CHAPTER XIX

A little before six (Earth time) on the fourth morning after they had

cleared the confines of the Saturnian System, Redgrave went as usual

into the conning-tower to examine the instruments, and to see that

everything was in order. To his intense surprise he found, on looking at

the gravitational compass, which was to the _Astronef_ what the ordinary

compass is to a ship at sea, that the vessel was a long way out of her

course.

Such a thing had never yet occurred. Up to now the _Astronef_ had obeyed

the laws of gravitation and repulsion with absolute exactness. He made

another examination of the instruments; but no, all were in perfect

order.

"I wonder what the deuce is the matter," he said, after he had looked

for a few moments with frowning eyes at the multitude of orbs ahead. "By

Jove, we're swinging more. This is getting serious."

He went back to the compass. The long, slender needle was slowly

swinging farther and farther out of the middle line of the vessel.

"There can only be two explanations of that," he went on, thrusting his

hands deep into his trousers pockets; "either the engines are not

working properly, or some enormous and invisible body is pulling us

towards it out of our course. Let's have a look at the engines first."

When he reached the engine-room he said to Murgatroyd, who was indulging

in his usual pastime of cleaning and polishing his beloved charges:

"Have you noticed anything wrong during the last hour or so,

Murgatroyd?"

"No, my Lord; at least not so far as concerns the engines. They're all

right. Hark, now, they're not making more noise than a lady's sewing

machine," replied the old Yorkshireman, with a note of resentment in his

voice. The suspicion that anything could be wrong with his shining

darlings was almost a personal offence to him. "But is anything the

matter, my Lord, if I might ask?"

"We're a long way off our course, and for the life of me I can't

understand it," replied Redgrave. "There's nothing about here to pull us

out of our line. Of course the stars--good Lord, I never thought of

that! Look here, Murgatroyd, not a word about this to her ladyship, and

stand by to raise the power by degrees, as I signal to you."

"Ay, my lord. I hope it's nothing bad!"

Redgrave went back to the conning-tower without replying. The only

possible solution of the mystery of the deviation had suddenly dawned

upon him, and a very serious solution it was. He remembered there were

such things as dead suns--the derelicts of the Ocean of Space--vast,

invisible orbs, lightless and lifeless, too distant from any living sun

to be illumined by its rays, and yet exercising the only force left to

them--the force of attraction. Might not one of these have wandered near

enough to the confines of the Solar System to exert this force, a force

of absolutely unknown magnitude, upon the _Astronef_?

He went to the desk beside the instrument-table and plunged into a maze

of mathematics, of masses and weights, angles and distances. Half an

hour later he stood looking at the last symbol on the last sheet of

paper with something like fear. It was the fatal _x_ which remained to

satisfy the last equation, the unknown quantity which represented the

unseen force that was dragging them into the outer wilderness of

insterstellar space, into far-off regions from which, with the remaining

force at his disposal, no return would be possible.

He signalled to Murgatroyd to increase the development of the R. Force

from a tenth to a fifth. Then he went to the lower saloon, where Zaidie

was busy with her usual morning tidy-up. Now that the mystery was

explained there was no reason to keep her in the dark. Indeed, he had

given her his word that he would conceal from her no danger, however

great, that might threaten them when he had once assured himself of its

existence.

She listened to him in silence and without a sign of fear beyond a

little lifting of the eyelids and a little fading of the colour in her

cheeks.

"And if we can't resist this force," she said, when he had finished, "it

will drag us millions--perhaps millions of millions--of miles away from

our own system into outer space, and we shall either fall on the surface

of this dead sun and be reduced to a puff of lighted gas in an instant,

or some other body will pull us away from it, and then another away from

that, and so on, and we shall wander among the stars for ever and ever

until the end of time!"

"If the first happens, darling, we shall die--together--without knowing

it. It's the second that I'm most afraid of. The _Astronef_ may go on

wandering among the stars for ever--but we have only water enough for

three weeks more. Now come into the conning-tower and we'll see how

things are going."

As they bent their heads over the instrument-table Redgrave saw that the

remorseless needle had moved two degrees more to the right. The keel of

the _Astronef_, under the impulse of the R. Force, was continually

turning. The pull of the invisible orb was dragging her slowly but

irresistibly out of her line.

