CHAPTER XVI

The period of Ganymede's revolution round its gigantic primary is seven

days, three hours, and forty-three minutes, practically a terrestrial

week, and on their return to their native world both the daring

navigators of Space described this as the most interesting and

delightful week in their lives, excepting always the period which they

spent in the Eden of the Morning Star. Yet in one sense, it was even

more interesting.

There the inhabitants had never learnt to sin; here they had learnt the

lesson that sin is mere foolishness, and that no really sensible or

properly educated man or woman thinks crime worth committing.

The life of the Crystal Cities, of which they visited four in different

parts of the satellite, using the _Astronef_ as their vehicle, was one

of peaceful industry and calm, innocent enjoyment. It was quite plain

that their first impressions of this aged world were correct. Outside

the cities spread a universal desert on which life was impossible. There

was hardly any moisture in the thin atmosphere. The rivers had dwindled

into rivulets and the seas into vast, shallow marshes. The heat received

from the Sun was only about a twenty-fifth of that which falls on the

surface of the Earth, and this was drawn to the cities and collected and

preserved under their glass domes by a number of devices which displayed

superhuman intelligence.

The dwindling supplies of water were hoarded in vast subterranean

reservoirs, and, by means of a perfect system of redistillation, the

priceless fluid was used over and over again both for human purposes and

for irrigating the land within the cities. Still the total quantity was

steadily diminishing, for it was not only evaporating from the surface,

but, as the orb cooled more and more rapidly towards its centre, it

descended deeper and deeper below the surface, and could now only be

reached by means of marvellously constructed borings and pumping

machinery which extended several miles below the surface.

The fast-failing store of heat in the centre of the little world, which

had now cooled through more than half its bulk, was utilised for warming

the air of the cities, and to drive the machinery which propelled it

through the streets and squares. All work was done by electric energy

developed directly from this source, which also actuated the repulsive

engines which had prevented the _Astronef_ from descending.

In short, the inhabitants of Ganymede were engaged in a steady,

ceaseless struggle to utilise the expiring natural forces of their world

to prolong their own lives and the exquisitely refined civilisation to

which they had attained to the latest possible date. They were, indeed,

in exactly the same position in which the distant descendants of the

human race may one day be expected to find themselves.

Their domestic life, as Zaidie and Redgrave saw it while they were the

guests of their host, was the perfection of simplicity and comfort, and

their public life was characterised by a quiet but intense

intellectuality which, as Zaidie had said, made them feel very much like

children who had only just learnt to speak.

As they possessed magnificent telescopes, far surpassing any on Earth,

their guests were able to survey, not only the Solar System, but the

other systems far beyond its limits as no others of their kind had ever

been able to do before. They did not look through or into the

telescopes. The lens was turned upon the object, and this was thrown,

enormously magnified, upon screens of what looked something like ground

glass some fifty feet square. It was thus that they saw, not only the

whole visible surface of Jupiter as he revolved above them and they

about him, but also their native Earth, sometimes a pale silver disc or

crescent close to the edge of the Sun, visible only in the morning and

the evening of Jupiter, and at other times like a little black spot

crossing the glowing surface.

But there was another development of the science of the Crystal Cities

which interested them far more than this--for after all they could not

only see the Worlds of Space for themselves, but circumnavigate them if

they chose.

During their stay they were shown on these same screens the pictorial

history of the world whose guests they were. These pictures, which they

recognised as an immeasurable development of what is called the

cinematograph process on Earth, extended through the whole gamut of the

satellite's life. They formed, in fact, the means by which the children

of Ganymede were taught the history of their world.

It was, of course, inevitable that the _Astronef_ should prove an object

of intense interest to their hosts. They had solved the problem of the

Resolution of Forces, as Professor Rennick had done, and, as they were

shown pictorially, a vessel had been made which embodied the principles

of attraction and repulsion. It had risen from the surface of Ganymede,

and then, possibly because its engines could not develop sufficient

repulsive force, the tremendous pull of the giant planet had dragged it

away. It had vanished through the cloud-belts towards the flaming

surface beneath--and the experiment had never been repeated.

Here, however, was a vessel which had actually, as Redgrave had

convinced his hosts by means of celestial maps and drawings of his own,

left a planet close to the Sun, and safely crossed the tremendous gulf

of six hundred and fifty million miles which separated Jupiter from the

centre of the system. Moreover, he had twice proved her powers by taking

his host and two of his newly-made friends, the chief astronomers of

Ganymede, on a short trip across Space to Calisto and Europa, the second

satellite of Jupiter, which, to their very grave interest, they found

had already passed the stage in which Ganymede was, and had lapsed into

the icy silence of death.

