Authors: George England
He tried to catch her in his arms, but she evaded him and ran back
toward the bungalow.
"No, no, you've got to work," she called to him from the porch. "And
so have I. Good-by!" And with a wave of the hand, a strong, brown hand
now, slim and very beautiful, she vanished.
Stern stood in thought a moment, then shook his head, and, with a
singular expression, picked up his hoe, and once more fell to
cultivating his precious little garden-patch, on which so infinitely
much depended. But something lay upon his mind; he paused, reflecting;
then picked up a stone and weighed it in his hand, tried another, and
a third.
"I'm damned," he remarked, "if these feel right to met I've been
wondering about it for a week now—there's got to be some answer to
it. A stone of this size in the old days would certainly have weighed
more. And that big boulder I rooted out from the middle of the
field—in the other days I couldn't have more than stirred it.
"Am I so very much stronger? So much as all that? Or have things grown
lighter? Is that why I can leap farther, walk better, run faster?
What's it all about, anyhow?"
He could not work, but sat down on a rock to ponder. Numerous
phenomena occurred to him, as they had while he had lain wounded under
the tree by the river during their first few days at the bungalow.
"My observations certainly show a day only twenty-two hours and
fifty-seven minutes long; that's certain," he mused. "So the earth is
undoubtedly smaller. But what's that got to do with the mass of the
earth? With weight? Hanged if I can make it out at all!
"Even though the earth has shrunk, it ought to have the same power of
gravitation. If all the molecules and atoms really were pressed
together, with no space between, probably the earth wouldn't be much
bigger than a football, but it would weigh just that much, and a body
would fall toward it from space just as fast as now. Quite a hefty
football, eh? For the life of me I can't see why the earth's having
shrunk has affected the weight of everything!"
Perplexed, he went back to his work again. And though he tried to
banish the puzzle from his mind it still continued to haunt and to
annoy him.
Each day brought new and interesting activities. Now they made an
expedition to gather a certain kind of reeds which Beatrice could plat
into cordage and basketry; now they peeled quantities of birch-bark,
which on rainy days they occupied themselves in splitting into thin
sheets for paper. Stern manufactured a very excellent ink in his
improvised laboratory on the second floor, and the split and pointed
quills of a wild goose served them for pens in taking notes and
recording their experiences.
"Paper will come later, when we've got things a little more settled,"
he told her. "But for now this will have to do."
"I guess if you can get along with skin clothing for a while, I can do
with birch-bark for my correspondence," she replied laughing. "Why not
catch some of those wild sheep that seem so plentiful on the hills to
westward? If we could domesticate them, that would mean wool and yarn
and cloth—and milk, too, wouldn't it? And if milk, why not butter?"
"Not so fast!" he interposed. "Just wait a while—we'll have cattle,
goats, and sheep, and the whole business in due time; but how much can
one pair of human beings undertake? For the present we'll have to be
content with what mutton-chops and steaks and hams I can get with a
gun—and we're mighty lucky to have those!"
Singularly enough, and contrary to all beliefs, they felt no need of
salt. Evidently the natural salts in their meat and in the fruits they
ate supplied their wants. And this was fortunate, because the quest of
salt might have been difficult; they might even had had to boil
sea-water to obtain it.
They felt no craving for sweets, either; but when one day they came
upon a bee-tree about three-quarters of a mile back in the woods to
westward of the river, and when Stern smoked out the bees and gathered
five pounds of honey in the closely platted rush basket lined with
leaves, which they always carried for miscellaneous treasure-trove,
they found the flavor delicious. They decided to add honey to their
menu, and thereafter always kept it in a big pottery jar in their
kitchen.
Stern's hunting, fishing and gardening did not occupy his whole time.
Every day he made it a rule to work at least an hour, two if possible,
on the thirty-foot yawl that had already begun to take satisfactory
shape on the timber ways which now stood on the river bank.
All through July and part of August he labored on this boat, building
it stanch and true, calking it thoroughly, fitting a cabin, stepping a
fir mast, and making all ready for the great migration which he felt
must inevitably be forced upon them by the arrival of cool weather.
