"The focus of the telescope is constant. We are evidently standing still."
His words sounded like a reprieve to a condemned man on the morning of his execution, and in the revulsion of my feeling I shouted,
"Hurrah!"
"What can it mean?" cried Gazen.
"Simply this," said I joyfully. "We have reached the "dead-point," where the attraction of Mercury on the car is balanced by the attraction of the sun. It can"t be anything else."
"Wait a minute," said Gazen, making a rapid calculation. "Yes, yes, probably you are right. I did not think we had come so far; but I had forgotten that gravitation on Mercury is only half as strong as it is on the Earth or Venus. Let us go and tell Miss Carmichael."
We hurried downstairs to the engine room and found her kneeling beside her father, who was no better.
She did not seem much enlivened by the good news.
"What will that do for us?" she enquired doubtfully.
"We can remain here as long as we like, suspended between the Sun and Mercury," replied Gazen.
"Is it better to linger and die in a living tomb than be dashed to pieces and have done with it?"
"But we shall gain time for your father to recover."
"I am afraid my father will never recover in this place. The heat is killing him. Unless we can get further away from the sun he will die, I"m sure he will."
Her eyes filled with tears.
"Don"t distress yourself, dear Miss Carmichael, please don"t," said Gazen tenderly. "Now that we have time to think, perhaps we shall hit upon some plan."
An idea flashed into my head.
"Look here," said I to Gazen, "you remember our conversation in your observatory one day on the propelling power of rockets--how a rocket might be used to drive a car through s.p.a.ce?"
"Yes; but we have no rockets."
"No, but we have rifles, and rifle bullets fired from the car, though not so powerful, will have a similar effect."
"Well?"
"The car is now at rest in s.p.a.ce. A slight impulse will direct it one way or another. Why should we not send it off in such a way that in falling towards Mercury it will not strike the planet, but circle round it; or if it should fall towards the surface, will do so at a great slant, and allow the atmosphere to cool the engines."
"Let me see," said Gazen, drawing a diagram in his note-book, and studying it attentively. "Yes, there is something in that. It"s a forlorn hope at best, but perhaps it"s our only hope. If we could only get into the shadow of the planet we might be saved."
As delay might prove fatal to Carmichael, and since it was uncertain whether he could right the engines in their present situation, we decided to act on the suggestion without loss of time. Gazen and I calculated the positions of the rifles and the number of shots to be fired in order to give the required impetus to the car. The engine-room, being well provided with scuttles, was chosen as the scene of our operations. A brace of magazine rifles were fixed through two of the scuttles in such a way that the recoil of the shots would urge the car in an oblique direction backwards, so as to clear or almost clear the planet, allowance being made for the forward motion of the latter in its...o...b..t. Needless to say, the barrel of each rifle was packed round so as to keep the air in the car from escaping into s.p.a.ce.
At a given signal the rifles were discharged simultaneously by Gazen and myself. There was little noise, but the car trembled with the shock, and the prostrate man opened his eyes.
Had it produced the desired effect? We could not tell without an appeal to the telescope.
"I"ll be back in a moment," cried Gazen, springing upstairs to the observatory.
"Do you feel any better, father?" enquired Miss Carmichael, laying her cool hand on the invalid"s fevered brow.
He winked, and tried to nod in the affirmative. "Were you asleep, father? Did the shock rouse you?"
He winked again.
"Do you know what we are doing?" Before he could answer the foot of Gazen sounded on the stair. He had left us with an eager, almost a confident eye. He came back looking grave in the extreme.
"We are not falling towards Mercury," he said gloomily. "_We are rushing to the sun!_"
I cannot depict our emotion at this awful announcement which changed our hopes into despair. Probably it affected each of us in a different manner. I cannot recollect my own feelings well enough to a.n.a.lyse them, and suppose I must have been astounded for a time. A vision of the car, plunging through an atmosphere of flame, into the fiery entrails of the sun, flashed across my excited brain, and then I seemed to lose the power of thought.
"Out of the frying-pan into the fire," said I at last, in frivolous reaction.
"His will be done!" murmured Miss Carmichael, instinctively drawing closer to her father, who seemed to realise our jeopardy.
"We must look the matter in the face," said Gazen, with a sigh.
"What a death!" I exclaimed, "to sit and watch the vast glowing furnace that is to swallow us up come nearer and nearer, second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour."
"The nearer we approach the sun the faster we shall go," said Gazen.
"For one thing, we shall be dead long before we reach him. The heat will stifle us. It will be all over in a few hours."
What a death! To see, to feel ourselves roasting as in an oven. It was too horrible.
"Are you certain there is no mistake?" I asked at length.
"Quite," replied Gazen. "Come and see for yourself."
We had all but gained the door when Miss Carmichael followed us.
"Professor," she said, with a tremor in her voice, and a look of supplication in her eyes, "you will come back soon--you will not leave us long."
"No, my darling--I beg your pardon," answered Gazen, obeying the impulse of his heart. "G.o.d knows I would give my life to save you if I could."
In another instant he had locked her in his arms.
I left them together, and ascended to the observatory, where Gazen soon afterwards rejoined me.
"I"m the happiest man alive," said he, with a beaming countenance.
"Congratulate me. I"m betrothed to Miss Carmichael."
I took his proffered hand, scarcely knowing whether to laugh or cry.
"It seems to me that I have found my life in losing it," he continued with a grim smile. "Saturn! what a courtship is ours--what an engagement--what a bridal bed! But there, old fellow, I"m afraid I"m happier than you--alone in spirit, and separated from her you love.
Perhaps I was wrong to carry you away from Venus--it has not turned out well--but I acted for the best. Forgive me!"
I wrung his hand in silence.