... "Fain would I knowYon heavenly wafting through the heaven wide,And the large view of the subjected seas,And famous cities, and the various toil of men.".........."And I will carry thee above the world,To share my ecstasy of flinging beams,And scattering without intermission joy.And thou shall know the first leap of the seaToward me; the grateful upward look of earth,Emerging roseate from her bath of dew--We two in heaven dancing. BabylonShall flash and murmur, and cry from under us.And Nineveh catch fire, and at our feetBe hurled with her inhabitants, and allAdoring Asia kindle and hugely bloom--We two in heaven running--continentsShall lighten, ocean unto ocean flash,And rapidly laugh till all this world is warm."
... "Fain would I knowYon heavenly wafting through the heaven wide,And the large view of the subjected seas,And famous cities, and the various toil of men.".........."And I will carry thee above the world,To share my ecstasy of flinging beams,And scattering without intermission joy.And thou shall know the first leap of the seaToward me; the grateful upward look of earth,Emerging roseate from her bath of dew--We two in heaven dancing. BabylonShall flash and murmur, and cry from under us.And Nineveh catch fire, and at our feetBe hurled with her inhabitants, and allAdoring Asia kindle and hugely bloom--We two in heaven running--continentsShall lighten, ocean unto ocean flash,And rapidly laugh till all this world is warm."
... "Fain would I know
Yon heavenly wafting through the heaven wide,
And the large view of the subjected seas,
And famous cities, and the various toil of men."
..........
"And I will carry thee above the world,
To share my ecstasy of flinging beams,
And scattering without intermission joy.
And thou shall know the first leap of the sea
Toward me; the grateful upward look of earth,
Emerging roseate from her bath of dew--
We two in heaven dancing. Babylon
Shall flash and murmur, and cry from under us.
And Nineveh catch fire, and at our feet
Be hurled with her inhabitants, and all
Adoring Asia kindle and hugely bloom--
We two in heaven running--continents
Shall lighten, ocean unto ocean flash,
And rapidly laugh till all this world is warm."
Bennie listened, as Rhoda spoke the lines, spellbound at the poet's imagination.
"By golly," he cried, in admiration, "that's more wonderful than—than actuallydoing it!"
III
Bentham T. Tassifer had paused, as usual, at the Metropolitan Club, on his way home from the Department of Justice, and, as a natural consequence, was exuding his regular post-meridian benignity. In his own little official occupation of the day—the joker in the contract for the new post-office at Pocalla, Texas—he had entirely forgotten the disappearance of his niece, as well as the anticipated collision between the wandering asteroid and the earth which he so honored by living upon it. He had followed his ordinary custom of going directly to the bar and consuming a sherry and bitters with an audible, guzzling satisfaction, something between the gurgles of a dying bathtub and the intake of a hippopotamus. Then his lordly little eye fell upon the lank form of his golfing friend Judson, of the Department of Agriculture, leaning in contemplation before a tumbler from which o'erlapped a sprig of mint.
"'Lo!" he remarked, with an intonation signifying 'Behold, minion; King John, your king and England's, doth approach!'
"'Lo yuhself!" returned Judson. "Djuh see somethin' happened to that comet?"
"Eh?" demanded the solicitor. "Comet? You mean the asteroid, I suppose? What's happened to it?"
Judson took a sip from the tumbler and turned savagely upon Tassifer.
"Ass-eroid!" he shouted.
"Don't get excited, Judson," commented Bentham patronizingly.
"You make me tired!" retorted his agricultural friend. "What difference does it makewhatit is, if it's been put out of business?"
"What do you mean?" cried Bentham. "Has anything unusual occurred?"
"Haven't you seen the papers?" inquired Judson. "Huh! If you're so blamed slow, lemme—I mean, let me—read it to you."
"Sure!" nodded Bentham. "Another sherry and bitters—and another mint julep," he added to the bartender, after a moment's reflection.
"Listen here," began Judson, elevating a newspaper which had been lying flat on the bar: "'Extry'! Collision between ass—ass—what d'you call it?"
Tassifer grabbed the paper quickly out of his hand.
"As-ter-oid," he articulated snappishly. "Let me see it. I can read."