It was these two journeys which led to the last adventure of the

_Astronef_ in the Jovian System. Both Redgrave and Zaidie had

determined, at whatever risk, to pass through the cloud-belts of

Jupiter, and catch a glimpse, if only a glimpse, of a world in the

making. Their host and the two astronomers, after a certain amount of

quiet discussion, accepted their invitation to accompany them, and on

the morning of the eighth day after their landing on Ganymede, the

_Astronef_ rose from the plain outside the Crystal City, and directed

her course towards the centre of the vast disc of Jupiter.

She was followed by the telescopes of all the observatories until she

vanished through the brilliant cloud-band, eighty-five thousand miles

long and some five thousand miles broad, which stretched from east to

west of the planet. At the same moment the voyagers lost sight of

Ganymede and his sister satellites.

The temperature of the interior of the _Astronef_ began to rise as soon

as the upper cloud-belt was passed. Under this, spread out a vast field

of brown-red cloud, rent here and there into holes and gaps like those

storm-cavities in the atmosphere of the Sun, which are commonly known as

sun-spots. This lower stratum of cloud appeared to be the scene of

terrific storms, compared with which the fiercest earthly tempests were

mere zephyrs.

After falling some five hundred miles further they found themselves

surrounded by what seemed an ocean of fire, but still the internal

temperature had only risen from seventy to ninety-five. The engines were

well under control. Only about a fourth of the total R. Force was being

developed, and the _Astronef_ was dropping swiftly, but steadily.

Redgrave, who was in the conning-tower controlling the engines, beckoned

to Zaidie and said:

"Shall we go on?"

"Yes," she said. "Now we've got as far as this I want to see what

Jupiter is like, and where you are not afraid to go, I'll go."

"If I'm afraid at all it's only because you are with me, Zaidie," he

replied, "but I've only got a fourth of the power turned on yet, so

there's plenty of margin."

The _Astronef_, therefore, continued to sink through what seemed to be a

fathomless ocean of whirling, blazing clouds, and the internal

temperature went on rising slowly but steadily. Their guests, without

showing the slightest sign of any emotion, walked about the upper deck

now, singly and now together, apparently absorbed by the strange scene

about them.

At length, after they had been dropping for some five hours by

_Astronef_ time, one of them, uttering a sharp exclamation, pointed to

an enormous rift about fifty miles away. A dull, red glare was streaming

up out of it. The next moment the brown cloud-floor beneath them seemed

to split up into enormous wreaths of vapour, which whirled up on all

sides of them, and a few minutes later they caught their first glimpse

of the true surface of Jupiter.

It lay, as nearly as they could judge, some two thousand miles beneath

them, a distance which the telescopes reduced to less than twenty; and

they saw for a few moments the world that was in the making. Through

floating seas of misty steam they beheld what seemed to them to be vast

continents shape themselves and melt away into oceans of flames. Whole

mountain ranges of glowing lava were hurled up miles high to take shape

for an instant and then fall away again, leaving fathomless gulfs of

fiery mist in their place.

[Illustration: _Whole mountain ranges of glowing lava were hurled up

miles high._]

Then waves of molten matter rose up again out of the gulfs, tens of

miles high and hundreds of miles long, surged forward, and met with a

concussion like that of millions of earthly thunder-clouds. Minute after

minute they remained writhing and struggling with each other, flinging

up spurts of flaming matter far above their crests. Other waves followed

them, climbing up their bases as a sea-surge runs up the side of a

smooth, slanting rock. Then from the midst of them a jet of living fire

leapt up hundreds of miles into the lurid atmosphere above, and then,

with a crash and a roar which shook the vast Jovian firmament, the

battling lava-waves would split apart and sink down into the

all-surrounding fire-ocean, like two grappling giants who had strangled

each other in their final struggle.

"It's just Hell let loose!" said Murgatroyd to himself as he looked down

upon the terrific scene through one of the port-holes of the

engine-room; "and, with all respect to my lord and her ladyship, those

that come this near almost deserve to stop in it."

Meanwhile, Redgrave and Zaidie and their three guests were so absorbed

in the tremendous spectacle, that for a few moments no one noticed that

they were dropping faster and faster towards the world which Murgatroyd,

according to his lights, had not inaptly described. As for Zaidie, all

her fears were for the time being lost in wonder, until she saw her

husband take a swift glance round upwards and downwards, and then go up

into the conning-tower. She followed him quickly, and said:

"What is the matter, Lenox, are we falling too quickly?"

