CHAPTER XIX
A little before six (Earth time) on the fourth morning after they hadcleared the confines of the Saturnian System, Redgrave went as usualinto the conning-tower to examine the instruments, and to see thateverything was in order. To his intense surprise he found, on looking atthe gravitational compass, which was to the _Astronef_ what the ordinarycompass is to a ship at sea, that the vessel was a long way out of hercourse.
Such a thing had never yet occurred. Up to now the _Astronef_ had obeyedthe laws of gravitation and repulsion with absolute exactness. He madeanother examination of the instruments; but no, all were in perfectorder.
"I wonder what the deuce is the matter," he said, after he had lookedfor a few moments with frowning eyes at the multitude of orbs ahead. "ByJove, we're swinging more. This is getting serious."
He went back to the compass. The long, slender needle was slowlyswinging farther and farther out of the middle line of the vessel.
"There can only be two explanations of that," he went on, thrusting hishands deep into his trousers pockets; "either the engines are notworking properly, or some enormous and invisible body is pulling ustowards it out of our course. Let's have a look at the engines first."
When he reached the engine-room he said to Murgatroyd, who was indulgingin his usual pastime of cleaning and polishing his beloved charges:
"Have you noticed anything wrong during the last hour or so,Murgatroyd?"
"No, my Lord; at least not so far as concerns the engines. They're allright. Hark, now, they're not making more noise than a lady's sewingmachine," replied the old Yorkshireman, with a note of resentment in hisvoice. The suspicion that anything could be wrong with his shiningdarlings was almost a personal offence to him. "But is anything thematter, my Lord, if I might ask?"
"We're a long way off our course, and for the life of me I can'tunderstand it," replied Redgrave. "There's nothing about here to pull usout of our line. Of course the stars--good Lord, I never thought ofthat! Look here, Murgatroyd, not a word about this to her ladyship, andstand by to raise the power by degrees, as I signal to you."
"Ay, my lord. I hope it's nothing bad!"
Redgrave went back to the conning-tower without replying. The onlypossible solution of the mystery of the deviation had suddenly dawnedupon him, and a very serious solution it was. He remembered there weresuch things as dead suns--the derelicts of the Ocean of Space--vast,invisible orbs, lightless and lifeless, too distant from any living sunto be illumined by its rays, and yet exercising the only force left tothem--the force of attraction. Might not one of these have wandered nearenough to the confines of the Solar System to exert this force, a forceof absolutely unknown magnitude, upon the _Astronef_?
He went to the desk beside the instrument-table and plunged into a mazeof mathematics, of masses and weights, angles and distances. Half anhour later he stood looking at the last symbol on the last sheet ofpaper with something like fear. It was the fatal _x_ which remained tosatisfy the last equation, the unknown quantity which represented theunseen force that was dragging them into the outer wilderness ofinsterstellar space, into far-off regions from which, with the remainingforce at his disposal, no return would be possible.
He signalled to Murgatroyd to increase the development of the R. Forcefrom a tenth to a fifth. Then he went to the lower saloon, where Zaidiewas busy with her usual morning tidy-up. Now that the mystery wasexplained there was no reason to keep her in the dark. Indeed, he hadgiven her his word that he would conceal from her no danger, howevergreat, that might threaten them when he had once assured himself of itsexistence.
She listened to him in silence and without a sign of fear beyond alittle lifting of the eyelids and a little fading of the colour in hercheeks.
"And if we can't resist this force," she said, when he had finished, "itwill drag us millions--perhaps millions of millions--of miles away fromour own system into outer space, and we shall either fall on the surfaceof this dead sun and be reduced to a puff of lighted gas in an instant,or some other body will pull us away from it, and then another away fromthat, and so on, and we shall wander among the stars for ever and everuntil the end of time!"
"If the first happens, darling, we shall die--together--without knowingit. It's the second that I'm most afraid of. The _Astronef_ may go onwandering among the stars for ever--but we have only water enough forthree weeks more. Now come into the conning-tower and we'll see howthings are going."
As they bent their heads over the instrument-table Redgrave saw that theremorseless needle had moved two degrees more to the right. The keel ofthe _Astronef_, under the impulse of the R. Force, was continuallyturning. The pull of the invisible orb was dragging her slowly butirresistibly out of her line.
