CHAPTER IV.THE PLUTOCRATS RECONCILED.Looking back now at that dreadful hour when the realization of our awful predicament burst upon us, I wonder that I preserved my own equilibrium.The first shock came near to throwing me off my poise, but after that I gained the whip hand of my wits by swift and sure degrees.I verily believe the professor would have been strangled by Meigs, aided and abetted by Popham and Markham, had I not rushed to his rescue. I had muscles of iron, and after I had caught Meigs by the nape of the neck and thrown him backward, I planted myself between Quinn and his foes."Leave the professor alone," said I. "You men show mighty poor judgment, it strikes me, in trying to lay violent hands on him.""He deserves death," babbled Meigs. "He had no business shooting us into space in this summary manner."Fear and anger had made Meigs childish. He measured our dilemma in terms so common a smile came to my lips."Judgment, poor judgment!" sniffed Popham. "Look at Gilhooly, and then talk about poor judgment, if you can."In truth, the railway magnate presented a sorry spectacle. His clothing was in wild disorder, his hair was rumpled about his head, and he was hopping back and forth with two fingers in the air.He was under the impression that he was dealing in railroad stocks, completing the huge transaction that had made him the talk of two continents."This professor ought to be flayed alive," declared Markham. "Where are we going, and when will we get there?""Now," said I. "you are striking the keynote. Who knows where we are going if the professor doesn't? And who knows when we shall arrive there if it is out of his power to tell? We need the professor, for if we are to be saved it will be his knowledge that does it.""But what will my family think?" whimpered Meigs. "And my business interests!"He threw up his hands and fell back in his seat with a groan. Then abruptly he straightened up again."This is a dream! By gad, it must be! The whole affair is too outrageously unreal for any sane man to believe."Gilhooly gave a maudlin chuckle."I was dead sure I'd get that last block of X.Y.&Z. stock! That road is the last span in my network of ties and rails. Ha!Nowwe'll see!Now!"Meigs shivered. Gilhooly's maunderings struck sharply at his desire to coddle himself with a myth."It's awful to have Gilhooly like that," spoke up Augustus Popham. "If he had not been thrown out of balance, his wide knowledge of matters relating to transportation might have proved of inestimable service to us now."Professor Quinn laughed. It was an eerie laugh, and it shook me to hear it."Oh, you!" cried Markham reproachfully, whirling on Quinn. "After causing this disaster and overthrowing as brilliant a mind as there ever was in Wall Street, you have the heart to indulge in levity. Look here: how far are we from the earth at the present moment?""That is a difficult matter to estimate, even approximately," answered Quinn calmly. "Ordinarily, gravity exerts a force that can be measured definitely on the earth's surface. A body falling freely from rest acquires a velocity which is equal to the product of thirty-two and one-fifth feet and the number of seconds during which the motion has lasted. What is the time now?"Three gentlemen reached for their watches, failed to find them, and turned hard looks on me. I appreciated their dilemma and drew from my vest an open-face timepiece that was personal property and honestly come by."It is twelve-fifteen," said I.Quinn took a pencil and notebook from his pocket and did some figuring."We might be a little more than two miles from our native planet," said he, "but——""Only two miles!" cried the three exiles in chorus."You can take us back, sir," said Popham, who had been pacing the floor nervously. "Shut off the power of this infernal machine and let us drop back to where we belong. Two miles is no great matter. Your castle is a slow freight compared with some of Gilhooly's express trains.""I cannot take you back, sir," returned the professor, "and I would not if I could. You did not hear me out. The law of velocity, recited for your benefit a moment ago, does not measure the speed of this car.""No?" murmured Markham."Decidedly not. The earth sweeps along in its orbit at the rate of eighteen miles to the second, while some aerolites and meteoroids attain a speed of twenty and thirty miles to the second. In building this car, I equipped it with an anti-gravity block geared up to fifty miles to the second. The lever on the wall"—and here Quinn turned and pointed to it—-"is thrown so as to give us the maximum.""In other words," said Popham feebly, "we are sailing skyward at a rate of—of three thousand miles per—per minute?""Presumably. As we left my city lot in New York at about eleven-fifteen, it follows that we have been one hour on the way.""And should be one hundred and eighty thousand miles from home," faltered Meigs."About that," answered the professor calmly. "I do not know just how much our progress was impeded by the atmospheric envelope of the earth, but I think we may call our distance from the mother orb some one hundred and eighty thousand miles, in round numbers."These startling figures came near to unsettling the three gentlemen again. In that flight through space we were confronting immensities well-nigh beyond our puny comprehension. And the professor was not yet done."In the storeroom overhead," he continued, "I have a supply of cubes and insulating compound which I can combine and give tremendous added velocity to the car.""I am sure we are traveling fast enough," said Meigs, leaning back on the divan hopelessly dejected."If you are now ready to listen to reason," proceeded Quinn. "I will tell you how Mr. Munn here saved your lives by rescuing me from your mad attack.""Our lives, forsooth!" exclaimed Markham bitterly. "Of what value is life to us, situated as we are?""That is one way to look at it, of course," rejoined Quinn caustically. "But I did not exile you into planetary space for the purpose of wiping you out of existence.""You might as well have done so," said Popham severely. "That is what this harum-scarum plot of yours amounts to in the long run.""You may not care to learn how I am preserving you at the present moment," continued Quinn, "nor how I shall do so in the future, yet I will tell you so that you may understand how much you owe to Mr. Munn's foresight and courage."I was beginning to entertain a high regard for Quinn in spite of what he had done. He may have been laboring under terrible delusions, but his resource certainly commanded respect."To my forethought," he continued, "is due the fact that you are breathing oxygen at this moment; and had I not invented a liquid which fortifies animate or inanimate bodies against heat and cold, our rush through the atmosphere of the earth would have incinerated this car and its contents—nay, would have caused it to explode and settle back on our native planet in impalpable powder."These were things that none of us, aside from the professor, had so much as taken thought of. My respect for him was growing into something like awe, and I fancied I detected traces of the same sentiment in the other three."There are roving bodies in space," Quinn went on, noting with apparent satisfaction the interest he had aroused, "with which we might come into collision. I have a good telescope at the observatory window upstairs, and while I cannot guide this car, I can at least increase or slacken its speed so as to dodge any other derelict that may come into dangerous proximity with us.""Hadn't you better be up there on the look-out?" queried Markham in some trepidation.He was manifesting an interest in his personal safety that pleased the professor."There is not much danger at present," returned Quinn. "When we have plunged farther into the interstellar void, it will be well to stand watch and watch about at the telescope.""Will it not be possible to land on some other planet, Mars, for instance?" queried Popham with sudden hope."I should prefer Mars," added Meigs, reflecting the hope shown in his friend's face. "They have been signaling from Mars, and perhaps we can find out what they want over there."Quinn shook his head."We are in the hands of fate, gentlemen," said he. "We may drop into some port, but what that port will be is beyond my power even to surmise.""The moon isn't so far off," suggested Markham."Only two hundred and forty thousand miles," said Quinn."We should be there in less than two hours from the time of starting," remarked Meigs, after a mental bout with the figures."If I wished," said Quinn, "I could increase our speed; traveling at the rate we are, however, something will have to be deducted for the resistance of the earth's atmosphere. If we drop on a planet it must be a planet with an atmosphere. The moon has none, and consequently is a dead world. Besides, fate might not throw us into its vicinity, or——""Just a minute, sir," interposed Markham, "for I am a man who likes to understand thoroughly every situation with which he is called upon to deal. You invited us to your castle, not, I am constrained to believe, to have us victimized by Munn, here, nor to have us invest in any of your discoveries, but to snatch us away from the scene of our labors. Is that correct, Professor Quinn?""Entirely so, Mr. Markham," replied Quinn."Evidently," proceeded Markham, "your plot has cost you some time and labor. You had first to find your gravity-resisting compound——""The plot followed as a result of my discovery," smiled the professor. "I did not first evolve the plot and then go searching for means to get you off the earth. When I had made the discovery, it remained for me to give it to the world—or to better the world by taking you four gentlemen away from it. Had I given the public the benefit, you shrewd men of affairs might have devised means for setting it aside, or for controlling it. Not being a business man myself, I feared to take chances. For that reason the present enterprise appealed to me.""You have planned so well in the smaller details that I wonder you overlooked the main point.""And that is——""What you are going to do with us, now that your plan has succeeded."The professor tossed his hands deprecatingly as though that was really the most insignificant part of his startling scheme."We can't go bobbing around through interstellar space," grumbled Popham. "I don't relish the idea of being cribbed, cabined and confined in a steel room indefinitely. I should go mad from the very thought.""It's awful to contemplate," said Meigs, casting a melancholy glance through the iron latticework at one of the windows.The bags of loot were in that vicinity, at the moment, and his glance swerved reproachfully to me."We shall make a landing, I have no doubt," said the professor soothingly, "somehow