Chapter X: The Twilight of Space

“Shall I come up into your compartment for the operation?” I asked.

“No; for this first time we will pump out my compartment, as I wish to observe from the rear port-hole the action of the air which we set free.”

The bulkhead, with its bevelled edge, was therefore fitted into the opening between the compartments, and I took the first turn at the lever handle of the air-pump, while the doctor observed from the window. I had given the handle less than a dozen vigorous strokes when the doctor suddenly exclaimed, --

“Stop! Wait a moment;” and he began pulling at the bulkhead, which was already rather tightly wedged in by the air pressure. “I have left the rabbit inside,” he said, when he found breath to speak. And poor little bunny’s heart was beginning to beat fast when he was rescued.

Then we began again. The doctor watched the escaping air for some time, evidently forgetting that I was at all interested in it.

“All quite as I expected,” he said at last. “Only I had forgotten about the snow.”

“Nothing will ever be very new or interesting to you,” I put in; “but pray remember I am here, and rapidly getting empty of breath and full of curiosity.”

Then he relieved me at the pump handle, and this is what I saw from the port-hole: The air escaping from the discharge pipe of the air-pump was visible, and looked like dull, grey steam. Immediately on being set free it swelled and expanded greatly, and sank away from us slowly. But at the instant of its expansion the cold thus produced froze the moisture of the air into a fine fleecy snow, which lasted but a second as it sank away from us and melted in the heat, which the thermometer showed to be close upon ninety-five degrees. This miniature snowstorm was seen for an instant only after each down motion of the pump handle.

“Where is this air going?” I inquired. “The little clouds of it seem to drop away from us like lead; but that must be because of our speed.”

“It is falling back to the Earth, to join the outer layer of rare atmosphere there. If we had a positive current instead of a negative one, the air would not leave us, but we should gradually be surrounded by an atmosphere of our own, which we should retain until some planet, whose gravitational attraction is vastly stronger than ours, stole it from us. When we begin to fall into Mars, we shall acquire such an enveloping atmosphere; and we can draw upon it and re-compress it if our inner supply should become exhausted.”

“If this air is falling home to earth,” said I, “we could send messages back in that manner.”

“We can drop them back at any time, regardless of the air,” he answered, and then added suddenly, “but it will make a beautiful experiment to drop out a bottle now.”

He ceased pumping, and opening a bottle of asparagus tips, he placed them in a bowl, and prepared to drop out the bottle. I took my pencil and wrote this message to go inside, --”Behold, I have decreed a judgment upon the Earth; for it shall rain pickle bottles and biscuit tins for the period of forty days, because of the wickedness of the world, unless she repent!” And I pictured to myself the perplexity of the poor devil who should see this message come straight down from heaven!

In order to make his experiment more successful, the doctor put in half a dozen bullets from one of the rifles, to make the weight more perceptible. Then he put the bottle into the discharging cylinder, and preparing to push it out he stooped over the port-hole. At a signal from him I gave the pump handle several quick, successive motions, and at the same instant he let drop the bottle. At once he cried out, --

“Beautiful! and just as I thought.”

“But I didn’t see it!” I protested. “What was it?”

“The instant the bottle was released the discharged air was immediately attracted toward it, and gradually surrounded it entirely. It was like a little planet with an atmosphere of its own, as they fell back to the Earth together.”

“But I couldn’t see it; I had to pump,” I complained. “We must do it again.”

“We shall soon have our bottled things all emptied out on plates to dry up and spoil,” he objected. So I emptied a biscuit tin this time, and delaying for no message, I put it in the discharging cylinder. Then I bent over the port-hole and gave the signal for the pumping. As I thrust out the tin I was astonished to see the lid pop off the first thing. The quick expansion of the air inside it did that. This air, as well as the air from the discharge pipe, seemed to flee from it instead of surrounding it, as the doctor had said. I continued watching so long that he finally said, --

“Hasn’t it fallen out of sight yet?”

“No; it is not falling away swiftly as the air does. It is following the projectile! It is not gathering any air about it as you said it would. It does not quite keep up with us; but considering our speed, it is doing remarkably well!”

The doctor was not inclined to believe me until he had looked for himself. He watched and pondered for a minute or two. Then his surprise ceased, and he spoke in that assured way which always irritated me.

“Quite natural, after all,” he said. “That biscuit can is made of thin sheet-iron with a surface coating of tin. The iron has become magnetized by induction, and the Earth repels the can just as it repels us. It will follow us to the dead-line, and probably on to Mars, unless the sheet-iron loses its polarization. If we had cast out a thing of solid iron, it would rush ahead of us, instead of falling a little behind, as this does, for it would have no dead weight to carry. But we could not put such a thing out of the rear end, for no force would make it fall that way. If we put it out of the forward port-hole, it would beat us in the race toward Mars.”