The Moon Maker

V

There was soon no doubt regarding Thornton’s prediction. Careful observation, supplemented by independent calculations, demonstrated beyond peradventure that the asteroid Medusa would certainly pass through the head of the comet, which now blazed nightly in the sky like the beam of a huge search-light. Never had such a meteor been known before, for it surpassed in brilliancy and size the famous comet of 1811. All night long the streets of every American city were filled with crowds of people watching the huge fire-ball, the diameter of which appeared to the terrestrial observer to be nearly half that of the moon itself. From the dawn of time these dragons of the sky have caused consternation in the hearts, not only of the ignorant savage but in those of the half-civilized as well, and even among the educated classes there still lingers some echo of that fear, inherited through millions of generations of men, who, from the birth of the race, have sought to read upon the scroll of the heavens the tracings of the hand of Fate. And so the boulevards of the capital swarmed with thousands of people, who gazed in silence at this monster of the sky. Unlike the Chinese, who endeavor to scare away such celestial demons by exploding firecrackers and making all the noise humanly possible, these Occidental multitudes viewed the comet in solemn if not religious awe, realizing poignantly, for the first time, that our universe is not protected from attack by wandering celestial bodies. Had a hostile Zeppelin appeared upon the horizon, a fleet of aeroplanes would have instantly arisen to meet and destroy it. But no known human agency existed which could go forth to challenge and possibly vanquish a fire-monster appearing thus malevolently out of the infinity of space. The man in the street walked with his nose pointing to the midnight zenith, and next morning complained at breakfast of having a most unaccountable "crick” in his neck; but the crowd was still save for the new

boys, who ran hither and thither shouting shrilly: "Extree! Extree! All about the comic!”

Consumptive old men, gray-bearded and withered survivors of antebellum days, wastrails of the vissitudes of fortune came

crawling out of garrets to set up small, battered brass telescopes on weather-beaten mahogany tripods. And about these collected knots of people, who eagerly paid small sums to get a nearer view of this astonishing phenomenon which portended no one knew what. In the "black-and-tan” quarters of the city, the impassioned tones of the exhorters, mingled with the groans and wailings of converts and the chant of salvation-hymns, filled the air, for there, at least, the conviction prevailed that the day of Judgment was at hand, and that the sheep were at last to be definitely separated from the goats.

Four days after the meeting of comet and asteroid, which was duly reported by observing astronomers, newsboys were again crying, "Extra!” in the streets of Washington. An evening paper had been made the recipient of the following, the result of calculation on the part of Thornton:

EARTH TO BE ANNIHILATED!

ASTEROID "MEDUSA" WILL TORPEDO OUR PLANET ON APRIL 22. CATACLYSM NOW ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN

It is announced positively by the officials of the National Observatory that the asteroid Medusa, having been arrested in its orbit by its collision with the comet, is now plunging toward the sun with an increasing hourly acceleration and will undoubtedly hit the earth in less than five months from today. Calculations have shown that the point of impact will be in Mexico on the line of latitude passing through Tampico, though it is possible that the body may fall in the Pacific if the time of arrival is a little later than that predicted, or in the gulf of Mexico, if earlier. The opinions held by the Leading scientific men of the country as to the immediate effects of the collision differ in the extreme. Some consider that, aside from earthquakes, tidal waves and considerable atmospheric disturbances, the destructive effects will be confined to an area of not more than three or four hundred miles radius. Others believe, however, that the concussion will destroy all life over the greater part of two Americas, and that the "splash" of the asteroid will bury the United States under a layer of fused rock, broken stones, dust, and mud to a depth varying from several miles in Texas to several feet in Maine and Oregon, All agree, however, in the belief that every building in the United States will be razed to the ground by the shock, and that the atmospheric disturbances will be such as to render the loss of life enormous over the entire continent.

