Chapter III

THE ASCENT OF THE FLYING CUBE.

This was put into the press and on the air on August 31. I need not enlarge upon the public sensation it caused. Consternation, hysteria and ridicule, all intermingled. Then, within three days came a new sensation, more far-reaching, more astounding in what ultimately it was to disclose.

But at first it was merely an astronomical report. Technical, and hence undramatic. It caused almost no public comment.

On the nights of September 1, 2 and 3, several observatories in different parts of the world saw what seemed a tiny cylinder just outside the Earth's atmosphere. Observational conditions were favorable. The cylinder—if it were that—seemed to be circling the Earth like a satellite. But with each revolution it approached closer. By September 3 it began to skim the thin outer atmospheric stratum, and glowed faintly with friction-heat.

It was very small—too small for an interplanetary vehicle. Indeed, except for the extremely favorable conditions prevailing, it would not have been seen at all. The scientists concluded, after many observations, that it had approached the Earth at a tangent, propelled only by the inertia of its own velocity. If power it had once had, that power must have been exhausted. The attraction of the Earth had caught and held it, the combination of forces resulting in its becoming a tiny Earth satellite.

But the centrifugal force of its velocity was lessening. Already it had struck our atmosphere, the friction of which was slowing it down. The Earth was drawing it closer. In a few more revolutions, coming down into the denser air strata, the friction-heat would consume it.

Both Jimmy Turk and I were during these days in close connection with Dr. Grenfell and his associates. I had learned now for a fact what formerly had been only hearsay. For ten years, financed by the millionaire J. G. Bolton, the Bolton Society for Astronomical Research had been working to develop a practical means of conquering gravity. The problem was said to have been solved.

I learned now that in the southern New Jersey workshops of the Bolton Metal Industries, an interplanetary vehicle was ready for trial. Had this weird affair in Maine not transpired, the Bolton Space-ship might not have made its test flight until the following spring. The intention had been to try a voyage in the direction of the Moon. Possibly to land there, and hunt for evidence of what had become of Guy Palisse and his Moon-rocket of ten years ago.

The vehicle now had been rushed to completion. On the morning of September 4, Jimmy excitedly arrived with the news.

"I've persuaded Grenfell to let us in on this, Jack! We're going, you and I!"

"Going? Where?"

"In the Bolton vehicle. They've got it ready! Well, ready enough, anyway, for a short test flight. They're going out to try to get this cylinder that's circling the Earth. It has to be done at once—in a few more revolutions the thing will burn up."

We flew Jimmy's Dragon down to the Bolton plant that same day, where in the center of the huge cluster of buildings stood the laboratories and workshop for the building of the vehicle. And among the busy and tensely excited scientists and mechanics here, we found the pale, calm Rowena Palisse.

She too was permitted to go on this test flight. I sat with her in one of the laboratory rooms where they were preparing the chemicals for the final charging of some of the Space-ship's batteries, while Jimmy hurried away to find out when we could go aboard and inspect it.

Strangely reticent girl, this Rowena Palisse! I told her so.

"Am I?" she mocked.

"I thought I knew you," I protested. "We talked for a good many hours and a good many different times at the White Camp. You never mentioned this Space-ship."

"Didn't I? It was held a secret, Jack."

"You're going on it?"

"Yes."

"You've known Dr. Grenfell for years? Somebody told me—"

"Yes. I have." She was amused. "All girls do not necessarily have to tell everything in their minds to every chance young man of their acquaintance."

I frowned, and at once she turned serious.

"When I was twelve years old, my brother—left me. I think, ever since then, I've been interested in astronomy—passionately so."

"Oh!"

A girl passionately interested in astronomy was something new to me. This was, indeed, a girl who in the midst of busy scientists did not seem out of place.

She added, "I studied under poor Professor White. He was teacher and father to me. And I've had some practical experience—I was one of the clockers of the last transit of Mercury. You see, even when I was a child, Dr. Grenfell promised me that some day he would take me to the Moon."

Her voice was slow, calm, but strangely intense. "I think I've been living for that—some day to get to the Moon.... My brother—"

Jimmy dashed up. "Come on! They say we can look over the ship."

