CHAPTER XII
"How very different Venus looks now to what it does from the earth,"said Zaidie, a couple of mornings later, by earth-time, as she took hereye away from the telescope through which she had been examining anenormous golden crescent which spanned the dark vault of Space ahead ofand slightly below the _Astronef_.
"Yes," replied Redgrave, "she looks----"
"How do you know that she is a she?" said Zaidie, getting up and layinga hand on his shoulder as he sat at his own telescope. "Of course I knowwhat you mean, that according to our own ideas on earth, it is theplanet or the world which has been supposed for ages to, as it were,shine upon the lovers of earth with the light reflected fromthe--the--well, I suppose you know what I mean."
"Seeing that you are the most perfect terrestrial incarnation of thesaid goddess that I have seen yet," he replied, slipping his arm roundher waist and pulling her down on to his knees, "I don't think that thatis quite the view you ought to take. Surely if Venus ever had adaughter----"
"Oh, nonsense! After we've travelled all these millions of milestogether do you really expect me to believe stuff like that?"
"My dear girl-graduate," he said, tightening his grip round her waist alittle, "you know perfectly well that if we had travelled beyond thelimits of the Solar System, if we had outsailed old Halley's Cometitself, and dived into the uttermost depths of Space outside the MilkyWay, you and I would still be a man and a woman, and, being, as may bepresumed, more or less in love with each other----"
"Less indeed!" said Zaidie; "you're speaking for yourself, I hope."
And then when she had partially disengaged herself and sat up straight,she said between her laughs----
"Really, Lenox, you're quite absurd for a person who has been married aslong as you have, I don't mean in time, but in Space. Was it a thousandyears or a couple of hundred million miles ago that we were married?Really I am getting my ideas of time and space quite mixed up.
"But never mind that! What I was going to say is that, according to allthe authorities which your girl-graduate has been reading since we leftMars, Venus--oh, doesn't she look just gorgeous, and our old friend theSun behind there blazing out of darkness like one of the furnaces atPittsburg--I beg your pardon, Lenox, I'm afraid I'm getting quiteprovincial. I suppose we're considerably more than a hundred millionmiles away?"
"Yes, dear; we're about a hundred and fifty millions, and at thatdistance, if you'll excuse me saying so, even the United States wouldseem almost like a province, wouldn't they?"
"Well, yes; that's just where distance doesn't lend enchantment to theview, I suppose."
"But what was it you were going to say before that----"
"The interlude, eh? Well, before the interlude you were accusing me ofbeing a graduate as well as a girl. Of course I can't help that, butwhat I was going to say was----"
"If you are going to talk science, dear, perhaps we'd better sit ondifferent chairs. I may have been married for a hundred and fiftymillion miles, but the honeymoon isn't half way through yet, you know."
Then there was another interlude of a few seconds' duration. When Zaidiewas seated beside her own telescope again, she said, after anotherglance at the splendid crescent which, as the _Astronef_ approached at aspeed of over forty miles a second, increased in size and distinctnessevery moment:
"What I mean is this. All the authorities are agreed that on Venus, heraxis of revolution being so very much inclined to the plane of herorbit, the seasons are so severe that half the year its temperate zoneand its tropics have a summer about twice as hot as ours and the otherhalf they have a winter twice as cold as our coldest. I'm afraid, afterall, we shall find the Love-Star a world of salamanders and seals;things that can live in a furnace and bask on an iceberg; and when weget back home it will be our painful duty, as the first explorers of thefields of Space, to dispel another dearly-cherished popular delusion."
"I'm not so very sure about that," said Lenox, glancing from the rapidlygrowing crescent, to the sweet, smiling face beside him. "Don't you seesomething very different there to what we saw either on the Moon orMars? Now just go back to your telescope and let us take anobservation."