The most extreme view is that taken by Professor Katz, of Columbia, who asserts that the impact will reduce our globe to powder. His colleague, Professor Smithers, claims that that part of the earth's surface subjected to the blow will be entirely fused and vaporized, while other scientists believe that the concurrent earthquake shock will travel completely around the earth and destroy all life upon both hemispheres. All agree that, if nothing worse occurs, the vast bulk of the asteroid will penetrate the film of the earth's surface for several hundred miles, the globe’s diurnal rotation will be affected, the shape will be changed, and its orbit around the sun will be altered. Ultimate consequences cannot be predicted bur THE END OF THE WORLD IS AT HAND!

The civilized world received the astounding news of the pending annihilation of the earth, first, with the amused silence of incredulity, and then with a gasp of horror that swept over the entire surface of the globe. The immediate reaction of the human brain to this inconceivable catastrophe was that of sublime disbelief in its possibility. The finite mind, incapable, as it is, of grasping the infinities, resolutely declined to accept any proposition outside the history of man’s experience. Since that moment when the human race in the course of evolution, had appeared

upon the face of our planet, the latter’s orbit through space had never been attacked or even affected by any other celestial body, and since the earth had spun for countless millions of years in its regular course about the center of the solar system, and summer had inevitably followed winter, and men had been born, made love, fought, and died, no one was ready at first to accept the simple scientific truth that, if a meteorite weighing perhaps only a single ton could fall flaming earthward to bury itself in some farmer’s plowed field, there was no reason, in the nature of things, why a meteorite a million times larger should not do the same thing, or why another planet several times larger than the earth should not shatter it to atoms.

Kings, emperors, presidents, sultans, and rajahs, with their courts, Cabinets, and wise men, treated the preliminary announcement of the observatories of Washington, Moscow, and Greenwich much as they had in the past treated the prophecies of clairvoyants and others that the day of Judgment was positively going to occur on certain specified dates. The newspapers carefully refrained from any editorial comment. Somebody, evidently, had made a big mistake which would presently be discovered, and then everybody would breathe easily again. But, unfortunately, the supposed mistake obstinately continued to remain undetected, and further observations merely served to corroborate those already made and to substantiate, not only the probability but the absolute certainty of what Thornton had prophesied.

Then, with a shriek of astonishment and despair the newspapers of all the nations gave themselves over to this, the greatest sensation in the history of the planet, and the combined energies of astronomers throughout the entire globe were concentrated upon determining, so far as possible, the size and weight of the falling asteroid, and the point upon the surface of the earth which would receive its momentous impact.

It was soon authoritatively announced that its diameter was not less than ninety or more than one hundred and sixty miles, and that, unless it was deflected from its course by the attraction of the moon or of some planet, if would strike the earth in the neighborhood of Galveston, Texas, with a velocity of nearly nineteen miles a second. What the precise result of this terrific concussion would be upon the earth and its movement, it was, of course, impossible for anybody to predict accurately or even imagine.

Would the earth be shattered, or would it resist the titanic blow of this monster from out of space? Would both bodies retain their integrity so that, one embedded in the other in a strange and horrible association, they would gyrate through eternity? What would the effect be upon the earth’s orbit, its climatic conditions, and its life? What might happen at the worst, the mind of man refused to conjecture. But it was admitted that, beyond peradventure, the best that could be hoped for would be that the asteroid itself might suffer annihilation - in which event, its shattered

carcass would lie smothering a thousand miles of the earth’s surface, changing the latter’s axis and sending it staggering along a new orbit under conditions which might render human life upon the globe impossible. And the blow itself! Could life continue after such a shock, which would be greater by ten thousand times than that of the most violent earthquake known in the history of man?

And in the midst of all this rumpus, Professor Benjamin Hooker suddenly stated that he purposed going out in the Flying Ring to meet the asteroid in its fall through space, attack it with the famous lavender ray that had disrupted the Atlas mountains, and either deflect it from its course so that it should not strike the earth at all or blow Medusa into smithereens! Yet his announcement that he intended to sally forth and slay the celestial monster - like a little scientific David - did not tend to assuage the universal terror in the slightest.