and somewhere.""By gad, sir," cried Popham, bringing his fist emphatically down on the table, "I don't like such a hit-and-miss way of doing things. Whenever I set out to accomplish anything, the goal is always clear in my mind; yet, here I am, through no desire of my own, afloat in the great void, without a single aim or a remote prospect. If we are going to land anywhere—and you remain firm in your decision not to take us back to our native planet—I demand that you make landfall on some orb that is worth while.""Very good, Popham," approved Meigs. "Unless I am greatly mistaken, that was the very idea Markham had in mind when he began questioning the professor. Eh, Markham?""It was," replied Markham. "A full knowledge of where we are going is necessary to a thorough understanding of our—er—most remarkable situation. Now, there are worlds larger than the one we have recently left. Personally, I am predisposed in favor of a large planet—one on which there are traction interests, fuel supplies, and products of the soil similar to those we have been accustomed to."Under the spell of Markham's words, Popham began to glow and expand. Meigs, all attention, pressed a little closer."The bigger the planet the bigger our field of operations!" cried Popham. "What's the matter with Jupiter?""Or Saturn?" echoed Meigs."Or Neptune?" put in Markham."What's the matter with the whole solar system?" inquired Quinn, with gentle irony. He turned to me. "Observe, Mr. Munn, how extravagant are the ideas inspired by monopoly! These gentlemen are hardly started on their journey into space before they forget the business interests, the friends and the environment they are leaving behind and begin planning the commercial conquest of the stars!" He shook his head forebodingly. "Your regeneration," he added to the millionaires, "calls for a landing on some barren world, some outcast of the solar system, where you will have nothing to do but think over the evil of your past and learn something of the duty you owe your fellow-men."Popham, Markham, and Meigs were visibly annoyed by the professor's remarks. Withdrawing as far as the limits of the steel structure would allow, they put their heads together and held a brief but animated conversation in tones so low that the professor and I could not overhear."Think of that, professor!" I muttered. "And yet there are people who find fault with a respectable burglar.""Softly, Mr. Munn," returned Quinn. "Before we are done with this journey I am fain to believe that all of you will have a different outlook upon life, and a higher regard for your duties of citizenship."Just then, Popham turned from his friends and stepped toward the professor. His manner was truculent—probably just such a manner as he was accustomed to use in facing a board of obstinate directors."If you will not return us to our native planet, Professor Quinn," said he sharply, "then we shall stand upon our rights. We are unalterably opposed to landing upon any orb whose diameter measures less than——"At that instant a most astounding thing happened. The car ducked sideways, throwing the whole structure out of plumb.Loose articles began to drop from shelves and other places and to slide across the floor to the lowest point. By a quick movement I saved the lamp and braced myself in an upright position.Cries of terror went up from Markham, Meigs, and Popham."Where's Gilhooly?" shouted the professor.He was answered by a wild yell from overhead."He's in the storeroom!" cried Quinn. "Follow me with that lamp, Munn—quick!"The professor rushed for the stairway and I made after him with what speed I could.CHAPTER V.TRAVELING SUNWARD.There never lived a man, I suppose, who did not, at some time or other in his career, submit his veracity to question. A reformed burglar, therefore, although animated by the most disinterested motives, can scarcely hope to escape the shafts of the incredulous.Although well-grounded in the science of cracksmanship, and with some store of legal learning as to alibis and so forth, my mind was as empty of astronomical lore as a drained bottle. The professor's sayings were jotted down in a sort of commonplace book at a later day when leisure offered.Memory may have played me false in some few minor points, but in all of major importance this narrative is to be taken with the same sincerity in which it is written. I ask no more of the reader than that; and if he is not averse to strolling through unfrequented ways touching elbows with a man who has a past, we shall get along famously.To return, then, to the steel car, and the obliquity it suddenly presented to the direction of its course. Startling disclosures had somewhat obscured Gilhooly, and he had vanished from the lower room without being missed.For a man of sixty-five, the professor was very agile, and he took the winding iron stairway two steps at a time. I gained the storeroom close behind him, and there we found Gilhooly, crooning to himself and working like mad.He was not working in the dark, but had possessed himself of my bull's-eye lantern, which I had left on descending from the loft some time before. Mounted on a pile of packing cases, he was engaged in painting a large steel cube, taking his pigment from an open cask with a whitewash brush."My anti-gravity compound!" exclaimed the professor in an irritated tone. "There are several blocks on the floor, as you can see: Gilhooly began painting that one, and it rose as insulation proceeded, lodging to the left of the dome and tilted the car.""This is the shabbiest lot of coaches I ever saw in my life," said Gilhooly, dabbing away with the brush. "I won't own a road with such rolling stock."The three men downstairs had followed Quinn and me. After some coaxing, Meigs got Gilhooly to descend from his perch and give up the whitewash brush.Thereupon the cube was pried over until it rested directly under another block in the point of the dome, and the professor finished the insulation begun by the railway magnate."Gilhooly will have to be watched," said Quinn, "or he will play havoc with the materials I have stored up here. He has wasted at least a quart of that anti-gravity mixture, and it is worth its weight in gold. Nay, it is worth more than that, for after this supply is exhausted there will be none to be had for love or money."Our rate of speed has been multiplied by two, and we are rushing through space with frightful rapidity. There is my telescope"—and the professor pointed to the instrument which stood beneath a window in the sloping roof of the car. "Suppose Gilhooly had demolished that! Or what if he had wrecked the oxygen vat, or the anti-temperature reservoir! Gentlemen, I shudder to think of what might have happened."The professor sank down on a copper tank and brushed his perspiring brow with a bandanna handkerchief. I placed the lamp on a box beside the bull's-eye lantern and reclined on a bale of something or other that lay conveniently near.Meigs and Popham dropped down on a packing case with Gilhooly moored between them, and Markham took up his station on an overturned cask.The loft of the car, stored as it was with odds and ends of science, together with a supply of provisions made ready for us by the farsighted and wonderful man who was conducting this select party into the unknown, was an object of deep solicitude and interest.Out of a desire to tag the various materials understandingly, I lifted the lid of my curiosity and let out a few questions."If I mistake not," said I, "you mentioned this anti-temperature material once before. What is it, professor?""A liquid," he answered amiably. "As a discovery, it is outranked only by my anti-gravity compound. An ounce of the fluid in a bath renders the bather impervious to heat or cold, keeping in the animal caloric and keeping out all other extremes of temperature. Some of the mixture was incorporated into the paint with which this car is coated."Yonder is the water receptacle," and the professor nodded toward a large tank opposite him. "With economy, the supply in that reservoir will last us several months. The food I have provided is of the ready-prepared kind, mostly in tins, with an alcohol lamp for the brewing of tea, coffee, and chocolate. During this hegira into infinity I have omitted nothing, gentlemen, which will minister to your comfort.""You are a very able man, professor," acknowledged Popham. "How long have you been planning this little excursion?""Ever since I began erecting what the Harlemites were pleased to call my castle," smiled Quinn. "The plan was conceived at the time the success of the manipulations of yourself and your friends seemed assured.""It was your purpose to foil the speculative gentlemen," I struck in, "and so come to the aid of a long-suffering public?""You hit off the matter finely, Mr. Munn," replied the professor. "That was my purpose.""Could not your anti-temperature mixture have been donated to the poor with beneficial results?""It is altogether too expensive for general use. I will not conceal from you gentlemen the fact that we are falling sunward. If we make landfall on a planet where the heat is several hundred degrees beyond our earthly powers of endurance, the mixture in question will preserve us.""Falling sunward!" exclaimed Markham. "It was hard upon midnight when we left the earth. If my school-day learning is not at fault, the sun, at the hour of our departure, was on the opposite side of our planet. How, then, does it happen that we are falling toward the great luminary?""Bravo!" cried the professor, vastly pleased. "I am glad to see, Mr. Markham, that your intellect has not suffered a total eclipse by the demands of commercial supremacy. Night is the result of one of the Earth's hemispheres being turned from the sun, and, other things being equal, we should now be falling toward the outer limits of our solar system; but, if I may use the term, the castle was not aimed for a direct fall from the earth's crust. We dropped at a very sharp angle, and the influence of the sun has attracted us still farther out of a straight course. I trust you follow me?"The three millionaires understood the situation, but, judging from the expression of their faces, the knowledge brought keen disappointment."There are only two planets between the earth and the sun," observed Markham, "Mercury and Venus, if I remember rightly.""Both insignificant," grumbled Popham."Venus is about the size of our own planet, gentlemen," said the professor. "However, it has long been supposed that there is another group of planets between Mercury and the sun, among them a little world called Vulcan, which——""That does not interest us," cut in Meigs. "Sunward the planets are smaller, but they get larger as you go the other way.""Larger," expounded the professor, "but less dense.""As I was