Page:Weird Tales Volume 3 Number 2 (1923-02).djvu/6

 arising in Monning. No doubt his talk, with the earnest Weston that morning had caused this. At any rate, Monning, hard-headed and stubborn as he was, felt, somehow, that he was about to witness the beginning of a magnificent achievement.

Weston watched the throng gather from the door of his workshop. A cynical smile quirked his lips. The majority were pleasure seekers, some were merely curious, some extravagant pessimists, a few' neutral, still fewer envious; none had faith in him.

Weston blamed himself for their lack of faith—he had never made any friends. Even in college his time had been taken up with his experiments. And yet he hated them for their skepticism, their pessimism, their utter lack of sympathy. Such attitude of mind caused him to wait impatiently for the time of his departure, a departure which would leave behind no sorrowing ones, nor leave him with any regrets in his heart.

At a few minutes of eight o'clock Weston mounted the ladder leading to the door of the rocket. A hundred searchlights played upon him as he climbed through the dripping atmosphere. Weston disappeared inside the rocket. The searchlights paused on its rain-drenched, glistening sides. The great throng seemed to hold its breath as the minutes ticked on toward eight o'clock. Motionless, yet menacing, a suddenly superhuman thing, the steel monster lay pointing into the heavens.

Five minutes after Weston entered the rocket, a great beam of dazzling light flashed out where the rocket had stood. Accompanying it, a terrific, grinding roar shook the entire vicinity. Automobile windows were broken by the shock; spectators on foot were overthrown, while a powerful wind swept back over them, carrying every light object with it from the center of disturbance. Panic reigned, and then was quieted by sight of the powerful beam of light shining down through a jagged rent in the clouds. Around the gaping hole, lit up by the dazzling white light, the gray vapor twisted and tumbled as though some mighty vortex of wind was whirling heaven-ward. A distant rumble, like peals of thunder, rolled incessantly.

As suddenly as the beam of light had blinded the spectators, it drew up through the rent in the enshrouding clouds and disappeared. As quickly the muttering thunder died away from far above. The great crowd, with little thought of the damage wrought, dispersed slowly, many with a great awe in them. Monning shivered in the rear seat of his car, and his joking friend was strangely silent on the way back to the city.

The terrific shock of the first explosion rendered Weston unconscious. The speed at which he was traveling was tremendous. Three thousand miles he had traveled before he awakened slowly in the depths of the cushioned shock absorbers. It seemed to him that the rocket was traveling slowly. He knew as in a dream that his engine was awaiting the explosion of the next cartridge of gas.

It came, and the rocket tore on at terrific speed through interstellar space. A ponderous weight crushed Weston's strong frame. His body was flattened out in the depths of the great cushions. Weston did not grow quite unconscious, but he was unable to move hand or foot.

Six days the rocket roared on through the sky, passing afar the outermost fingers of satellite gravity. Free from earth magnetism and carrying its unconscious driver, the man-made engine tore on like a comet, plunging thousands of miles through the infinite void at the urge of the explosions behind.

Across interstellar space the rocket sped into the whorls of Mars's gravity. At first it was almost imperceptibly that the rocket reacted to the magnetism of the whirling planet, then slowly it began to fall. And then, faster and faster, head on, it rushed, toward substance.

Weston grew conscious of the change of atmosphere. A definable roar was apparent, though his ears were almost deafened to all sound. But Weston knew the sound now above all was the roar of displaced air. Air meant a planet body!

With infinite slowness, but gigantic effort, Weston threw off the switch igniting the driving cartridges. Again he found another switch and threw it over. A cartridge in the fore part of the rocket exploded with a terrific hiss and rumble. The rocket wavered in mid-air, backed slightly, then rushed on, while a funnel of livid fire spouted from the rear. Weston set off a second, and then a third charge. Once the rocket shot fifty miles backward, but the charges were light, and the gravity drawing it again took effect.

A fourth charge Weston set off. The gas split the atmosphere with rending fury, and an instant later Weston, in a half conscious state, felt a crash, a terrific jolt, then silence, while a sensation of falling into unfathomable, illimitable space possessed him.

ESTON awakened with a ray of light in his eyes. A great silence beat upon him. He tried to move, but his tortured, starved, thirst-parched body refused to obey his will.

Blinking wonderingly at the light shining through the interstices of the ventilators in the rocket's steel body, Weston strove to obtain command of himself. He succeeded a little and his memory returned. All the terrible flight came back as an unbelievably terrible dream.

Maundering through his thirst-parched lips, Weston managed to move his hands and arms. He pulled the compressed air nozzle from his face and felt refreshed. Trembling, squirming, panting, the disheveled, gaunt and weary man turned on the hose from the water tank nearby. He drank from the running stream with greedy gulps.

With the quenching of his thirst, he found more strength, and worked upon the cover of his larder, which chest now rested over his head. Most of the contents came tumbling down on his head, and from the pile of provisions thus precipitated about him he selected a can of milk and, after an exhausting struggle, cut open the can. He found to his disappointment that the milk had hardened into a cheesy mass. Resting on his back, he nibbled the pulpy mass.

Many times he felt an impulse to wolf the entire bit of food, but conquered it by a supreme effort. He dozed off, and it seemed to him that occasionally and from afar he beard a monotonous chant, as of spirit voices. He fell asleep, with the strange, lulling sound in his ears.

When he next awakened a red light glowed about him. The strangeness of it kept him lying still and thinking. He felt a queer lightness, but reasoned that his condition might cause that. When he turned over on the cushions it was to experience an ease of movement little short of magical. But on struggling to a sitting posture he found how terribly weak he really was.

After another drink of water Weston's brain grew clearer. He thought more rationally and felt a new interest in his surroundings. He managed to eat, without dangerous consequence, the greater part of a can of meat from his larder. The food strengthened him a little.

With this renewal of strength, Weston experienced an almost irresistible impulse to investigate the phenomenon of red light. But he mastered this feeling, reasoning that he was not strong enough