"Well," said Zaidie, rising, "as our trip is, partly at least, in theinterests of science, I will;" and then when she had got her owntelescope into focus again--for the distance between the _Astronef_ andthe new world they were about to visit was rapidly lessening--she took along look through it, and said:
"Yes, I think I see what you mean. The outer edge of the crescent isbright, but it gets greyer and dimmer towards the inside of the curve.Of course Venus has an atmosphere. So had Mars; but this must be verydense. There's a sort of halo all round it. Just fancy that splendidthing being the little black spot we saw going across the face of theSun a few days ago! It makes one feel rather small, doesn't it?"
"That is one of the things which a woman says when she doesn't want tobe answered; but, apart from that, you were saying----"
"What a very unpleasant person you can be when you like! I was going tosay that on the Moon we saw nothing but black and white, light anddarkness. There was no atmosphere, except in those awful places I don'twant to think about. Then, as we got near Mars, we saw a pinkyatmosphere, but not very dense; but this, you see, is a sort ofpearl-grey white shading from silver to black. You notice how much palerit grows as we get nearer. But look--what are those tiny bright spots?There are hundreds of them."
"Do you remember as we were leaving the Earth, how bright the mountainranges looked; how plainly we could see the Rockies and the Andes?"
"Oh, yes, I see; they're mountains; thirty-seven miles high, some ofthem, they say; and the rest of the silver-grey will be clouds, Isuppose. Fancy living under clouds like those."
"Only another case of the adaptation of life to natural conditions, Iexpect. When we get there I daresay we shall find that these clouds arejust what make it possible for the inhabitants of Venus to stand theextremes of heat and cold. Given elevations three or four times as highas the Himalayas, it would be quite possible for them to choose theirtemperature by shifting their altitude.
"But I think it's about time to drop theory and see to the practice," hecontinued, getting up from his chair and going to the signal board inthe conning-tower. "Whatever the planet Venus may be like, we don't wantto charge it at the rate of sixty miles a second. That's about the speednow, considering how fast she's travelling towards us."
"And considering that, whether it is a nice world or not it's nearly asbig as the Earth, I guess we should get rather the worst of the charge,"laughed Zaidie as she went back to her telescope.
Redgrave sent a signal down to Murgatroyd to reverse engines, as itwere, or, in other words, to direct the "R. Force" against the planet,from which they were now only a couple of hundred thousand milesdistant. The next moment the sun and stars seemed to halt in theircourses. The great golden-grey crescent, which had been increasing insize every moment, appeared to remain stationary, and then, when he wassatisfied that the engines were developing the Force properly, he sentanother signal down, and the _Astronef_ began to descend.
The half-disc of Venus seemed to fall below them, and in a few minutesthey could see it from the upper deck spreading out like a hugesemi-circular plain of light ahead and on both sides of them. The_Astronef_ was falling at the rate of about a thousand miles a minutetowards the centre of the half-crescent, and every moment the brilliantspots above the cloud-surface grew in size and brightness.
"I believe the theory about the enormous height of the mountains ofVenus must be correct after all," said Redgrave, tearing himself with anevident wrench away from his telescope. "Those white patches can't beanything else but the summits of snow-capped mountains. You know howbrilliantly white a snow-peak looks on earth against the whitest ofclouds."
"Oh, yes," said Zaidie, "I've often seen that in the Rockies. But it'slunch-time, and I must go down and see how my things in the kitchen aregetting on. I suppose you'll try and land so
mewhere where it's morning,so that we can have a good day before us. Really, it's very convenientto be able to make your own morning or night as you like, isn't it? Ihope it won't make us too conceited when we get back, being able tochoose our mornings and our evenings; in fact, our sunrises and sunsetson any world we like to visit in a casual way like this."
"Well," laughed Redgrave, as she moved away towards the companionstairs, "after all, if you find the United States, or even the PlanetTerra, too small for you, we've always got the fields of Space open tous. We might take a trip across the Zodiac or down the Milky Way."
"And meanwhile," she replied, stopping at the top of the stairs andlooking round, "I'll go down and get lunch. You and I may be king andqueen of the realms of Space, and all that sort of thing, but we've gotto eat and drink, after all."