PART II

THE FLYING RING

I

Bentham T. Tassifer had had a very hard day indeed. He had discovered, to his disgust, that fear is a great leveler, and that the professional dignity of a deputy assistant solicitor at the Department of Justice counted for very little when the world was on the point of extinction. Like forty or fifty million other citizens of the United States, he had attempted to participate in the scramble to "get onto the lee side of the earth,” but his efforts had been totally unavailing.

There wasn’t a chance even for him - Bentham T. Tassifer -to get further from Washington than he could be taken in a taxi. To New York, perhaps’ But New York had gone mad. Its harbor was blocked with liners, cruisers, tugs, and ferry-boats away out beyond Sandy Hook, so that there was no means of departure for those already loaded with their terrified human freight. Tassifer had expostulated, insisted, ordered, roared that it was imperative that he, if anybody, should at once secure passage for Europe. But berths on the liners sailing from Newfoundland were selling for twenty-five thousand dollars each. And he hadn’t the money. He had thought of asking for a war-ship to take him away - like a recalled foreign ambassador - but he had been informed that they were all otherwise engaged. His feelings were deeply hurt. Also, he was - although he did not admit it - agonized with fear. He was only fifty-three. And he didn’t want to die young.

He found his wife already at the supper-table and rather snippy; so he resolved to put on a brave front and laugh the matter off.

"Well,” she inquired severely, as he removed his napkin from

its ring decorated with an enameled design of the Clan McIntosh plaid, "did you get anything?"

Delicately detaching a fish-ball from its comrades, he made as if he didn’t fully understand.

"Get - anything?’’ he repeated vaguely. "Oh, you mean passage? No - that is, I didn’t take your suggestion seriously. Did you really mean that you wanted to run away?”

Mrs. Tassifer fixed him with a pair of fiery, if watery, gray eyes, and her lips drew down into a thin line.

"Bentham,” she almost hissed, "don't trifle with me! You know you are just as anxious to get away from this God-forsaken country as I am - as everybody is! Do you suppose I am going to wait here calmly for a planet to fall on my head?”

Mr. Tassifer was frightened, but he preserved his outward placidity and sampled a piece of fish-ball.

"I don’t believe a word of it,” he answered, avoiding her glance. "Who ever heard of such a thing? Asteroid—rot!”

Nobody else thinks it’s rot, as you call it!” she snapped. Rhoda certainly knows about such things, and she says it’s absolutely sure."

"Rhoda!” snorted Bentham. His wife's niece was a constant thorn in the side of his pride. He resented her cleverness, conscious that, if women got the vote, he could never manage to keep his job - some college girl would get it probably.

Well, she's a real professor, isn't she?” demanded Mrs. Tassifer, who admired her brother's daughter in spite of her intellectual superiority.

"S'pose so,” mumbled Bentham, removing a small bone from his mouth.

"Rhoda says,” continued his wife, "that Professor Hooker is going to start out in his flying machine and drive that asteroid off, so it won't hit the earth at all!”

"Ha—ha—ha!” laughed Mr. Tassifer, but without mirth.

"Ha-ha-ha!” she mocked him. "You are very irritating at times, Bentham!"

When she spoke that way, he took warning; that quiet evenness was not to be misinterpreted.

That crazy lunatic that landed on our golf-course? Bosh!” They say he is a very wonderful man,” she commented.

Bentham turned round and faced her, for he was now on safer ground.

"Look here,” he said impressively: "Take it from me, there’s nothing in it - even if Rhoda says so! I saw Seabury at the Cosmos Club last night, and he said none of the big fellows took any stock in this Hooker at all. Stands to reason, it's just — buncombe! Flying Ring! Oh, ray!”

"You know Rhoda is awful thick with that fellow just the same,” suggested his wife, a little nervously. "I wouldn't be a bit surprised if she tried to get him to take her along.”

"What!” exploded Bentham, scattering molecules of fish-ball

over the table-cloth in front of him. "Rhoda go with him? Who ever heard of such a thing! An unmarried woman! What would everybody say?”

