CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
“REPULSITE”
When I returned to consciousness, I saw in the gleam of a lamp an enormous man who stood at my side, looking at me while smiling.
I regarded him with an astonished expression and I prepared to question him, when he said to me:
“Hmm? Dear Sir, it was time that I arrived. If I hadn’t we would have all been blown up...and you first. But where is the doctor?”
“He is below,” I answered, filled with wonder in spite of myself by the coolness of this stranger.
“What? He left you here without showing you how to regulate the cupola-furnace?”
“He believed he would return immediately but I suppose he was the victim of an accident.”
“It is necessary to go to see what occurred,” said the man, who appeared in the clutch of a sudden concern.
I rose painfully, as though I had broken limbs, and followed him.
Arriving at the bottom of the staircase, we found the door which gave onto the corridor closed.
“Ah! I understand,” said my companion. “He got locked out. This would happen to him one day or another with his system of secret locks. But how is it we didn’t hear him?”
“He shouted for a long time,” I answered. “Perhaps at the end emotion overcame him. That wouldn’t be too surprising. I half expected him to explode at any moment.”
The unknown did not answer. Placing his mouth against the wood of the door, he called in a stentorian voice:
“Doctor! doctor!”
We heard a kind of growl. The man then leaned his shoulder against the door and, without apparent effort, made it leap from its hinges.
We found the doctor squatted in the hall. He appeared furious. His hands were bloddy, his clothes splattered with plaster. He must have been making superhuman efforts to leave his prison.
I tried to speak to him. He pushed me back brutally. Then the giant who accompanied me risked a tentative question.
“Enough, Fred!” shouted the doctor. “Enough! I don’t want to hear.”
However he was calmed a little.
“And the cupola-furnace?” he asked.
“I assure you, doctor, there’s no danger since I arrived in time,” answered Fred.
The scientist laughed a little. Then turning to me, he said:
“Ah! my dear Mr Borel! You must have been quite upset!”
Making a point of furnishing proof to the old man that I had the courage of which I had been bragging, I answered in a very calm tone:
“Me? Oh! I tried to avert the danger, but when I understood the impossibility of that, I laid down and, on my faith, awaited death.”
The doctor believed every word. But I saw on the face of Fred a malicious smile. He knew better than anybody what to think of my heroic attitude
Looking at the lock, he examined the bolts carefully.
“See.” he said to me, “when I went down to close this cursed door which had opened from the effect of a gust, a even more violent gale slammed it shut and I was a prisoner. My bolts wouldn’t slide into their grooves and iron bar which connects them was suddenly distorted It will be necessary that I fix that.”.
The day had dawned.
“I believe,” added the doctor, “that after such a night, we all have need for rest. Would you care to accept my hospitality?”
The prospect of hiking three kilometers on foot back to my cottage hardly appealed to me, so I eagerly accepted the scientist’s offer.
He led me to a furnished part of the room where a small cot was covered with turkey-red cotton.
“You rest well,” he said. “I will awaken you about midday. It is now four in the morning, so you will have eight hours of sleep at least. Your nerves, as do mine, need to relax.”
The emotions which had been going through me had left me drained. I threw myself onto the bed fully dressed and was asleep almost at once.
I slept deeply and undoubtedly for a rather long time when I was suddenly awaked by loud cries coming from outside. I sought to understand some of the words in the middle of that confused clamor, but I could distinguish nothing but wild howls and the whines of threatening voices.
The door opened suddenly and the doctor appeared, followed by Fred who held an enormous stick in his hand.
“You hear!” exclaimed the old man. “They want to break down the door! They utter death threats and the gendarmes allow this because there are gendarmes among them! My God! My God! What means all that?
I too was anxious. I opened a window which gave on the plain. At sight of me the cries rose:
“Ah! here he is! There he is!”
And, in the forefront of crowd, I saw my manservant and my gardener.
I gave a burst of laughter and, turning towards the doctor, said:
“You have a bad reputation in the country. They take you for a wizard My servants knew that I was on your premises. Then they didn’t see me return, they supposed that you had killed me.”
Looking down from the window I harangued crowd. In a loud voice I explained that Doctor Omega was not what they thought he was.
“He is a great man!” I exclaimed. “A marvellous man. Soon you will hear of his amazing discoveries. Greet him, my friends! Acclaim him! Did I say he honors France? He honors the whole world!”
Frantic applause burst out. One might have thought a hail storm was falling on a zinc roof.
The doctor, very moved, approached the window and gave an awkward greeting. The acclamations redoubled.
For the first time in his life this modest scientist enjoyed the honors of his triumph.