"And that reminds me," said Redgrave, getting up and following her, "wemust celebrate our arrival on a new world as usual. I'll go down and getout the wine. I shouldn't be surprised if we found the people of theLove-World living on nectar and ambrosia, and as fizz is our nearestapproach to nectar----"
"I suppose," said Zaidie, as she gathered up her skirts and steppeddaintily down the companion stairs, "if you find anything human, or atleast human enough to eat and drink, you'll have a party and give themchampagne. I wonder what those wretches on Mars would have thought of itif we'd only made friends with them?"
Lunch on board the _Astronef_ was about the pleasantest meal of the day.Of course, there was neither day nor night, in the ordinary sense of theword, except as the hours were measured off by the chronometers.Whichever side or end of the vessel received the direct rays of the sun,was bathed in blazing heat and dazzling light. Elsewhere there was blackdarkness and the more than icy cold of Space; but lunch was a convenientdivision of the waking hours, which began with a stroll on the upperdeck and a view of the ever-varying splendours about them, and endedafter dinner in the same place with coffee and cigarettes andspeculations as to the next day's happenings.
This lunch-hour passed even more pleasantly and rapidly than others haddone, for the discussion as to the possibilities of Venus was continuedin a quite delightful mixture of scientific disquisition and thatconverse which is common to most human beings on their honeymoon.
As there was nothing more to be done or seen for an hour or two, theafternoon was spent in a pleasant siesta in the luxurious deck-saloon;because evening to them would be morning on that portion of Venus towhich they were directing their course, and, as Zaidie said, when shesubsided into her hammock:
It would be breakfast-time before they could get dinner.
As the _Astronef_ fell with ever-increasing velocity towards thecloud-covered surface of Venus, the remainder of her disc, lit up by theradiance of her sister-worlds, Mercury, Mars, and the Earth, and also bythe pale radiance of an enormous comet, which had suddenly shot intoview from behind its southern limb, became more or less visible.
Towards six o'clock it became necessary to exert nearly the wholestrength of her engines to check the velocity of her fall. By eight shehad entered the atmosphere of Venus, and was dropping slowly towards avast sea of sunlit cloud, out of which, on all sides, towered thousandsof snow-clad peaks, rounded summits, and widespread stretches of uplandabout which the clouds swept and surged like the silent billows of somevast ocean in Ghostland.
"I thought so!" said Redgrave, when the propellers had begun to revolveand Murgatroyd had taken his place in the conning-tower. "A very denseatmosphere loaded with clouds. There's the Sun just rising, so yourladyship's wishes are duly obeyed."
"And doesn't it seem nice and homelike to see him rising through anatmosphere above the clouds again? It doesn't look a bit like the samesort of dear old Sun just blazing like a red-hot Moon among a lot ofwhite-hot stars and planets. Look, aren't those peaks lovely, and thatcloud-sea?--why, for all the world we might be in a balloon above theRockies or the Alps. And see," she continued, pointing to one of thethermometers fixed outside the glass dome which covered the upper deck,"it's only sixty-five even here. I wonder if we can breathe this air,and--oh--I do wonder what we shall see on the other side of thoseclouds."
"You shall have both questions answered in a few minutes," repliedRedgrave, going towards the conning-tower. "To begin with, I think we'llland on that big snow-dome yonder, and do a little exploring. Wherethere are snow and clouds there is moisture, and where there is moisturea man ought to be able to breathe."
_Snow peaks and cloud seas._]
The _Astronef_, still falling, but now easily under the command of thehelmsman, shot forwards and downwards towards a vast dome of snow which,rising some two thousand feet above the cloud-sea, shone with dazzlingbrilliance in the light of the rising Sun. She landed just above theedge of the clouds. Meanwhile they had put on their breathing-suits, andRedgrave had seen that the air chamber through which they had to passfrom their own little world into the new ones that they visited was inworking order. When the outer door was opened and the ladder lowered hestood aside, as he had done on the Moon, and Zaidie's was the firsthuman foot which made an imprint on the virgin snows of Venus.
