Books: The Moon Metal
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Garrett P. Serviss >> The Moon Metal
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"Did you get the angles?" yelled Hall, excitedly.
"Yes; the telescope is yet pointed on the spot where the kite
disappeared."
"Read them off," he called, "and then get your angle with the Syx
works."
"All right," I replied, doing as he had requested, and noticing at the
same time that he was in the act of putting his watch in his
pocket. "Is there anything else?" I asked.
"No, that will do, thank you."
Hall came running over, his face beaming, and with the air of a man
who has just hooked a particularly cunning old trout.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, "this has been a great success! I could almost
dispense with the calculation, but it is best to be sure."
"What are you about, anyhow?" I asked, "and what was it that happened
to the kite?"
"Don't interrupt me just now, please," was the only reply I received.
Thereupon my friend sat down on a rock, pulled out a pad of paper,
noted the angles which I had read on the transit, and fell to figuring
with feverish haste. In the course of his work he consulted a pocket
almanac, then glanced up at the sky, muttered approvingly, and finally
leaped to his feet with a half-suppressed "Hurrah!" If I had not known
him so well I should have thought that he had gone daft.
"Will you kindly tell me," I asked, "how you managed to set the kite
afire?"
Hall laughed heartily. "You though it was a trick, did you?" said
he. "Well, it was no trick, but a very beautiful demonstration. You
surely haven't forgotten the scarlet tanager that gave you such a
surprise the day before yesterday."
"Do you mean" I exclaimed, startled at the suggestion, "that the fate
of the bird had any connection with the accident to your kite?"
"Accident isn't precisely the right word," replied Hall. "The two
things are as intimately related as own brothers. If you should care
to hunt up the kite sticks, you would find that they, too, are now
artemisium plated."
"This is getting too deep for me," was all that I could say.
"I am not absolutely confident that I have touched bottom myself,"
said Hall, "but I'm going to make another dive, and if I don't bring
up treasures greater than Vanderdecken found at the bottom of the sea,
then Dr. Syx is even a more wonderful human mystery than I have
thought him to be."
"What do you propose to do next?"
"To shake the dust of the Grand Teton from my shoes and go to San
Francisco, where I have an extensive laboratory."
"So you are going to try a little alchemy yourself, are you?"
"Perhaps; who knows? At any rate, my good friend, I am forever
indebted to you for your assistance, and even more for your
discretion, and if I succeed you shall be the first person in the
world to hear the news."
XII
BETTER THAN ALCHEMY
I come now to a part of my narrative which would have been deemed
altogether incredible in those closing years of the nineteenth century
that witnessed the first steps towards the solution of the deepest
mysteries of the ether, although men even then held in their hands,
without knowing it, powers which, after they had been mastered and
before use had made them familiar, seemed no less than godlike.
For six months after Hall's departure for San Francisco I heard
nothing from him. Notwithstanding my intense desire to know what he
was doing, I did not seek to disturb him in his retirement. In the
meantime things ran on as usual in the world, only a ripple being
caused by renewed discoveries of small nuggets of artemisium on the
Tetons, a fact which recalled to my mind the remark of my friend when
he dislodged a flake of the metal from a crevice during our ascent of
the peak. At last one day I received this telegram at my office in New
York:
"SAN FRANCISCO, May 16, 1940.
"Come at once. The mystery is solved.
"(Signed) HALL."
As soon as I could pack a grip I was flying westward one hundred miles
an hour. On reaching San Francisco, which had made enormous strides
since the opening of the twentieth century, owing to the extension of
our Oriental possessions, and which already ranked with New York and
Chicago among the financial capitals of the world, I hastened to
Hall's laboratory. He was there expecting me, and, after a hearty
greeting, during which his elation over his success was manifest, he
said:
"I am compelled to ask you to make a little journey. I found it
impossible to secure the necessary privacy here, and, before opening
my experiments, I selected a site for a new laboratory in an
unfrequented spot among the mountains this side of Lake Tahoe. You
will be the first man, with the exception of my two devoted
assistants, to see my apparatus, and you shall share the sensation of
the critical experiment."
"Then you have not yet completed your solution of the secret?"
"Yes, I have; for I am as certain of the result as if I had seen it,
but I thought you were entitled to be in with me at the death."