He read:
EXTRA—Four O'Clock—EXTRA!COLLISION BETWEEN ASTEROID AND EARTH AVERTED!PROBABLE SUCCESS OF HOOKER EXPEDITION!MEDUSA NOW OUR SATELLITE!There is every reason to believe that Professor Benjamin Hooker and his daring companions have achieved their stupendous object of diverting the falling asteroid from its course toward the earth, and have thus saved the human race from destruction. Professor Thornton, of the National Observatory, announced the receipt, early this morning, of a cable-despatch from an amateur astronomer at Honolulu, stating that, about ten hours after the time set for the departure of the Hooker Expedition in the Flying Ring, he suddenly observed a yellow glow surrounding the asteroid Medusa. This glow increased in volume and intensity for perhaps five minutes, and then as suddenly ceased, drawing away from the planet like a puff of smoke. No trace of the phenomenon was observed either at the Lick Observatory or in the great one-hundred-inch telescope at Mount Wilson, near Pasadena, the unfavorable position of the asteroid, low down in the western sky, probably accounting for this. All other observatories of note were on the daylight side of the earth at the time.Professor Thornton further announces, however, that the observations upon Medusa's position which were made last night at the various European observatories show conclusively that the path of the asteroid has been changed and its flight toward the sun checked. It is now moving in an elliptical orbit around the earth, with a period of approximately four months and twelve days. The astronomer states that, at the time of the asteroid's nearest approach to us, it will be a conspicuous object—its apparent diameter being nearly one-half that of the moon. Professor Hooker and his associates have thus not only averted the impending catastrophe but have presented the earth with a new moon as a lasting monument to the boldest enterprise ever conceived by the human brain.
EXTRA—Four O'Clock—EXTRA!
COLLISION BETWEEN ASTEROID AND EARTH AVERTED!
PROBABLE SUCCESS OF HOOKER EXPEDITION!
MEDUSA NOW OUR SATELLITE!
There is every reason to believe that Professor Benjamin Hooker and his daring companions have achieved their stupendous object of diverting the falling asteroid from its course toward the earth, and have thus saved the human race from destruction. Professor Thornton, of the National Observatory, announced the receipt, early this morning, of a cable-despatch from an amateur astronomer at Honolulu, stating that, about ten hours after the time set for the departure of the Hooker Expedition in the Flying Ring, he suddenly observed a yellow glow surrounding the asteroid Medusa. This glow increased in volume and intensity for perhaps five minutes, and then as suddenly ceased, drawing away from the planet like a puff of smoke. No trace of the phenomenon was observed either at the Lick Observatory or in the great one-hundred-inch telescope at Mount Wilson, near Pasadena, the unfavorable position of the asteroid, low down in the western sky, probably accounting for this. All other observatories of note were on the daylight side of the earth at the time.
Professor Thornton further announces, however, that the observations upon Medusa's position which were made last night at the various European observatories show conclusively that the path of the asteroid has been changed and its flight toward the sun checked. It is now moving in an elliptical orbit around the earth, with a period of approximately four months and twelve days. The astronomer states that, at the time of the asteroid's nearest approach to us, it will be a conspicuous object—its apparent diameter being nearly one-half that of the moon. Professor Hooker and his associates have thus not only averted the impending catastrophe but have presented the earth with a new moon as a lasting monument to the boldest enterprise ever conceived by the human brain.
There were several columns more, but Bentham did not proceed further.
"Gee whiz!" he exploded. "He's really done it!"
"Tush!" returned Judson. "You don'tbelievethat, do you? No matter how big a fool you are, you don't honestly suppose anyone can go sailin' around in the air blowin' comets—I mean ass-eroids—out of their orbits, like Buffalo Bill shootin' glass balls?"
"Look here, Judson," shrieked Tassifer: "You keep a civil tongue in your head! I know all about that flying machine; I've been in it, and, what's more, my niece Rhoda—" He stopped unexpectedly.
"What about your niece?" inquired Judson.
"Nothing! Why,yousaw the machine that day on the golf-course—don't you remember? That was Hooker."
"Sure, I saw it!" assented the agriculturalist. "But that thing could only fly round in theair! The most it could do would be to go up five or six miles. You see, when you go higher up than that, there ain't any more air—and you'ddie! Besides, the machine wouldn'tfloatunless there was air—any more'n a ship without water. That's why all this is just bunk."
Tassifer glared disgustedly at Judson.
Really, the fellow was too insignificant—too big a nincompoop to bother with!
"Darn it, Judson," he said, with slow emphasis; "I don't want to quarrel with you, but what you don't know about flying machines would fill the Congressional Library. I've got to go home in a minute, but I've known you long enough not to want you to go around making an ass of yourself."
"Don' say!" sneered Judson.
"Now," continued Tassifer, "this flying machine hasn't anything to do withairat all. It goes up, air or no air. It goes up through the air and through the nothingness above the air, and it can go up easier without air than with air, because then there isn't any resistance."
"But what makes it go up?" inquired Judson.
"What makes a rocket go up?" retorted Tassifer.
"But it ain't a rocket!"
"I didn't say it was. It'slikea rocket."