The first thing Redgrave did was to raise the visor of his helmet andtaste the air of the new world. It was cool, and fresh, and sweet, andthe first draught of it sent the blood tingling and dancing through hisveins. Perfect as the arrangements of the _Astronef_ were in thisrespect, the air of Venus tasted like clear running spring water wouldhave done to a man who had been drinking filtered water for severaldays. He threw the visor right up and motioned to Zaidie to do the same.She obeyed, and, after drawing a long breath, she said:
"That's glorious! It's like wine after water, and rather stagnant watertoo. But what a world, snow-peaks and cloud-seas, islands of ice andsnow in an ocean of mist! Just look at them! Did you ever see anythingso lovely and unearthly in your life? I wonder how high this mountainis, and what there is on the other side of the clouds. Isn't the airdelicious! Not a bit too cold after all--but, still, I think we may aswell go back and put on something more becoming. I shouldn't quite likethe ladies of Venus to see me dressed like a diver."
"Come along, then," laughed Lenox, as he turned back towards the vessel."That's just like a woman. You're about a hundred and fifty millionmiles away from Broadway or Regent Street. You are standing on the topof a snow mountain above the clouds of Venus, and the moment that youfind the air is fit to breathe you begin thinking about dress. How doyou know that the inhabitants of Venus, if there are any, dress at all?"
"What nonsense! Of course they do--at least, if they are anything likeus."
As soon as they got back on board the _Astronef_ and had taken theirbreathing-dresses off, Redgrave and the old engineer, who appeared totake no visible interest in their new surroundings, threw open all thesliding doors on the upper and lower decks so that the vessel might bethoroughly ventilated by the fresh sweet air. Then a gentle repulsionwas applied to the huge snow mass on which the _Astronef_ rested. Sherose a couple of hundred feet, her propellers began to whirl round, andRedgrave steered her out towards the centre of the vast cloud-sea whichwas almost surrounded by a thousand glittering peaks of ice and domes ofsnow.
"I think we may as well put off dinner, or breakfast as it will be now,until we see what the world below is like," he said to Zaidie, who wasstanding beside him on the conning-tower.
"Oh, never mind about eating just now, this is altogether too wonderfulto be missed for the sake of ordinary meat and drink. Let's go down andsee what there is on the other side."
He sent a message down the speaking tube to Murgatroyd, who was belowamong his beloved engines, and the next moment sun and clouds andice-peaks had disappeared and nothing was visible save theall-enveloping silver-grey mist.
For several minutes they remained silent, watching and wondering whatthey would find beneath the veil which hid the surface of Venus fromtheir view. Then the mist thinned out and broke up into patches whichdrifted past them as they descended on their downward slanti
ng course.
Below them they saw vast, ghostly shapes of mountains and valleys, lakesand rivers, continents, islands, and seas. Every moment these becamemore and more distinct, and soon they were in full view of the mostmarvellous landscape that human eyes had ever beheld. The distances weretremendous. Mountains, compared with which the Alps or even the Andeswould have seemed mere hillocks, towered up out of the vast depthsbeneath them.
Up to the lower edge of the all-covering cloud-sea they were clad with agolden-yellow vegetation, fields and forests, open, smiling valleys, anddeep, dark ravines through which a thousand torrents thundered down fromthe eternal snows beyond, to spread themselves out in rivers and lakesin the valleys and plains which lay many thousands of feet below.
"What a lovely world!" said Zaidie, as she at last found her voice afterwhat was almost a stupor of speechless wonder and admiration. "And thelight! Did you ever see anything like it? It's neither moonlight norsunlight. See, there are no shadows down there, it's just all lovelysilvery twilight. Lenox, if Venus is as nice as she looks from here Idon't think I shall want to go back. It reminds me of Tennyson's LotusEaters, 'the Land where it is always afternoon.'
"I think you are right after all. We are thirty million miles nearer tothe Sun than we were on the Earth, and the light and heat have to filterthrough those clouds. They are not at all like Earth clouds from thisside. It's the other way about. The silver lining is on this side. Look,there isn't a black or a brown one, or even a grey one, within sight.They are just like a thin mist, lighted by a million of electric lamps.It's a delicious world, and if it isn't inhabited by angels it ought tobe."