Chapter V: The Meteoric Storm

For a moment or two Carysfort and the others stood in tense silence. The Professor raised the electric pressure to the maximum, ten miles a second. He was only just in time--a minute more and no motive force could have availed against the lunar attraction.

Even as it was Carmichael did not breathe freely when the distance increased until it became evident that the increase was multiplying itself in widening proportions.

“Well, we had run ourselves into a ghastly hole,” said the engineer. “I wonder when the next will confront us?”

“Some millions of miles onwards when we have our big tussle with the sun,” replied the Professor. “My plan will be to slow down somewhat till we cut the orbit of Venus, and then try to pursue our path along it, instead of crossing it; we shall travel slower than the planet and we can let it overtake us.”

“Where is Mercury?” asked Radcliffe.

“Circling round the other side of the sun,” answered the Professor. “It will not add to our dangers, for it will not interpose its attraction to pull us sunwards for several weeks.”

As soon as the distance from the moon made any danger from that source negligible, the party sat down to their first regular meal in the dining-room. Conversation flowed freely now that the danger was passed. They spent the time in mapping out the programme of their life on the Asteroid before they should near Venus. They made an artificial chart of day and night, allotting sixteen hours to work and study, and eight hours to repose. Two were always to mount guard during the rest time; one to steer, the other to watch.

The Professor advised that the first thing to be done was for him and the engineer to give the rest of the party full instructions as to the use of the machinery and the guidance of the machine. Every one would then be available and every hand ready in a moment of crisis. When off duty each was left free to pass his time exactly as he liked, though Carmichael insisted that all should take exercise at stated intervals, and Abercromby put in practice a series of gymnastics on a small scale, and used to make Radcliffe, of all people, take a prominent part in them. Chess was a source of pleasurable interest. All the party worked together in perfect harmony and brotherliness, except for one passing incident which produced a transient unpleasantness.

Abercromby one day when seated at lunch asked the Professor if he thought they would find Venus a feminine or a masculine world.

“Nonsense!” said Carmichael, a little irritably, for his views about the fair sex were well known to the Cambridge men to be the reverse of complimentary. “There is no such thing as a feminine planet. The very idea is only mythology and legend. Of course Venus is supposed to be the planet of love, and Mars the planet of war, but that is all classical rubbish, you know.”

“Of course,” assented Carysfort; “but we shall have to keep a sharp look-out on this young man if by any luck the inhabitants of Venus were all or mostly women.”

“Luck!” exclaimed the Professor. “Good heavens! I should start back to the earth at once. But I do really think, though I know Abercromby will bark at me, that a parson I once met spoke near the truth when he said it was easier to reach the heart of a man than the heart of a woman.”

“You cannot reach any heart till you possess the key to it, and that you may, alas! sometimes mistake,” answered Radcliffe; adding hotly, “If this conversation is carried any further I shall leave the room.”

“I vote the parson, whoever he was, a donkey,” said Abercromby, “and as he is not here the remark will have a soothing effect upon our agitated nerves.”

“Let it drop, as we are not likely to agree,” replied the Professor. Radcliffe, however, quietly left the room.

“Well,” said Carysfort, “there is no accounting for some people; we shall have two to look after when we get to this incomparable planet. Abercromby will fall in love with the first female savage he meets, unless she brings his courtship to an abrupt close, and Radcliffe--well, he will probably do the last thing that we expect he _will_ do.”

This was the first and only time that the inhabitants of Venus were discussed on the romantic side; all agreeing that it would be best to postpone the question till they got there.

But a tremendous excitement, and an acute danger, was at hand, which stopped all talk on any subject for a good while. When they were about eight millions of miles from the earth--about a third part of their journey, the engineer sighted with his telescope a large comet with a small nucleus, with a fiery train of meteorites spread out in sparkling streams, fan-shaped, and radiating in various directions. The object was but small, and at first it was not easy to trace the exact course which it was taking. The Professor thought it would pass some twenty thousand miles from them, and that they would be in no way affected by it. But as the hours went on the situation grew exceedingly grave, for it became evident that the cometary train might nearly, if not actually, cross their path. Moreover, the mass of burning meteors constantly grew in apparent size, and presented a fiery barrier actually looming before them.