about to tell you, a moment ago," pursued Popham, "Meigs, Markham, and I have decided that either Saturn or Mars would about fill the bill so far as we are concerned. There are lights on Mars, which, as we figure it, presupposes electricity; and electricity means civilization to a degree that affords us a promising prospect. Then, again, there are canals on Mars, and, if canals, certainly water transportation. Transportation problems of any sort will interest Gilhooly; indeed, we are prone to think they would bring him back to his normal poise. Saturn, on the other hand, has rings, and such a condition might afford opportunities to wide-awake men such as are unknown anywhere else in the solar system. Take us either to Mars or to Saturn, Professor Quinn, as you may find it most convenient. We demand it!""It is impossible to do anything of that kind, Mr. Popham," returned the professor decidedly. "The influence of the sun upon our course is too powerful.""Are we to understand, then," cried Markham, "that we are compelled to put up with either Mercury or Venus?""Even there, gentlemen, we have no choice. We are in the grip of circumstances and must perforce accept whatever fate throws our way. Possibly we shall become a satellite of the sun, revolving around and around it—Quinn's Planet, the smallest of any in the great system."Although I felt drowsy, I aroused myself with an effort and kept sharp eyes on the professor's face. I do not think he was in earnest, but merely talking to see what effect his remarks would have on the three millionaires."Corner, corner, corner," babbled Gilhooly; "make a corner, corner everything."Markham dropped his face in his hands, Meigs bowed his head, and I saw a shiver run through Popham."Egad," muttered Popham, "this castle of yours, Quinn, is little short of a steel tomb. Inasmuch as we are safely interred, what's the use of living? Gilhooly is the only fortunate one among us, for his reason is shattered and he cannot realize what he is facing.""You are talking less like a man, now, Popham," reproved Quinn, "than like a driveling idiot. While there's life there's hope. How many brilliant minds have been overthrown as a result of your manipulations of stock in Wall Street? How many bright futures have been wrecked by an adverse trend of the speculative market? Were those unfortunates any better off because thrust into madhouses and unable to realize the fate that had overtaken them? For shame, sir!""You are perfectly sure, are you, professor," I struck in, attempting to give a more pleasant twist to the conversation, "that we shall come out all right in the end?""I have my plans, Mr. Munn," he answered, not unkindly, "and the success or failure of them will depend largely upon the mental attitude of these gentlemen."This was too deep for me, and I cast about for some equally important question which would bring a less indefinite response."Anyhow," said I, "we have plenty of food for a long journey? It would be a fearful thing to have a famine so—so many miles from a base of supplies.""The food supply, Mr. Munn," answered the professor, "is adequate. There will be no famine.""And the water, the oxygen, the——""I have looked after everything necessary to our safety and comfort."I had confidence in Quinn. He had shown that he was an able man, and that his promises were to be taken at face value. With a sigh of relief, I settled back in tolerable comfort.Meigs took the role of questioner out of my hands at this point, and, although I was eager to hear all that was said, "tired nature's sweet restorer" got the better of my curiosity and I fell asleep on the bale.CHAPTER VI.A LANDING EFFECTED.It is not my purpose to cumber this narrative with the smaller details of our journey, novel and thrilling though some of them proved to be. It is with our experiences on the planet which finally claimed us that this account has mostly to do, so I shall glide over intermediate incidents in a somewhat cursory manner.Our faculties, keyed to an understanding of earthly conditions only, found themselves continually at bay; and at nothing did they stand more aghast than at the lightning-like speed with which we shot through space.The energy developed by the two insulated cubes gave to our steel car the stupendous velocity of one hundred miles per second, six thousand miles per minute, three hundred and sixty thousand miles per hour! Human reason might well falter at the threshold of such immensity.Yet while I slept peacefully on that bale in the storeroom, these figures were verified by the professor and J. Archibald Meigs, who happened to be the only two who were wide awake. It has been my lasting regret that they did not rouse me so that I might also have had a view of the noble spectacle for the first time unrolled to earthly eyes.We passed the moon, a dreary, burned-out world, and the professor was able to check off two hundred and forty thousand miles of our sunward plunge. We had traveled a little more than half an hour at our ultimate velocity; taking this into consideration, and noting the exact minute when we crossed the centre of the satellite's orbit, the professor was able to do some figuring and so test his theories as to speed.The car skimmed through ether less than five hundred miles above the lunar crust. Quinn was doubly pleased, for he not only proved that our velocity was substantially as he had supposed, but also discovered that the moon's attraction, so powerful on the tides of our mother sphere, could not swerve the car by a hair's breadth from its direct course, or overcome the influence of the sun.Meigs told me later that the marvelous beauty of the satellite, gleaming against the black void with ghostly radiance, was probably worth the trip and its attendant inconveniences. He and Quinn had looked their fill on the hemisphere which is never seen from the earth.After this the hours literally flew past, the novelty of our journey precluding any such thing as monotony. In fact, we hardly allowed ourselves a sufficient amount of time for rest and refreshment.A lookout was kept continually at the eye-piece of the telescope to signal the approach of any asteroid with which we might possibly come into collision. Only once did this danger threaten us, and then, as may be supposed, it was the professor who proved our salvation.The lever in the wall of the lower or living room of the car communicated with screens, ingeniously arranged for shutting off the power of the anti-gravity cubes. By lessening our speed, the professor suffered the asteroid to cross our course, our car ducking through the luminous trail that swept out behind it.Night reigned around us constantly. Our car caught the rays of the sun, it is true, but the lack of an atmosphere caused the light to be thrown back into space and lost.The castle was nothing less than a small planet, attended by five satellites which, held to our vicinity by the car's attraction, circled around us continually. These satellites were the four knotted handkerchiefs containing the tribute I had levied upon the plutocrats, and also the revolver which had assisted me in the work.These objects went through varied phases exactly as more pretentious satellites would have done. It would be difficult to describe my feelings as I watched them from the car windows.I am prone to think, at the present writing, that this lost booty, waxing and waning under my eyes, planted in my nature those first seeds of regret which finally grew into a reformation.I recall a conversation that I had with Markham while I sat with my eye at the lower end of the telescope, watching for stray asteroids.The millionaires had given me to understand that I was not in their set. Circumstances over which they had no control had brought us together within the narrow confines of the car, but no social barriers had been leveled. Occasionally the novelty of our situation, and the consequent excitement, would cause one or other of the wealthy gentleman to forget the gulf that yawned between us.This attitude of the magnate afforded me a good deal of innocent enjoyment. They had left social prestige, no less than their bank accounts, behind them, and what little collateral they had had upon their persons was now "satelliting" about the car. The line they drew between themselves and me, in their thoughtful moments, was a distinction without much of a difference.Markham, I remember, was munching a sandwich, contrived out of two crackers and a slice of tinned beef."Did you never reflect, Mr. Munn," said he, "upon the evil of your past?""When a man writes books which are mainly drawn from his own experience, Mr. Markham," said I, "he has to go into his past pretty exhaustively.""Ah, yes, I was forgetting about the books. Were you not horrified with the results of your retrospection?""Horrified? Well, yes, here and there. I lost a big haul once through the breaking of a jimmy, and I was horrified to think how any dealer in burglar's kits could have foisted such an unreliable instrument upon a well-meaning cracksman."Markham stared at me dazedly."I have set down the experience in Chapter One of 'Forty Ways for Cracking Safes,'" I proceeded, "and one of the first of my ten rules for success in any safe-cracking job was this: Be sure that your kit is reliable, and without flaws.""Mr. Munn, Mr. Munn!" whispered Markham hoarsely. "Think of the people from whom you have taken property dishonestly.""I never think of them but to wish that I had been able to relieve them of more.""This is awful!" muttered Markham. "You really exult over what you have done."He would have started down the iron stairs had I not restrained him with a word."Let me ask you something, Mr. Markham," said I. "Last fall, bread went to ten cents a loaf because the wheat market was cornered—and a man by the name of Markham did the cornering. The people who had to put up that extra five cents missed it more than did those from whom I took five hundred dollars."Markham coughed. "Any asteroids in sight?" he inquired absently."I wonder ifyouever did any reflecting?" I asked tartly."What do you think of Quinn?" and Markham looked away as I took my eye from the telescope and gave him an expressive wink."I don't think," I continued, "that you ever wrote a book called 'Forty Ways to Starve the Poor.' You have material enough for a pretty effective volume on the subject, but you haven't my nerve.""No," he returned slowly, "I haven't your nerve. It requires unalloyed impudence and a mind incapable of clear thinking to liken the results of high finance with those of your own petty and highly criminal proceedings. You are too bright a man, Mr. Munn, to allow yourself to be led afield by sophistries of that kind.""Mr. Markham, Mr. Markham!" I breathed, in horrified protest."You have bolstered up your nefarious