"Much faster than we should," he replied, sending a signal to Murgatroyd

to increase the force by three-tenths.

The answering signal came back, but still the _Astronef_ continued to

fall with terrific rapidity, and the awful landscape beneath them--a

landscape of fire and chaos--broadened out and became more and more

distinct.

He sent two more signals down in quick succession. Three-fourths of the

whole repulsive power of the engines was now being exerted--a force

which would have been sufficient to hurl the _Astronef_ up from the

surface of the Earth like a feather in a whirlwind. Her downward course

became a little slower, but still she did not stop. Zaidie, white to the

lips, looked down upon the hideous scene beneath and slipped her hand

through Redgrave's arm. He looked at her for an instant and then turned

his head away with a jerk, and sent down the last signal.

The whole energy of the engines was now directing the maximum of the R.

Force against the surface of Jupiter, but still, as every moment passed

in a speechless agony of apprehension, it grew nearer and nearer. The

fire-waves mounted higher and higher, the roar of the fiery surges grew

louder and louder. Then in a momentary lull, he put his arm round her,

drew her close up to him and kissed her and said:

"That's all we can do, dear. We've come too close and he's too strong

for us."

She returned his kiss and said quite steadily:

"Well, at any rate, I'm with you, and it won't last long, will it?"

"Not very long now, I'm afraid," he said between his clenched teeth. And

then he pulled her close to him again, and together they looked down

into the storm-tossed hell towards which they were falling at the rate

of nearly a hundred miles a minute.

Almost the next moment they felt a little jerk beneath their feet--a

jerk upwards; and Redgrave shook himself out of the half stupor into

which he was falling and said:

"Hullo, what's that? I believe we're stopping--yes, we are--and we're

beginning to rise, too. Look, dear, the clouds are coming down upon

us--fast too! I wonder what sort of miracle that is. Ay, what's the

matter, little woman?"

Zaidie's head had dropped heavily on his shoulder. A glance showed him

that she had fainted. He could do nothing more in the conning-tower, so

he picked her up and carried her towards the companion-way, past his

three guests, who were standing in the middle of the upper deck round a

table on which lay a large sheet of paper.

He took her below and laid her on her bed, and in a few minutes he had

brought her to and told her that it was all right. Then he gave her a

drink of brandy-and-water and went back to the upper deck. As he reached

the top of the stairway one of the astronomers came towards him with a

sheet of paper in his hand, smiling gravely, and pointing to a sketch

upon it.

He took the paper under one of the electric lights and looked at it. The

sketch was a plan of the Jovian System. There were some signs written

along one side, which he did not understand, but he divined that they

were calculations. Still, there was no mistaking the diagram. There was

a circle representing the huge bulk of Jupiter; there were four smaller

circles at varying distances in a nearly straight line from it, and

between the nearest of these and the planet was the figure of the

_Astronef_, with an arrow pointing upwards.

"Ah, I see!" he said, forgetting for a moment that the other did not

understand him, "that was the miracle! The four satellites came into

line with us just as the pull of Jupiter was getting too much for our

engines, and their combined pull just turned the scale. Well, thank God

for that, sir, for in a few minutes more we should have been cinders!"

The astronomer smiled again as he took the paper back. Meanwhile the

_Astronef_ was rushing upward like a meteor through the clouds. In ten

minutes the limits of the Jovian atmosphere were passed. Stars and suns

and planets blazed out of the black vault of Space, and the great disc

of the World that Is to Be once more covered the floor of Space beneath

them--an ocean of cloud, covering continents of lava and seas of flame,

the scene of the natal throes of a world which some day will be.

They passed Io and Europa, which changed from new to full moons as they

sped by towards the Sun, and then the golden yellow crescent of Ganymede

also began to fill out to the half and full disc, and by the tenth hour

of Earth-time, after they had risen from its surface, the _Astronef_ was

once more lying beside the gate of the Crystal City.

At midnight on the second night after their return, the ringed shape of

Saturn, attended by his eight satellites, hung in the zenith

magnificently inviting. The _Astronef's_ engines had been replenished

after the exhaustion of their struggle with the might of Jupiter. They

said farewell to their friends of the dying world. The doors of the

air-chamber closed. The signal tinkled in the engine-room, and a few

moments later a blurr of white lights on the brown background of the

surrounding desert was all they could see of the Crystal City under

whose domes they had seen and learnt so much.