CHAPTER VI

After the _Astronef's_ forward searchlight had flashed its farewells to

the thronging, cheering crowds of Washington, her propellers began to

whirl, and she swung round northward on her way to say goodbye to the

Empire City.

A little before midnight her two lights flashed down over New York and

Brooklyn, and were almost instantly answered by hundreds of electric

beams streaming up from different parts of the Twin Cities, and from

several men-of-war lying in the bay and the river.

"Goodbye for the present! Have you any messages for Mars?" flickered out

from above the _Astronef's_ conning-tower.

What Uncle Sam's message was, if he had one, was never deciphered, for

fifty beams began dotting and dashing at once, and the result was that

nothing but a blur of many mingled rays reached the conning-tower from

which Lord Redgrave and his bride were taking their last look at human

habitations.

"You might have known that they would all answer at once," said Zaidie.

"I suppose the newspapers, of course, want interviews with the leading

Martians, and the others want to know what there is to be done in the

way of trade. Anyhow, it would be a feather in Uncle Sam's cap if he

made the first Reciprocity Treaty with another world."

"And then proceeded to corner the commerce of the Solar System," laughed

Redgrave. "Well, we'll see what can be done. Although I think, as an

Englishman, I ought to look after the Open Door."

"So that the Germans could get in before you, eh? That's just like you

dear, good-natured English. But look," she went on, pointing downwards,

"they're signalling again, all at once this time."

Half a dozen beams shone out together from the principal newspaper

offices of New York. Then simultaneously they began the dotting and

dashing again. Redgrave took them down in pencil, and when the

signalling had stopped he read off:

"No war. Dual Alliance climbs down. Don't like idea of _Astronef_.

Cables just received. Goodbye, and good luck! Come back soon, and safe!"

"What? We have stopped the war!" exclaimed Zaidie, clasping his arm.

"Well, thank God for that. How could we begin our voyage better? You

remember what we were saying the other day, Lenox. If that's only true,

my father somewhere knows now what a blessing he has given his brother

men! We've stopped a war which might have deluged the world in blood.

We've saved perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives, and kept sorrow from

thousands of homes. Lenox, when we get back, you and the States and the

British Government will have to build a fleet of these ships, and then

the Anglo-Saxon race must say to the rest of the world----"

"The millennium has come and its presiding goddess is Zaidie Redgrave.

If you don't stop fighting, disband your armies and turn your fleets

into liners and cargo boats, she'll proceed to sink your ships and

decimate your armies until you learn sense. Is that what you mean,

dear?" laughed Redgrave, as he slipped his left hand round her waist and

laid his right on the searchlight-switch to reply to the message.

"Don't be ridiculous, Lenox. Still, I suppose that is something like it.

They wouldn't deserve anything else if they were fools enough to go on

fighting after they knew we could wipe them out."

"Exactly. I perfectly agree with your Ladyship, but still sufficient

unto the day is the Armageddon thereof. Now I suppose we'd better say

goodbye and be off."

"And what a goodbye," whispered Zaidie, with an upward glance into the

starlit ocean of Space which lay above and around them. "Goodbye to the

world itself! Well, say it, Lenox, and let us go; I want to see what the

others are like."

"Very well then; goodbye it is," he said, beginning to jerk the switch

backwards and forwards with irregular motions, sending short flashes and

longer beams down towards the earth.

The Empire City read the farewell message.

"Thank God for the peace. Goodbye for the present. We shall convey the

joint compliments of John Bull and Uncle Sam to the peoples of the

planets when we find them. _Au revoir!_"

The message was answered by the blaze of the concentrated searchlights

from land and sea all directed on the _Astronef_. For a moment her

shining shape glittered like a speck of diamond in the midst of the

luminous haze far up in the sky, and then it vanished for many an

anxious day from mortal sight.

A few moments later Zaidie pointed over the stern and said:

"Look, there's the moon! Just fancy--our first stopping place! Well, it

doesn't look so very far off at present."

Redgrave turned and saw the pale yellow crescent of the new moon

swimming high above the eastern edge of the Atlantic Ocean.