All the party were on the alert, and both the Professor and the engineer went to the conning-tower and took a united part in the steering.

“Are we going to be set on fire, or what is to happen?” said Abercromby in a serious tone. “We seem to be heading straight for a volcanic eruption.”

“The fire cannot reach us except by direct collision,” answered Radcliffe. “What I fear is that the meteorites will bombard us and damage the roof and sides of the Asteroid.”

A little later and the danger approached still nearer. It was a veritable meteoric storm into which they seemed rushing with blind speed. The burning meteors did not, of course, in the void of space burn steadily, but only kindled when they came into collision with each other. Then outbursts of many coloured fires lighted up the gulf of space, some burning for a few minutes, others dying out in a heap of calcined ashes which almost immediately became invisible. Fortunately, they were able to avoid the full brunt of the storm, the nucleus of the comet passing at a considerable distance ahead of them, but they had to endure several nerve-shaking concussions.

Once the Asteroid was struck in the prow and a small amount of damage done. Once a meteoric stone glanced obliquely from the roof, leaping into flames as it did so. The Asteroid was coated over with a fire-proof asbestos substance, and to this they largely owed their safety. Two masses showing up dark against the sun’s rays bore down upon them, but before they could reach them they struck one another and two dark bodies formed instantly one blazing mass; this resolved itself into a fiery mist which rotated rapidly upon its new-formed axis.

All this while the Professor and the engineer stuck to their posts with white set faces, for they well knew the awfulness of the peril. When it was over, and the heavens had resumed their wonted tranquillity, they left the conning-tower and joined the others upon the upper deck.

“We have been almost wrecked,” said Carysfort. “Every moment I thought we were going to be smashed up. I repeated two little prayers my mother taught me, keeping my hand on the machinery all the time.”

“That is just the right combination,” said Radcliffe. “Work as if all depended upon yourself; pray as if all depended upon Another.”

“You saw a world created, I suppose,” said Carmichael.

“What in the name of all that is astounding do you mean?” said Abercromby, staring at him.

“Why, my friend, when those two meteors collided and formed one fiery mass, that is how the thing is done,” answered the Professor.

Radcliffe then said: “You know these matters better than I do, gentlemen, but have we not seen a way in which science, which tells us that the sun will die and the earth be a cold corpse, may be right in the abstract but wrong in fact. Suppose a much larger mass of meteors falls into the sun, might he not renew his youth and the other planets theirs?”

“When the Arab vows perpetual fidelity to his ladylove in the Eastern song he swears to be true

Till the stars grow old,
Till the sun grows cold,
Till the leaves of the Judgment book unfold.”

The remark was Abercromby’s, who thought it more cheerful to sing it.

Radcliffe, ignoring the poetic interpolation, went on: “Is it not feasible that the world may be ended some day by a sudden accession to the sun’s heat through collision of the sun with an extinct star, or the invasion of the solar system by a fire mist, and that afterwards may come a new order of things?”

“‘Death is the gate of life,’ so the proverb runs,” put in the engineer.

“I do not dispute the possibility of these and similar theories proving true,” said Carmichael slowly. “That human affairs may be wound up by a blow from outer space is a proposition to which any thinking man will agree; but don’t be in a hurry to try to make science square with the Bible--watch, wait, gather facts, and patiently build up your conclusions about them. Solomon and the Roman Pliny, the Eastern king and the classical gentleman, had one great merit, they _observed_. Parsons and scientists are always apt to rush to conclusions, one pretty nearly as much as the other. The theories of to-day may be the laughing-stock of to-morrow, but the patient labour of to-day may be the heritage of to-morrow. I have now preached two lay sermons, Radcliffe, one to you, the other to myself.”

“Then, Professor, you must be feeling pretty well used up,” said Abercromby. “Suppose we have a cup of tea. Wellington is not in it, for he never fought a comet in mid-skies and preached twice afterwards.”

Tom, with a grin upon his honest face, put the tea-things on the table and announced with immaculate gravity, “Tea is ready, gentlemen.”