The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Cosmic CourtshipThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Cosmic CourtshipAuthor: Julian HawthorneRelease date: September 22, 2021 [eBook #66349]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Robert Allen Lupton, Michael Tierney, and P. Alexander by way of Cirsova Publishing.*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COSMIC COURTSHIP ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Cosmic CourtshipAuthor: Julian HawthorneRelease date: September 22, 2021 [eBook #66349]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Robert Allen Lupton, Michael Tierney, and P. Alexander by way of Cirsova Publishing.
Title: The Cosmic Courtship
Author: Julian Hawthorne
Author: Julian Hawthorne
Release date: September 22, 2021 [eBook #66349]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Robert Allen Lupton, Michael Tierney, and P. Alexander by way of Cirsova Publishing.
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COSMIC COURTSHIP ***
THE twenty-second of June, of the year 2001, was Miriam Mayne’s birthday—her twenty-first. She and her father, Terence Mayne, the billionaire contractor, had arranged to meet at the Long Island house for dinner. After an early breakfast, she kissed him good-by; he went down-town to business, and she to her room, to put on her traveling dress.
A glorious day it was! When the tall girl stepped from the window of her room on to the balcony, the sun embraced her graceful figure as if it loved her; the perfume of flowers rose up like incense; two humming-birds, busy with the morning-glories, buzzed a welcome; the air was warm but exhilarating. She mounted to the wide parapet of the balcony and stood poised for a moment before starting on her journey.
She was clad in a dove-colored suit of a tunic and trousers to the knee, fitting snugly, but allowing freedom of movement. On her feet she wore a pair of sandals, with appendages on the heel resembling the talaria of Greek myth, ascribed to Iris and Mercury; but for the wings were substituted triangular projections of a pliable metal with a silvery sheen. Over her head was drawn a close-fitting cap, fastened securely under the chin, and bearing wing-like excrescences similar to the foot-gear. A wide belt or girdle encircled her waist; it was formed of narrow vertical pieces connected together, and four buttons or small knobs appeared on the front of it, where they could be readily reached by either hand. In her right hand she carried a light staff.
The art of personal flight was still a novelty at this period, though the principle of it had been known for several years. Only persons of sound physical and mental coordinations were apt to attempt it. Miriam had not only passed the government tests, but was considered an expert.
With an upward swing of the arms, she leaped into the air; the drop to the pavement of the court below was some fifty feet; but she rose upward as if she had no weight, and continued her ascent until she hovered at a height of a couple of thousand feet above the far-extending city of New York. There she paused, gazing hither and thither at the magnificent prospect.
From the Battery to Harlem, the surface of Manhattan Island was covered with handsome villas and mansions, of white or tinted marble, standing each in an ample enclosure of green turf studded with trees and flower-beds. Several miles to the south rose the superb turreted pile of the new Madison Square Garden, like a fairy palace, of white marble set off with pinnacles and trimmings of gold. It was Terence Mayne’s crowning achievement, and was still unfinished. The East and North Rivers were spanned by between three and four hundred bridges, lofty and wide, made of a metallic substance that glittered and shone in the sun. The beds of the rivers themselves were laid with white concrete, over which the water flowed blue and transparent. Northward, beyond the island, the city proper stretched for forty miles, following the course of the Hudson, but extending westward over a breadth of five miles into New Jersey; the home of nearly fifteen millions of people. From side to side, and from end to end, no smoke fouled the clear air, and no sign of factories or of business traffic was visible. But the entire area had been excavated to a depth of a thousand feet, and here, layer beneath layer, were housed the business activities of the metropolis.
Miriam was not unfamiliar with these subterranean regions. Illuminated by the electron light, and ventilated by the carbon process, and kept at an even temperature of seventy degrees Fahrenheit, they were wholesome and pleasant, and many thousands of the inhabitants never troubled themselves to appear above-ground from year’s end to year’s end. Except for the absence of sun, moon and stars, life in this artificial world was as agreeable and convenient as on the surface. But sun, moon and stars, and the fathomless depths of space, were indispensable to Miriam’s happiness.
She now pointed her staff eastward, and began to move gently in that direction. She was using the ten-mile-an-hour stop in her belt; she had no present need for haste. She flew, leaning forward on the air, at an inclination of about twenty degrees from the vertical, without movement of her limbs. Few individual fliers were abroad, and they passed at a distance. But three of the great Atlantic liners were setting their course east and southeast; and high overhead, flocks of buses carrying business men were sliding swiftly toward the lower part of the city. In spite of its external transformation, New York, in some human respects, had not changed much in the last hundred years.
In crossing the Sound, a sea-gull flew past Miriam, and she, by a sudden turn, swept so close by it that she was almost able to touch its wing. It dodged and dived with a scream. Smiling to herself, she gave a supple impulse to her body, which caused her to slant slightly downward across the Sound toward the Long Island shore. Five hundred feet above the ground she resumed a horizontal course, moving slowly across the green lawns and parklike enclosures that surrounded the sumptuous county-seats of this district. It was a fair sight; but the sun, now forty-five degrees above the sea-line, dazzled her eyes; she turned her body with a leisurely and luxurious motion until she lay with her face toward the western sky, where a snowy flock of gossamer fine-weather clouds was strung across the blue. She was now carried along as if reclining on a couch, and did not change her posture until she heard the rhythm of the surf on the great eastern beaches. Fetching herself upright again, she touched the gravitation-control in her belt, and sank slowly, guiding herself with her staff toward the left. In a few minutes she alighted buoyantly on the soft turf of the great Mayne estate.
Fifty yards before her rose a grassy mound, with a sort of summer-house on its summit; the place was protected by a grove of tall pines, disposed in a wide semicircle between the dwelling-house and the ocean. Entering the pavilion, she quickly threw off her flying-suit, and running down the steps to the beach, she plunged into the surf. So was Artemis, in the seclusion of her temple precincts, wont to bathe on the Lydian shore of the Ægean. Heading out beyond the breakers, Miriam swam and dived and splashed up diamond spray in the thrilling coolness. At length she came ashore, borne on the crest of a white-maned steed of the sea, and ran back, a virgin shaft of glistening whiteness, to the pavilion. Thence, after an interval, she reissued, robed in a flowing gown of purple wool, lined with orange silk. She seated herself on a curved bench of marble that stood on the seaward crest of the knoll, and spread out her black hair, thick and long, to dry in the sun. Seated thus at ease, and secure from all disturbance, Miriam fell into a reverie, which gradually became profound. The intense but restricted sphere of personal consciousness closed itself in the broad, steady luminousness of perception which comprises and permeates the individual as does the ocean its waves. The beautiful capacities of nature became transparent.
A voice of agreeable quality was speaking to her “Miriam!” The call had been repeated several times before she recognized her own name. No one was within sight or hearing. She knew the methods by which, in late times, science had overcome space for both ear and eye; but this voice was using a method unknown to her.
“Hold yourself still,” it now said, “and you will see me.”
She imposed quiescence upon mind and body. A shadow flickered for a moment before her, and vanished. It came again, less vague. Upon the empty air between herself and the sea it gradually defined itself. A tall, grave figure in a dark robe with a black silk cap on its head. The face was pale, with large, black eyes under level brows, it expressed tranquility and power. As she gazed, a blue star surrounded by a ring glimmered forth over the figure’s left breast. The lips moved, and the quiet voice spoke again.
“I have observed you for a year. We are companions of the star. We can help each other. Will you meet me?”
