The Man Who Rocked the Earth Part 15

[Footnote 5: He even climbed with Atterbury to the very summit of the tractor, where he discovered that his original guess had been correct and that the car rose from the earth rocket fashion, due to the back pressure of the radiant discharge from a ma.s.sive cylinder of uranium contained in the tractor. Against this block played a disintegrating ray from a small thermic inductor, the inner construction of which he was not able to determine, although it was obviously different from his own, and the coils were wound in a curious manner which he did not understand. There might be something in Hiros.h.i.to's theory after all.

The cylinder of the tractor pointed directly downward so that the blast was discharged through the very centre of the Ring, but it could be swung through a small angle in any direction, and by means of this slight deflection the horizontal motion of the machine secured. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the mechanism was that the Ring appeared to have automatic stability, for the angle of the direction in which the tractor was pointed was controlled not only by a pair of gyroscopes which kept the Ring on an even keel, but also by a manometric valve causing it to fly at a fixed height above the earth's surface. Should it start to rise, the diminished pressure of the atmosphere operating on the valve swung the tractor more to one side, and the horizontal acceleration was thus increased at the expense of the vertical.]

But the more he learned about the mechanism of the Ring the greater became his misgivings about undertaking the return journey alone with Atterbury through the air. If they were to go, the start must be made within a few days, for the condenser held its charge but a comparatively short time, and its energy was necessary for starting the Ring. When freshly charged it supplied current for the thermic inductor for nearly three minutes, but the metallic films, deposited on the plates, dissolved slowly in the fluid, and after three or four days there remained only enough for a thirty-second run, hardly enough to lift the Ring from the earth. Once in the air, the downward blast from the tractor operated a turbine alternator mounted on a skeleton framework at the centre of the Ring, and the current supplied by this machine enabled the Ring to continue its flight indefinitely, or until the cylinder of uranium was completely disintegrated.

Yet to trek back over the route by which he had come appeared to be equally impossible. There was little likelihood that the two Indians would return; they were probably already thirty miles on their way back to the coast. If only he could get word to Thornton or some of those chaps at Washington they might send a relief expedition! But a ship would be weeks in getting to the coast, and how could he live in the meantime? There were provisions for only a few days in the Ring, and the storehouse in the valley had been wiped out of existence. Only an aeroplane could do the trick. And then he thought of Burke, his cla.s.smate--Burke who had devoted his life to heavier-than-air machines, and who, since his memorable flight across the Atlantic in the _Stormy Petrol_, had been a national hero. Burke could reach him in ten hours, but how could _he_ reach Burke? In the heart of the frozen wilderness of Labrador he might as well be on another planet, as far as communication with the civilized world was concerned.

A burst of sunlight shot through the window and formed an oval patch on the floor at his feet. The weather was clearing. He went out upon the platform. Patches of blue sky appeared overhead. As he gazed disconsolately across the valley toward the tower, his eye caught the glisten of something high in the air. From the top of the wreckage five thin shining lines ran parallel across the sky and disappeared in a small cloud which hung low over the face of the cliff.

"The antennae!" exclaimed Bennie. "A wireless to Burke." Burke would come; he knew Burke. A thousand miles overland was nothing to him.

Hadn't he wagered five thousand dollars at the club that he would fly to the pole and bring back Peary's flag--with no takers? Why, Burke would take him home with as little trouble as a taxicab. And then, aghast, he remembered the complete destruction in the valley. The wireless plant had gone with the rest. He ran back into the chart room and called Atterbury.

"Can we get off a message to Washington?" he demanded. "The wires are still up, and we have the condenser."

"We might, sir, if it's not--a long one, though you've always said there was danger in running the engine with the car bolted down. We did it the time the big machine burnt out a coil. I can throw--a wire--over the antennae with a rocket--and join up--with the turbine machine. It will increase--our wave length, but they ought to pick us up."

"We'll try it, anyway," announced Bennie.

He inspected the chart and measured the distance in an airline from Boston to the point where the red lines converged. It was a trifle less than the distance between Boston and Chicago. Burke had done that in nine hours on the trial trip of his trans-Atlantic monoplane. If the machine was in order and Burke started in the morning he would be with them by sunset, if he didn't get lost. But Bennie knew that Burke could drive his machine by dead reckoning and strike within a few leagues of a target a thousand miles away.