"She hasn’t admitted it in so many words," his wife answered, "but I can tell by the way she acts. She thinks he’s the most extraordinary man that ever lived. Talks about the ’wonderful opportunity’ of flying about in space - and all that!”

"Flying fiddlesticks!” he retorted. "If she goes off with that fellow, I’ll never have her in the house again - never!’’

"Maybe there won’t be any house,” commented Mrs. Tassifer grimly.

"Don’t say that!” he expostulated. "Don’t!”

"I knew you were afraid,” she thrust at him.

"I’m not,” he answered defiantly. "I don’t believe a word of it. As for getting passage for Europe, it’s impossible - I asked at the War Department this morning. I couldn’t even get standing-room on one of those open scow-tows the cruisers are taking over. The millionaires have bought up every berth on the liners and tugs. Twenty-five thousand dollars apiece they’re asking! What chance has a poor man got, anyway, in this world?” Tears stood in his eyes.

"All the same,” she answered, "I’m not going to give up hope. And, what’s more, I believe Professor Hooker will be able to do something. I’d like to see the inside of that Ring, too. Rhoda says she can arrange it. Will you go with me?” "Y-e-e-s,” admitted Mr. Tassifer.

II

While it was quite true that the "big fellows” at the Cosmos Club and elsewhere took little stock in Hooker, and the public at large were openly incredulous, it was nevertheless the fact that the announcement of his proposed attempt to destroy the asteroid created an extraordinary amount of interest. For professor Hooker’s plan had at last received the approval and cooperation of the government, and he was now almost ready to undertake his flight. His crew was to consist of Atterbury and Burke, who had been in daily consultation with him for weeks, and little remained to be done except to verify some of their more important calculations and install a new dynamo and their uranium turbine.

Among the privileged few to whom he had offered to exhibit his sidereal war-ship were Mr. and Mrs. Tassifer and, of course, Rhoda.

It was a beautiful spring afternoon about two weeks after the conversation just recounted between the solicitor and his lady, and their chauffeur found great difficulty in threading his way among the crowds of people who had come out, as usual, to struggle for a glimpse of the famous machine that was going to essay a trip through space, not merely for the banal purposes of scientific discovery but actually to attack and alter the course of a

celestial body. Finally having gained the gate without committing manslaughter, they found themselves on a flat parade-ground, in the center of which rested a gigantic, shining, circular tube, seventy-five feet in diameter and fifteen feet thick, built of aluminum places, and surmounted by the superstructure which had been visible from outside, and which, as Bennie told them, bore the tractor that lifted the car.

"It’s the thing at the top shaped like an inverted thimble,” he explained. "There’s a big cylinder of metallic uranium inside, and we play our disintegrating rays on the under surface of this cylinder from those oblique tubes below. When the rays hit the uranium in the cylinder, the atoms explode, and the decomposition products are shot off downward at almost the velocity of light. A back pressure is thus produced which lifts the Ring exactly like a rocket.”

"How long does one of your cylinders last?” inquired Rhoda.

"Atterbury - Pax’s engineer, who came back with us - says that a cylinder is good for about a ten-hour run.”

"But you can’t get very far out into space in ten hours, can you?” she queried. "What will you do when the cylinder is exhausted?”

"I’ve figured out that we can get up a velocity of over fifteen miles a second with a one-hour run of the tractor,” he answered. "If we then shut off the power, our momentum alone will carry us over fifty thousand miles during the next hour. So, you see, we can coast most of the way.”

One of the khaki-uniformed guards now detached and lowered a steel ladder and then climbed up and opened a round door in a sort of vestibule on the side of the Ring.

"Now, Mrs. Tassifer,” remarked Bennie, "that is the air-lock. It has double doors. When the car is in a vacuum, or beyond the earth’s atmosphere, the contained air would all rush out into space if there were any direct communication with the outside. You enter the air-lock from the inside, close and bolt the inner door behind you, open the other door and step out, just as the divers leave and enter a submarine on the bottom of the ocean.”