“What star?” asked Miriam, though she did not speak aloud.
“Saturn! The desire of your heart may be accomplished. I have found the way, but can go no further without you. Will you meet me?”
The eyes of the apparition, meeting hers gravely and almost sternly, communicated confidence. The speaker was a woman.
“I am willing!” said Miriam after a long look.
The expression of the face softened.
“You will receive a letter to-morrow. I have taken this method that you might act freely. Without sympathy there could be no—” The voice died away; the figure dimmed and a quivering passed through the air-drawn scene. The next moment, nothing was visible but the sun-steeped sea and shore.
Miriam stayed where she was for a long time. The influence had not been hypnotic, but had conveyed a strong sense of spiritual harmony and of enlightenment. She recognized the value of spontaneity. Knowledge was not acquisition, but revelation. Her visitor had understood her need.
Miriam was a woman of her time. After acquiring political equality with man, the other sex had soon turned from political activities to science. Her more finely organized and fresher brain and her spiritual intuition opened to her realms of conquest over nature and methods of achieving it hitherto unimagined. The revolutionary investigations and discoveries of later years had been woman’s work. Etheric heat, planetary motive-power, electron light were gifts from woman’s hand. She had divined the parallelism between material fact and spiritual truth. A lever so powerful began to make the rock of human ignorance stir in its bed. The birthday of the universal man seemed near.
To Miriam, keeping abreast of progress, had come some time since the dream of actual interplanetary communication, not by interchange of signals merely, but by bodily transference from the earth to other worlds of our system. She had never confided this ambition to any person, and her fantom visitor had been the first to divine it—for such had seemed to be her intimation. Her father, a man of a past age, never suspected it. All the girl’s studies had had this ambition for their end, but hitherto her progress had seemed small. But to-day for the first time she could feel, with a tremulous joy, that her labor and self-discipline had fitted her for what was to come. A powerful hand had grasped hers and a profound and fearless intelligence would direct her course. It was an added joy to know that her cooperation was needed even for her guide’s masterful intelligence.
The personal equation had begun to be recognized as the most important agency of man’s rule over nature. It found its analogy in the inter-atomic force. By solving the true nature of the isolation which the personal equation implies, the way to its mastery was found to lie in the compensating attraction of innate sympathies. Proper use of this vital truth could result in achievements otherwise unattainable and seemingly miraculous.
Miriam’s mother, a lovely and intelligent woman, had died when the girl was fifteen; her father, though a man of the old fashion, was in his way a genius, of immense energy and ability; and the whole tide of his ardent Celtic nature flowed into love for his daughter. He had the insight to perceive that she must allowed great freedom of choice and action in order to secure her best development; he let her make her own rules of conduct and education, and merely supplied whatever means and facilities she required; there was complete mutual love and confidence between them. She came and went, studied and played, as she pleased, without supervision or question; and as she grew up the visible results were fully satisfactory. Her bodily strength and symmetry were united with supple grace; she was trained in the great gymnasiums which the influence of the king had made fashionable; she was expert in fencing, swimming, running and wrestling; and, besides her aptness in flying, was a consummate horsewoman. Terence Mayne never learned personal flight, and hardly liked to have his girl “mix herself up with a lot of ducks and geese,” as he put it; but he was always eager and proud to act as her cavalier on a ride, and they were often seen cantering down the Long Drive side by side, he with his bushy gray hair uncovered to the breeze, thumping up and down on his big hunter; she undulating easily beside him on her fine-limbed Arab. The vision of her beauty haunted the dreams of many an impassioned youth. But Miriam, though always kind and frank, drew back from male intimacies. She was wedded to science and desired no human husband. Her father forbore to urge her.
“A pretty gal is a good thing; let ’em stay so long as they will. The woman in ’em will have her say in the long run; don’t let us be meddling!” This was his rejoinder to the suggestions of sympathetic friends.
On her side, she recognized his cordial and sociable temperament, and never refused her cooperation in his great dinners and receptions—a queenlike presence, with her black hair and sea-gray eyes, moving through the glowing vistas of the great rooms. Side by side with her intellectual proclivities, there was in her a deep emotional quality, which found expression in forms of art, and which she used to give distinction to the plans and details of her father’s social enterprises.
But the greater part of her time was devoted to thoughts and effort far removed from such matters; these had for her a sort of sanctity, due to their exalted character. Science, in that age, had a spiritual soul which lifted it toward the religious level. The solution of her problems was connected with the future of mankind; it required courage to face even the prevision of them. Transcendent moments visited her, mingled with a sentiment of profound personal humility. She was conscious at times of an appalling loneliness, chilling her to the finger-tips with delicious terrors. But anon the warm blood flowed back to her heart, and she would rise and pace her chamber, crowned with the hope of being forever known and blessed as the giver to her race of unimagined benefits.
Her spectral interview on the Long Island estate brought a new influence to her. The next morning at breakfast she found the most commonplace-looking letter imaginable beside her plate. The contents were as follows:
DEAR MIRIAM:My laboratory is at Seven Hundred and Ninety-Sixth Street, near the river. Come at three o’clock any day. Pardon the abrupt way I presented myself yesterday. It was made possible by our saturnian affiliations. I am still a little awkward about it—the interruption was caused by an accident to the coordination. I hope to fulfil your expectations. I am myself more than ever convinced that we shall achieve together something that will modify the course of human history.Sincerely yours, MARY FAUST.
Sincerely yours, MARY FAUST.
Miriam looked across at her father, who was immersed in his business mail. How near and dear to her he was, and yet how far removed! Distance is but the relation of one mind to another; we may be closer to the Pleiades than to the companion whose arm is linked in our own. But diameters of sidereal systems cannot sever us from those we love.
She said nothing to her father; but that afternoon she privately visited Mme. Faust’s laboratory; and thus began a secret connection destined to have important issues.
A LITTLE more than a year after Miriam became Mary Faust’s pupil and partner, the new Madison Square Garden was opened with the annual horse-show, which, for ages, had been a leading function of New York society.
The new building covered four city blocks, and was raised above the vast plaza in the midst of which it stood by flights of ornamental steps. The great central tower rose fifteen hundred feet above the pavement, and the towers of less elevation stood at the four corners. Forests of delicate columns supported the superstructure, which mounted height above height in snowy elevations, finely touched with gold and color, till the central tower leaped aloft like a fountain. So just were the proportions of the whole that the edifice seemed rather to rise upward with an aspiring impulse than to press upon the earth.
The populace filled the plaza, thronged the steps, and streamed inward through twenty broad doorways. The king and court were to attend the ceremony of the opening, and the uniforms of the guards divided with their bright lines the masses of the crowd. Air-boats, like great birds, chased one another high overhead in sweeping circles, dropping small parachutes carrying bags of sugar plums, which were caught by the crowd. The October sun shone on the front of the marble edifice, kindling all into airy splendor.