"But a rocket hasgunpowder."
"Well, this has something or other—I forget what—to make it go—" concluded Tassifer lamely. "Anyhow—"
"Rats!" snorted Judson. "You know a lot about it—youdo! You—"
They might have landed under the bar in the tightly locked embrace of those defending their honor had not an unusual clamor from the avenue interrupted them. What seemed like the confused shoutings of a mob came through the closed windows.
"What's that?" gasped Bentham.
They paused, intent. Evidently, something had happened—an accident, maybe. They could hear a subdued, distant roar, in which were mingled the tooting of motors, the clanging of bells, the bellowing of whistles, and the cries and yells of excited humanity. A multitude of black shadows rushed by. The bartender threw open the window. The avenue was filled with a hurrying crowd—all gazing skyward.
"Hooray!" yelled the crowd. "Hooray! Hooker's back! Hooray!"
Tassifer and Judson looked at one another mutely. Suddenly, the bartender leaped out the window and joined the mob. The whole city was in the streets.
"Come on, Judson!" cried Bentham. "If there's anything doing, let's be on the wagon!" And he climbed upon the sill and leaped after the bartender.
Judson hesitated, emptied his glass, and followed. Over in the west, across the park, a great cloud of smoke and dust was rising against the crimson sky.
"What's happened?" asked the now thoroughly sober Judson of a man who was hurrying by.
"Don't know," panted the other. "People say comet's struck us!"
"Comet Nothin'!" shouted a policeman. "It's Hooker's flying machine!"
Judson grabbed Tassifer by the arm, and they hastened cheerfully along with the crowd.
IV
At the moment her husband thus undignifiedly surrendered to mob psychology, Mrs. Bentham T. Tassifer was taking her Saturday-afternoon bath—thus leaving the tub free for Bentham before going to bed. She had closed the windows, which fact, coupled with the noise of her puffings and splashings, had prevented her from hearing the demonstration going on in the street below. She was just reaching for her towel when she heard the door-bell ring and hurried footsteps upon the stairs.
"Is that you, Bentham?" she shrilled.
"No; it's me—Rhoda!" came back the voice of her niece.
"Where on earth have you been?" cried her aunt. "You scared us almost to death!"
"Oh, flying around!" answered Rhoda. "I want my tooth-powder and nail-brush."
"What are you going to do now?" shouted Mrs. Tassifer, through the door.
"I'm going to get married," replied Rhoda. "Please hand me my things."
There were but two passengers to come down the gangplank when the Washington boat docked the next morning at Old Point Comfort. Trade had been, in fact, very light for several weeks, and the hotels had been practically closed owing to the defection of the colored help, who in a frenzy of religious fervor, had abandoned their jobs to prepare, by prayer and chanting, for the day of Judgment.
Carrying their grips, Bennie and Rhoda walked along the wooden pier and entered a hotel. A decrepit clerk assigned them rooms and handed Bennie a pen freshly dipped in ink. With his hand poised above the blank page of the register, our hero hesitated. They had come there to avoid the pestering crowds, the adulation, the publicity, the reporters. Should he sign as was befitting—"Professor and Mrs. Benjamin Hooker, Washington, D.C."? In that case, even that old dormouse of a hotel-clerk would recognize his identity and the hotel would swarm with interviewers. Yet—did he dare? He had only been married a few hours. He glanced apprehensively at Rhoda, who was examining some needlework in a showcase. Then he resolutely gripped the pen and scrawled, B. Hooker and wife, Camb. Mass.
All that day, the two star-voyagers wandered over the white beach, drinking in the odoriferous breath of the coming spring and talking over their experiences of the past seventy-two hours.
And, in the evening, they sat on the sand and watched the sea darken and caught the first glint of the moon's edge as it pushed up over the horizon. They neither saw the throng of reporters who poured off the afternoon train nor suspected that they were the marked-down quarry of a pack of ravenous wolves.
In ignorance of what was in store for them, Bennie and Rhoda strolled further and further up the beach, away from the hotel. The moon came up round and full, smiling like an old and familiar friend. The breeze had died away, and the silver-edged waves lapped the soft sand gently at their feet as they threw themselves at full-length under some stray pines and gazed up through the branches at the blue arch with its thousands of twinkling lights.
"I like them so much better that way!" she murmured. "If they don't wink at you, it seems so unfriendly!"
"Itwasawful up there!" he assented.
The moon swam higher and higher, turning the beach into a white snow-drift, along which, save for that of the pines under which they lay, no shadow could be seen for miles. Toward this single possible hiding-place moved Diggs, a newspaper reporter from New York. The crunch of his steps made them sit up hurriedly.