We followed Rowena, who seemed as much at home here as any of these goggled, gray-robed laboratory workers. We threaded a crowd in the inner yard and entered a square flat building with a bulging dome-roof which housed the vehicle. It stood on a concrete platform, raised a few feet above the level of the floor. Impressive, awe-inspiring thing: the first, the only one of its kind in the world. For a moment Rowena did not speak, but stood regarding us as Jimmy and I silently gazed at it.

In outward dimensions it was an exact cube, each of its faces fifty feet square—a great sugar-lump, girded with fantastic trappings. The upper face—the roof, so to speak—bulged convex with a dome-peak, as though upon the sugar-lump a little conical hat were set.

A low doorway with a thick bull's-eye pane was at the bottom of one face. There were round bull's-eye windows in tiers which indicated three stories in the interior. And girdling it near its middle, some twenty feet up, was a sort of outside balcony, or deck. Parallel with the base, this deck encircled all four sides. It was about ten feet wide, and eight feet high, entirely inclosed with metallic plates in which large circular windows were set like a row of portholes in an airplane cabin.

Such was the Flying Cube's outward aspect. It was of a dull-white aluminum color. The lights in the room glistened on it with a silver sheen.

"Well!" said Jimmy. He was speechless with awe. I turned and met Rowena's gaze. Her face was placid, calm, but her big blue eyes glowed with a fierce emotion more intense because it was suppressed.

"It is going to take me to the Moon, Jack—some day soon."

The cube stood vibrationless. Yet somehow it seemed trembling to be away. Held here on Earth—but eager to be gone. Like the restless spirit of man, which had created it; ready to dare everything for the adventure, the conquest of the Unknown.

We entered the single lower doorway. I saw that the door was some two feet thick, with mechanical fastenings upon its inner side like the door to a bank vault. A few mechanics were inside; the shop outside rang with the hum of the last details for the trial trip which was to be made the following night.

No one paid any attention to us as we followed Rowena about the interior. I saw none of the mechanisms of the ship upon this visit, save in a cursory glance at the engine rooms and the banks of controls. Some time later, upon a far different flight than any one of us could now anticipate, Dr. Grenfell explained to me the fundamental operating principles and many of the working details.

Jimmy was not interested now—nor ever, for that matter. This Flying Cube was leaving to-morrow night to try and capture a little cylinder which was encircling the Earth. And he would be aboard; that was enough for him. His thoughts flew ahead, eager only to capture the cylinder. Twenty times he had asked me what I thought the cylinder actually was.

The interior of the cube was divided into three stories. The lower was merely a single, low-ceilinged metal room with several small rooms partitioned off on two of its sides—cubby-holes which were an electric galley, storerooms for food and miscellaneous supplies, and a lower control room.

The main room had somewhat the aspect of the small lounge of a dirigible gas-ship. In the center of its grid-floor was a large oval bull's-eye pane—a window gazing downward. There were small rugs, and rattan chairs and tables. A phonograph; books set in metal shelves; and tables with chess, checkers and cards.

To one side a narrow metal ladder, like a steep stairway, led upward. The second story had a single transverse corridor cutting it in half. It was fifty feet long; at each of its ends a door opened to the outer balcony-deck.

On each side of the corridor were four small doorways, giving access to as many rooms. Four of them were sleeping cabins, with windows and doors opening to the deck. The other four were instrument and mechanism rooms. Electric pumps for charging pressure-tanks by which the pneumatic valves shifted the gravity plates; ventilators; chemical air-renewers; the heating and cooling system; interior air pressure and interior gravity controls; the lighting system. All small, compact mechanisms. Miracles of science; astounding tributes to man's inventive skill.

Most of them were here, though some were in the upper tier. We ascended the ladder from the dimly lighted corridor. The top story held a circular central room surrounded by small cubby-holes which were additional instrument and control rooms. A tiny circular staircase led upward into the interior of the dome-peak—a small observatory with an ultra-modern though not very large electro-telescope.

"Well," said Jimmy again, "there's plenty to it. Compact, isn't it? Let's see the outer deck—we haven't been there yet."