A young man of modest demeanor but of striking aspect was slowly edging his way through the throng. He was nobody in particular—an artist, Jack Paladin by name. But he was tall, well formed and handsome; his fellow students in the art class, a few years before, found a strong resemblance between him and the statue of Hermes, ascribed to Praxiteles, and used to get him to pose for them. Jack was good-natured and easy-going; but his mind was not centered upon himself. It did not even dwell upon one or another beautiful girl, with whom he could imagine himself in love. He thought of and loved nothing but art: was aGalahadof art, in short. Mankind and the universe were to him material for pictures: his constant problem and delight was to make them serve art purposes. He had little money, and only one living relative—his uncle, Sam Paladin, quite a notable personage, who had been a great traveler and adventurer in all parts of the world, a hero of daring escapades, a soldier of fortune; but now, at a little less than fifty, had settled in New York, enjoying the society of a few old friends and applying himself enthusiastically to astronomy; as if, having exhausted the resources of this planet, he were seeking further entertainment in other satellites of our sun. Jack had no heartier backer and sympathizer than Uncle Sam, though art was an unknown region to him. Though by no means a rich man, Uncle Sam devised all sorts of pretexts for “tipping” him; and Jack was obliged to stipulate that his uncle was not to buy any picture of him which had not already been sought by some outside purchaser. Hitherto, the outside purchaser had seldom brought the stipulation to the test.
Jack was going to the horse-show because, if anything could share a place in his heart with art, it was fine horses. He had almost been born on horseback, and there were few better riders alive. Since horses had been retired from utilitarian service, the art of breeding had been cultivated, and magnificent animals were produced.
As he reached the broad flight of steps at the front of the building, bugles announced the approach of the royal party. The king and queen, simple and unostentatious persons, drove up in a carriage-and-four of the fashion of fifty years ago. The popularity of the monarch was attested by the cordial greetings of the populace. The old man’s stately head was uncovered, and he bowed with kindly smiles at the acclaim. On the platform at the top of the steps a group of officials awaited him, foremost among them Terence Mayne, with a tall black-haired woman by his side. Jack happened to get himself within arm’s reach of this woman; she slowly turned her head, and their eyes met.
At first her smooth cheeks paled; then she lowered her eyes, and her face was covered with a blush. At the same moment the music of ten thousand silver bells sounded; the royal party reached their hosts and changes of position occurred in the group, so that the black-haired girl disappeared. But her image had entered Jack’s soul and banished all else except the purpose to follow her forever!
Availing himself, unobtrusively, of his great strength, he made his way to the interior immediately in the wake of the royalties. The spectacle was astonishing—an oval of blue and gold nine hundred feet in diameter surrounding the dark red tan-bark of the arena. From above the seats, which accommodated one hundred thousand spectators, arches rose to the spring of the tower, meeting at the base of the golden dome, through whose central aperture further heights were visible, with frostwork arabesques, ascending into a misty vagueness of rainbow light. The royal box was in the center of the middle circle of seats, and to the left of it Jack soon identified the gray hair and stalwart figure of Terence Mayne chatting with the Maharaja of Lucknow. But the girl of his soul was nowhere to be seen.
“Miriam Mayne is to ride in the ninth race, I hear,” said some one to some one else at his elbow. Miriam! That must be she! How he worshipped the name!
At another bugle-blast, several hundred beautiful animals entered the ring and began to move round it. Many of the riders were women. The usual riding-costume for both sexes was a close-fitting silken tunic and leggings: the hair of the women flowed loose from a fillet, or hung in braids. As the procession passed him Jack noted in the ninth rank a rider on a white Arab. Dense black hair streamed out from beneath her fillet; the movements of her body were full of supple dignity, replying to those of her horse; she rode without saddle or bridle; her dress was gray silk embroidered with gold, and in her right hand she carried a red rose. Miriam!
Jack leaned far over the balustrade. Miriam Mayne, in the magic of a moment, had thrown wide the gates of his heart and transformed the boy dreamer into the lover full grown. She was blood to his heart and air to his lungs. To be hers—to make her his!
As she drew near she did not look toward him; but her Arab began to curvet and dance, and she playfully struck him on his glossy neck with the rose. Hereupon the beautiful creature reared erect; she flung her body forward, and in the act the rose somehow escaped from her hand and fell into Jack’s breast. She passed on.
Had she meant it? Jack dared not believe so. He had never considered the effect upon a woman of his commanding stature and noble bearing. Many a fair woman had followed him with her eyes, in vain.
But here was her rose, the most sacred object he had ever possessed! Did it not create some ineffable understanding between them?
The parade filed out, and on consulting the program Jack found that Miriam’s race was two hours hence. He determined to visit the stalls below.
Among the noticeable horses was a roan, belonging to the maharaja, seventeen hands, to be ridden in the ninth race by a Mohammedan groom as big as Jack himself. Jack took a fancy to him, and, though warned by the groom, entered his stall and petted him. He was a natural horse-tamer. After a few moments the formidable creature responded to his advances, and the groom stared.
When he returned to the arena the royal party had withdrawn and the spectators, freed from court etiquette, were visiting one another and strolling about the lobbies. But Miriam was nowhere to be seen. However, as he was ascending the tower on one of the escalators, he saw, through the carved interstices, a party descending on the opposite side. An exclamation broke from him.
She was there, with her father and the maharaja. Her back was toward Jack. But as they passed she turned slowly, and for the second time their eyes met. Oh, the poignant delight to him of that moment! As she averted her glance she seemed to notice the rose in his doublet, and he thought she smiled. The next moment the relentless machinery of the escalators had separated them and hope of overtaking her was vain.
Returning to the arena he found Miriam absent from her father’s box; the latter was talking animatedly with the prince, and near by stood the big Mohammedan groom with a dejected air. It seemed that he had just stabbed another attendant and was under arrest. The official was sorry, but an assault with a deadly weapon could not be overlooked. As no one else could ride the roan, the animal must be withdrawn from the race. The maharaja smiled and bowed politely, shrugged his shoulders, and resigned himself to the will of Allah; but gave the groom a glance that boded no good for his near future.
Jack had an inspiration; he flung a leg over the railing of the box and strode up to its astonished occupants. “I’ll ride for you,” he said to the maharaja, “I know your horse and can manage him.” His highness gazed at him with an inscrutable Oriental smile. Mayne, his Celtic temper already somewhat ruffled, growled out in the brogue that always more pronounced in emotional junctures, “An’ who mightyoube, me frien’? Ye have yer nerve wid ye, anyhow!”
Before Jack could reply a long-legged, athletic figure came striding down the aisle with a grin of amusement on his aquiline features. It was Uncle Sam!
“It’s all right, Terence!” he called out, a laugh in his deep voice. “That’s only my nephew, Jack. How do, prince? Oh, the boy can ride, all right. If you want to win that race, the youngster can come nearer doing the trick for you than any other jockey on the track!”
The atmosphere changed. None ventured to dispute Sam Paladin. Terence smoothed his hostile front. The maharaja bowed with engaging grace. “My horse has killed six men,” he observed in liquid tones, “but I see your nephew is a big, brave man. I am content—Bismillah!”
Jack lifted his head and his chest expanded; his eyes shone with joy. “Thanks, uncle; thanks, prince!” he said. “I’ll fix it!” and he was off. He remembered afterward that he ought to have said something nice to Miriam’s father; but it was too late.
There was a bare twenty minutes before the ninth race. Jack, the pacific, plunging down to the basement, abruptly became the despot of the stables. He stripped the roan of the cumbrous saddle, patted him, divested himself of shoes and doublet, bound the broad blue sash of the maharaja round his waist, fastened Miriam’s rose over his heart, vaulted at a bound astride the great horse, and was ready for the ring five minutes ahead of the bell.
Some of the best horses and riders in the world faced the starter—seven of them. The champions of England and of Australia; a black from Morocco, carrying a Berber prince as black as he; a famous Chinese mare bestridden by a mandarin’s daughter; a wiry brute from Russia backed by a Cossack. But where was Miriam?