"Sh! Somebody's coming!" he whispered.
They were motionless—two hunted creatures—scarcely breathing, in a black island surrounded by a deluge of moonlight.
But Diggs had spied them. Fifty feet away, he paused and lit a warning cigarette. Then he walked down to the water's edge, gazed pensively at the moon and remarked,
"I say, Professor Hooker?"
"It's no use," growled Bennie; "he's got us! Hello!" he answered.
The reporter coughed and came slowly toward the patch of shadow.
"Excuse me," he remarked briskly; "but you understand there's a whale of a story in all this, and it's up to me to get it? You can't blow up a meteor and knock the solar system topsyturvy and get away without even being interviewed, you know. Sorry—but it isn't done. What do you suppose they would do to me? And then there's Mrs. Hooker, you see! If it hadn't been for Mrs. Tassifer—"
Rhoda suddenly spoke up.
"What has she said?" she demanded.
"Oh, she gave us the romance stuff," he answered. "Look here, now: It's ten o'clock, and I've got to 'phone this to New York in time for the early edition. Do you mind my asking just a few questions?"
"But I haven't anything to say," expostulated Professor Hooker.
"Just listen to the man!" groaned Diggs. "Let me ask you: Is this story about landing on the moon perfectly straight?"
Rhoda pointed up through the trees to the great yellow circle of the lunar orb.
"Do you see that bright spot with the shadow on the left-hand side of it?"
"Sure," answered Diggs.
"Well," she continued, "I was standing right there less than thirty-six hours ago."
"Great stuff!" Diggs exclaimed. "But how could you prove it? Whatevidencehave you got?"
"I've got plenty of photographs," she answered. "Dozens of them—of the moon, of the crescent earth—"
"Beg pardon! Of the—what?"
"The crescent earth," she explained, "at about the first quarter. I suppose the phrase seems a little strange."
"Oh—like the moon. I get you," he nodded. "But pictures might be faked."
"These weren't," she retorted wearily.
"Of course not," he agreed. "But they're open to attack."
"I suppose so," she conceded. "But it doesn't matter."
"Of course it matters!" he expostulated. "Now if you only, had something yougoton the moon—brought away with you—that didn't exist on earth—"
"People would just say itdid," put in Bennie. "Who cares?Wedon't!"
"Sure you don't!" he answered sympathetically. "But it means a heap to me. Don't you see what a scoop it would be for us to be the only paper toproveyou'd been to the moon?"
Even as Diggs spoke, far out on the black, heaving horizon, a dull luminosity became suddenly apparent. Brighter it grew, and some stray wisps of cirrus cloud above smoldered in the sky.
"What's that over there?" asked the reporter. "It looks as if the moon were coming up—only itisup!"
He turned and gazed into the heavens, where the moon was rolling through the clouds like a great golden wheel.
Bennie was lighting his pipe, and Rhoda vouchsafed no reply.
Then, on the edge of the distant, watery world, a bead of fire rose and sent toward them a flittering beam. An orange disk thrust itself above the waves—a brilliant, dazzling shield of gold marked with strange wrinkles like a corrugated orange.
"Good heavens, what's that?" exclaimed Diggs. "Am I seeing double?"
"No more—than anybody—else," retorted Bennie puffing. "That is our evidence—the proof you were asking for. That is Medusa—the earth's new satellite—the wandering asteroid that will wander hereafter around the earth."
"Two moons?" demanded Diggs.
"Yes, Mr. Diggs; you can telephone to New York that hereafter you have arranged for two moons—a big one for the grownups; a little one, half-size, for the children."
"And not such a bad little moon at that," added Bennie.
"Our honeymoon," whispered Rhoda. "Goodnight, Mr. Diggs."
THE END
Arthur Train and Robert W. Wood
On the front cover:Professor Hooker watches the Earth rise as he stands on the Moon!
On the back cover:The destruction of the asteroid; Medusa!
These are just two of the many memorable scenes of fantastic adventure in this thrilling classic of science fiction.
A masterpiece of suspense as a giant asteroid hurtles thru space towards Earth, and man must make his first trip into space to save his planet!
Edition limited to 500 copies!$3.00
Other fantasy and science-fiction published in limited editions are:
FOOD FOR DEMONS by E. Everett Evans. Nine stories of vampires and kindred souls. $3.00
THE MOTIVE KEY by Jack Woodford. A long novel of terror and suspense! $2.00
THE DREAM QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH by H. P. Lovecraft. $1.25
THE MAKER OF MOONS by Robert W. Chambers $1.00
LOOK BEHIND YOU! by Arthur J. Burks $1.00
THE FEMALE DEMON by William McDougle $1.25
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