Chapter III: Starting Skywards

Two years have passed away since the meeting at Newbiggin described in the last chapter. They have been years of varied and incessant toil, research, forethought, and preparation.

The Professor continued his scientific lectures in Cambridge for one more academic year and took a house for the vacation at Cullercoats. Carysfort stuck to his old quarters near to Newbiggin, where his workshops were erected. Abercromby kept with him, working like a dock labourer, as the engineer used often to say. Radcliffe held on to his curacy at Oxford and drew crowds, at least so Abercromby always declared, for when he could spare himself a holiday he ran down to see him. His rector, a man notorious for his orthodoxy though his sympathies ran in a somewhat different channel, would have been much startled had he known the character of the studies in which his curate delighted.

Many works that bore on astronomy and kindred subjects were to be found in his library, and once a person, happening to drop in, casually remarked that the undergraduate who had evidently left his books behind him when he went down must have been a man of wide reading.

Study is generally supposed to make a man pale and thin, but upon the curate it had a contrary effect. He seemed, as time went on, to get better and stronger. He sunk the whole of his private means in his friends’ enterprise, and supported himself for the last few months on the merest pittance.

One bright June evening he and Abercromby met on the railway platform at Cullercoats. They walked together to Beverley Terrace and had tea and supper with the Professor and Carysfort.

“Matters are approaching a crisis, old man,” said Abercromby. “The Professor tells me we must pack our week-end boxes in a month, in fact, to be precise, July 22nd is the day fixed.”

A spasm of pain shot across Radcliffe’s face but he only said, “I will be ready.”

“Write me down an ass,” said Abercromby. “We must alter the date, Professor.”

“Quite so,” answered Carmichael. “Venus is approaching the minimum distance, but a margin of ten days could be allowed.”

“There shall not be a margin of ten minutes as far as I am concerned,” replied Radcliffe. “After all, it is best for me that I should bid an eternal farewell to this earth on that date. It has been chosen for me, and I accept it.”

“Let me tell you how matters stand,” said Carysfort. “We had our trial trip last night. It was quite dark, there was no moon, so we could start unobserved. We passed over Rothbury at a height of about two miles, then we drifted towards Newcastle, and when we were over Ponteland we soared straight towards the zenith. We saw the sun rise in the east, and then found that our most difficult task was to get back again before it rose over the Tyne. We were quite outside the atmosphere and saw the earth at a rather unusual altitude. It was a bit ghastly I allow, but we knew already we had succeeded.”

“Abercromby was splendid,” said the Professor; “he stood in the outer balcony in that rarefied atmosphere till I had to drag him in.”

“I drew the line at going off pop,” said Abercromby, “because I naturally felt that though I might be of little use at the best of times, yet if by chance I burst I might even be less.”

“Did any people see you as you descended?” asked Radcliffe.

“Only two bounders walking in from Woodhorn, and though it was barely six o’clock they had both been tippling. They ran down the road screaming, but we put on speed and were safe over the garden wall and our machine in its proper place before they could do any harm. It was a near shave though, and we have voted for no more trips till the final start.”

“What I have chiefly feared,” said the Professor, “was that some meddling Government official would insist upon knowing what we were about. However, being in England, I knew I was in the easiest place to destroy the British Empire if I desired so to do, as nobody would believe it of me, and everybody would think it uncharitable to say it of me, so I had no bother except from the surveyor of taxes. It happened that some patriotic gentleman not very far off was perfecting an airship to render England invulnerable to the Germans, but many liberal-minded clergymen and laymen think he would show a more broad spirit of Christianity if he gave it to the Kaiser. Thanks to this good man I have been much less an object of curiosity than I might have been.”

“Suppose we just take a stroll on the Tynemouth sands and talk over details,” said Carysfort. “To-morrow, if you can stay, you must come with us to Newbiggin and inspect the machine for yourself. Full particulars must wait until then.”

Radcliffe assented with pleasure. They strolled along as far as they could, talking and discussing, while a band was playing “All in the hush of twilight,” and a negro minstrel performance was going on near the Palace Pier. There was a sort of open-air concert, two vocalists having sung “Beauty’s home, Killarney,” and “Phil the Fluter’s Ball,” sang “Love launched a fairy boat.” The people encored and they sang it again. Radcliffe stood listening, and only Frank Abercromby noticed that his eyes were full of tears. Carysfort, who voted the whole proceedings a deadly nuisance, at last pulled him away, and resumed discussions upon mathematics and locomotion.

After supper the party had a further walk along the Cullercoats promenade and then retired to rest in readiness for a visit to Newbiggin in the early hours of the morning.

The party were gathered in due course before the great steel-grey machine with its fans, its balconies, and its long steel prow. They mounted the short ladder that gave access to the interior, which consisted of an upper-deck dining-room lighted with electricity, with large windows, the glass of which was protected by steel shutters easily workable and short steel projections. There was a long table in the centre with chairs, around the thickly padded walls ran couches and divans, and in recesses various collections of books, instruments of all kinds, and other articles, each firmly secured to the wall.

Below the dining-room, approached by a hatchway, were small cabins with comfortable hammocks, and, below these, the engine-room and the store-rooms. At one end of the dining-room a flight of steps with protecting hand-rail led to the conning-tower where the upper steering apparatus was fixed, communicating with electric bells with the lower duplicate steering apparatus in the engine-room. There was direct communication by bells and telephones with each several part of the machine.