Jack’s heart sank. Without her his presence was a farce. True, honor bound him to defeat her if he could; but he believed her Arab was unbeatable. The riders took their places, while a murmur of admiration from tens of thousands of lips created a soft but thunderous vibration in the enclosed space. The starter’s arm was uplifted!
“Miriam, my soul, where art thou?” Had Jack spoken aloud? At all events, as if in response to a summons, and to Jack’s unspeakable delight and agitation, out she paced, quietly, from behind the barrier and moved to a place directly at his side!
She gave no sign, however, of recognizing his presence. She tossed back over her shoulder a heavy strand of her hair, leaned forward and whispered in her stallion’s ear, then straightened her limbs and lifted her body, alert with life and vigor. At the second signal she crouched forward over the withers and threw up one arm, keen for the signal. It came—the race was on!
Jack, with a hoarse shout of love and war, made himself one creature with the roan, and they hurled forward. His blood thundered in his veins, the frenzy of his pulse was answered by the leap of his steed. They flew forward smoothly, and the ground swept beneath them like the fleeting of a cataract. Hippomenes and Atalanta—a memory of that, read in a shadowy corner of his father’s library, sped through Jack’s mind. Triumphant power, mingled with the exquisite sense of Miriam’s companionship, made him greater than himself. He knew, without looking, that she was still at his side, riding with elastic ease. What a girl! What a rider! What a queen of heart and soul, whom he with heart and soul was striving to overcome!
The first circuit was a free course; after that, obstacle succeeded obstacle, each of increasing difficulty. Few would survive the finish! The great ring seemed to speed round like the rush of a whirlpool. The riders were trying out one another’s powers. As yet there was little change in their relative positions. With the first obstacle, foresight and strategy began to match themselves against mere swiftness.
Jack suddenly felt that Miriam had changed her place, but at the jump a waft of her hair touched his cheek and something like a great white bird swept past him; she alighted just ahead of him, closely followed by the mandarin’s daughter on her gray. The two girls had outmaneuvered him.
Rapid vicissitudes followed. At the third fence the Englishman collided in mid air with the Berber and both came down in a headlong ruin. As Jack swung into the fourth circuit a tall, white fence with a ditch beyond it rose before him; some one was at his shoulder; but Miriam and the Chinese girl had already passed it. The roan leaped a thought too soon, and his hind feet failed to reach the edge of the ditch; in regaining it he was passed by the Cossack, with the Australian at his heels. Jack was last in the race!
But the roan was fresh as ever, and two circuits of the course remained. Jack, moreover, knew by a sixth sense that he and Miriam would finish together, with the rest nowhere. A glimpse of Miriam flashed before him, leading the field by a scant head, her hair streaming out like a sable oriflamme to lead him on. Like a bolt shot by Hercules, the roan answered his call. The Cossack and the hardy Australian fell to the rear, but Jack and the former swung around the corner nearly abreast; the two girls were close in front; all four would take the final jump almost together!
The spectators were on their feet and the air roared with the gigantic diapason of their cheers. Jack’s nerves were steady as iron now and his spirit dilated, till the whole desperate struggle seemed to be taking place within himself, and the end foreordained.
The last barrier was seven feet high, at the top of a slight incline. Beyond was a six-hundred yard stretch to the tape.
The mandarin’s daughter, riding superbly, but near the end of her physical endurance, had the gray’s head at Miriam’s knee. Miriam, at the incline, slightly abated her pace; the other shot forward at full stride, but her mount, embarrassed by the incline, struck and snapped the top rail and fell, with the near foreleg broken on the further side. Miriam, in leaping, had to swerve to escape the sharp end of the broken rail and to avoid landing on her rival. But the latter picked herself up unhurt; the gray lay kicking on its side.
Meanwhile the Cossack, relying on the lightness of his horse, took the incline at top speed, grazing the roan’s shoulder as he went by, and he and Miriam, in unison, but on converging lines, rose in the air. With Jack between them, a catastrophe was imminent. A hush, followed by hissing of breath drawn between the teeth, showed that the spectators realized the peril.
Jack, self-possessed in that crisis, knew what to do and had the power to do it. Miriam’s white Arab cleared the bar first and unscathed; but the kicking gray beneath caused him to stumble on alighting and he fell on his right side. Miriam threw her right leg over his head as he fell and thus avoided injury, but she was unseated and thrown heavily; unprotected from the Cossack and from the hoofs of the struggling gray, she lay prostrate, partly stunned.
The Cossack leaped ruthlessly; but Jack leaped with him, at an angle which hurled the Russian aside; the fence crashed and fell, the man pitched on his shoulder, breaking his collar-bone; his horse, recovering, scurried riderless down the course.
Jack, descending, saw beneath him the pale, upturned face of Miriam, her eyes half closed. To all in the house her instant death seemed inevitable; in the horror-stricken interval shrieked out the voice of old Terence Mayne: “My girl! My girl!”
But as the roan with stiffened forelegs dropped earthward, Jack flung himself far down on the left, holding on by arm and heel, Indian fashion; and before those deadly hoofs touched the tan-bark, he gathered up the unconscious girl with his right arm, regained his seat by an incredible effort, and thundered on to the finish with Miriam across the roan’s withers.
A long-drawn roar of amazement and relief greeted them. Even in that age of unmatched horsemanship, such a feat had never before been witnessed. The roan was halted; Mayne, Sam Paladin and the maharaja were pressing through the throng. Jack slid to earth with the girl he loved still in his arm; and thanked God, humbly, in his heart.
TWO days after the horse-show opening Jack stood in front of an easel, in the studio on the top floor of an up-town building. He had charcoaled on the canvas a design of a girl on a horse. No model for either figure was in sight; but the artist’s rapt expression suggested that his eyes were opened to things invisible to common senses. The girl had long, black hair, and the horse seemed to be a white Arab stallion.
The only other person in the big, empty room was an undersized boy of fifteen, who was short one leg. He had the aspect of a clever and good-natured gnome. He was occupied in cleaning paint-brushes and was whistling softly to himself.
A soft, bell-like sound, thrice repeated, suddenly proceeded from a small black box affixed to the wall. The artist, roused from his vision, frowned.
“Say I’m busy, Jim,” he muttered. “Only ten o’clock, too!”
Jim hobbled to the box and shot back a panel, disclosing a mirror six inches square, in which appeared a miniature but lively image of a middle-aged man of athletic build and aquiline features. “It’s yer Uncle Sam, boss,” he said.
Jack sighed, laid down his palette, and strode over to the box.
“Good morning, uncle,” he said, addressing the image. “What’s up?”
“Get over here at once—very important—quick car!” the other replied, with an urgent gesture.
“Would this afternoon do, uncle? I’m awfully busy just now—”
“Don’t lose a moment!” rejoined his uncle, beckoning imperiously. “That girl of Mayne’s, you know—the old man is in a devil of a taking—come on!”
Jack’s bearing changed, as if a million volts had passed through him.
“In five minutes, uncle!” he exclaimed, slamming back the panel. “Stay here till I call, Jim,” he added to the gnome.
