Chapter VI

After the Astronef’s forward searchlight had flashed its farewells to the thronging, cheering crowds of Washington, her propellers began to whirl, and she swung round northward on her way to say goodbye to the Empire City.

A little before midnight her two lights flashed down over New York and Brooklyn, and were almost instantly answered by hundreds of electric beams streaming up from different parts of the Twin Cities, and from several men-of-war lying in the bay and the river.

“Goodbye for the present! Have you any messages for Mars?” flickered out from above the Astronef’s conning-tower.

What Uncle Sam’s message was, if he had one, was never deciphered, for fifty beams began dotting and dashing at once, and the result was that nothing but a blur of many mingled rays reached the conning-tower from which Lord Redgrave and his bride were taking their last look at human habitations.

“You might have known that they would all answer at once,” said Zaidie. “I suppose the newspapers, of course, want interviews with the leading Martians, and the others want to know what there is to be done in the way of trade. Anyhow, it would be a feather in Uncle Sam’s cap if he made the first Reciprocity Treaty with another world.”

“And then proceeded to corner the commerce of the Solar System,” laughed Redgrave. “Well, we’ll see what can be done. Although I think, as an Englishman, I ought to look after the Open Door.”

“So that the Germans could get in before you, eh? That’s just like you dear, good-natured English. But look,” she went on, pointing downwards, “they’re signalling again, all at once this time.”

Half a dozen beams shone out together from the principal newspaper offices of New York. Then simultaneously they began the dotting and dashing again. Redgrave took them down in pencil, and when the signalling had stopped he read off:

“No war. Dual Alliance climbs down. Don’t like idea of Astronef. Cables just received. Goodbye, and good luck! Come back soon, and safe!”

“What? We have stopped the war!” exclaimed Zaidie, clasping his arm. “Well, thank God for that. How could we begin our voyage better? You remember what we were saying the other day, Lenox. If that’s only true, my father somewhere knows now what a blessing he has given his brother men! We’ve stopped a war which might have deluged the world in blood. We’ve saved perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives, and kept sorrow from thousands of homes. Lenox, when we get back, you and the States and the British Government will have to build a fleet of these ships, and then the Anglo-Saxon race must say to the rest of the world----”

“The millennium has come and its presiding goddess is Zaidie Redgrave. If you don’t stop fighting, disband your armies and turn your fleets into liners and cargo boats, she’ll proceed to sink your ships and decimate your armies until you learn sense. Is that what you mean, dear?” laughed Redgrave, as he slipped his left hand round her waist and laid his right on the searchlight-switch to reply to the message.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lenox. Still, I suppose that is something like it. They wouldn’t deserve anything else if they were fools enough to go on fighting after they knew we could wipe them out.”

“Exactly. I perfectly agree with your Ladyship, but still sufficient unto the day is the Armageddon thereof. Now I suppose we’d better say goodbye and be off.”

“And what a goodbye,” whispered Zaidie, with an upward glance into the starlit ocean of Space which lay above and around them. “Goodbye to the world itself! Well, say it, Lenox, and let us go; I want to see what the others are like.”

“Very well then; goodbye it is,” he said, beginning to jerk the switch backwards and forwards with irregular motions, sending short flashes and longer beams down towards the earth.

The Empire City read the farewell message.

“Thank God for the peace. Goodbye for the present. We shall convey the joint compliments of John Bull and Uncle Sam to the peoples of the planets when we find them. Au revoir!“

The message was answered by the blaze of the concentrated searchlights from land and sea all directed on the Astronef. For a moment her shining shape glittered like a speck of diamond in the midst of the luminous haze far up in the sky, and then it vanished for many an anxious day from mortal sight.

A few moments later Zaidie pointed over the stern and said:

“Look, there’s the moon! Just fancy--our first stopping place! Well, it doesn’t look so very far off at present.”

Redgrave turned and saw the pale yellow crescent of the new moon swimming high above the eastern edge of the Atlantic Ocean.

“It almost looks as if we could steer straight to it right over the water--only, of course, it wouldn’t wait there for us,” she went on.

“Oh, it’ll be there when we want it, never fear,” he laughed, “and, after all, it’s only a mere matter of about two hundred and forty thousand miles away, and what’s that in a trip that will cover hundreds of millions? It will just be a sort of jumping-off place into Space for us.”

“Still, I shouldn’t like to miss seeing it,” she said. “I want to see what there is on that other side which nobody has ever seen yet, and settle that question about air and water. Won’t it just be heavenly to be able to come back and tell them all about it at home? But just fancy me talking stuff like this when we are going, perhaps, to solve some of the hidden mysteries of Creation, and, may be, look upon things that human eyes were never meant to see,” she went on, with a sudden change in her voice.

He felt a little shiver in the arm that was resting upon his, and his hand went down and caught hers.

“Well, we shall see a good many marvels, and, perhaps, miracles, before we come back, but why should there be anything in Creation that the eyes of created beings should not look upon? Anyhow, there’s one thing we shall do I hope, we shall solve once and for all the great problem of the worlds.