"There's nothing for it but this," said Redgrave, putting out his hand

to the signal-board, and signalling to Murgatroyd to put the engines to

their highest capacity. "You see, dear, our greatest danger is this: we

had to exert such a tremendous lot of power getting away from Jupiter

and Saturn, that we haven't any too much to spare, and if we have to

spend it in counteracting the pull of this dead sun, or whatever it is,

we may not have enough of what I call the R. fluid left to get home

with."

"I see," she said, staring with wide-open eyes at the needle. "You mean

that we may not have enough to keep us from falling into one of the

planets or perhaps into the Sun itself. Well, supposing the dangers are

equal, this one is the nearest, and so I guess we've got to fight it

first."

"Spoken like a good American!" he said, putting his arm across her

shoulders and looking at once with infinite pride and infinite regret at

the calm, proud face which the glory of resignation had adorned with a

new beauty.

She bowed her head and then looked away again so that he should not see

that there were tears in her eyes. He took his hand from her shoulder

and stared in silence down at the needle. It was stationary again.

"We've stopped!" he said, after a pause of several moments. "Now, if the

body that's taken us out of our course is moving away from us we win, if

it's coming towards us we lose. At any rate, we've done all we can. Come

along, Zaidie, let's go and have a walk on deck."

They had scarcely reached the upper deck when something happened which

dwarfed all the other experiences of their marvellous voyage into utter

insignificance.

Above and around them the constellations blazed with a splendour

inconceivable to an observer on Earth, but ahead of them gaped the vast,

black void which sailors call "the Coal Hole," and in which the most

powerful telescopes have only discovered a few faintly luminous bodies.

Suddenly, out of the midst of this infinity of darkness, there blazed a

glare of almost intolerably brilliant radiance. Instantly the forward

end of the _Astronef_ was bathed in light and heat--the light and heat

of a re-created sun, whose elements had been dark and cold for uncounted

ages.

Hundreds of tiny points of light, unknown worlds which had been dark for

myriads of years, twinkled out of the blackness. Then the fierce glare

grew dimmer. A vast mantle of luminous mist spread out with

inconceivable rapidity, and in the midst of this blazed the central

nucleus--the sun which in far-off ages to come would be the giver of

light and heat, of life and beauty to worlds unborn, to planets which

were now only little eddies of atoms whirling in that ocean of nebulous

flame.

For more than an hour the two wanderers from the far-off Earth stood

motionless and silent, gazing on the indescribable splendours of the

fearfully magnificent spectacle before them. Every mundane thought

seemed burnt out of their souls by the glory and the wonder of it. It

was almost as though they were standing in the very presence of God.

Indeed, were they not witnessing the supreme act of Omnipotence, a new

creation? Their peril, a peril such as had never threatened mortals

before, was utterly forgotten. They had even forgotten each other's

presence. For the time being they existed only to look and to wonder.

They were called at length out of their trance by the matter-of-fact

voice of Murgatroyd saying--

"My Lord, she's back to her course. Will I keep the power on full?"

"Eh! What's that?" exclaimed Redgrave, as they both turned quickly

round. "Oh, it's you, Murgatroyd. The power? Yes, keep it on full till I

have taken the bearings."

"Ay, my Lord, very good," replied the engineer.

As he left the deck Redgrave put his arm round Zaidie and drew her

gently towards him and said, "Zaidie, truly you are favoured among

women! You have seen the beginning of a new creation. You will certainly

be saved somehow after that."

"Yes, and you too, dear," she murmured, as though still half-dreaming.

"It is very glorious and wonderful; but what is it all--I mean, what is

the explanation of it?"

"The merely scientific explanation, dear, is very simple. I see it all

now. The force that was dragging us out of our course was the united

pull of two dead stars approaching each other in the same orbit. They

may have been doing that for millions of years. The shock of their

meeting has transformed their motion into light and heat. They have

united to form a single sun and a nebula, which will some day condense

into a system of planets like ours. To-night the astronomers on Earth

will discover a new star--a variable star as they'll call it--for it

will grow dimmer as it moves away from our system. It has often happened

before."

Then they turned back to the conning-tower.

The needle had swung to its old position. The new star, henceforth to be

known in the annals of astronomy as Lilla-Zaidie, had already set for

them to the right of the _Astronef_ and risen on the left, and, at a

distance of more than nine hundred million miles from the Earth, the

corner was turned, and the homeward voyage began.