“Right! Here’s yer tile, boss,” the latter returned, extending a hat to his master. “Cut it out!” exclaimed Jack, pushing it aside, with no realization of what it was. He stepped on the lift in a recess of the wall and vanished upward like a clay pigeon from the trap. Emerging on the roof, he seated himself in the little air-boat stationed there, cast off the moorings, seized the wheel, set the needle, and had the craft skimming southwestward like a bullet. In four minutes he had traversed the twelve miles to his uncle’s house and found Sam Paladin awaiting him on the landing. While Jack was gasping out, “What has happened to her?” the elder man cast an amused glance at the boy’s costume—an old velvet jacket, out at the elbows and daubed with paint, knee breeches of the same period and condition, red slippers and hair on end. “Come below and I’ll tell you,” he said. “Too bad to take you away from your work!”
Jack, following his uncle to his rooms, uttered inarticulate sounds and trod upon the other’s heels. The seasoned adventurer pushed him into a chair, sat down opposite him, handed the cigars, took and lit one himself.
“Ordinarily,” he observed, “I’d be the last person to interrupt a man in his professional business; but this thing is a bit out of the common. Terence and I are old pals, and he has a notion fixed in that obstinate noddle of his that you are the man for this job. The way you picked up that girl at the show gave him a high conception of your general ability. I must confess I don’t see how you managed it! I guess your back muscles must be in good shape. If you can repeat the trick—not in just the same way, to be sure—you might consider your fortune made. Terence, as you probably know, has all sorts of money, and would think nothing of tipping you a million or so, if you made good.”
“Uncle—please! Is she hurt?” What—”
“What are you breaking that cigar in pieces for? Was it a bad one? Take another!”
“Uncle, I—”
“Oh, well, here’s the story. To-day is Wednesday. The show was on Monday. Terence says all went as usual on Tuesday, up to six o’clock, afternoon. At that hour the maharaja was to dine at his house tête-à-tête—no one else but Miriam—that’s her name I believe. I have a suspicion that the maharaja is rather hit by the young lady. And the prospect of becoming Rani of Lucknow might appeal to her—but that’s another matter!”
“Miriam marry that damned heathen!” shouted Jack, standing up and raising his clenched fists. He could not get out another word, but his red face, blazing eyes, and rumpled hair were eloquent and formidable.
“I don’t know about the prince’s religion,” said Uncle Sam calmly; “but he’s a good enough fellow: was educated at Oxford: has a fine palace at Lucknow—I stayed with him there, once, for a fortnight. But all that is aside from our present business. It seems Terence had made it a point with Miriam to be present at this dinner, and she had promised; he says she never failed to keep an appointment in her life. He got home from his office at four o’clock Tuesday: Miriam not in: she was in the habit, he believed (but he always left her to do what she liked) of being absent most afternoons, and sometimes till late in the evening. By five-thirty he was dressed for dinner; Miriam had not returned. At six sharp the maharaja arrived; no Miriam. They waited for her an hour: no signs of her or message from her. Maharaja very polite, but serious: Terence—well, you can imagine his state by this time, and how pleasantly the dinner went off. Nine o’clock—no news! The prince took leave, still very polite, but— Terence, sending out searchers in all directions, and taking rapid leave of his senses. Sleepless night: morning: No Miriam! No trace or vestige of her. Terence called me up at nine-thirty: had a revelation from Heaven that you are the man in the world who can find her: insisted on my taking up the matter with you at once. Now, of course, the girl may be nothing to you; but it’s my opinion that if you could find her, and were not immutably set against matrimony, you’d stand a good chance against his highness. So here we are!”
While Jack was devouring this recital with one part of his mind, another was recalling an episode in his career which had taken place within the past thirty-six hours. In the first place, there had been a tremendous, palpitating minute or two, after the rescue, when he had had an opportunity to speak to Miriam in private. In that minute he had desperately dared to tell her that he loved her, that heaven and earth could not keep him from her, and had implored her with the most impetuous and irresistible adjurations to grant him an interview the next day. The girl, under the influence of these words and of the general situation, had finally replied that if he would be at a certain spot at a certain hour the following afternoon, he might have his wish. The rendezvous was, in fact, in the avenue bordering the high wall which enclosed Mary Faust’s grounds and laboratory. Suffice it that the tryst was kept; and from two o’clock until near three things were said by the two young people to each other, which, considering that both of them had been, until that time, vowed to celibacy and to science and art, were sufficiently remarkable and important. Miriam had also briefly indicated her relations with Mary Faust, and her habit of daily study there. The lovers parted in delicious agitation and happiness. And it now appeared, from his uncle’s chronology, that Jack was the last person, except Mary Faust, to whom Miriam had appeared in the flesh. The last, that is, unless she had left the laboratory for the dinner at home, and had been lost on the way. Either she was with Mary Faust at this moment, or she was lost—probably kidnaped. Jack had the immense advantage over all other searchers of the possession of this clue. As to the kidnaping hypothesis, he refused to entertain so intolerable an idea, at least until he had proved that it was not Mary Faust!
Lovers are at once the most outspoken and the most secret persons in the world. It might have seemed natural that Jack should confide his story to his uncle, his only intimate friend. He did nothing of the kind—the matter was too sacred. At the conclusion of Sam Paladin’s statement, the young man adopted a reserved demeanor, intimated, vaguely, that he happened to be in possession of some facts which might lead to something, promised to undertake the task at once, and to communicate promptly whatever news he might obtain, and forthwith rather hurriedly excused himself. Five minutes later he was back in his studio, and with Jim’s expert assistance was preparing himself for the adventure. At a little after eleven, the two stood before the door of the Faust laboratory.
Sam Paladin, meanwhile, after a half-hour’s meditation, during which he sometimes smiled and sometimes looked grave, transferred himself to Mayne’s habitation, and went into private session with that distracted personage.
“The boy is in love with the girl,” he told him, “and love is the best sleuth in the world. He knows something—wouldn’t say what—he is on edge, body and soul, and whatever is humanly possible, he will do to find her. Of course, your girl may not care for him; but if she does, the problem will be the easier. It wouldn’t surprise me if we got a message before evening. Some accident has occurred, no doubt; but there’s no reason to suppose it serious. In these times of occult researches very funny things sometimes happen; but they commonly turn out all right. If I thought otherwise, I should advise you to get drunk. As it is, take a cold shower and a nap.”
“Naps and cold showers for a father whose daughter is maybe murdered this minute!” moaned Terence, whose appearance emphasized his words. “If that lad of yours brings her back to me safe and sound, he may take all I’ve got—except the girl! I’m ready to start in again carrying bricks up a ladder, as I did thirty years ago; but the girl is the girl; there’s none like her; and if I had the solar system in me pocket, I’d not swap her for it—once I got her in me arms again. ‘Occult,’ d’ye say? ‘Funny things!’ If ever I get me hands on the parties that’s handed me this deal, believe me, I’ll occult ’em, and funny won’t be the word for their feelin’s, neither.”
“If you hand over your property to Jack, I’ve no doubt he’d let you board and lodge with him and his wife,” remarked Sam Paladin composedly. “But this is all foolishness. You’ll hear from Jack before dinner time, and good news, too!”
“Dinner time? That’s seven hours off, and how will I kape living till then?” demanded Terence, taking his head between his hands and planting his elbows on his knees, like the effigies of despair in Dante’sInferno.“Ye’ll find the cruiskeen lawn in the cupboard, Sam, lad; take what ye want, but stand by me till the end,” he added after a while, looking up from the depths of his misery. “No, none for me!—though never did I think to see the day when Terence Mayne would turn his back on whisky! Wurra, wurra!”