business with false ideals," he went on, "and you are unregenerate and lost!""This is awful!" I murmured."When we get to where we are going," pursued Markham, either failing to note my sarcasm or else hoping to ride it down, "I trust you will hold your criminal instincts in check. If there are any people there, don't give them any false ideals or implant the notion that your standards belong to the rest of us.""I would not so belittle my ideals," I returned bluntly."Sir," he cried sharply, "am I to understand that you set yourself up as being any better than Mr. Popham, Mr. Gilhooly, Mr. Meigs, or myself?""What you understand doesn't concern me in the least," I answered airily. "What you don't understand, it strikes me, is the matter that ought to claim your attention.""Confound you, sir! Your overwhelming ignorance is equalled only by your colossal egotism. I am sorry that I allowed myself to be beguiled into any talk with you.""Our regrets are mutual," said I, "for your conversation is demoralizing. You are a past master in successful trickery—trickery of the sort that ought to be stamped out. If the law was as quick to deal with you as with me——""Hold!" fumed Markham, plunging for the stairs, "I have heard enough."I have said that I was a hard man, in those times. I could call a spade a spade with never a thought that my angle of vision was distorted. I have regretted expressing my views in this frank fashion to Markham, yet I believe that there was injustice in his remarks no less than in mine.Being the only person in the car who possessed a watch, the professor appointed me official time-keeper. It was my duty to bulletin the hour, with its equivalent in days such as we were accustomed to, upon a blackboard in the lower room; I had also to enter this information upon a book, which the professor called the "log-book."Every ten hours we had a class in astronomy, with the professor as instructor and with every man save Gilhooly and the lookout as students. The railway magnate's aberration continued; all we could do was to watch him solicitously and prevent him from doing any injury to himself or to our paraphernalia.The class learned that the nearest planet with an atmosphere, and supposedly habitable, was Venus, which, at inferior conjunction, is distant some twenty-five million miles from Terra, as Quinn called our own planet. Counting out the delays at starting, and in maneuvring to escape the asteroid, our instructor asserted that we should reach Venus in something like seventy-five hours.Markham, Meigs, and Popham, on consulting the bulletin board and finding that seventy hours had passed, began to brush their clothes and tidy themselves against the hour of landing. But they were destined to disappointment.Unable to locate Venus at the point where he had hoped to find it, the professor decided that it was nearing superior conjunction and was somewhere on the other side of the sun. Meigs made a deplorable display of temper.Quinn was a mighty poor astronomer, he said sneeringly, if he could find himself so far wide of the mark on such a simple matter. Meigs further added—with a good deal of childishness as I thought—that the role of a derelict was distasteful to him: a derelict, he argued, was nothing more than a tramp, and he objected to being a tramp, even a celestial tramp.I was out of patience with the man. Admiration for the professor had taken fast hold of me and I would not have him sneered at or maligned.A war of hot words was on between myself and the Wall Street broker when Quinn interfered."True," said he, "we have missed Venus by a few millions of miles, but we are aimed directly at the orbit of another world, and I can so manipulate the lever as to wait for it, if necessary, and drop upon its surface when it overtakes us.""What world is that?" said Popham, pricking tip his ears."Mercury," answered the professor. "It is the smallest orb in our solar system and measures some three thousand miles in diameter.""I thought Venus was rather contracted for men with such large schemes as ourselves," remarked Meigs, shaking his head, "but this other planet seems to be smaller still.""I wonder if they have coal mines there?" murmured Popham meditatively."And if they grow wheat and cotton?" added Meigs."If Mercury is inhabited," spoke up Markham eagerly, "food will certainly be as necessary there as on the earth. I don't know, gentlemen, but it strikes me we might fall into worse places.""Poor Gilhooly!" sighed Meigs. "What a pity it will be if the Mercurials prove to have traction interests!""How long before we shall reach this planet you speak of, professor?" inquired Popham."Well," answered Quinn thoughtfully, "Mercury is rather slow. It travels along its orbit at the rate of thirty miles per second, while we are moving at one hundred miles. At a rough estimate, I should say we can effect a juncture with the planet in ten hours, although an extra hour may be required for maneuvres to secure a landing."The ten hours that followed were hours of great anxiety and feverish labor. Believing that my nerves were the steadiest, the professor placed me at the telescope to act as pilot while he served as engineer and manipulated the lever.The responsibilities of my position so worked upon me that I had no time for the glories of the planet we were endeavoring to intercept. Through the telescope I saw huge mountains and broad plains, but they were blurred over with a reddish light and the lesser details of topography were lost.When five hours were gone, the professor left the lever and came upstairs to have a look through the telescope for himself."You have done very well indeed, Mr. Munn," he was pleased to say, "but I think that I had better take this post from now on, while you go below and station yourself at the switch board. The slightest mismanagement, when the critical moment arrives, might hurl us against Mercury with a force that would result in annihilation."The lever turns in a half circle, as you may know. The arc is divided into spaces, numbered from zero to ninety. I will call down to you the number to which you must throw the lever; you will repeat the number back to me, and instantly obey my order.""Trust me, sir," said I.But the professor was loath to let me go without still further impressing upon me the importance of the work before us."In order to alight safely, Mr. Munn," he continued, "we must graduate the power of the anti-gravity cubes to the Mercurial atmosphere. By proceeding intelligently in the matter, we shall make the car weigh slightly more than the atmosphere we encounter; then, when we are about to land, we will let the car just counterbalance the 'pull' of the planet and there will not be the slightest jar.""I understand, professor," I answered and went downstairs.Markham, Meigs, and Popham ascended to the upper chamber, this position bringing them a few feet nearer the goal of our desires as well as giving them a point of vantage from which to watch events. Gilhooly was the only one besides myself in the lower room; he was kneeling on the divan writing imaginary stock quotations on the steel wall with the point of his finger.For four hours or more the professor called out for slight variations in the speed of the car, but in the main the lever was held on the number, 90, which gave a maximum velocity. The tension of the minutes ushering in the last hour of the ten is beyond my power to describe.Once in my evil days I manipulated the tumblers of a combination and pulled open a vault door. Behind the door stood two men with revolvers. For two seconds I stared agape at the trap which I had sprung upon myself; and when I got away I had a bullet in my shoulder.Intensify my feelings fourfold as I stood looking into the leveled revolvers of those two men, then spread out the two seconds to cover a half hour. In this way only can I describe my state of mind while we fought for a safe landing on the planet Mercury.Cries of wonder and apprehension echoed to me from overhead. Above them I heard the shrill voice of the professor:"Zero.""Zero," I repeated, throwing the lever clear over.There followed a jolt as the screens covered the cubes and shut off their energy. Instantly there came the sickening sensation of a fall, accompanied by a rush of displaced air that roared and bellowed all about the car."Forty-five!" shrieked Quinn."Forty-five!" I yelled, throwing the lever half over.Then we caught ourselves with a suddenness that threw me to my knees. We were moving upward again—I could feel the steel floor rising under me."Twenty!" came down from above."Twenty," I answered hoarsely, struggling erect and shifting the lever.I felt that we were still rising, but slowly. The professor was juggling with an unknown atmosphere, and on the success of his judgment depended our lives."Fifteen!""Fifteen!" and over went the lever for five degrees.We were swinging stationary in mid-air. From the window by the switch board I looked outward and downward with bulging eyes.A dazzling glow covered peak and plain, and I turned away that my sight might not be blinded to the lever numbers."Ten!" cried the professor."Ten it is!" and I threw the switch to the number given.Then again we dropped, but slowly, very slowly."Five!"I repeated the order, and again the air rushed against the blunt base of the car, yet not so fiercely as before. Then, all of a sudden, I felt a grip of fingers about my throat, and I was hauled from the lever and thrown back on the floor.Gilhooly had a knee on my breast and was strangling me with fingers of steel. The fire of an insane purpose gleamed in his eyes, and he seemed possessed of the strength of a dozen demons.I struggled, but I might as well have tried to rise under the thousand-tons pressure of a hydraulic press."Ten!" cried Quinn.I did not answer—I could not, for my tongue was lolling between my lips."Ten!" screamed Quinn. "Ten—or we're lost!"A groan, hardly audible, escaped my gasping throat. I heard a frantic clamor above and then there was such a jar and crash as I hope I shall never experience again.All tangible life slipped away from me, and I collapsed into an unconsciousness that I felt might be death itself.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PLUTOCRATS RECONCILED.
Looking back now at that dreadful hour when the realization of our awful predicament burst upon us, I wonder that I preserved my own equilibrium.
The first shock came near to throwing me off my poise, but after that I gained the whip hand of my wits by swift and sure degrees.
I verily believe the professor would have been strangled by Meigs, aided and abetted by Popham and Markham, had I not rushed to his rescue. I had muscles of iron, and after I had caught Meigs by the nape of the neck and thrown him backward, I planted myself between Quinn and his foes.