"It almost looks as if we could steer straight to it right over the

water--only, of course, it wouldn't wait there for us," she went on.

"Oh, it'll be there when we want it, never fear," he laughed, "and,

after all, it's only a mere matter of about two hundred and forty

thousand miles away, and what's that in a trip that will cover hundreds

of millions? It will just be a sort of jumping-off place into Space for

us."

"Still, I shouldn't like to miss seeing it," she said. "I want to see

what there is on that other side which nobody has ever seen yet, and

settle that question about air and water. Won't it just be heavenly to

be able to come back and tell them all about it at home? But just fancy

me talking stuff like this when we are going, perhaps, to solve some of

the hidden mysteries of Creation, and, may be, look upon things that

human eyes were never meant to see," she went on, with a sudden change

in her voice.

He felt a little shiver in the arm that was resting upon his, and his

hand went down and caught hers.

"Well, we shall see a good many marvels, and, perhaps, miracles, before

we come back, but why should there be anything in Creation that the eyes

of created beings should not look upon? Anyhow, there's one thing we

shall do I hope, we shall solve once and for all the great problem of

the worlds.

"Look, for instance," he went on, turning round and pointing to the

west, "there is Venus following the sun. In a few days I hope you and I

will be standing on her surface, perhaps trying to talk by signs with

her inhabitants, and taking photographs of her scenery. There's Mars

too, that little red one up yonder. Before we come back we shall have

settled a good many problems about him, too. We shall have navigated the

rings of Saturn, and perhaps graphed them from his surface. We shall

have crossed the bands of Jupiter, and found out whether they are clouds

or not; perhaps we shall have landed on one of his moons and taken a

voyage round him.

"Still, that's not the question just now, and if you are in a hurry to

circumnavigate the moon we'd better begin to get a wriggle on us as they

say down yonder; so come below and we'll shut up. A bit later I'll show

you something that no human eyes have ever seen."

"What's that?" she asked as they turned away towards the companion

ladder.

"I won't spoil it by telling you," he said, stopping at the top of the

stairs and taking her by the shoulders. "By the way," he went on, "I may

remind your Ladyship that you are just now drawing the last breaths of

earthly air which you will taste for some time, in fact until we get

back. And you may as well take your last look at earth as earth, for the

next time you see it it will be a planet."

She turned to the open window and looked over into the enormous void

beneath, for all this time the _Astronef_ had been mounting swiftly

towards the zenith.

She could see, by the growing moonlight, vast, vague shapes of land and

sea. The myriad lights of New York and Brooklyn were mingled in a tiny

patch of dimly luminous haze. The air about her had suddenly grown

bitterly cold, and she saw that the stars and planets were shining with

a brilliancy she had never seen before. Redgrave came back to her, and

laying his arm across her shoulder, said:

"Well, have you said goodbye to your native world? It is a bit solemn,

isn't it, saying goodbye to a world that you have been born on; which

contains everything that has made up your life, everything that is dear

to you?"

"Not quite everything," she said, looking up at him--"at least I don't

think so."

He lost no time in making the only reply which was appropriate under the

circumstances; and then he said, drawing her close to him:

"Nor I, as _you_ know, darling. This is our world, a world travelling

among worlds, and since I have been able to bring the most delightful of

the daughters of Terra with me, I, at any rate, am perfectly happy. Now,

I think it's getting on to supper time, so if your Ladyship will go to

your household duties, I'll have a look at my engines and make

everything snug for the voyage."

The first thing he did when he left the conning-tower was to

hermetically close every external opening in the ship. Then he went and

carefully inspected the apparatus for purifying the air and supplying it

with fresh oxygen from the tanks in which it was stored in liquid form.

Lastly he descended into the lower hold and turned on the energy of

repulsion to its fullest extent, at the same time stopping the engines

which had been working the propellers.

It was now no longer necessary or even possible to steer the _Astronef_.