“Try a draw of the pipe, anyway,” suggested, Sam; “I see the end of it sticking out of your pocket. Here’s tobacco,” he said, proffering his pouch.
“The plug is better,” replied Terence, proceeding slowly to fill a blackened old clay from the loose chippings in his pocket. He then drew a match along his thigh and lit up. “A bit of old times!” he sighed; and as the two friends puffed fragrant clouds at each other, the lines of anguish on the Irishman’s visage were softened.
“HERE is where I saw Miss Mayne last,” said Jack, as he and Jim paused before a massive door studded with iron nails, in the western end of a high cement wall, on which the shadows of the trees bordering the avenue were thrown by the noon sun. “It’s just twenty-one hours since that door opened, and she went in.”
“What opened it, boss?” inquired the gnome. “I don’t see no handle.”
Jack thought a minute. “She pressed her thumb on one of those nails,” he said. “I think it was this one,” and he laid a finger on the third nail from the west edge of the door, four feet down from the top. Jim examined the nail carefully.
“Guess yer right, boss,” he muttered. “That ain’t no real nail, it’s the top of a spring. Will I try a punch on it?”
“Wait!” said Jack, arresting his hand. “As I remember, she pressed it in a particular way—like this!” He pressed the nail-head, which yielded to the impulse; then twice again, in rapid succession; then a fourth punch after a moment’s interval. The door swung heavily inward, and the two companions stepped quickly within. They found themselves in a spacious garden, planted with flowers and ornamental bushes; a path led up to a house made of gray stone, with an iron dome thirty feet in diameter projecting from its roof. Jim, after a glance around, shut the door behind them, and hobbled after Jack, who was advancing up the path. In a few moments they reached a doorway on the east side of the building, at the top of a short flight of steps. Jack laid a hand on the latch, which yielded, and the two entered. They passed down a corridor, which brought them to a stairway. Up the stairs they went, Jim’s crutch tapping on each step as they ascended. The stair wound upward for a considerable distance; at length they emerged on the landing, and saw another door, with a heavy blue curtain hanging before it. As Jack stepped toward it, it was pushed aside from within, and a tall figure in a dark robe stood before them.
“Who are you? What do you want?” asked the figure. The voice, quiet and deep, was evidently a woman’s. The face, pale, with regular features and level, dark brows, might almost have been a man’s, such was the power and firmness of its expression.
Jack’s eyes met hers intently. He was sending the whole force of his nature into the gaze, and she was conscious of it; they measured each other.
“Jack Paladin—a friend of Miriam Mayne’s,” he said after a moment. “I parted from her at your door yesterday afternoon—you are Mme. Faust, I suppose? She has not been seen since. Her father sent me here. Is she here?”
“Does her father think she is here?”
“I alone know she comes here,” answered the young man.
“Who is this?” inquired the other, indicating Jim, who was scrutinizing her with great interest.
“My trusty servant,” returned Jack.
“The gen’leman saved me life, lady,” put in Jim. “Catch’d me in his arms, fallin’ out of an air-boat. I bumped him good, and bruk me leg; an’ I’d go to hell and back for him, any time, surest thing you know. That’s me!”
“His is not the only life you have saved, I understand,” said Mary Faust, continuing to fix her eyes on Jack’s face. He blushed red. “I am come for Miriam Mayne,” was his rejoinder. She was silent for some time, seeming to take counsel with herself.
“Come with me,” she finally said, and turning, held back the curtain that concealed the room beyond. Jack entered, Jim following; and she brought up the rear. The room was large, with a high ceiling, which was pierced by the shaft of a great sidereal telescope mounted beneath it on massive piers which passed through the floor and were no doubt anchored in the ground far below. A wide table, covered with diagrams and other papers stood in a window on the north. Several machines of odd construction were disposed here and there. Of these, the most noticeable was a structure of black metal, shaped somewhat like a large chair or throne; the seat-room was cushioned with blue silk; at the right side a hand-lever projected, connected with a powerful system of geared wheels; in front was a funnel-like projection formed of copper wire coiled in a spiral, the diameter of the cone diminishing outward. On the sides of the structure were clock-like disks, the hands pointing to astronomical signs. Above the chair was suspended a large hollow hemisphere, highly polished, and covered with flowing designs somewhat resembling Persian writing. The chair was placed facing a broad open window opposite the eastern sky. The whole contrivance may have weighed more than a ton, and, like the telescope, rested on solid foundations passing through the floor.
Jack gave all this a passing glance. He had no head for mechanics. Jim, on the contrary, had a natural insight into machinery, and he examined this strange object with a fascinated but perplexed expression.
“I have doubted how best to make known what has happened here,” said Mary Faust, “but your coming has forced me to a course which is, perhaps, the best. Miriam Mayne was here on Tuesday afternoon—has been in the habit of coming here for more than a year past, as my pupil and assistant. Together we built this engine. It is psycho-physical; its function is to transport persons from this earth to other planets of the solar system. But it was not to be used until means had been perfected for their return hither.”
“Gee! dat’s big stuff! How does yer work it, lady?” required Jim.
“I shall explain it when Miriam’s father arrives—I have already sent for him,” said she, addressing herself to Jack. “Meanwhile, if your nerves are steady, I will show you something. But bear in mind that appearance misleads; sleep resemble death, and trance still more. The spirit has no relation to space.”
Jack drew in a long breath; his heart was beating painfully. He felt as if he stood on the brink of a fathomless abyss, from the depths of which things unimagined were to arise. The woman took his hand and led him to a large cabinet on the left. Her touch sent through him a strong vibration, which seemed to calm his mind and fortify his resolution. The cabinet had folding doors; she touched the knob, and they opened wide. The interior was lined with blue satin, and was illuminated with a white light. The figure of a young woman lay there, apparently deep asleep. Her hair flowed beside her like a black river. On her left breast glimmered faintly a blue star: it flickered like a flame.
At the sight, Jack stiffened and trembled. His grasp tightened upon Mary Faust’s hand. The serene, cool pressure of her fingers steadied him. “Miriam—here!” he uttered in a husky whisper.
“A part of her,” rejoined Mary Faust quietly. “The garment she wears on this earth. Miriam is absent. The flickering of that star is the assurance that she lives.”
“Where is she, then?” demanded Jack, with dry lips.
“She is on the planet Saturn,” replied Mary Faust.
THESE astounding words were so composedly and confidently spoken as to make incredulity clash against conviction in a bewildering battle. Jack’s knees relaxed, and there was a prickly sensation over his scalp.
“Sattum!” muttered Jim. “Must be in Jersey. I never heard of it—not me!”
“Things more startling have become commonplace by use,” remarked the woman. She was about to say more, but the entrance of Terence Mayne, accompanied by Sam Paladin, interrupted her. She closed the cabinet and moved forward to receive them.
The father was too much agitated and exhausted to express himself conventionally; but the appeal of his eyes was poignant and pathetic. Sam Paladin, as always, was master of himself, and he greeted Mary Faust with urbane courtesy.
“I am this boy’s uncle; I ventured to accompany my friend Mayne on the chance that I might be of use. I hope you have good news of the young lady?”
“Your daughter is alive and well,” said Mary Faust, turning to Mayne. “But she is gone on a long journey. I would have notified you at once, but delayed in the hope of being able to fix the time of her return. That however is still uncertain.”
“Some little accident, I understand?” said Sam cheerfully.