"Leave the professor alone," said I. "You men show mighty poor judgment, it strikes me, in trying to lay violent hands on him."
"He deserves death," babbled Meigs. "He had no business shooting us into space in this summary manner."
Fear and anger had made Meigs childish. He measured our dilemma in terms so common a smile came to my lips.
"Judgment, poor judgment!" sniffed Popham. "Look at Gilhooly, and then talk about poor judgment, if you can."
In truth, the railway magnate presented a sorry spectacle. His clothing was in wild disorder, his hair was rumpled about his head, and he was hopping back and forth with two fingers in the air.
He was under the impression that he was dealing in railroad stocks, completing the huge transaction that had made him the talk of two continents.
"This professor ought to be flayed alive," declared Markham. "Where are we going, and when will we get there?"
"Now," said I. "you are striking the keynote. Who knows where we are going if the professor doesn't? And who knows when we shall arrive there if it is out of his power to tell? We need the professor, for if we are to be saved it will be his knowledge that does it."
"But what will my family think?" whimpered Meigs. "And my business interests!"
He threw up his hands and fell back in his seat with a groan. Then abruptly he straightened up again.
"This is a dream! By gad, it must be! The whole affair is too outrageously unreal for any sane man to believe."
Gilhooly gave a maudlin chuckle.
"I was dead sure I'd get that last block of X.Y.&Z. stock! That road is the last span in my network of ties and rails. Ha!Nowwe'll see!Now!"
Meigs shivered. Gilhooly's maunderings struck sharply at his desire to coddle himself with a myth.
"It's awful to have Gilhooly like that," spoke up Augustus Popham. "If he had not been thrown out of balance, his wide knowledge of matters relating to transportation might have proved of inestimable service to us now."
Professor Quinn laughed. It was an eerie laugh, and it shook me to hear it.
"Oh, you!" cried Markham reproachfully, whirling on Quinn. "After causing this disaster and overthrowing as brilliant a mind as there ever was in Wall Street, you have the heart to indulge in levity. Look here: how far are we from the earth at the present moment?"
"That is a difficult matter to estimate, even approximately," answered Quinn calmly. "Ordinarily, gravity exerts a force that can be measured definitely on the earth's surface. A body falling freely from rest acquires a velocity which is equal to the product of thirty-two and one-fifth feet and the number of seconds during which the motion has lasted. What is the time now?"
Three gentlemen reached for their watches, failed to find them, and turned hard looks on me. I appreciated their dilemma and drew from my vest an open-face timepiece that was personal property and honestly come by.
"It is twelve-fifteen," said I.
Quinn took a pencil and notebook from his pocket and did some figuring.
"We might be a little more than two miles from our native planet," said he, "but——"
"Only two miles!" cried the three exiles in chorus.
"You can take us back, sir," said Popham, who had been pacing the floor nervously. "Shut off the power of this infernal machine and let us drop back to where we belong. Two miles is no great matter. Your castle is a slow freight compared with some of Gilhooly's express trains."
"I cannot take you back, sir," returned the professor, "and I would not if I could. You did not hear me out. The law of velocity, recited for your benefit a moment ago, does not measure the speed of this car."
"No?" murmured Markham.
"Decidedly not. The earth sweeps along in its orbit at the rate of eighteen miles to the second, while some aerolites and meteoroids attain a speed of twenty and thirty miles to the second. In building this car, I equipped it with an anti-gravity block geared up to fifty miles to the second. The lever on the wall"—and here Quinn turned and pointed to it—-"is thrown so as to give us the maximum."
"In other words," said Popham feebly, "we are sailing skyward at a rate of—of three thousand miles per—per minute?"
"Presumably. As we left my city lot in New York at about eleven-fifteen, it follows that we have been one hour on the way."
"And should be one hundred and eighty thousand miles from home," faltered Meigs.
"About that," answered the professor calmly. "I do not know just how much our progress was impeded by the atmospheric envelope of the earth, but I think we may call our distance from the mother orb some one hundred and eighty thousand miles, in round numbers."
These startling figures came near to unsettling the three gentlemen again. In that flight through space we were confronting immensities well-nigh beyond our puny comprehension. And the professor was not yet done.
"In the storeroom overhead," he continued, "I have a supply of cubes and insulating compound which I can combine and give tremendous added velocity to the car."
"I am sure we are traveling fast enough," said Meigs, leaning back on the divan hopelessly dejected.
"If you are now ready to listen to reason," proceeded Quinn. "I will tell you how Mr. Munn here saved your lives by rescuing me from your mad attack."
"Our lives, forsooth!" exclaimed Markham bitterly. "Of what value is life to us, situated as we are?"
"That is one way to look at it, of course," rejoined Quinn caustically. "But I did not exile you into planetary space for the purpose of wiping you out of existence."
"You might as well have done so," said Popham severely. "That is what this harum-scarum plot of yours amounts to in the long run."
"You may not care to learn how I am preserving you at the present moment," continued Quinn, "nor how I shall do so in the future, yet I will tell you so that you may understand how much you owe to Mr. Munn's foresight and courage."
I was beginning to entertain a high regard for Quinn in spite of what he had done. He may have been laboring under terrible delusions, but his resource certainly commanded respect.
"To my forethought," he continued, "is due the fact that you are breathing oxygen at this moment; and had I not invented a liquid which fortifies animate or inanimate bodies against heat and cold, our rush through the atmosphere of the earth would have incinerated this car and its contents—nay, would have caused it to explode and settle back on our native planet in impalpable powder."
These were things that none of us, aside from the professor, had so much as taken thought of. My respect for him was growing into something like awe, and I fancied I detected traces of the same sentiment in the other three.
"There are roving bodies in space," Quinn went on, noting with apparent satisfaction the interest he had aroused, "with which we might come into collision. I have a good telescope at the observatory window upstairs, and while I cannot guide this car, I can at least increase or slacken its speed so as to dodge any other derelict that may come into dangerous proximity with us."
"Hadn't you better be up there on the look-out?" queried Markham in some trepidation.
He was manifesting an interest in his personal safety that pleased the professor.
"There is not much danger at present," returned Quinn. "When we have plunged farther into the interstellar void, it will be well to stand watch and watch about at the telescope."
"Will it not be possible to land on some other planet, Mars, for instance?" queried Popham with sudden hope.
"I should prefer Mars," added Meigs, reflecting the hope shown in his friend's face. "They have been signaling from Mars, and perhaps we can find out what they want over there."
Quinn shook his head.
"We are in the hands of fate, gentlemen," said he. "We may drop into some port, but what that port will be is beyond my power even to surmise."
"The moon isn't so far off," suggested Markham.
"Only two hundred and forty thousand miles," said Quinn.
"We should be there in less than two hours from the time of starting," remarked Meigs, after a mental bout with the figures.
"If I wished," said Quinn, "I could increase our speed; traveling at the rate we are, however, something will have to be deducted for the resistance of the earth's atmosphere. If we drop on a planet it must be a planet with an atmosphere. The moon has none, and consequently is a dead world. Besides, fate might not throw us into its vicinity, or——"
"Just a minute, sir," interposed Markham, "for I am a man who likes to understand thoroughly every situation with which he is called upon to deal. You invited us to your castle, not, I am constrained to believe, to have us victimized by Munn, here, nor to have us invest in any of your discoveries, but to snatch us away from the scene of our labors. Is that correct, Professor Quinn?"
"Entirely so, Mr. Markham," replied Quinn.
"Evidently," proceeded Markham, "your plot has cost you some time and labor. You had first to find your gravity-resisting compound——"
"The plot followed as a result of my discovery," smiled the professor. "I did not first evolve the plot and then go searching for means to get you off the earth. When I had made the discovery, it remained for me to give it to the world—or to better the world by taking you four gentlemen away from it. Had I given the public the benefit, you shrewd men of affairs might have devised means for setting it aside, or for controlling it. Not being a business man myself, I feared to take chances. For that reason the present enterprise appealed to me."
"You have planned so well in the smaller details that I wonder you overlooked the main point."
"And that is——"
"What you are going to do with us, now that your plan has succeeded."
The professor tossed his hands deprecatingly as though that was really the most insignificant part of his startling scheme.
"We can't go bobbing around through interstellar space," grumbled Popham. "I don't relish the idea of being cribbed, cabined and confined in a steel room indefinitely. I should go mad from the very thought."
"It's awful to contemplate," said Meigs, casting a melancholy glance through the iron latticework at one of the windows.
The bags of loot were in that vicinity, at the moment, and his glance swerved reproachfully to me.
"We shall make a landing, I have no doubt," said the professor soothingly, "somehow and somewhere."