From the nearest railway station we took horses to the laboratory,
which occupied a secluded but most beautiful site at an elevation of
about six thousand feet above sea-level. With considerable surprise I
noticed a building surmounted with a dome, recalling what we had seen
from the Grand Teton on the roof of Dr. Syx's mill. Hall, observing my
look, smiled significantly, but said nothing. The laboratory proper
occupied a smaller building adjoining the domed structure. Hall led
the way into an apartment having but a single door and illuminated by
a skylight.
"This is my sanctum sanctorum," he said, "and you are the first
outsider to enter it. Seat yourself comfortably while I proceed to
unveil a little corner of the artemisium mystery."
Near one end of the room, which was about thirty feet in length, was a
table, on which lay a glass tube about two inches in diameter and
thirty inches long. In the farther end of the tube gleamed a lump of
yellow metal, which I took to be gold. Hall and I were seated near
another table about twenty-five feet distant from the tube, and on
this table was an apparatus furnished with a concave mirror, whose
optical axis was directed towards the tube. It occurred to me at once
that this apparatus would be suitable for experimenting with electric
waves. Wires ran from it to the floor, and in the cellar beneath was
audible the beating of an engine. My companion made an adjustment or
two, and then remarked:
"Now, keep your eyes on the lump of gold in the farther end of the
tube yonder. The tube is exhausted of air, and I am about to
concentrate upon the gold an intense electric influence, which will
have the effect of making it a kind of kathode pole. I only use this
term for the sake of illustration. You will recall that as long ago as
the days of Crookes it was known that a kathode in an exhausted tube
would project particles, or atoms, of its substance away in straight
lines. Now watch!"
I fixed my attention upon the gold, and presently saw it enveloped in
a most beautiful violet light. This grew more intense, until, at
times, it was blinding, while, at the same moment, the interior of the
tube seemed to have become charged with a luminous vapor of a delicate
pinkish hue.
"Watch! Watch!" said Hall. "Look at the nearer end of the tube!"
"Why, it is becoming coated with gold!" I exclaimed.
He smiled, but made no reply. Still the strange process continued. The
pink vapor became so dense that the lump of gold was no longer
visible, although the eye of violet light glared piercingly through
the colored fog. Every second the deposit of metal, shining like a
mirror, increased, until suddenly there came a curious whistling
sound. Hall, who had been adjusting the mirror, jerked away his hand
and gave it a flip, as if hot water had spattered it, and then the
light in the tube quickly died away, the vapor escaped, filling the
room with a peculiar stimulating odor, and I perceived that the end of
the glass tube had been melted through, and the molten gold was slowly
dripping from it.
"I carried it a little too far," said Hall, ruefully rubbing the back
of his hand, "and when the glass gave way under the atomic bombardment
a few atoms of gold visited my bones. But there is no harm done. You
observed that the instant the air reached the kathode, as I for
convenience call the electrified mass of gold, the action ceased."
"But your anode, to continue your simile," I said, "is constantly
exposed to the air."
"True," he replied, "but in the first place, of course, this is not
really an anode, just as the other is not actually a kathode. As
science advances we are compelled, for a time, to use old terms in a
new sense until a fresh nomenclature can be invented. But we are now
dealing with a form of electric action more subtile in its effects
than any at present described in the text-books and the transactions
of learned societies. I have not yet even attempted to work out the
theory of it. I am only concerned with its facts."
"But wonderful as the exhibition you have given is, I do not see," I
said, "how it concerns Dr. Syx and his artemisium."
"Listen," replied Hall, settling back in his chair after disconnecting
his apparatus. "You no doubt have been told how one night the Syx
engine was heard working for a few minutes, the first and only night
work it was ever known to have done, and how, hardly had it started up
when a fire broke out in the mill, and the engine was instantly
stopped. Now there is a very remarkable story connected with that, and
it will show you how I got my first clew to the mystery, although it
was rather a mere suspicion than a clew, for at first I could make
nothing out of it. The alleged fire occurred about a fortnight after
our discovery of the double tunnel. My mind was then full of
suspicions concerning Syx, because I thought that a man who would fool
people with one hand was not likely to deal fairly with the other.
"It was a glorious night, with a full moon, whose face was so clear in
the limpid air that, having found a snug place at the foot of a
yellow-pine-tree, where the ground was carpeted with odoriferous
needles, I lay on my back and renewed my early acquaintance with the
romantically named mountains and 'seas' of the Lunar globe. With my
binocular I could trace those long white streaks which radiate from
the crater ring, called 'Tycho,' and run hundreds of miles in all
directions over the moon. As I gazed at these singular objects I
recalled the various theories which astronomers, puzzled by their
enigmatical aspect, have offered to a more or less confiding public
concerning them.