"There's nothing for it but this," said Redgrave, putting out his handto the signal-board, and signalling to Murgatroyd to put the engines totheir highest capacity. "You see, dear, our greatest danger is this: wehad to exert such a tremendous lot of power getting away from Jupiterand Saturn, that we haven't any too much to spare, and if we have tospend it in counteracting the pull of this dead sun, or whatever it is,we may not have enough of what I call the R. fluid left to get homewith."
"I see," she said, staring with wide-open eyes at the needle. "You meanthat we may not have enough to keep us from falling into one of theplanets or perhaps into the Sun itself. Well, supposing the dangers areequal, this one is the nearest, and so I guess we've got to fight itfirst."
"Spoken like a good American!" he said, putting his arm across hershoulders and looking at once with infinite pride and infinite regret atthe calm, proud face which the glory of resignation had adorned with anew beauty.
She bowed her head and then looked away again so that he should not seethat there were tears in her eyes. He took his hand from her shoulderand stared in silence down at the needle. It was stationary again.
"We've stopped!" he said, after a pause of several moments. "Now, if thebody that's taken us out of our course is moving away from us we win, ifit's coming towards us we lose. At any rate, we've done all we can. Comealong, Zaidie, let's go and have a walk on deck."
They had scarcely reached the upper deck when something happened whichdwarfed all the other experiences of their marvellous voyage into utterinsignificance.
Above and around them the constellations blazed with a splendourinconceivable to an observer on Earth, but ahead of them gaped the vast,black void which sailors call "the Coal Hole," and in which the mostpowerful telescopes have only discovered a few faintly luminous bodies.Suddenly, out of the midst of this infinity of darkness, there blazed aglare of almost intolerably brilliant radiance. Instantly the forwardend of the _Astronef_ was bathed in light and heat--the light and heatof a re-created sun, whose elements had been dark and cold for uncountedages.
Hundreds of tiny points of light, unknown worlds which had been dark formyriads of years, twinkled out of the blackness. Then the fierce glaregrew dimmer. A vast mantle of luminous mist spread out withinconceivable rapidity, and in the midst of this blazed the centralnucleus--the sun which in far-off ages to come would be the giver oflight and heat, of life and beauty to worlds unborn, to planets whichwere now only little eddies of atoms whirling in that ocean of nebulousflame.
For more than an hour the two wanderers from the far-off Earth stoodmotionless and silent, gazing on the indescribable splendours of thefearfully magnificent spectacle before them. Every mundane thoughtseemed burnt out of their souls by the glory and the wonder of it. Itwas almost as though they were standing in the very presence of God.Indeed, were they not witnessing the supreme act of Omnipotence, a newcreation? Their peril, a peril such as had never threatened mortalsbefore, was utterly forgotten. They had even forgotten each other'spresence. For the time being they existed only to look and to wonder.
They were called at length out of their trance by the matter-of-factvoice of Murgatroyd saying--
"My Lord, she's back to her course. Will I keep the power on full?"
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nbsp; "Eh! What's that?" exclaimed Redgrave, as they both turned quicklyround. "Oh, it's you, Murgatroyd. The power? Yes, keep it on full till Ihave taken the bearings."
"Ay, my Lord, very good," replied the engineer.
As he left the deck Redgrave put his arm round Zaidie and drew hergently towards him and said, "Zaidie, truly you are favoured amongwomen! You have seen the beginning of a new creation. You will certainlybe saved somehow after that."
"Yes, and you too, dear," she murmured, as though still half-dreaming."It is very glorious and wonderful; but what is it all--I mean, what isthe explanation of it?"
"The merely scientific explanation, dear, is very simple. I see it allnow. The force that was dragging us out of our course was the unitedpull of two dead stars approaching each other in the same orbit. Theymay have been doing that for millions of years. The shock of theirmeeting has transformed their motion into light and heat. They haveunited to form a single sun and a nebula, which will some day condenseinto a system of planets like ours. To-night the astronomers on Earthwill discover a new star--a variable star as they'll call it--for itwill grow dimmer as it moves away from our system. It has often happenedbefore."
Then they turned back to the conning-tower.
The needle had swung to its old position. The new star, henceforth to beknown in the annals of astronomy as Lilla-Zaidie, had already set forthem to the right of the _Astronef_ and risen on the left, and, at adistance of more than nine hundred million miles from the Earth, thecorner was turned, and the homeward voyage began.