Bennie ran up the rungs, gave Mrs. Tassifer a hand, and then both of them assisted Rhoda, who gingerly ascended to the vestibule. Thence they passed into the large, well lighted chart-room of the Ring, which, except for the glass observation-windows in the floor, looked exactly like a comfortable cabin on board a yacht. This resemblance was heightened by the fact that

in the center of the room a number of easy chairs were drawn up around a table, where a teakettle was purring in homelike fashion. Burke, the aviator who had rescued Hooker from the wilds of Ungava, a jolly-looking man of about thirty-five, now made his appearance from the remote interior and was presented to the guests.

"But how could one breathe on the moon?” continued Rhoda, after the introduction, following up an idea suggested by the

presence of the air lock.

"Until we found the Ring, I didn’t suppose one could," answered the air-man. "But Pax has worked that all out for us beforehand. In that next room, over there, we found three suits of heavy rubber with helmets and oxygen-tanks, or, rather, small, double-walled cylinders designed to carry liquid air. The slow evaporation of this supplies fresh air to the interior of the rubber suits, the excess escaping through a valve."

The two ladies having expressed some interest in these new "outing suits," Burke obligingly put one of them on and walked up and down the chart-room for their edification. It was a simple-enough device, weighing but little, and resembled a modified suit of diving-armor, although much less cumbersome.

Then Mrs. Tassifer busied herself at the tea-table, and Rhoda strolled over and looked through one of the circular deadlights in the outer wall of the Ring. What she saw was a skeleton framework of steel rods, reaching out like the arm of a derrick and carrying at its extremity a cylinder composed of a yellowish white metal, the open end of which was closed by a plate of some transparent substance. This cylinder, from which the disintegrating ray was discharged, pointed downward, and was held in such a manner that it could be swung or aimed in any direction by means of an electric motor operated from inside the chart-room.

Rhoda eagerly examined all the appliances as Bennie described them in turn, and then followed her host into the adjacent control-room of the Ring, which contained a tangle of complicated machinery and where hung the famous twin gyroscopes, the axes of their thirty-inch disks at right angles.

"These give us our automatic stability," explained the master of the Ring. "They control the slant of the tractor. You see, we rise just like a rocket, vertically at first, the blast shooting straight down through the center of the machine, but when we wish to fly in a horizontal direction at a fixed height, we tilt the tractor, and the blast drives off in an oblique direction. The vertical component of the recoil keeps us up, and the horizontal drives us forward. The gyroscopes act on the rods controlling the slant of the tractor and keep this balance automatically. You see, if we didn’t have some device of this sort, our equilibrium would be destroyed every time anybody moved about in the Ring. But we have no idea how the machine is going to behave when we get out into space away from the earth’s attraction. She may act like a kite without a tail."

He smiled confidently at his companion, however, as if he had no fears upon that score.

Bentham Tassifer was tremendously impressed by what he saw, for, like most lawyers, he had no knowledge of mechanics or physics, and the sight of a perfectly contrived machine, the equanimity of which could not possibly be upset by either cross-examination or any sort of bullyragging, filled him with vast respect. He had been especially taken with the gyroscopes and their automatic adjustment - was, in fact, almost converted to the idea that the Ring might actually get somewhere. And now, as he looked around the cozy chart-room, with its crimson-cushioned armchairs and its walls hung with maps of the world on Mercator’s projection, on which dotted red lines in great curved loops showed the previous flights of the Ring, he began to feel as if he were an honored guest at the admiral’s table on a flag-ship, rather pleased than otherwise with the whole thing and his own vicarious part in it, through being the uncle of the research professor.

He felt very drowsy after the mental exertion of following Bennie’s explanations, and the air was indubitably a trifle close in there. Mrs. Tassifer also was having hard work to keep awake. Rhoda, beckoning to Professor Hooker, tiptoed into the control-room.

"Those two old dears will be sound asleep in three minutes," she whispered. "I want to talk to you. Where is the kitchen— galley, or whatever you call it?’’

Bennie led her through the condenser-room into a white-tiled apartment furnished with both gas and electric stoves. There were chairs there and a table, and Rhoda took possession of one and pointed to the other.