"By gad, sir," cried Popham, bringing his fist emphatically down on the table, "I don't like such a hit-and-miss way of doing things. Whenever I set out to accomplish anything, the goal is always clear in my mind; yet, here I am, through no desire of my own, afloat in the great void, without a single aim or a remote prospect. If we are going to land anywhere—and you remain firm in your decision not to take us back to our native planet—I demand that you make landfall on some orb that is worth while."
"Very good, Popham," approved Meigs. "Unless I am greatly mistaken, that was the very idea Markham had in mind when he began questioning the professor. Eh, Markham?"
"It was," replied Markham. "A full knowledge of where we are going is necessary to a thorough understanding of our—er—most remarkable situation. Now, there are worlds larger than the one we have recently left. Personally, I am predisposed in favor of a large planet—one on which there are traction interests, fuel supplies, and products of the soil similar to those we have been accustomed to."
Under the spell of Markham's words, Popham began to glow and expand. Meigs, all attention, pressed a little closer.
"The bigger the planet the bigger our field of operations!" cried Popham. "What's the matter with Jupiter?"
"Or Saturn?" echoed Meigs.
"Or Neptune?" put in Markham.
"What's the matter with the whole solar system?" inquired Quinn, with gentle irony. He turned to me. "Observe, Mr. Munn, how extravagant are the ideas inspired by monopoly! These gentlemen are hardly started on their journey into space before they forget the business interests, the friends and the environment they are leaving behind and begin planning the commercial conquest of the stars!" He shook his head forebodingly. "Your regeneration," he added to the millionaires, "calls for a landing on some barren world, some outcast of the solar system, where you will have nothing to do but think over the evil of your past and learn something of the duty you owe your fellow-men."
Popham, Markham, and Meigs were visibly annoyed by the professor's remarks. Withdrawing as far as the limits of the steel structure would allow, they put their heads together and held a brief but animated conversation in tones so low that the professor and I could not overhear.
"Think of that, professor!" I muttered. "And yet there are people who find fault with a respectable burglar."
"Softly, Mr. Munn," returned Quinn. "Before we are done with this journey I am fain to believe that all of you will have a different outlook upon life, and a higher regard for your duties of citizenship."
Just then, Popham turned from his friends and stepped toward the professor. His manner was truculent—probably just such a manner as he was accustomed to use in facing a board of obstinate directors.
"If you will not return us to our native planet, Professor Quinn," said he sharply, "then we shall stand upon our rights. We are unalterably opposed to landing upon any orb whose diameter measures less than——"
At that instant a most astounding thing happened. The car ducked sideways, throwing the whole structure out of plumb.
Loose articles began to drop from shelves and other places and to slide across the floor to the lowest point. By a quick movement I saved the lamp and braced myself in an upright position.
Cries of terror went up from Markham, Meigs, and Popham.
"Where's Gilhooly?" shouted the professor.
He was answered by a wild yell from overhead.
"He's in the storeroom!" cried Quinn. "Follow me with that lamp, Munn—quick!"
The professor rushed for the stairway and I made after him with what speed I could.
CHAPTER V.
TRAVELING SUNWARD.
There never lived a man, I suppose, who did not, at some time or other in his career, submit his veracity to question. A reformed burglar, therefore, although animated by the most disinterested motives, can scarcely hope to escape the shafts of the incredulous.
Although well-grounded in the science of cracksmanship, and with some store of legal learning as to alibis and so forth, my mind was as empty of astronomical lore as a drained bottle. The professor's sayings were jotted down in a sort of commonplace book at a later day when leisure offered.
Memory may have played me false in some few minor points, but in all of major importance this narrative is to be taken with the same sincerity in which it is written. I ask no more of the reader than that; and if he is not averse to strolling through unfrequented ways touching elbows with a man who has a past, we shall get along famously.
To return, then, to the steel car, and the obliquity it suddenly presented to the direction of its course. Startling disclosures had somewhat obscured Gilhooly, and he had vanished from the lower room without being missed.
For a man of sixty-five, the professor was very agile, and he took the winding iron stairway two steps at a time. I gained the storeroom close behind him, and there we found Gilhooly, crooning to himself and working like mad.
He was not working in the dark, but had possessed himself of my bull's-eye lantern, which I had left on descending from the loft some time before. Mounted on a pile of packing cases, he was engaged in painting a large steel cube, taking his pigment from an open cask with a whitewash brush.
"My anti-gravity compound!" exclaimed the professor in an irritated tone. "There are several blocks on the floor, as you can see: Gilhooly began painting that one, and it rose as insulation proceeded, lodging to the left of the dome and tilted the car."
"This is the shabbiest lot of coaches I ever saw in my life," said Gilhooly, dabbing away with the brush. "I won't own a road with such rolling stock."
The three men downstairs had followed Quinn and me. After some coaxing, Meigs got Gilhooly to descend from his perch and give up the whitewash brush.
Thereupon the cube was pried over until it rested directly under another block in the point of the dome, and the professor finished the insulation begun by the railway magnate.
"Gilhooly will have to be watched," said Quinn, "or he will play havoc with the materials I have stored up here. He has wasted at least a quart of that anti-gravity mixture, and it is worth its weight in gold. Nay, it is worth more than that, for after this supply is exhausted there will be none to be had for love or money.
"Our rate of speed has been multiplied by two, and we are rushing through space with frightful rapidity. There is my telescope"—and the professor pointed to the instrument which stood beneath a window in the sloping roof of the car. "Suppose Gilhooly had demolished that! Or what if he had wrecked the oxygen vat, or the anti-temperature reservoir! Gentlemen, I shudder to think of what might have happened."
The professor sank down on a copper tank and brushed his perspiring brow with a bandanna handkerchief. I placed the lamp on a box beside the bull's-eye lantern and reclined on a bale of something or other that lay conveniently near.
Meigs and Popham dropped down on a packing case with Gilhooly moored between them, and Markham took up his station on an overturned cask.
The loft of the car, stored as it was with odds and ends of science, together with a supply of provisions made ready for us by the farsighted and wonderful man who was conducting this select party into the unknown, was an object of deep solicitude and interest.
Out of a desire to tag the various materials understandingly, I lifted the lid of my curiosity and let out a few questions.
"If I mistake not," said I, "you mentioned this anti-temperature material once before. What is it, professor?"
"A liquid," he answered amiably. "As a discovery, it is outranked only by my anti-gravity compound. An ounce of the fluid in a bath renders the bather impervious to heat or cold, keeping in the animal caloric and keeping out all other extremes of temperature. Some of the mixture was incorporated into the paint with which this car is coated.
"Yonder is the water receptacle," and the professor nodded toward a large tank opposite him. "With economy, the supply in that reservoir will last us several months. The food I have provided is of the ready-prepared kind, mostly in tins, with an alcohol lamp for the brewing of tea, coffee, and chocolate. During this hegira into infinity I have omitted nothing, gentlemen, which will minister to your comfort."
"You are a very able man, professor," acknowledged Popham. "How long have you been planning this little excursion?"
"Ever since I began erecting what the Harlemites were pleased to call my castle," smiled Quinn. "The plan was conceived at the time the success of the manipulations of yourself and your friends seemed assured."
"It was your purpose to foil the speculative gentlemen," I struck in, "and so come to the aid of a long-suffering public?"
"You hit off the matter finely, Mr. Munn," replied the professor. "That was my purpose."
"Could not your anti-temperature mixture have been donated to the poor with beneficial results?"
"It is altogether too expensive for general use. I will not conceal from you gentlemen the fact that we are falling sunward. If we make landfall on a planet where the heat is several hundred degrees beyond our earthly powers of endurance, the mixture in question will preserve us."
"Falling sunward!" exclaimed Markham. "It was hard upon midnight when we left the earth. If my school-day learning is not at fault, the sun, at the hour of our departure, was on the opposite side of our planet. How, then, does it happen that we are falling toward the great luminary?"
"Bravo!" cried the professor, vastly pleased. "I am glad to see, Mr. Markham, that your intellect has not suffered a total eclipse by the demands of commercial supremacy. Night is the result of one of the Earth's hemispheres being turned from the sun, and, other things being equal, we should now be falling toward the outer limits of our solar system; but, if I may use the term, the castle was not aimed for a direct fall from the earth's crust. We dropped at a very sharp angle, and the influence of the sun has attracted us still farther out of a straight course. I trust you follow me?"
The three millionaires understood the situation, but, judging from the expression of their faces, the knowledge brought keen disappointment.
"There are only two planets between the earth and the sun," observed Markham, "Mercury and Venus, if I remember rightly."
"Both insignificant," grumbled Popham.
"Venus is about the size of our own planet, gentlemen," said the professor. "However, it has long been supposed that there is another group of planets between Mercury and the sun, among them a little world called Vulcan, which——"
"That does not interest us," cut in Meigs. "Sunward the planets are smaller, but they get larger as you go the other way."
