of faith on my part to believe that we had been moving at all.



But suppose we should gradually lose our speed and stop in a neutral

point, how should I know it? The Earth now was, and had been for ten

days, a mere spot on the Sun. While Mars had been visible, he had never

increased in size in the telescope, and he was now invisible. The only

way I could tell would be to wait until after many days had elapsed, and

if Mars did not finally come into view, I should know something was

wrong. But it would be too late then; there would be no winds or tides,

no weight or buoyancy, nothing to move us out of that dreadful calm

where even gravity does not exist. That must be avoided at every cost!

But might we not be very near it now? Weight had been practically

nothing for a month, within an hour it might be positively nothing,

and----



The doctor's mutterings interrupted these thoughts. "The power with

which to travel was so simple and so vast! It all lay hidden in that

elementary law of magnetism, like poles repel and unlike poles attract.

But the road to travel and the problems by the way, those were the hard

things!"



He was putting them all in the past tense, as if he had already solved

them! But what was that law of magnetism he mentioned? Perhaps he would

reveal his secrets to me in his ravings! I must mark every word he said;

for it was clear I must solve the problem, he would not be well in time.

I must brush the cobwebs from my meagre science and struggle with his

invention.



"Unlike poles attract," he had said. Then Earth and matter must normally

have unlike poles, and to make Earth repel matter it would only be

necessary to change the polarization of the matter. Yes, he had told me

it was all accomplished by polarizing the steel and iron of the

projectile! When they were made the same pole as the Earth, then she

repelled them. But if the whole thing were so simple, why had it never

been discovered before? Ah, that is the strong shield behind which

incredulity always takes refuge!



I ventured near the gravity apparatus and examined it carefully. There

was a small thing which looked like the switchboard of a telegraph

office. The perforations in it were all in a row, and the ten holes were

now filled with little brass pegs, which were suspended from above on

small spiral springs. These were evidently the points of communication

of the negative current to the framework of the projectile. It certainly

would do no harm to pull out one of these pegs, as that would only

slightly diminish the current. At least I would risk it. My fingers had

scarcely closed upon the brass, when I was given such a violent shock as

to be thrown powerfully across the compartment; and had my body weighed

anything, my bones would certainly have been broken by the concussion.

My arm and shoulder did not recover from the stinging and deadening

sensation for some time. I noted the little peg I had pulled out hanging

by its spiral spring just above the hole it had filled. It would be

worth my life to remove the other nine in the same way.



Besides, how would I know when the time came to remove them? My eyes

fell upon the two large leaden balls suspended from short copper

chains. I had seen these before, but now I thought I understood them.

They would swing whichever way gravity attracted. They hung down toward

my compartment now, and if we ever passed the dead line, they would hang

forward toward Mars. But in the neutral point what would they do? When

the gravity of planets neutralized each other, the steel of the

projectile would repel these balls towards its centre, which would tend

to put them both in the same spot and thus bring them together.

Moreover, they would slightly attract each other. Yes, it was quite

certain that these had been devised as a Gravity Indicator, and they

would tell me when we were approaching a dead line, when we were in it,

and when it was safely passed. But all that would do me but little good

unless I could manage the currents.



I sat thinking this over a long time, when it suddenly occurred to me

that the doctor would recognise, even in his delirium, the importance of

action when these two balls came together. As soon as they had

approached each other, I must lift him up and show them to him. The

brain that had made them would know their meaning, and know how to act

even in illness! Perhaps I was like a drowning man clutching at a straw;

but from the moment I thought of this I believed firmly that the

solution of the whole problem would come in this manner. My hopes were

ready to hang on the slightest peg. It consoled me to remember some

instances where men temporarily insane had been brought to consciousness

by impending danger, or by the sight of what last weighed upon their

mind.



When I glanced at the balls next, I saw that their chains lacked an inch

of being parallel. They were already moving slowly inward toward each

other. I noted that the chains, which ran through the balls and were

connected with a small copper plate on the bottom of each, were just

long enough to allow the bottom edges to touch, if they were drawn as

far toward each other as possible.



The doctor's fever was at its very worst, but that did not dampen my

hopes. The balls were gradually drawing nearer together. I wished them

to be quite close before I made the supreme trial which was to liberate

us or leave us prisoners in space for ever! Presently I loosened the

knotted sheets which held him to his bed, and lifted the feverish man,

as I might have carried a doll, and brought him in full view of the

approaching balls.



"Doctor, listen now and look," I said firmly and commandingly.



"Always stubborn and unbelieving!" he raved. "I must take it to a new

country, to America, where they invent things themselves, and are

willing to listen, and anxious to try!"



"Doctor, don't you know me? It is I, Werner, who helped you. This is a

crisis for us! Do you see those approaching balls? You know what they

mean! You must save us."



"Thou'rt too busy, like all the rest! Why, then, remember that to-morrow

will despise those who are so busy with to-day! Opportunity has knocked

and listened for thee and thou hast bade her begone!"



"Listen, Doctor. I am he who heard you and gave you the pink cheque. I

am he who refused three times to go with you and then came at last. I am

he who was afraid of the light, who dodged the Moon, and chaffed you

about the pump. Do you not remember it all? Come, you are no longer ill.

There is work to do. Have you forgotten the leaden balls? See! they are

touching each other now, and we are in the dead-line, the neutral spot,

the one danger of the trip which you acknowledged."



But it was useless. He remembered nothing, his eyes were dim and vacant,

and the great brain that had planned all this was overthrown by fever.

The experiment had failed and we were lost!



I tied him gently back on his bed and turned in desperation to the

apparatus, deciding to risk my life to pull out those nine pegs with my

hands, one after another.



My God! they were already out! Every one of them was hanging by its

spiral spring, just above the hole it had filled. The switchboard had

opened a little and released them. It was all automatic! The contact of

the copper surface of the balls had completed a short circuit which cut

the negative current. He had thought of it all, even to this emergency,

and the machine could take care of itself!



And in the wave of thankfulness and rejoicing which swept over me, I

sank on my knees and kissed the forehead of the feverish old man again

and again!