She was directed solely by the repulsive force which would carry her

with ever-increasing swiftness, as the attraction of the earth

diminished, towards that neutral point at which the attraction of the

earth is exactly balanced by the moon. Her momentum would carry her past

this point, and then the "R. Force" would be gradually brought into play

in order to avert the unpleasant consequences of a fall of some forty

odd thousand miles.

Andrew Murgatroyd, relieved from his duties in the wheel-house, made a

careful inspection of the auxiliary machinery, which was under his

special charge, and then retired to his quarters in the after end of the

vessel to prepare his own evening meal.

Meanwhile, her Ladyship, with the help of the ingenious contrivances

with which the kitchen of the _Astronef_ was stocked, had prepared a

dainty little _souper à deux_. Her husband opened a bottle of the finest

champagne that the cellars of Smeaton could supply, to drink to the

prosperity of the voyage, and the health of his beautiful

fellow-voyager. When he had filled the two tall glasses the wine began

to run over the side which was toward the stern of the vessel. They took

no notice of this at first, but when Zaidie put her glass down she

stared at it for a moment, and said, in a half-frightened voice:

"Why, what's the matter, Lenox? look at the wine! It won't keep

straight, and yet the table's perfectly level--and see! the water in the

jug looks as though it were going to run up the side."

Redgrave took up the glass and held it balanced in his hand. When he had

got the surface of the wine level the glass was no longer perpendicular

to the table.

"Ah, I see what it is," he said, taking another sip and putting the

glass down. "You notice that, although the wine isn't lying straight in

the glass, it isn't moving about. It's just as still as it would be on

earth. That means that our centre of gravity is not exactly in line with

the centre of the earth. We haven't quite swung into our proper

position, and that reminds me, dear. You will have to be prepared for

some rather curious experiences in that way. For instance, just see if

that jug of water is as heavy as it ought to be."

She took hold of the handle, and exerting, as she thought, just enough

force to lift the jug a few inches, was astonished to find herself

holding it out at arm's length with scarcely any effort. She put it down

again very carefully as though she were afraid it would go floating off

the table, and said, looking rather scared:

"That's very strange, but I suppose it's all perfectly natural?"

"Perfectly; it merely means that we have left Mother Earth a good long

way behind us."

"How far?" she asked.

"I can't tell you exactly," he replied, "until I go to the

instrument-room and take the angles, but I should say roughly about

seventy thousand miles. When we've finished we'll go and have coffee on

the upper deck, and then we shall see something of the glories of Space

as no human eyes have ever seen them before."

"Seventy thousand miles away from home already, and we only started a

couple of hours ago!" Zaidie found the idea a trifle terrifying, and

finished her meal almost in silence. When she got up she was not a

little disconcerted when the effort she made not only took her off her

chair but off her feet as well. She rose into the air nearly to the

surface of the table.

"Sakes!" she said, "this is getting quite a little embarrassing; I shall

be hitting my head against the roof next."

"Oh, you'll soon get used to it," he laughed, pulling her down on to her

feet by the skirt of her dress; "always remember to exert very little

strength in everything you do, and don't forget to do everything very

slowly."

When the coffee was made he carried the apparatus up into the

deck-chamber. Then he came back and said:

"You'd better wrap yourself up warmly. It's a good deal colder up there

than it is here."

When she reached the deck and took a first glance about her, Zaidie

seemed suddenly to lapse into a state of somnambulism.

The whole heavens above and around were strewn with thick clusters of

stars which she had never seen before. The stars she remembered seeing

from the earth were only pin-points in the darkness compared with the

myriads of blazing orbs which were now shooting their rays across the

black void of Space.

So many millions of new ones had come into view, that she looked in vain

for the familiar constellations. She saw only vast clusters of living

gems of every colour crowding the heavens on every side of her.

She walked slowly round the deck, gazing to right and left and above,

incapable for the moment either of thought or speech, but only of dumb

wonder, mingled with a dim sense of overwhelming awe. Presently she

craned her neck backwards and looked straight up to the zenith. A huge

silver crescent, supporting, as it were, a dim greenish-coloured body in

its arms, stretched overhead across nearly a sixth of the heavens.