“Look, for instance,” he went on, turning round and pointing to the west, “there is Venus following the sun. In a few days I hope you and I will be standing on her surface, perhaps trying to talk by signs with her inhabitants, and taking photographs of her scenery. There’s Mars too, that little red one up yonder. Before we come back we shall have settled a good many problems about him, too. We shall have navigated the rings of Saturn, and perhaps graphed them from his surface. We shall have crossed the bands of Jupiter, and found out whether they are clouds or not; perhaps we shall have landed on one of his moons and taken a voyage round him.

“Still, that’s not the question just now, and if you are in a hurry to circumnavigate the moon we’d better begin to get a wriggle on us as they say down yonder; so come below and we’ll shut up. A bit later I’ll show you something that no human eyes have ever seen.”

“What’s that?” she asked as they turned away towards the companion ladder.

“I won’t spoil it by telling you,” he said, stopping at the top of the stairs and taking her by the shoulders. “By the way,” he went on, “I may remind your Ladyship that you are just now drawing the last breaths of earthly air which you will taste for some time, in fact until we get back. And you may as well take your last look at earth as earth, for the next time you see it it will be a planet.”

She turned to the open window and looked over into the enormous void beneath, for all this time the Astronef had been mounting swiftly towards the zenith.

She could see, by the growing moonlight, vast, vague shapes of land and sea. The myriad lights of New York and Brooklyn were mingled in a tiny patch of dimly luminous haze. The air about her had suddenly grown bitterly cold, and she saw that the stars and planets were shining with a brilliancy she had never seen before. Redgrave came back to her, and laying his arm across her shoulder, said:

“Well, have you said goodbye to your native world? It is a bit solemn, isn’t it, saying goodbye to a world that you have been born on; which contains everything that has made up your life, everything that is dear to you?”

“Not quite everything,” she said, looking up at him--”at least I don’t think so.”

He lost no time in making the only reply which was appropriate under the circumstances; and then he said, drawing her close to him:

“Nor I, as you know, darling. This is our world, a world travelling among worlds, and since I have been able to bring the most delightful of the daughters of Terra with me, I, at any rate, am perfectly happy. Now, I think it’s getting on to supper time, so if your Ladyship will go to your household duties, I’ll have a look at my engines and make everything snug for the voyage.”

The first thing he did when he left the conning-tower was to hermetically close every external opening in the ship. Then he went and carefully inspected the apparatus for purifying the air and supplying it with fresh oxygen from the tanks in which it was stored in liquid form. Lastly he descended into the lower hold and turned on the energy of repulsion to its fullest extent, at the same time stopping the engines which had been working the propellers.

It was now no longer necessary or even possible to steer the Astronef. She was directed solely by the repulsive force which would carry her with ever-increasing swiftness, as the attraction of the earth diminished, towards that neutral point at which the attraction of the earth is exactly balanced by the moon. Her momentum would carry her past this point, and then the “R. Force” would be gradually brought into play in order to avert the unpleasant consequences of a fall of some forty odd thousand miles.

Andrew Murgatroyd, relieved from his duties in the wheel-house, made a careful inspection of the auxiliary machinery, which was under his special charge, and then retired to his quarters in the after end of the vessel to prepare his own evening meal.

Meanwhile, her Ladyship, with the help of the ingenious contrivances with which the kitchen of the Astronef was stocked, had prepared a dainty little souper à deux. Her husband opened a bottle of the finest champagne that the cellars of Smeaton could supply, to drink to the prosperity of the voyage, and the health of his beautiful fellow-voyager. When he had filled the two tall glasses the wine began to run over the side which was toward the stern of the vessel. They took no notice of this at first, but when Zaidie put her glass down she stared at it for a moment, and said, in a half-frightened voice:

“Why, what’s the matter, Lenox? look at the wine! It won’t keep straight, and yet the table’s perfectly level--and see! the water in the jug looks as though it were going to run up the side.”

Redgrave took up the glass and held it balanced in his hand. When he had got the surface of the wine level the glass was no longer perpendicular to the table.

“Ah, I see what it is,” he said, taking another sip and putting the glass down. “You notice that, although the wine isn’t lying straight in the glass, it isn’t moving about. It’s just as still as it would be on earth. That means that our centre of gravity is not exactly in line with the centre of the earth. We haven’t quite swung into our proper position, and that reminds me, dear. You will have to be prepared for some rather curious experiences in that way. For instance, just see if that jug of water is as heavy as it ought to be.”

She took hold of the handle, and exerting, as she thought, just enough force to lift the jug a few inches, was astonished to find herself holding it out at arm’s length with scarcely any effort. She put it down again very carefully as though she were afraid it would go floating off the table, and said, looking rather scared:

“That’s very strange, but I suppose it’s all perfectly natural?”

“Perfectly; it merely means that we have left Mother Earth a good long way behind us.”