He doubted very much, in view of the semitropic character of some of
the foliage, whether even in January the temperature would now go
below freezing; but in any event he foresaw that there would be no
fruits available, and he objected to a winter on flesh foods. In
preparation for the trip he had built a little "smoke-house" near the
beach, and here he smoked considerable quantities of meat—deer-meat,
beef from a wild steer which he was so fortunate as to shoot during
the third week of their stay at the bungalow, and a good score of hams
from the wild pigs which rooted now and then among the beech growth
half a mile downstream.
Often the girl and he discussed this coming trip, of an evening,
sitting together by the river to watch the stars and moon and that
strange black wandering blotch that now and then obscured a portion of
the night sky—or perchance leaning back in their huge, rustic easy
chairs lined with furs on the broad piazza; or again, if the night
were cool or rainy, in front of their blazing fire of pine knots and
driftwood, which burned with gorgeous blues and greens and crimsons in
the vast throat of Hope Lodge fireplace.
Other matters, too, they talked of—strange speculations, impossible
to solve, yet filling them with vague uneasiness, with wonder and a
kind of mighty awe in face of the vast, unknowable mysteries
surrounding them; the forces and phenomena which might, though
friendly in their outward aspect, at any time precipitate catastrophe,
ruin and death upon them and extinguish in their persons all hopes of
a world reborn.
The haunting thought was never very far away: "Should either one of us
be killed—what then?"
One day Stern voiced his fear.
"Beatrice," he said, "if anything should ever happen to me, and you be
left alone in a world which, without me, would become instantly
hostile and impossible, remember that the most scientific way out is a
bullet. That's
my
way if anything happens to
you!
Understand?"
She nodded, and for a long time that day the silence of a great pact
weighed upon their souls.
Stern rigged a tripod for the powerful field-glasses he had
rescued from the Metropolitan Building, and by an ingenious addition
of a wooden tube and another lens carefully ground out of rock
crystal, succeeded in producing (on the right-hand barrel of the
binoculars) a telescope of reasonably high power. With this, of an
evening, he often made long observations, after which he would spend
hours figuring all over many sheets of the birch bark, which he then
carefully saved and bound up with leather strings for future
reference.
In Van's set of encyclopedias he found a fairly large celestial map
and thorough astronomic data. The results of his computations were of
vital interest to him.
He said to Beatrice one evening:
"Do you know, that wandering black patch in the sky moves in a regular
orbit of its own? It's a solid body, dark, irregular in outline, and
certainly not over five hundred miles above the surface of the earth."
"What can it be, dear?"
"I don't know yet. It puzzles me tremendously. Now, if it would only
appear in the daytime once in a while, we might be able to get some
information or knowledge about it; but, coming only at night, all it
records itself as is just a black, moving thing. I'm working on the
size of it now, making some careful studies. In a while I shall
probably know its area and mass and density. But what it is I cannot
say—not yet."
They both pondered a while, absorbed in wonder. At last the engineer
spoke again.
"Beta," said he, "there's another curious fact to note. The axis of
the earth itself has shifted more than six degrees, thirty minutes!"
"It has? Well—what about it?" And she went on with her platting of
reed cordage.
"You don't seem much concerned about it!"
"I'm not. Not in the least. It can shift all it wants to, for all of
me. What hurt does it do? Doesn't it run just as well that way?"
Stern looked at her a moment, then laughed.
"Oh, yes; it runs all right," he answered. "Only I thought the
announcement that the pole-star had thrown up its job might startle
you a bit. But I see it doesn't. So far as practical results go, it
accounts for the warmer climate and the decreased inclination to the
plane of the ecliptic; or, rather, the decreased—"
"Please, please, don't!" she begged. "There's nothing really wrong, is
there?"
"Well, that depends on how you define it. Probably an astronomer might
think there was something very much wrong. I make it that the orbit of
the earth has altered its relative length and width by—"
"No figures, Allan, there's a dear. You know I'm awfully bad at
arithmetic. Tell me what it means, won't you?"