"Larger," expounded the professor, "but less dense."
"As I was about to tell you, a moment ago," pursued Popham, "Meigs, Markham, and I have decided that either Saturn or Mars would about fill the bill so far as we are concerned. There are lights on Mars, which, as we figure it, presupposes electricity; and electricity means civilization to a degree that affords us a promising prospect. Then, again, there are canals on Mars, and, if canals, certainly water transportation. Transportation problems of any sort will interest Gilhooly; indeed, we are prone to think they would bring him back to his normal poise. Saturn, on the other hand, has rings, and such a condition might afford opportunities to wide-awake men such as are unknown anywhere else in the solar system. Take us either to Mars or to Saturn, Professor Quinn, as you may find it most convenient. We demand it!"
"It is impossible to do anything of that kind, Mr. Popham," returned the professor decidedly. "The influence of the sun upon our course is too powerful."
"Are we to understand, then," cried Markham, "that we are compelled to put up with either Mercury or Venus?"
"Even there, gentlemen, we have no choice. We are in the grip of circumstances and must perforce accept whatever fate throws our way. Possibly we shall become a satellite of the sun, revolving around and around it—Quinn's Planet, the smallest of any in the great system."
Although I felt drowsy, I aroused myself with an effort and kept sharp eyes on the professor's face. I do not think he was in earnest, but merely talking to see what effect his remarks would have on the three millionaires.
"Corner, corner, corner," babbled Gilhooly; "make a corner, corner everything."
Markham dropped his face in his hands, Meigs bowed his head, and I saw a shiver run through Popham.
"Egad," muttered Popham, "this castle of yours, Quinn, is little short of a steel tomb. Inasmuch as we are safely interred, what's the use of living? Gilhooly is the only fortunate one among us, for his reason is shattered and he cannot realize what he is facing."
"You are talking less like a man, now, Popham," reproved Quinn, "than like a driveling idiot. While there's life there's hope. How many brilliant minds have been overthrown as a result of your manipulations of stock in Wall Street? How many bright futures have been wrecked by an adverse trend of the speculative market? Were those unfortunates any better off because thrust into madhouses and unable to realize the fate that had overtaken them? For shame, sir!"
"You are perfectly sure, are you, professor," I struck in, attempting to give a more pleasant twist to the conversation, "that we shall come out all right in the end?"
"I have my plans, Mr. Munn," he answered, not unkindly, "and the success or failure of them will depend largely upon the mental attitude of these gentlemen."
This was too deep for me, and I cast about for some equally important question which would bring a less indefinite response.
"Anyhow," said I, "we have plenty of food for a long journey? It would be a fearful thing to have a famine so—so many miles from a base of supplies."
"The food supply, Mr. Munn," answered the professor, "is adequate. There will be no famine."
"And the water, the oxygen, the——"
"I have looked after everything necessary to our safety and comfort."
I had confidence in Quinn. He had shown that he was an able man, and that his promises were to be taken at face value. With a sigh of relief, I settled back in tolerable comfort.
Meigs took the role of questioner out of my hands at this point, and, although I was eager to hear all that was said, "tired nature's sweet restorer" got the better of my curiosity and I fell asleep on the bale.
CHAPTER VI.
A LANDING EFFECTED.
It is not my purpose to cumber this narrative with the smaller details of our journey, novel and thrilling though some of them proved to be. It is with our experiences on the planet which finally claimed us that this account has mostly to do, so I shall glide over intermediate incidents in a somewhat cursory manner.
Our faculties, keyed to an understanding of earthly conditions only, found themselves continually at bay; and at nothing did they stand more aghast than at the lightning-like speed with which we shot through space.
The energy developed by the two insulated cubes gave to our steel car the stupendous velocity of one hundred miles per second, six thousand miles per minute, three hundred and sixty thousand miles per hour! Human reason might well falter at the threshold of such immensity.
Yet while I slept peacefully on that bale in the storeroom, these figures were verified by the professor and J. Archibald Meigs, who happened to be the only two who were wide awake. It has been my lasting regret that they did not rouse me so that I might also have had a view of the noble spectacle for the first time unrolled to earthly eyes.
We passed the moon, a dreary, burned-out world, and the professor was able to check off two hundred and forty thousand miles of our sunward plunge. We had traveled a little more than half an hour at our ultimate velocity; taking this into consideration, and noting the exact minute when we crossed the centre of the satellite's orbit, the professor was able to do some figuring and so test his theories as to speed.
The car skimmed through ether less than five hundred miles above the lunar crust. Quinn was doubly pleased, for he not only proved that our velocity was substantially as he had supposed, but also discovered that the moon's attraction, so powerful on the tides of our mother sphere, could not swerve the car by a hair's breadth from its direct course, or overcome the influence of the sun.
Meigs told me later that the marvelous beauty of the satellite, gleaming against the black void with ghostly radiance, was probably worth the trip and its attendant inconveniences. He and Quinn had looked their fill on the hemisphere which is never seen from the earth.
After this the hours literally flew past, the novelty of our journey precluding any such thing as monotony. In fact, we hardly allowed ourselves a sufficient amount of time for rest and refreshment.
A lookout was kept continually at the eye-piece of the telescope to signal the approach of any asteroid with which we might possibly come into collision. Only once did this danger threaten us, and then, as may be supposed, it was the professor who proved our salvation.
The lever in the wall of the lower or living room of the car communicated with screens, ingeniously arranged for shutting off the power of the anti-gravity cubes. By lessening our speed, the professor suffered the asteroid to cross our course, our car ducking through the luminous trail that swept out behind it.
Night reigned around us constantly. Our car caught the rays of the sun, it is true, but the lack of an atmosphere caused the light to be thrown back into space and lost.
The castle was nothing less than a small planet, attended by five satellites which, held to our vicinity by the car's attraction, circled around us continually. These satellites were the four knotted handkerchiefs containing the tribute I had levied upon the plutocrats, and also the revolver which had assisted me in the work.
These objects went through varied phases exactly as more pretentious satellites would have done. It would be difficult to describe my feelings as I watched them from the car windows.
I am prone to think, at the present writing, that this lost booty, waxing and waning under my eyes, planted in my nature those first seeds of regret which finally grew into a reformation.
I recall a conversation that I had with Markham while I sat with my eye at the lower end of the telescope, watching for stray asteroids.
The millionaires had given me to understand that I was not in their set. Circumstances over which they had no control had brought us together within the narrow confines of the car, but no social barriers had been leveled. Occasionally the novelty of our situation, and the consequent excitement, would cause one or other of the wealthy gentleman to forget the gulf that yawned between us.
This attitude of the magnate afforded me a good deal of innocent enjoyment. They had left social prestige, no less than their bank accounts, behind them, and what little collateral they had had upon their persons was now "satelliting" about the car. The line they drew between themselves and me, in their thoughtful moments, was a distinction without much of a difference.
Markham, I remember, was munching a sandwich, contrived out of two crackers and a slice of tinned beef.
"Did you never reflect, Mr. Munn," said he, "upon the evil of your past?"
"When a man writes books which are mainly drawn from his own experience, Mr. Markham," said I, "he has to go into his past pretty exhaustively."
"Ah, yes, I was forgetting about the books. Were you not horrified with the results of your retrospection?"
"Horrified? Well, yes, here and there. I lost a big haul once through the breaking of a jimmy, and I was horrified to think how any dealer in burglar's kits could have foisted such an unreliable instrument upon a well-meaning cracksman."
Markham stared at me dazedly.
"I have set down the experience in Chapter One of 'Forty Ways for Cracking Safes,'" I proceeded, "and one of the first of my ten rules for success in any safe-cracking job was this: Be sure that your kit is reliable, and without flaws."
"Mr. Munn, Mr. Munn!" whispered Markham hoarsely. "Think of the people from whom you have taken property dishonestly."
"I never think of them but to wish that I had been able to relieve them of more."
"This is awful!" muttered Markham. "You really exult over what you have done."
He would have started down the iron stairs had I not restrained him with a word.
"Let me ask you something, Mr. Markham," said I. "Last fall, bread went to ten cents a loaf because the wheat market was cornered—and a man by the name of Markham did the cornering. The people who had to put up that extra five cents missed it more than did those from whom I took five hundred dollars."
Markham coughed. "Any asteroids in sight?" he inquired absently.
"I wonder ifyouever did any reflecting?" I asked tartly.
"What do you think of Quinn?" and Markham looked away as I took my eye from the telescope and gave him an expressive wink.
"I don't think," I continued, "that you ever wrote a book called 'Forty Ways to Starve the Poor.' You have material enough for a pretty effective volume on the subject, but you haven't my nerve."
"No," he returned slowly, "I haven't your nerve. It requires unalloyed impudence and a mind incapable of clear thinking to liken the results of high finance with those of your own petty and highly criminal proceedings. You are too bright a man, Mr. Munn, to allow yourself to be led afield by sophistries of that kind."