“I will outline what took place,” she replied. “This machine combines material with spiritual forces in a way not hitherto attempted. It separates these components in man, and directs the immaterial part to any point selected; the physical body remains here, entranced, pending the reunion. Other planets of our system may thus be visited at will.”
Mayne probably understood nothing of this. Sam had followed her keenly.
“I’ve been something of a traveler myself,” he remarked, “and after bringing my explorations on this globe to an end, I adventured, through my telescope, into other fields. I had looked forward to a time when we might communicate intelligently with our planetary neighbors, but there is novelty in your plan. But supposing you to have arrived at your destination, divested of your mortal body, how would you make yourself manifest in a practical way to the mortal people out there?”
“A natural law, of which I am the discoverer, covers that difficulty,” the scientist answered. “The spirit of an inhabitant of any earth, on reaching another, is spontaneously clothed with a body proper to that globe, and, of course, endowed with its language. This has long been known to me; but only recently, and with your daughter’s assistance,” she added to Mayne, “have we succeeded in effecting actual transference from one to another.”
“How far away is my little gal gone, ma’am?” demanded Mayne, in a faltering voice.
“Whether the distance covered be a mile or millions of miles, the principle is the same, and the distance is unimportant,” she replied. “The planet Saturn, where she is now a guest, is between eight and nine hundred million miles from where we stand.”
Mayne dropped into a chair with a groan, and even Paladin arched his eyebrows. Jim, for whom such figures had no significance, was busy investigating the parts of the machine. Jack had sunk into a profound meditation, and was perhaps as remote from the circle as Miriam herself. His uncle was the first to speak.
“From what you say, I infer that Miss Mayne’s physical part is here?” he suggested.
“What happened is this,” she returned. “After Miriam’s arrival here yesterday, I was in another room for several minutes to fetch some materials. When I returned, I found her sitting in this chair, unconscious. The pointer indicated Saturn. She must have seated herself, and inadvertently pressed the lever. I signaled Saturn and learned of her safe arrival there; but neither I nor they had prepared means for her return. Since then I have been occupied with this problem.”
“Then—?” interjected Sam.
“I have made this explanation in order to prepare Mr. Mayne for what he is to see,” observed Mary Faust. “Do not attempt to touch her; she is protected by forces whose disturbance might involve grave consequences both for you and her.”
She moved to the cabinet, followed by the two elder men; Jack remained in his revery.
When the doors were opened, Mayne, with a faint cry, staggered toward the sleeping figure, but Paladin restrained him. The starlike light upon the girl’s breast, flickered as before; at long intervals a slight movement was perceptible in the chest and diaphragm, as she drew her breath.
“Respiration in Saturn is slower than with us,” Mary Faust remarked.
“What is the cause of that bluish light?” Sam inquired.
“It is the Saturnian sign,” she replied. “It indicates the connection between the spirit and its body here.”
“Don’t deceive me, woman—is she alive?” burst out Mayne, hoarsely. He was trembling like a man shaken with palsy.
“Be assured of that!” was her grave answer. “On the spiritual plane, what we call distance is but difference in mental states. Miriam is now temporarily in the Saturnian phase. Her return will be as an awakening from slumber.”
“Waken her, then!” cried the old man, passionately. “Mother of God, is there no way of undoing your devil’s work?”
Jack had drawn near the others, and now laid a hand on Mayne’s shoulder.
“Don’t be discouraged, Mr. Mayne,” he said quietly. “I’m going after her, and I’ll bring her back.”
This announcement, which the speaker’s countenance emphasized with a look of serious resolve as unbending as natural law, caused all present, including Mary Faust, to hold their breath for a moment. Then the croaking voice of Jim broke the silence.
“Dat’s de right stuff, boss! an’ I’m wid ye!”
A GREAT resolve is magnetic: it transforms the bystanders. Jack, modest and shy by nature, suddenly became the leading personage of the group. He had not spoken rashly or without realizing what his purpose involved. A journey of near nine hundred million miles, and back again, across the void of space! Courage, faith, devotion, consciousness of resources adequate to cope with the unknown, belief that love, the moving power of the universe, was more than a match for all obstacles—these were his armor and weapons. He would follow Miriam, find her, and bring her back! The youth assumed, with the words he had uttered, the stature of a hero; and the hearts of his hearers bowed before him.
His uncle, in whose blood the hero strain was still warm, looked in the boy’s eyes and stifled the remonstrance that sprang to his lips. It was an enterprise in which any man might have been proud to perish. Old Terence Mayne stared at him speechless: then, tottering forward, leaned his gray head upon Jack’s shoulder and sobbed aloud. Finally, Mary Faust stepped up to him and took both his hands in hers.
“All power that is mine I give to you,” she said. “You are worthy of the adventure. You are worthy of her you seek. You will find her: more, I cannot promise. But you do not need more. The will of God be done!” She drew his head down and kissed him on the lips. It was the accolade of the new-made knight.
Before taking his place on the machine, Jack stood for several minutes looking down upon the form of Miriam, as if to draw into himself, through the medium of that beautiful image, the perfume of the spirit he was to pursue.
He turned at length, his face cheerful and tranquil. He exchanged a mighty grip with his uncle. To Mayne he said, as the latter grasped his other hand: “When you see us again, sir, she will be my affianced wife.”
“I love her more than life and all,” replied the old man stoutly; “but when I see her yours, I’ll love her more yet!”
Mary Faust now threw about his neck a gold chain with a pointing hand attached to it, wrought out of a sapphire. “It is the mariner’s compass of your voyage,” she said.
‘Good-by, Jim,” said Jack, enclosing the little gnome’s fingers in his large clutch. “Take care of Uncle Sam while I’m away. Did you finish cleaning the paint brushes?”
“Sure I done ’em, boss” answered the boy, in a piping tone, his black eyes sparkling like diamonds. “Good luck and happy days to yer!”
Jack stepped on the throne; as he did so, the hollow hemisphere above his head glowed like molten metal, and zigzag flashes played to and fro within it. An undertone of deep sound vibrated through the room. Jack, with a farewell glance at the others, laid his right hand upon the lever. As he was about to press it down, Jim, who had crept round to the left, made a sudden spring with his crutch and landed across his knees. The lever descended, and they were off!
“NOT a bit what I expected,” murmured Jack to himself: “not the least!”
He looked around him, turning slowly this way and that. On every side stretched out a plain—if it were a plain; but it had no horizons—no curvature. In fact, though solid beneath the feet, it was not easily distinguishable from the medium in which he stood, moved and breathed. It was transparent, too, in all directions, below as well as above and sidewise. It was as if he were walking on water—or in water, like a fish. This medium, however, had a luminousness of its own: not sunlight or moonlight, though sunlight itself was not so bright and clear. Moreover, yonder was what looked like the sun—probably was the sun, indeed; it shone like a white fire, and had no shadowed side, like the other spherical objects that floated at various distances round about it, and which he now surmised must be planets. Yes, planets of the solar system, evidently; and that large one, somewhat below and to the right was our own earth; the masses of north and south America, and part of western Europe, were recognizable, lying lustrous on the dark oceans; and there was the moon, just clear of it on the further side; they must be very far off—several hundred thousand miles. Jupiter—that must be Jupiter, with the belts and the red spot—looked much larger than the earth, although more remote. Jack must have been traveling at a good pace during the few minutes since pushing down that lever in Mme. Faust’s laboratory—if it were a few minutes, and not a few days or years: there was no way of telling. Was he stationary now, or still moving? That too was not easily decided.