"Well, it means, for one thing, that we've maybe spent a far longer
time on this earth since the cataclysm than we even dare suspect. It
may be that what we've been calculating as about a thousand years, is
twice that, or even five times that—no telling. For another thing,
I'm convinced by all these changes, and by the diminution of gravity
and by the accelerated rate of revolution of the earth—"
"Allan dear, please hand me those scissors, won't you?"
Stern laughed again.
"Here!" said he. "I guess I'm not much good as a lecturer. But I tell
you one thing I'm going to do, and that's a one best bet. I'm going to
have a try at some really big telescope before a year's out, and know
the truth of this thing!"
"A big telescope! Build one, you mean?"
"Not necessarily. All I need is a chance to make some accurate
observations, and I can find out all I need to know. Even though I
have been out of college for—let's see—"
"Fifteen hundred years, at a guess," she suggested.
"Yes, all of that. Even so, I remember a good bit of astronomy. And
I've got my mind set on peeking through a first-class tube. If the
earth has broken in two, or anything like that, and our part is
skyhooting away toward the unknown regions of outer space beyond the
great ring of the Milky Way and is getting into an unchartered place
in the universe—as it seems to be—why, we ought to have a good look
at things. We ought to know what's what, eh?
"Then there's the moon I want to investigate, too. No living man
except myself has even seen the side that's now turned toward the
earth. No telling what a good glass mightn't show."
"That's so, dear," she answered. "But where can you find the sort of
telescope you need?"
"In Boston—in Cambridge, rather. The Harvard observatory has the
biggest one within striking distance. What do you say to our making
our trial trip in the boat, up the Sound and around Cape Cod, to
Boston? We can spend a week there, then slant away for wherever we may
decide to pass the winter. How does that suit you, Beta?"
She put away her work, and for a moment sat looking in at the flames
that went leaping up the huge boulder chimney. The room glowed with
warmth and light that drove away the cheerlessness of a foggy, late
August drizzle.
"Do you really think we're wise to—to leave our home, with winter
coming on?" she asked at length, pensively, the firelight casting its
glow across her cheek and glinting in her eyes.
"Wise? Yes. We can't stay here, that's certain. And what is there to
fear out in the world? With our firearms and our knowledge of fire
itself, our science and our human intelligence, we're far more than a
match for all enemies, whether of the beast-world or of that race of
the Horde. I hate, in a way, to revisit the ruins of New York, for
more ammunition and canned stuffs. The place is to o ghastly, too
hideous, now, after the big fight.
"Boston will be a clean ground for us, with infinite resources. And as
I said before, there's the Cambridge observatory. It's only two or
three miles back in the forest, from the coast; maybe not more than
half a mile from some part of the Charles River. We can sail up, camp
on Soldiers' Field, and visit it easily. Why not?"
He sat down on the tiger-rug before the fire, near the girl. She drew
his head down into her lap; then, when he was lying comfortably, began
playing with his thick hair, as he loved so well to have her do.
"If you think it's all right, Allan," said she, "we'll go. I want what
you want."
"That's my good girl!" exclaimed the engineer. "We'll be ready to
start in a few days now. The boat's next thing to finished. What with
the breadfruit, smoked steer and buffalo meat, hams and canned goods
now on our shelves, we've certainly got enough supplies to stock her a
two months' trip.
"Even with less, we'd be safe in starting. You see, the world's lain
untouched by mankind for so many centuries that all the blighting
effect of man's folly and greed and general piracy has vanished.
"The soil's got back to its natural state, animal life abounds, and so
long as I still have a good supply of cartridges, we can live almost
anywhere. Anthropoids? I don't think there's much danger. Oh, yes, I
remember the line of blue smoke we saw yesterday over the hills to
westward; but what does that prove? Lightning may have started a
fire—there's no telling. And we can't always stay here, Beta, just
because there may be dangers out yonder!"