We descended to the middle story; went out one of the corridor end-doors. The deck interior was somewhat less than ten feet wide and eight feet high. Entirely inclosed, it was like a narrow corridor.

Doors and windows at intervals opened into the second-tier rooms, and bull's-eye panes were set in a row along the outer wall. There were similar panes both in ceiling and floor; and the ceiling held a row of hooded light bulbs. There were small lounge chairs out here. The deck was fifty feet long on each side—two hundred feet in all, it girdled the cube, as the deck of a surface ship girdles its superstructure.

One of these fifty-foot stretches of deck differed from the other three. D-face, Rowena called this section. An exit-porte was here—a low, six-foot square room bolted outside the deck. It was an air-lock, in which the air pressure could be changed by pneumatic pumps and exhausts.

"For landing upon the Moon," said Rowena.

Along the deck here she showed us somewhat similar, though more complicated portes in which guns might be mounted and fired out into a different air-pressure, or even into the vacuum of Space.

We wandered about the Flying Cube for fully an hour that late afternoon, tremendously interested. Yet with what intensified emotion I would have made that inspection if I could have seen into the future! The weird, stirring events in which I was destined to participate within the narrow confines of those inclosing walls! On that narrow deck, at those pressure-portes—that air-lock!

At 10 P.M. on the evening of September 5 the Bolton Flying Cube left the Earth on its attempt to intercept the cylinder.

The orbit of this mysterious projectile—if projectile it was—had been calculated. It would approach from the west, passing over the middle of North America, and reaching the longitude of the Atlantic seaboard at about midnight.

Its altitude was now estimated to be about two hundred and fifty miles above the Earth's surface.

There were nine of us on board. Dr. Grenfell, with five assistants, and Jimmy, Rowena and myself. We three had no part in the details of this departure. There was nothing we could do. We stood together, in the dimness of one of the deck lengths, at a bull's-eye window. We were silent—words seemed inadequate. The cube had been resounding with the tramp of mechanics, but they had all left it now.

Jimmy glanced at his watch. "Nine fifty-five—we ought to be on our way soon."

Rowena stood beside me. I felt the pressure of her hand on my arm, but she did not speak. The portes were all closed now, save the lower door. Then the mechanism of the ship came on. The hum of air-circulating system; the pressure equalizers; the throb of the little pumps on the pressure-tanks of the plate-shifters; the hissing of the exhaust valves; and the low whine of the current in the magnetic gravity plates.

Through the deck window we could see the lighted interior of the workshop. The dome-roof was rolled back. The deep purple sky with blazing star-gems stretched overhead, waiting to receive us.

I heard Jimmy mutter, "Why the dickens don't we get going?"

The hum in the cube's interior grew louder. The hissing of the shifting-valves sounded. There was a slight vibration of the deck-floor under my feet. I clutched suddenly at the heavy fastenings of the window. It was nothing, however; in a moment even the tiny vibration was gone.

But outside the window there was movement. The room dropping away. I caught a glimpse of the white emotion-swept faces of the men out there gazing up at us as we lifted.

Then there was the open roof of the building. The grounds about it; the high wall; a crowd of people and gathered vehicles outside the wall, for the news of our test ascension, however closely held, had spread to draw a thousand spectators.

Then there were trees and a starlit landscape. A few moments, with the feeling that I was upon the deck of a rapidly lifting airship. But only a few moments, for the landscape shrank amazingly. Concave at first, with the horizon a great upstanding rim, like the upper edge of a circular bowl with us near the bottom.

There were clusters of tiny lights to mark the villages far down. Moving lights along the roads—a passing airplane occasionally, but now far beneath us. Off to the west, I saw the line of seacoast. Starlight on the sea.

How long we stood there I do not know. I can't recall that any one of us spoke—even Jimmy was stricken into an awed silence. I became conscious that I was intolerably, suffocatingly hot.

The landscape was a landscape no longer! A surface. The surface of the Earth. Cloud-banks were visible. But we were high above them, up in the starlight.

I saw with a sudden thrill of awe that the surface was convex! A great upward-bulging curved surface beneath me. Shrunken, map-like contours of land and water, mottled with cloud-areas.

The Earth! But I was no longer part of it!