A m.u.f.fled roar outside interrupted his musings, and running out on the platform again he found Atterbury attaching the cord of the aluminum ribbon, which the rocket had carried up and over the antennae, to one of the brush bars of the alternator.

"Nearly ready, sir," he said. "We'd best--lock the storm bolts--to hold her down--in case we have--to crowd on the power. We've got to use--pretty near the full lift--to get the alternator up--to the proper speed."

A chill ran down Bennie's spine. They were going to start the engine! In a moment he would be within twenty feet of a blast of disintegration products capable of lifting the whole machine into the air, and it was to be started at his command, after he had worked and pottered for two years with a thermic inductor the size of a thimble! He felt as he used to feel before taking a high dive, or as he imagined a soldier feels when about to go under fire for the first time. How would it turn out?

Was he taking too much responsibility, and was Atterbury counting on him for the management of details? He felt singularly helpless as he reentered the chart room to compose his message.

He turned on the electric lamp which hung over the desk, for in the fast-gathering dusk the interior of the Ring was in almost total darkness. How should his message read? It must be brief: it must tell the story, and, above all, it must be compelling.

He was joined by the electrician.

"I think--we are all--ready now," stammered the latter. "What will you send, sir?"

Bennie handed him a sc.r.a.p of yellow paper, and Atterbury put on a pair of dark amber gla.s.ses, to protect his eyes from the light of the spark.

"_Thornton, Naval Observatory, Washington:_

"Stranded fifty-four thirty-eight north, seventy-four eighteen west. Have the Ring machine. Ask Burke come immediately. Life and death matter.

"B. HOOKER."

Atterbury read the message and then gazed blankly at Hooker.

"I--don't--understand," he said.

"Never mind, send it. I'll explain later." Together they went into the condenser room.

Atterbury mechanically pushed the bra.s.s b.a.l.l.s in contact, shoved a bundle of iron wires halfway through the core of a great coil, and closed a switch. A humming sound filled the air, and a few seconds later a glow of yellow light came in through the window. A cone of luminous vapour was shooting downward through the centre of the Ring from the tractor. At first it was soft and nebulous, but it increased rapidly in brilliancy, and a dull roar, like that of a waterfall, added itself to the hum of the alternating current in the wires. And now a third sound came to his ears, the note of the turbine, low at first, but gradually rising like the scream of a siren, and the floor of the Ring beneath his feet throbbed with the vibration.

Bennie forgot the dynamometer, forgot his message to Burke, was conscious only that he had wakened a sleeping volcano. Then came the crack of the sparks, and the room seemed filled with the glare of the blue lightning, for Atterbury, with his telephones at his ears, staring through his yellow gla.s.ses, was sending out the call for the Naval Observatory.

"NAA--NAA--P--A--X."

Over and over again he sent the call, while in the meantime the condenser built up its charge from the overflow of current from the turbine generator. Then the electrician opened a switch, and the roar outside diminished and finally ceased.

"We can't listen--with the tractor running," he fretted. "The static--from the discharge--would tear--our detector--to pieces." He threw in the receiving instrument. For a few moments the telephones spoke only the whisperings of the arctic aurora, and then suddenly the faint cry of the answering spark was heard. Bennie watched the words as the electrician's pencil scrawled along on the paper.

"Waiting for you. Why don't you send? N.A.A."

"They must have--called us before--while the discharge--was running down," muttered Atterbury. "I think we can send--with the condenser--now."

He picked up the sc.r.a.p of yellow paper, read it over, and threw out into s.p.a.ce the message which he did not understand.

"O. K. Wait. Thornton," came in reply.

Two hours later came a second message:

"P--A--X. Burke starts at daybreak. Expects reach you by nine P. M.

Asks you to show large beacon fire if possible.

"THORNTON, N. A. A."

"Hurrah!" cried Bennie. "Good for Burke! Atterbury, we're saved--saved, do you hear! Go to bed now and don't ask any questions. And say, before you go see if you can find me a gla.s.s of brandy."