Then Redgrave came to her side, took her in his arms, lifted her as if

she had been a little child, and laid her in a long, low deck-chair, so

that she could look at it without inconvenience.

The splendid crescent seemed to be growing visibly bigger, and as she

lay there in a trance of wonder and admiration she saw point after point

of dazzling white light flash out in the dark portions, and then begin

to send out rays as though they were gigantic volcanoes in full

eruption, and were pouring torrents of living fire from their blazing

craters.

"Sunrise on the Moon!" said Redgrave, who had stretched himself on

another chair beside her. "A glorious sight, isn't it? But nothing to

what we shall see to-morrow morning--only there doesn't happen to be any

morning just about here."

"Yes," she said dreamily, "glorious, isn't it? That and all the

stars--but I can't think anything yet, Lenox, it's all too mighty and

too marvellous. It doesn't seem as though human eyes were meant to look

upon things like this. But where's the earth? We must be able to see

that still."

"Not from here," he said, "because it's underneath us. Come below now,

and you shall see what I promised you."

They went down into the lower part of the vessel and to the after end

behind the engine-room. Redgrave switched on a couple of electric

lights, and then pulled a lever attached to one of the side-walls. A

part of the flooring about six feet square slid noiselessly away; then

he pulled another lever on the opposite side and a similar piece

disappeared, leaving a large space covered only by a thick plate of

absolutely transparent glass. He switched off the lights again and led

her to the edge of it, and said:

"There is your native world, dear. That is your Mother Earth."

Wonderful as the moon had seemed, the gorgeous spectacle which lay

seemingly at her feet was infinitely more magnificent. A vast disc of

silver grey, streaked and dotted with lines and points of dazzling

lights, and more than half covered with vast, glimmering, greyish-green

expanses, seemed to form the floor of the tremendous gulf beneath them.

They were not yet too far away to make out the general features of the

continents and oceans, and fortunately the hemisphere presented to them

happened to be singularly free from clouds.

To the right spread out the majestic outlines of the continents of North

and South America, and to the left Asia, the Malay Archipelago, and

Australia. At the top was a vast, roughly circular area of dazzling

whiteness, and Redgrave, pointing to this, said:

"There, look up a little further north than the middle of that white

patch, and you'll see what no eyes but yours and mine have ever

seen--the North Pole! When we come back we shall see the South Pole,

because we shall approach the earth from the other end, as it were.

"I suppose you recognise a good deal of the picture. All that bright

part up to the north, with the black spots on it, is Canada. The black

spots are forests. That long white line to the left is the Rockies. You

see they're all bright at the north, and as you go south you only see a

few bright dots. Those are the snow-peaks.

"Those long thin white lines in South America are the tops of the Andes,

and the big, dark patches to the right of them are the forests and

plains of Brazil and the Argentine. Not a bad way of studying geography,

is it? If we stopped here long enough we should see the whole earth spin

right round under us, but we haven't time for that. We shall be in the

moon before it's morning in New York, but we shall probably get a

glimpse of Europe to-morrow."

Zaidie stood gazing for nearly an hour at this marvellous vision of the

home-world which she had left so far behind her before she could tear

herself away and allow her husband to shut the slides again. The greatly

diminished weight of her body destroyed the fatigue of standing almost

entirely. In fact, on board the _Astronef_ just then it was almost as

easy to stand as it was to lie down.

There was of course very little sleep for the travellers on this first

night of their wonderful voyage, but towards the sixth hour after

leaving the earth, Zaidie, overcome as much by the emotions which had

been awakened within her as by physical fatigue, went to bed, after

making her husband promise that he would wake her in good time to see

the descent upon the moon. Two hours later she was awake and drinking

the coffee which he had prepared for her. Then she went on to the upper

deck.

To her astonishment she found, on one hand, day more brilliant than she

had ever seen it before, and on the other hand darkness blacker than the

blackest earthly night. On the right was an intensely brilliant orb,

about half as large again as the full moon seen from the earth, shining

with inconceivable brightness out of a sky black as midnight and

thronged with stars. It was the Sun; the Sun shining in the midst of

airless Space.

