Page:Weird Tales v02n04 (1923-11).djvu/12

Rh "Precisely. And that's just what Proctor thought this discovery of Layard's indicated."*

"How old, it seems, the world is, and man is!"

"And how young! But to return to Aphrodite.

"As for her axial period, the elder Cassini was the first to make a determination, and he set it down as twenty-three hours and fifteen minutes. Bianchini, in 1726, gave it as twenty-four days and eight hours; but J. Cassini pointed out. that there could be deduced, also, from the observations of Bianchini an axial period of twenty-three hours and twenty minutes. That given by Schroeter, in 1789, was twenty-three hours, twenty-one minutes and nineteen seconds, which he afterwards corrected and made twenty-three hours, twenty minutes and 7.977 seconds. From over ten thousand observations, De Vico, of Rome, deduced a diurnal rotation of twenty-three hours, twenty-one minutes and 21.956 seconds a conclusive deduction, one would think.

"However, in 1890, Schiaparelli made the startling announcement that Venus rotates very slowly, that her axial rotation is probably isochronous with her orbital revolution; in other words, that she always keeps one face turned toward the sun, just as the moon does toward the earth.

"Lowell's observations led him to the same conclusion. Her sky-which others declare is densely cloud-laden-he finds invariably clear (the great brilliancy of her atmosphere, indeed, he explains by this very clearness) and he also finds certain faint spoke-like markings, which do not move across the planet's disk, as they would do did Venus rotate like the earth.

Then Belopolsky sought to solve the problem with the spectroscope; the displacement of the lines showed a rotation period of about twenty-three hours. This would seem to conclude the question; but Lowell followed suit; and the Flagstaff spectrograms, taken by Slipher, gave no evidence whatever of a rapid rotation.

"'They yielded, indeed,' Lowell tells us, 'testimony to a negative rotation of three months, which, interpreted, means that so slow a spin as this was beyond their power to precise.'

"On the other hand, Professor See- who claims that Venus is an inhabited world- is convinced that the rapid rotation is the true one; indeed, he declares that 'a period of about twenty-four hours is shown to be the only one possible.'

"So there you are. Judge for yourself."

"I find a lot of leaves," I told him, "but very few grapes. However, what do you believe?"

"That the evidence is preponderantly in favor of the short period of rotation."

"Let us hope 'tis the true one," said I. "Heaven pity the poor planet if one side is an oven and the other an ice-box."

"In point of fact," Henry went on, "I am convinced that the planet's axial spin is a rapid one. For, as Arrhenius has pointed out, if one side of the planet was in eternal darkness she would not have any atmosphere to speak of; the temperature on that night side would be near minus two hundred and seventy-three degrees Centigrade-the absolute zero- and all the atmospheric gases would be there, and frozen liquid or solid:*

"But we find no such thing on Venus; her atmosphere, as both visual and spectroscopic observations show, is a dense one, probably even denser than our own, and contains a considerable amount of water-vapor.

"So much, though, for her diurnal spin. When it comes to her axis, there is a like uncertainty. Some observers believe that it is nearly perpendicular to the plane of her orbit. If this is so, then she has no appreciable succession of seasons, but the seasons (if we may so call them) lie in zones and are perennial, and day and night, everywhere on the planet, are of equal length.

"Others, however, assure us that the inclination is in reality about the same as that of Terra's axis; while still others picture a world as terrible, almost, as that Venus of Schiaparelli and Lowell.

at an angle of probably no more than fifteen degrees. That of the earth's is sixty-six and one-half degrees. Venus' equator, therefore, is, roughly, where the earth's axis is and her axis is in about the same place as Terra's equator. If this is so, the torrid and temperate zones overlap each other, and the boreal and austral regions have, at one solstice, a frigid temperature and a torrid heat at the other, which would make things mighty uncomfortable for Terrestrials.

"However, for my part, I believe that we have nothing to fear from this remarkable inclination-that in this respect, as in so many others, Venus closely resembles the earth.

"The difference between the gravities of the respective orbs is not noteworthy.

"The planet has no moon."

"And now what more? Venus must be inhabited. Her physical habitudes must closely resemble those of this. planet. Of course, because of her greater proximity to the sun, the amount of light and heat that is poured upon Venus greatly exceeds that which this planet of our receives; but the heavy cloud-envelope is a good protection, reflecting much of it and rendering the surface of the planet cool and equable.

"But even if there is no cloud-envelope, even if the Venusian skies are as clear as our skies, one could live in the temperate, subarctic and arctic zones, though no Terrestrial could endure the heat poured down upon her equatorial regions.

"Then there are the mountain and the plateau heights; one could find any kind of climate."

"So men could surely live on her surface, cloud-envelope or no cloud-envelope that is, so far as the rigors of climate are concerned. Whether the Cythereans, or Venusians or whatever we choose to call her inhabitants-would permit one to live in comfort remains to be seen; and I am going to see.

"It is obvious that it would be idle to speculate on the manner of inhabitants that people her solitudes or swarming cities. Perhaps there are creatures of high intelligence there, but there may be nothing of the kind. Who can say? But one thing is certain."

"And that is-" I suggested.

"There are no human beings!"

"I knew it was that."

"If we believed that each kind of living things was created by a. direct fiat of the Creator- if we believed this, then the belief that Venus may be inhabited by human beings would be tenable; but, since evolution is an incontestable fact, this belief is an utter absurdity: evolution can not progress along parallel, identical lines on two planets."

"I can see as far into a millstone as another man," I told him.

"That was true once, Rider, but not now: the other fellow may have an X-ray."

Said St. Cloud: "In that star of the west, by whose shadowy splendor, At twilight so often we've roamed thro' the dew, There are maidens, perhaps, who have bosoms as tender, And look, in their twilights, as lovely as you."


 * Was there once a now forgotten age when men were as learned as we are today, and did a little of this knowledge descend to their degenerate successors in the form of uncomprehended traditions?-Garrett P. Serviss.


 * Except the helium and the hydrogen. - H. Q.