It was decided that Burke must land on the plateau above the cliff, and here the material for the fire was collected. There was little enough of it and it was hard work carrying the oil up the steep trail. At times Bennie was almost in despair.

"It won't burn half an hour," said he, surveying the pile. "And we ought to be able to keep it going all night. There's plenty of stuff in the valley, but we can't have him come down there, with the tower, the antennae, and all the rest of the mess."

"We might--show him--the big Ray," ventured Atterbury. "The thing--can be pointed up--and I can--keep the turbine running. You can start--the fire--as soon as you--hear his motors--and I'll shut down--as soon as I see your fire."

"Good idea!" agreed Bennie. "Only don't run continuously. Show the Ray for a minute every quarter of an hour, and on no account start up after you see the fire. If he thought the vertical beam was a searchlight and flew through it----" Bennie shuddered at the thought of Burke driving his aeroplane through the Ray that had shattered the Atlas Mountains.

So it was arranged. Half an hour after sunset Atterbury shut himself up in the Ring, and while Bennie climbed the trail leading to his post on the plateau, he heard the creaking of the great inductor as it slowly turned on its trunions.

It was pitch dark by the time he reached the pitifully small pile of brush which they had collected, and he poured some of the oil over it and sat down, drawing a blanket around his shoulders. He felt very much alone. Suppose the inductor failed to work? Suppose Atterbury turned the Ray on him? Suppose.... But his musings were shattered by a noise from the valley, a sound like that of escaping steam, and a moment later the Lavender Ray shot up toward the zenith. Bennie lay on his back and watched it, mindful of the night before the last when he had watched the Ray from the tower descending upon the cliff. He wondered if he should see any meteorites kindle in its path, but nothing appeared and the Ray died down, leaving everything in darkness again. Fifteen minutes pa.s.sed and again the ghostly beam shot up into the night sky. Bennie looked at his watch. It was nearly half-past eight. The cold made him sleepy. He drew the blanket about him....

Two hours later through his half-dreams he caught the faint sound for which he had been listening. At first he was not sure. It might be the turbine alternator of the Ring running by its own inertia for some time after the discharge had ceased. But no, it was growing louder momentarily, and appeared to come from high up in the air. Now it died away to nothingness, and now it swelled in volume, and again died away.

But at each subsequent recurrence it was louder than before. There was no longer any doubt. Burke was coming! It was time to start the brush pile. He lit match after match, only for the wind to blow them out. Yet all the time the machine in the air was coming nearer, the roar of its twin engines beating on the stillness of the Labrador night. In despair Bennie threw himself flat on his face by the brush pile and made a tent of the blanket, under which he at last succeeded in starting a blaze among the oil-soaked twigs. Then he pushed the half-empty keg into the fire, arose and stared up at the sky.

The machine was somewhere directly above him--just where he could not say. Presently the motors stopped. He shouted feebly, running up and down with his eyes turned skyward, and several times nearly fell into the fire. He wondered why it didn't appear. It seemed hours since the motors stopped! Then unexpectedly against the black background of the sky the great wings of the machine appeared, illuminated on their underside by the light of the fire. Silently it swung around on its descending spiral, instantly to be swallowed up in the darkness again, a moment later reappearing from the opposite direction, this time low down and headed straight for him. He jumped hastily to one side and fell flat. The machine grounded, rose once or twice as it ran along the ground, and came to a stop twenty yards from the fire. A man climbed out, slowly removed his goggles, and shook himself. Bennie scrambled to his feet and ran forward waving his hat.

"Well, Hooker!" remarked the man. "What th' h.e.l.l are you doing _here_?

You sure have some searchlight!"

How Hooker and Burke, under the guidance of Atterbury, who gradually regained his normal mental status, explored and charted the valley of the Ring is strictly no part of this tale which deals solely with the end of War upon the Earth. But next day, after several hours of excavation among the debris of the smelter, where Pax had extracted his uranium from the pitch blend mined at the cliff, they uncovered eight cylinders of the precious metal weighing about one hundred pounds apiece--the fuel of the Flying Ring. Now they were safe. Nay, more: universal s.p.a.ce was theirs to traffic in.