The tiny atmosphere enclosed in the glass-domed deck-space was lighted

brilliantly, but it was not perceptibly warmer, though Redgrave warned

her not to touch anything upon which the sun's rays fell directly, as

she might find it uncomfortably hot. On the other side was the same

black immensity which she had seen the night before, an ocean of

darkness clustered with islands of light. High above in the zenith

floated the great silver-grey disc of earth, a good deal smaller now.

But there was another object beneath them which was at present of far

more interest to her.

Looking down to the left, she saw a vast semi-luminous area in which not

a star was to be seen. It was the earth-lit portion of the long familiar

and yet mysterious orb which was to be their resting place for the next

few hours.

"The sun hasn't risen over there yet," said Redgrave, as she was peering

down into the void. "It's earth-light still. Now look at the other

side."

She crossed the deck, and saw the strangest scene she had yet beheld.

Apparently only a few miles below her was a huge crescent-shaped plain

arching away for hundreds of miles on either side. The outer edge had a

ragged look, and little excrescences, which soon took the shape of

flat-topped mountains, projected from it and stood out bright and sharp

against the black void beneath, out of which the stars shone up, as it

seemed, a few feet beyond the edge of the disc.

The plain itself was a scene of awful and utter desolation. Huge

mountain-walls, towering to immense heights and enclosing great circular

and oval plains, one side of them blazing with intolerable light, and

the other side black with impenetrable obscurity; enormous valleys

reaching down from brilliant day into rayless night--perhaps down into

the very bowels of the dead world itself; vast grey-white plains lying

round the mountains, crossed by little ridges and by long black lines,

which could only be immense fissures with perpendicular sides--but all

hard, grey-white and black, all intolerable brightness or inky gloom;

not a sign of life anywhere; no shady forests, no green fields, no

broad, glittering oceans; only a ghastly wilderness of dead mountains

and dead plains.

"What an awful place," Zaidie whispered. "Surely we can't land there.

How far are we from it?"

"About fifteen hundred miles," replied Redgrave, who was sweeping the

scene below him with one of the two powerful telescopes which stood on

the deck. "No, it doesn't look very cheerful, does it? But it's a

marvellous sight for all that, and one that a good many people on earth

would give one of their eyes to see from here. I'm letting her drop

pretty fast, and we shall probably land in a couple of hours or so.

Meanwhile you may as well get out your moon atlas, and study your

lunography. I'm going to turn the power a bit astern so that we shall go

down obliquely, and see more of the lighted disc. We started at new moon

so that you should have a look at the full earth, and also so that we

could get round to the invisible side while it is lighted up."

They both went below, he to deflect the repulsive force so that one set

of engines should give them a somewhat oblique direction, while the

other, acting directly on the surface of the moon, simply retarded their

fall; and she to get out her maps.

When they got back the _Astronef_ had changed her apparent position,

and, instead of falling directly on to the moon, was descending towards

it in a slanting direction. The result of this was that the sunlit

crescent rapidly grew in breadth. Peak after peak and range after range

rose up swiftly out of the black gulf beyond. The sun climbed quickly up

through the star-strewn, mid-day heavens, and the full earth sank more

swiftly still behind them.

Another hour of silent, entranced wonder and admiration followed, and

then Redgrave said:

"Don't you think it's about time we were beginning to think of

breakfast, dear--or do you think you can wait till we land?"

"Breakfast on the moon!" she exclaimed. "That would be just too lovely

for words--of course we'll wait!"

"Very well," he said; "you see that big black ring nearly below

us?--that, as I suppose you know, is the celebrated Mount Tycho. I'll

try and find a convenient spot on the top of the ring to drop on, and

then you will be able to survey the scenery from seventeen or eighteen

thousand feet above the plains."

About two hours later a slight, jarring tremor ran through the frame of

the vessel, and the first stage of the voyage was ended. After a passage

of less than twelve hours the _Astronef_ had crossed a gulf of nearly

two hundred and fifty thousand miles, and rested on the untrodden

surface of the lunar world.