"Yes," she repeated; "I want to talk to you - seriously."

The ordinarily unobservant Bennie noticed that she was dressed in the same trim tan suit she had worn when he first met her, and that her cheeks were quite pink. She looked very nice there, in that white-tiled room - very nice indeed! This was the second time he had been struck by that salient fact. If all girls were like her! But most of them were, unfortunately, more like Miss Beebe. He sat down opposite her and lit his pipe. Somehow, he never felt the slightest awkwardness when in her company - always at his best! She had a brain like - well, even better than Seabury’s, for instance, and a figure— His eye followed the line of the tailor-made suit, and his heart pumped noticeably. Too much tobacco, he thought.

"Look here," she said, with determination: "Don’t start this fool adventure. There is still the possibility that the moon may turn the asteroid aside." He looked at her, astounded. "Oh, I mean it!" she insisted, wrinkling her brows. "This machine is all very well - in theory. It will go. But we ail know that it won’t come back!"

"Of course it will come back," he retorted, "unless it busts!"

"It’s a thou sand-to-one-shot!"

"Supposing it is - isn’t it up to me to go?" he replied simply. "It’s the only chance to save the earth from destruction. I’d be the worst sort of a coward if I didn't. You wouldn’t want me to show the white feather - now!"

He stopped short at the look in her eyes - such a queer look. Her cheeks had become quite pale.

"No,” she answered, in a low voice, but still with a question in it. "Then you are resolved to go?”

"Absolutely!” He gripped his pipe-stem hard between his teeth.

She looked down, and the red came back into her face, stealing gradually from the collar of her almost military jacket to her eyes.

"Then take me, too!” she said.

"You! I will not!” he answered brusquely.

"Please! Don’t you think you almost owe it to me? It was my idea—and I worked out your equations for you. I ought to have some of the fun.”

"Don’t be foolish,” he urged, although he hated to deny her anything. "You’ve got your life to live. You’re young and clever and—and pretty”—his own features had become unaccountably warm—"and—and—what’s the sense of it? Of course, it’s a very uncertain project—this space-navigation. I wouldn’t let you risk your life in this blooming car for—for anything! No—by thunder!” My life is my own—isn’t it?—if I want to sacrifice it to science, as you purpose doing with yours?”

"One of—us—is enough,” he announced with conviction. Somehow, the word "us” sounded curiously personal. She raised her eyes to his, and there were tears in them. The flush had spread over her whole face and to the very roots of her dark-yellow hair. He had never seen her so before. She had always been so capable, so crisp, so cool—and now she was so—young, and pathetic almost. He had a strange inclination to reach over and put his arm along the back of her chair. And then she gave him a funny, teary little smile.

"That’s—just—it. One of us—isn’t enough—for me!"

Something blurted Professor Hooker’s sight. There was a roaring in his ears like that of a thousand pine trees in a gale.

"How do you mean?” he heard himself asking, in a weirdly conventional tone, although he knew what she meant all the time, and the knowledge seemed to be swelling him up like a balloon, lndeed, he felt as if he was just coming out of a dose of laughing-gas—inflated and very much excited and irresponsible.

The next instant, he was kneeling on the tiles in front of her; those tailor-made arms were around his neck, and his face was pressed up against the tan jacket, and her hair was tickling his ears.

"You funny little man!” she was saying, in a trembly voice. "You funny, silly little man! I won’t let you go without me.” And Bennie answered—he could feel her heart beating through the tan military jacket:

"Silly little thing yourself! Do you think I’d let you take a chance like that now—dear?”

"You must!”

"I won’t!”

He raised his head and drew down her face to his.

"I simply—simply—w-won’t!”

"Rhoda! Where are you?”

Mrs. Tassifer’s acrid voice echoed through the Ring from the control-room. Bennie scrambled to his feet and hastily lit his

pipe.

"Yes, auntie!” she called back sweetly, with a whimsical glance at Bennie. "I'm in here looking at the electric stove—such a funny little thing!”