"Mr. Markham, Mr. Markham!" I breathed, in horrified protest.
"You have bolstered up your nefarious business with false ideals," he went on, "and you are unregenerate and lost!"
"This is awful!" I murmured.
"When we get to where we are going," pursued Markham, either failing to note my sarcasm or else hoping to ride it down, "I trust you will hold your criminal instincts in check. If there are any people there, don't give them any false ideals or implant the notion that your standards belong to the rest of us."
"I would not so belittle my ideals," I returned bluntly.
"Sir," he cried sharply, "am I to understand that you set yourself up as being any better than Mr. Popham, Mr. Gilhooly, Mr. Meigs, or myself?"
"What you understand doesn't concern me in the least," I answered airily. "What you don't understand, it strikes me, is the matter that ought to claim your attention."
"Confound you, sir! Your overwhelming ignorance is equalled only by your colossal egotism. I am sorry that I allowed myself to be beguiled into any talk with you."
"Our regrets are mutual," said I, "for your conversation is demoralizing. You are a past master in successful trickery—trickery of the sort that ought to be stamped out. If the law was as quick to deal with you as with me——"
"Hold!" fumed Markham, plunging for the stairs, "I have heard enough."
I have said that I was a hard man, in those times. I could call a spade a spade with never a thought that my angle of vision was distorted. I have regretted expressing my views in this frank fashion to Markham, yet I believe that there was injustice in his remarks no less than in mine.
Being the only person in the car who possessed a watch, the professor appointed me official time-keeper. It was my duty to bulletin the hour, with its equivalent in days such as we were accustomed to, upon a blackboard in the lower room; I had also to enter this information upon a book, which the professor called the "log-book."
Every ten hours we had a class in astronomy, with the professor as instructor and with every man save Gilhooly and the lookout as students. The railway magnate's aberration continued; all we could do was to watch him solicitously and prevent him from doing any injury to himself or to our paraphernalia.
The class learned that the nearest planet with an atmosphere, and supposedly habitable, was Venus, which, at inferior conjunction, is distant some twenty-five million miles from Terra, as Quinn called our own planet. Counting out the delays at starting, and in maneuvring to escape the asteroid, our instructor asserted that we should reach Venus in something like seventy-five hours.
Markham, Meigs, and Popham, on consulting the bulletin board and finding that seventy hours had passed, began to brush their clothes and tidy themselves against the hour of landing. But they were destined to disappointment.
Unable to locate Venus at the point where he had hoped to find it, the professor decided that it was nearing superior conjunction and was somewhere on the other side of the sun. Meigs made a deplorable display of temper.
Quinn was a mighty poor astronomer, he said sneeringly, if he could find himself so far wide of the mark on such a simple matter. Meigs further added—with a good deal of childishness as I thought—that the role of a derelict was distasteful to him: a derelict, he argued, was nothing more than a tramp, and he objected to being a tramp, even a celestial tramp.
I was out of patience with the man. Admiration for the professor had taken fast hold of me and I would not have him sneered at or maligned.
A war of hot words was on between myself and the Wall Street broker when Quinn interfered.
"True," said he, "we have missed Venus by a few millions of miles, but we are aimed directly at the orbit of another world, and I can so manipulate the lever as to wait for it, if necessary, and drop upon its surface when it overtakes us."
"What world is that?" said Popham, pricking tip his ears.
"Mercury," answered the professor. "It is the smallest orb in our solar system and measures some three thousand miles in diameter."
"I thought Venus was rather contracted for men with such large schemes as ourselves," remarked Meigs, shaking his head, "but this other planet seems to be smaller still."
"I wonder if they have coal mines there?" murmured Popham meditatively.
"And if they grow wheat and cotton?" added Meigs.
"If Mercury is inhabited," spoke up Markham eagerly, "food will certainly be as necessary there as on the earth. I don't know, gentlemen, but it strikes me we might fall into worse places."
"Poor Gilhooly!" sighed Meigs. "What a pity it will be if the Mercurials prove to have traction interests!"
"How long before we shall reach this planet you speak of, professor?" inquired Popham.
"Well," answered Quinn thoughtfully, "Mercury is rather slow. It travels along its orbit at the rate of thirty miles per second, while we are moving at one hundred miles. At a rough estimate, I should say we can effect a juncture with the planet in ten hours, although an extra hour may be required for maneuvres to secure a landing."
The ten hours that followed were hours of great anxiety and feverish labor. Believing that my nerves were the steadiest, the professor placed me at the telescope to act as pilot while he served as engineer and manipulated the lever.
The responsibilities of my position so worked upon me that I had no time for the glories of the planet we were endeavoring to intercept. Through the telescope I saw huge mountains and broad plains, but they were blurred over with a reddish light and the lesser details of topography were lost.
When five hours were gone, the professor left the lever and came upstairs to have a look through the telescope for himself.
"You have done very well indeed, Mr. Munn," he was pleased to say, "but I think that I had better take this post from now on, while you go below and station yourself at the switch board. The slightest mismanagement, when the critical moment arrives, might hurl us against Mercury with a force that would result in annihilation.
"The lever turns in a half circle, as you may know. The arc is divided into spaces, numbered from zero to ninety. I will call down to you the number to which you must throw the lever; you will repeat the number back to me, and instantly obey my order."
"Trust me, sir," said I.
But the professor was loath to let me go without still further impressing upon me the importance of the work before us.
"In order to alight safely, Mr. Munn," he continued, "we must graduate the power of the anti-gravity cubes to the Mercurial atmosphere. By proceeding intelligently in the matter, we shall make the car weigh slightly more than the atmosphere we encounter; then, when we are about to land, we will let the car just counterbalance the 'pull' of the planet and there will not be the slightest jar."
"I understand, professor," I answered and went downstairs.
Markham, Meigs, and Popham ascended to the upper chamber, this position bringing them a few feet nearer the goal of our desires as well as giving them a point of vantage from which to watch events. Gilhooly was the only one besides myself in the lower room; he was kneeling on the divan writing imaginary stock quotations on the steel wall with the point of his finger.
For four hours or more the professor called out for slight variations in the speed of the car, but in the main the lever was held on the number, 90, which gave a maximum velocity. The tension of the minutes ushering in the last hour of the ten is beyond my power to describe.
Once in my evil days I manipulated the tumblers of a combination and pulled open a vault door. Behind the door stood two men with revolvers. For two seconds I stared agape at the trap which I had sprung upon myself; and when I got away I had a bullet in my shoulder.
Intensify my feelings fourfold as I stood looking into the leveled revolvers of those two men, then spread out the two seconds to cover a half hour. In this way only can I describe my state of mind while we fought for a safe landing on the planet Mercury.
Cries of wonder and apprehension echoed to me from overhead. Above them I heard the shrill voice of the professor:
"Zero."
"Zero," I repeated, throwing the lever clear over.
There followed a jolt as the screens covered the cubes and shut off their energy. Instantly there came the sickening sensation of a fall, accompanied by a rush of displaced air that roared and bellowed all about the car.
"Forty-five!" shrieked Quinn.
"Forty-five!" I yelled, throwing the lever half over.
Then we caught ourselves with a suddenness that threw me to my knees. We were moving upward again—I could feel the steel floor rising under me.
"Twenty!" came down from above.
"Twenty," I answered hoarsely, struggling erect and shifting the lever.
I felt that we were still rising, but slowly. The professor was juggling with an unknown atmosphere, and on the success of his judgment depended our lives.
"Fifteen!"
"Fifteen!" and over went the lever for five degrees.
We were swinging stationary in mid-air. From the window by the switch board I looked outward and downward with bulging eyes.
A dazzling glow covered peak and plain, and I turned away that my sight might not be blinded to the lever numbers.
"Ten!" cried the professor.
"Ten it is!" and I threw the switch to the number given.
Then again we dropped, but slowly, very slowly.
"Five!"
I repeated the order, and again the air rushed against the blunt base of the car, yet not so fiercely as before. Then, all of a sudden, I felt a grip of fingers about my throat, and I was hauled from the lever and thrown back on the floor.
Gilhooly had a knee on my breast and was strangling me with fingers of steel. The fire of an insane purpose gleamed in his eyes, and he seemed possessed of the strength of a dozen demons.
I struggled, but I might as well have tried to rise under the thousand-tons pressure of a hydraulic press.
"Ten!" cried Quinn.
I did not answer—I could not, for my tongue was lolling between my lips.
"Ten!" screamed Quinn. "Ten—or we're lost!"
A groan, hardly audible, escaped my gasping throat. I heard a frantic clamor above and then there was such a jar and crash as I hope I shall never experience again.
All tangible life slipped away from me, and I collapsed into an unconsciousness that I felt might be death itself.