In order that nothing useful might be forgotten, each member, every four months, wrote out a list of necessary and desirable things and sent them in to the Professor. Twice over the list was carefully revised. Abercromby reminded them one day that the only thing he could think of was to give a name to the machine, and they decided to christen her the “Asteroid.”

* * * * *

At six o’clock on the evening of July 22nd the whole company was assembled in the parlour of the lonely house at Newbiggin. It was a close thunderous summer evening, the sea had scarce a ripple, and the air was most oppressively still.

Abercromby in vain tried to revive their spirits by his jokes and sallies, but a solemn sadness hung over the company, yet combining with it an emotion of undaunted resolve.

“Now, friends and comrades,” said the Professor, “I propose in an hour’s time that we take final possession of the Asteroid. The work of cutting loose from our moorings will, even then, occupy a certain while, but I suggest that we start skywards at eight p.m.

“Now it is my duty to say that I offer a final opportunity to any one, if he has the least misgivings, to draw back; I shall think none the worse of him. We are sensible men, and we must for the last time look difficulties in the face ere we are committed beyond recall.”

“There are no difficulties,” retorted Abercromby.

“Pardon me, my dear fellow, but that is nonsense. To begin with, we run the risk of our motive force failing us or going wrong, in which case we should fall back at ruinous speed upon the earth, and be either burned to cinders in its atmosphere or pulverised upon its surface. Then we have a struggle to wage against the attractive force of the sun, and I need not point out what sort of death will await us that way.

“Supposing we get near to Venus, we have to encounter the fall upon its surface, which, with all our care, may be deadly. Once arrived, we may find its air unbreathable, and its heat too great for human life. Its people may capture us and deprive us of our machine, thus preventing us for ever from returning home; and they may even torture us and kill us. Then we have the terrors of the return journey, which are of a precisely similar kind to those of the outward, with the possible variation that we may find a lunatic asylum awaiting us in the place of an international welcome. These are the odds: ponder them for the last time.”

“I have pondered them over and over again,” said Carysfort, “and for me they have no terrors.”

“I object to no item in the Professor’s black list except the terrestrial lunatic asylum,” said Abercromby, “and we have only to avoid British territory, and, being true Britons, we shall be sure of a hearty welcome.”

“To me the journey to Venus is but the prelude to a longer journey,” replied Clarence Radcliffe, “but, till my work is done, I shall not ask to die. I have risen superior to that, chiefly through the kindness of you, my brothers.”

“Jackson, what have you to say?” said the Professor.

“Bless you, sir! I’ll just be after going where you go, and if the Lord brings us all safe back I’ll tell the folks at home that I’ve been and gone and had a real good time of it. But you must leave me the polishing-up of the machine, sir. You’ll do the steering, and I the scrubbing. When I laid my old mother to rest in Elton churchyard I buried the last who would miss me, and I thought as how I would like to go clear away, only you are taking me a bit farther than I reckoned.”

“Well done, honest Tom,” said Carysfort. “If every master had as good a helper as Carmichael has in you, there would be a little more sensible work carried out in this spoiled land of ours.”

“Just one word, Professor,” put in Abercromby. “If things go all right, how long do you mean to stay away?”

“Only a few months if Venus is not inhabited, two or three years if it is,” replied the Professor. “I have written out a full and concise account of our intentions and shall leave it behind me. I have also addressed a letter to the Home Secretary. Of course the secret of our discovery is carefully guarded, but I have told who we are and where we are going. I have left full instructions as to my property and this packet shall be posted as soon as you have all signed your names to it. Another shall be sent to the Mayor of Newcastle, and a third shall be left on the table. And now we had better sign, as we are all agreed.”

This having been done, the two postal packets were sent off. Radcliffe asked that they should invoke the Divine blessing upon their enterprise, to which all consented, and then they silently left the house, and proceeded to the place, sheltered behind high walls, where the Asteroid was poised ready for its vast and thrilling flight.

Abercromby remarked that they had not as many to see them start as Columbus or Sir John Franklin had, to which fact the Professor yielded the most hearty and even cheerful assent.

The final preparations took up a shorter time than was expected, and at 7.30 p.m. on that cloudy July evening Carmichael took his post in the conning-tower; the others stood upon the outer balcony, Abercromby assuring the Professor that as soon as they had got outside the earth’s atmosphere he would button up his greatcoat and leisurely come in.

“Farewell to England!” said the engineer simply. “May we find our country a little more open to common sense when we come back.”

Jackson evidently thought that Mr. Frank would give them a colossal joke at the moment of starting, but perhaps, unknown to himself, the power to do so failed him at the last moment. He put his arm through Clarence Radcliffe’s and said, “Say something for me, old chap; I’m hanged if I can.”

“May God bless all in the world who are in sorrow, and may we bring them back something to help them,” answered Radcliffe.

“Start the car, Professor, or I shall make an ass of myself,” sung out Abercromby. “No, hold hard, please. Tom has got a last message for the old country.”

“God save the King,” said Jackson, pulling off his cap.

“Most correct and admirable,” replied Abercromby; “nothing could be less open to hostile criticism. Now, Professor, if Nelson were here he would tell us that every man’s duty was to fly. Go ahead, and just give us a peep of Northumbria before we finally vanish.”

A moment more and Newbiggin, from the old church on the wave-worn promontory to the Eagle Rocks, lay many hundreds of feet below them.