"In the midst of my meditation and moon gazing I was startled by
hearing the engine in the Syx works suddenly begin to run. Immediately
a queer light, shaped like the beam of a ship's searchlight, but
reddish in color, rose high in the moonlit heavens above the mill. It
did not last more than a minute or two, for almost instantly the
engine was stopped, and with its stoppage the light faded and soon
disappeared. The next day Dr. Syx gave it out that on starting up his
engine in the night something had caught fire, which compelled him
immediately to shut down again. The few who had seen the light, with
the exception of your humble servant, accepted the doctor's
explanation without a question. But I knew there had been no fire, and
Syx's anxiety to spread the lie led me to believe that he had narrowly
escaped giving away a vital secret. I said nothing about my
suspicions, but upon inquiry I found out that an extra and pressing
order for metal had arrived from the Austrian government the very day
of the pretended fire, and I drew the inference that Syx, in his haste
to fill the order--his supply having been drawn low--had started to
work, contrary to his custom, at night, and had immediately found
reason to repent his rashness. Of course, I connected the strange
light with this sudden change of mind.
"My suspicion having been thus stimulated, and having been directed in
a certain way, I began, from that moment to notice closely the hours
during which the engine labored. At night it was always quiet, except
on that one brief occasion. Sometimes it began early in the morning
and stopped about noon. At other times the work was done entirely in
the afternoon, beginning sometimes as late as three or four o'clock,
and ceasing invariably at sundown. Then again it would start at
sunrise and continue the whole day through.
"For a long time I was unable to account for these eccentricities, and
the problem was not rendered much clearer, although a startling
suggestiveness was added to it, when, at length, I noticed that the
periods of activity of the engine had a definite relation to the age
of the moon. Then I discovered, with the aid of an almanac, that I
could predict the hours when the engine would be busy. At the time of
new moon it worked all day; at full moon, it was idle; between full
moon and last quarter, it labored in the forenoon, the length of its
working hours increasing as the quarter was approached; between last
quarter and new moon, the hours of work lengthened, until, as I have
said, at new moon they lasted all day; between new moon and first
quarter, work began later and later in the forenoon as the quarter was
approached, and between first quarter and full moon the laboring hours
rapidly shortened, being confined to the latter part of the afternoon,
until at full moon complete silence reigned in the mill."
"Well! well!" I broke in, greatly astonished by Hall's singular
recital, "you must have thought Dr. Syx was a cross between an
alchemist and an astrologer."
"Note this," said Hall, disregarding my interruption, "the hours when
the engine worked were invariably the hours during which the moon was
above the horizon!"
"What did you infer from that?" "Of course, I inferred that the moon
was directly concerned in the mystery; but how? That bothered me for a
long time, but a little light broke into my mind when I picked up, on
the mountain-side, a dead bird, whose scorched feathers were bronzed
with artemisium, and sometime later another similar victim of a
mysterious form of death. Then came the attack on the mine and its
tragic finish. I have already told you what I observed on that
occasion. But, instead of helping to clear up the mystery, it rather
complicated it for a time. At length, however, I reasoned my way
partly out of the difficulty. Certain things which I had noticed in
the Syx mill convinced me that there was a part of the building whose
existence no visitor suspected, and, putting one thing with another, I
inferred that the roof must be open above that secret part of the
structure, and that if I could get upon a sufficiently elevated place
I could see something of what was hidden there.
"At this point in the investigation I proposed to you the trip to the
top of the Teton, the result of which you remember. I had calculated
the angles with great care, and I felt certain that from the apex of
the mountain I should be able to get a view into the concealed
chamber, and into just that side of it which I wished particularly to
inspect. You remember that I called your attention to a shining object
underneath the circular opening in the roof. You could not make out
what it was, but I saw enough to convince me that it was a gigantic
parabolic mirror. I'll show you a smaller one of the same kind
presently.
"Now, at last, I began to perceive the real truth, but it was so
wildly incredible, so infinitely remote from all human experience,
that I hardly ventured to formulate it, even in my own secret
mind. But I was bound to see the thing through to the end. It occurred
to me that I could prove the accuracy of my theory with the aid of a
kite. You were kind enough to lend your assistance in that experiment,
and it gave me irrefragable evidence of the existence of a shaft of
flying atoms extending in a direct line between Dr. Syx's pretended
mine and the moon!"