Jupiter?—where then was Saturn? His heart began to beat hard; was he on the way? He gazed before, behind, to right and left; nothing that looked like Saturn appeared. Not below him, either. Above, perhaps? Ah, yes, there it was! It hung directly in his zenith, a lovely vision, the ring clearly defined all round it; its hue was a delicate sapphire, not the yellowish tinge that earth’s atmosphere gives it. It was very distant; its apparent size had increased hardly at all. And yet, as Jack gazed at it, it seemed suddenly to grow larger, as if it had been projected directly toward him. But that could not be; rather, he had moved at an inconceivable speed toward it. This was strange!
At this juncture he was acutely surprised to hear a voice—a human voice, a familiar voice, none other than Jim’s, in fact, addressing him in these words: “Slow down a bit, boss: Gee, dat was a dandy jump you made! I ain’t got me sea-leg yet: slow down!”
Jack turned toward the apparent source of this appeal, but at first could see nothing of his attendant, whose existence he had quite forgotten. Presently he discerned a dot in the pathless void, immeasurably remote: could that be Jim? He narrowed his eyes, and now became aware of a new peculiarity in his environment: Jim, though still in seeming size no bigger than a flea, became distinctly visible in his minutest details; nay, he could even hear the tap of his crutch as he exerted himself to bridge the gulf between them. The mere act of attention—a mental process—could have the effect of abolishing space to the senses!
“But the boy can never come that distance in a dozen years!” he murmured half aloud.
“Try anudder t’ink, boss.” replied Jim’s voice, close to his ear; “Watch me!”
While these words were uttering the flea enlarged to the dimensions of a bee, and was still coming. What was it that Mary Faust had said about space? “A difference in mental states?” In other words, thought, on the mental plane was presence!
As he meditated this discover, understanding began to flow in upon his mind from various quarters, like the light of dawn through crevices in a darkened room. He had left his material body on the earth; he was now all mind—spirit, though he could perceive no change in his outward aspect; his garments seemed the same; he was substantial as before; though there was no air in space, he breathed and his heart beat as usual; though space was absolute cold his body had the warmth of summer; though there was no blue sky, the etheric light—if it were that—was intense as the electric flash and iridescent as the rainbow. Upon distant objects it had the effect of a lens of enormous power.
“I’m what is called dead,” said Jack to himself, summing up his ideas. “This is my spirit—my me itself. I’m not dead for good though—my body down there is only asleep. To travel is to pass through a series of thoughts in continuous succession with a fixed end always in view. I once read, ‘As a man thinks, so is he.’ To be in Saturn, I must think myself into a Saturn state of mind. Just how to do that isn’t clear; but I’ll see what wishing myself there will do; wishes may be wings!”
“Dat sort o’ dope is beyond me, boss,” said Jim; “but if hangin’ on to your coattails is any good, count me in!” Jim had arrived.
“You’re not scared, are you, Jim?” said Jack, smiling down on him.
“Nix on scared!” was the reply. “I al’ays t’ought it would be a fine t’ing getting out o’ N’York; but I never t’ought t’would be like this!”
Jack now applied himself to concentrating his mind on his destination, which he figured as Miriam, with a sapphire halo round her head. They were moving through the solid, yet diaphanous medium at a speed which could be estimated only in planetary terms; but with no sense of bodily exertion. All at once Jim cried out:
“Hully Gee! will yer lamp dat, boss!”
Jack looked: the spectacle sent a shock through him, as when one suddenly sees the red glare of an express train bearing close down upon him. A vast red disk covered twenty degrees of the eastern firmament. The planet Jupiter stood revealed in all its details. Raging whirlpools of fiery storms tore its surface, diversified with dark streamings and appalling abysses. Jack fancied he could feel the terrific heat radiating from it; flames hundreds of miles long licked out toward him. Accompanying this paralyzing sight was an awful humming sound, and a feeling as of being drawn into the vortex of an inconceivable red-hot maelstrom. The gigantic disk seemed nearer!
“The sapphire hand!” spoke the quiet voice of Mary Faust, like a whisper in his ear. Had she been observing his progress from her station on the other side of the diameter of the solar system?
He had forgotten the talisman that was to guide him across space: he grasped it, and in the same moment felt the rush past him of an invisible tide of forces; as, when one is being swept down the headlong torrent of a flood, he catches at some stable object, and the wild waters tear at him as they hurtle past. The sapphire hand barely stemmed the rush. As Jack hung there, in doubt whether he were saved or doomed, he seemed to see wild figures racing past him, snatching at him as they flew; fierce, beautiful faces convulsed with passion; contorted bodies of giants; the flaring out of fiery hair like streamers of the northern lights. They gnashed their teeth, the glare of their eyes was as the flashing of torches. But the sapphire hand was cool in his own, and its power prevailed.
“Dere was never no subway rush to beat dat!” was the manner in which Jim expressed his feelings, as the tension abated.
A powerful arm was thrown across Jack’s shoulders, drawing him out into freedom, and a voice like the tones of a mighty harp exclaimed laughingly:
“Those Jovian fellows are always on the lookout to catch people napping. They must be disciplined. If you hadn’t thought of your compass when you did, I should have had quite a struggle getting you free. You are from Faust, are you not?”
Jack nodded; he was panting from his exertions. Then he looked at his new friend.
A superb being he was, quite as tall as Jack, and with a body so beautifully formed that the earth-man, a connoisseur in such matters, could not restrain a cry of admiration; so might the god Apollo have disclosed himself in vision to the sculptor who vainly strove to reproduce him in the Belvedere. He glowed as with an inner light; his features seemed divinity incarnate; his hair, thick and waving, of a golden hue, flowed down upon his Olympian shoulders. There was no excess of muscular development in trunk or limbs, but irresistible power declared itself in every contour and movement. “Who are you?” Jack asked.
“I am called Solarion,” the other replied; “I am stationed in the midway here, to look after travelers from your earth, who are specially liable to kidnaping by these Jovians, who make serfs of them. But, you,” he added, scrutinizing Jack more closely, “belong to a new type: I have only met one other—a girl, bound for Saturn. Our friend Mary Faust has been preparing the route for some while past; but it was not thought that she had yet completed her arrangements. A wise woman, that!”
“You met a girl—who was she?” demanded Jack with devouring eagerness.
“Miriam was her name—a lovely child— Ah, I see! you have come after her! Well, you must expect difficulties; it is much easier to make the trip out than to get back again. The Saturn folks are very agreeable people; but you two are such an attractive pair that I fear they may want to keep you.” He laughed good-humoredly as he spoke, sending a very keen look into Jack’s eyes. “It’s taking a risk, you know,” he added. “I would help you if I could, but my domain is restricted to these outlying regions. I am assuming, of course, that you and she—or either of you—will care to return. Saturn is a pleasant country.”
“Little old N’York is good enough fer us, mister, and don’ you fergit it!” put in Jim earnestly. “We was jest takin’ a look aroun’, dat’s all!”
Solarion smiled amusedly. “You’ll have a good story to tell your friends,” he observed. “Few of them will have traveled so far on one leg.”
“My boss figgers we’se sperrits,” said Jim; “sperrits is angels, ain’t dey? Wot I want to know is, is dere any odder angels wid one fin off, like me?”
“You are only partly a spirit as yet, Jim,” answered Solarion, patting the urchin’s head. “When you cut loose altogether, you will find your leg in its place again.”