Arthur Zagat - The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume IX

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.”