"Hall!" I exclaimed, "you are mad!" My friend smiled good-naturedly,
and went on with his story.
"The instant the kite shrivelled and disappeared I understood why the
works were idle when the moon was not above the horizon, why birds
flying across that fatal beam fell dead upon the rocks, and whence the
terrible master of that mysterious mill derived the power of
destruction that could wither an army as the Assyrian host in Byron's
poem
"Melted like snow in the glance of the Lord."
"But how did Dr. Syx turn the flying atoms against his enemies?" I
asked.
"In a very simple manner. He had a mirror mounted so that it could be
turned in any direction, and would shunt the stream of metallic atoms,
heated by their friction with the air, towards any desired point. When
the attack came he raised this machine above the level of the roof and
swept the mob to a lustrous, if expensive, death."
"And the light at night--"
"Was the shining of the heated atoms, not luminous enough to be
visible in broad day, for which reason the engine never worked at
night, and the stream of volatilized artemisium was never set flowing
at full moon, when the lunar globe is above the horizon only during
the hours of darkness."
"I see," I said, "whence came the nuggets on the mountain. Some of the
atoms, owing to the resistance of the air, fell short and settled in
the form of impalpable dust until the winds and rains collected and
compacted them in the cracks and crevices of the rocks."
"That was it, of course."
"And now," I added, my amazement at the success of Hall's experiments
and the accuracy of his deductions increasing every moment, "do you
say that you have also discovered the means employed by Dr. Syx to
obtain artemisium from the moon?"
"Not only that," replied my friend, "but within the next few minutes I
shall have the pleasure of presenting to you a button of moon metal,
fresh from the veins of Artemis herself."
XIII
THE LOOTING OF THE MOON
I shall spare the reader a recital of the tireless efforts, continuing
through many almost sleepless weeks, whereby Andrew Hall obtained his
clew to Dr. Syx's method. It was manifest from the beginning that the
agent concerned must be some form of etheric, or so-called electric,
energy; but how to set it in operation was the problem. Finally he hit
upon the apparatus for his initial experiments which I have already
described.
"Recurring to what had been done more than half a century ago by
Hertz, when he concentrated electric waves upon a focal point by means
of a concave mirror," said Hall, "I saw that the key I wanted lay in
an extension of these experiments. At last I found that I could
transform the energy of an engine into undulations of the ether,
which, when they had been concentrated upon a metallic object, like a
chunk of gold, imparted to it an intense charge of an apparently
electric nature. Upon thus charging a metallic body enclosed in a
vacuum, I observed that the energy imparted to it possessed the
remarkable power of disrupting its atoms and projecting them off in
straight lines, very much as occurs with a kathode in a Crookes's
tube. But--and this was of supreme importance--I found that the line
of projection was directly towards the apparatus from which the
impulse producing the charge had come. In other words, I could produce
two poles between which a marvellous interaction occurred. My
transformer, with its concentrating mirror, acted as one pole, from
which energy was transferred to the other pole, and that other pole
immediately flung off atoms of its own substance in the direction of
the transformer. But these atoms were stopped by the glass wall of
the vacuum tube; and when I tried the experiment with the metal
removed from the vacuum, and surrounded with air, it failed utterly.
"This at first completely discouraged me, until I suddenly remembered
that the moon is in a vacuum, the great vacuum of interplanetary
space, and that it possesses no perceptible atmosphere of its own. At
this a great light broke around me, and I shouted 'Eureka!' Without
hesitation I constructed a transformer of great power, furnished with
a large parabolic mirror to transmit the waves in parallel lines,
erected the machinery and buildings here, and when all was ready for
the final experiment I telegraphed for you." Prepared by these
explanations I was all on fire to see the thing tried. Hall was no
less eager, and, calling in his two faithful assistants to make the
final adjustments, he led the way into what he facetiously named "the
lunar chamber."
"If we fail," he remarked with a smile that had an element of
worriment in it, "it will become the 'lunatic chamber'--but no danger
of that. You observe this polished silver knob, supported by a
metallic rod curved over at the top like a crane. That constitutes the
pole from which I propose to transmit the energy to the moon, and upon
which I expect the storm of atoms to be centred by reflection from the
mirror at whose focus it is placed."
"One moment," I said. "Am I to understand that you think that the moon
is a solid mass of artemisium, and that no matter where your radiant
force strikes it a 'kathodic pole' will be formed there from which
atoms will be projected to the earth?"
"No," said Hall, "I must carefully choose the point on the lunar
surface where to operate. But that will present no difficulty. I made
up my mind as soon as I had penetrated Syx's secret that he obtained
the metal from those mystic white streaks which radiate from Tycho,
and which have puzzled the astronomers ever since the invention of
telescopes. I now believe those streaks to be composed of immense
veins of the metal that Syx has most appropriately named artemisium,
which you, of course, recognize as being derived from the name of the
Greek goddess of the moon, Artemis, whom the Romans called Diana. But
now to work!"
It was less than a day past the time of new moon, and the earth's
satellite was too near the sun to be visible in broad daylight.
Accordingly, the mirror had to be directed by means of knowledge of
the moon's place in the sky. Driven by accurate clockwork, it could be
depended upon to retain the proper direction when once set.
With breathless interest I watched the proceedings of my friend and
his assistants. The strain upon the nerves of all of us was such as
could not have been borne for many hours at a stretch. When everything
had been adjusted to his satisfaction, Hall stepped back, not without
betraying his excitement in flushed cheeks and flashing eyes, and
pressed a lever. The powerful engine underneath the floor instantly
responded. The experiment was begun.
"I have set it upon a point about a hundred miles north of Tycho,
where the Yerkes photographs show a great abundance of the white
substance," said Hall.
Then we waited. A minute elapsed. A bird, fluttering in the opening
above, for a second or two, wrenched our strained nerves. Hall's face
turned pale.
"They had better keep away from here," he whispered, with a ghastly
smile.
Two minutes! I could hear the beating of my heart. The engine shook
the floor.
Three minutes! Hall's face was wet with perspiration. The bird
blundered in and startled us again.
Four minutes! We were like statues, with all eyes fixed on the
polished ball of silver, which shone in the brilliant light
concentrated upon it by the mirror.
Five minutes! The shining ball had become a confused blue, and I
violently winked to clear my vision.
"At last! Thank God! Look! There it is!"
It was Hall who spoke, trembling like an aspen. The silver knob had
changed color. What seemed a miniature rainbow surrounded it, with
concentric circles of blinding brilliance.
Then something dropped flashing into an earthen dish set beneath the
ball! Another glittering drop followed, and, at a shorter interval,
another!
Almost before a word could be uttered the drops had coalesced and
become a tiny stream, which, as it fell, twisted itself into a bright
spiral, gleaming with a hundred shifting hues, and forming on the
bottom of the dish a glowing, interlacing maze of viscid rings and
circlets, which turned and twined about and over one another, until
they had blended and settled into a button-shaped mass of hot metallic
jelly. Hall snatched the dish away, and placed another in its stead.
"This will be about right for a watch charm when it cools," he said,
with a return of his customary self-command. "I promised you the first
specimen. I'll catch another for myself."
"But can it be possible that we are not dreaming?" I exclaimed. "Do
you really believe that this comes from the moon?"
"Just as surely as rain comes from the clouds," cried Hall, with all
his old impatience. "Haven't I just showed you the whole process?"
"Then I congratulate you. You will be as rich as Dr. Syx."
"Perhaps," was the unperturbed reply, "but not until I have enlarged
my apparatus. At present I shall hardly do more than supply mementoes
to my friends. But since the principle is established, the rest is
mere detail."
Six weeks later the financial centres of the earth were shaken by the
news that a new supply of artemisium was being marketed from a mill
which had been secretly opened in the Sierras of California. For a
time there was almost a panic. If Hall had chosen to do so, he might
have precipitated serious trouble. But he immediately entered into
negotiations with government representatives, and the inevitable
result was that, to preserve the monetary system of the world from
upheaval, Dr. Syx had to consent that Hall's mill should share equally
with his in the production of artemisium. During the negotiations the
doctor paid a visit to Hall's establishment. The meeting between them
was most dramatic. Syx tried to blast his rival with a glance, but
knowledge is power, and my friend faced his mysterious antagonist,
whose deepest secrets he had penetrated, with an unflinching eye. It
was remarked that Dr. Syx became a changed man from that moment. His
masterful air seemed to have deserted him, and it was with something
resembling humility that he assented to the arrangement which required
him to share his enormous gains with his conqueror.
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