He wanted to say some words, but his small voice, paralyzed by emotion, emitted strange sounds—in turn serious and sweet, sour and nasal. One might have been able to believe that he sang a Tyrolian yodel. The crowd, which did not hear a word of this short speech, did not express any less enthusiasm.
It had been enough to restore the nerves of a man who, that very morning, had been treated as an enemy It is one of the defects and also one of qualities of a crowd that it can change its opinion so quickly.
When the cheers had ceased, I called my manservant, who was in front of the hangar, and rapidly gave him some instructions. Then turning towards the doctor, whose face radiated joy, I said to him:
“Come to my home, my dear scientist. I offer you lunch.”
A few minutes later, accompanied by the doctor and Fred, I was headed towards my residence.
The crowd opened respectfully to let to us pass and followed us to my cottage.
There, I brought up from my cellar four barrels of excellent wine and gave it to all the population of Marbeuf.
This generous attention increased the popularity of the doctor, to say nothing of raising my stock among the peasants.
With the dessert, the scientist, made cheerful by some glasses of Spanish wine, became very communicative.
“You must have thought me a very strange individual when we first met?”
“Indeed!”
“Yes, yes...you must have thought me insane, but I knew perfectly that nobody had been hurt. I am neither a Kaffir nor a Patagonian If one of my collaborators had been a victim of the explosion, you would not have seen me so merry.”
“You were actually singing.”
“I sang? It is quite possible...but I was so happy!”
“And might one know the cause of this sudden joy?”
“I’ll tell you now, dear friend, to satisfy your curiosity.
“I already told you that, for a long time, I had devoted myself to ceaseless research on various metals, but this research related particularly to radium, this new element which has revolutionized modern science. You are not unaware that, until recently, scientists posed as an axiom that matter attracted matter and that this attraction was proportional to the masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distance.
“But radium seems to want to escape this gravitation; its molecules, far from attracting, are instead repelled with such energy that they are irradiated in all directions with a speed calculated at three hundred and thousand kilometers a second, exactly the speed of light.
“Yes, yes. I have heard of that,” I answered, although these explanations were absolutely new to me
“But, like any very good chemist, I had in my laboratory a precision balance and each time I operated a mixture of several bodies I had care to proportion the weight of each one exactly
“Ever since Lavoisier it was quite obvious—or at least, it seemed obvious—that the weight of the total body was equal to the sum of the weights of the component parts. It was so indisputable a truth no scientist would have thought of disputing it.
“Thus judge my amazement when, one day, after having thoroughly weighed the various minerals which were to combine in my cupola furnace, I realized that the balance indicated a weight appreciably lower than that which it should logically have indicated.
“I assumed that I had made an error in taking the initial weights.
“I repeated the experiment and the same phenomenon occurred.
“Certainly, I said myself, my balance must be wrong.
“I checked it by placing two similar weights there; the plates balanced.
“I then applied the well-known operation of double weighing: my balance was of an irreproachable accuracy.
“For the third time, by carefully supervising the movement of my fingers, I again weighed same metals and I obtained a result in all points similar to the first.
“I started to believe that I had completely lost my mind!
“However, an idea gradually came to me. It was initially a vague assumption, something obscure and hazy, which little by little came to light. It was that my mixture had produced a new materia, one enjoying properties that were phenomenal, unimaginable, amazing.
“After long reflections, I ended up realizing that chance had put me on the track of a discovery.
“This mysterious element, the existence of which I theorized, seemed to have the amazing property of opposing gravitation! There was no doubt but that it had mass , but it weighed nothing!
“Consequently I had but one idea: to isolate this body, to release it from its alloys.
“Ah! All that night I worked on my experiments! To how many useless trials I devoted myself!
“Anyone else in my place would have been discouraged, but I persisted! Something said to me that I was to succeed.
“Four days ago, I had added two new ingredients in my cupola furnace and I counted much on their effectiveness to remove the mysterious metal from the parasitic molecules. The trick was to determine the exact time needed to heat this amalgam.
“An old formula found in a work of alchemy of the sixteenth century had encouraged me to try this experiment. One can think of new ideas only if one draws sometimes from the old books.
“My new mixture boiled in a cupola furnace similar to that which you know when, happily, this cupola furnace exploded thanks to the negligence of one of my workmen—a negligence that I bless today, as you”ll see.
“First of all this catastrophe afflicted me with an insane rage. I almost broke everything in here.
“Shortly after dawn, I left to take the air, because my head was on fire. I automatically went towards the debris of my hangar. A wood ceiling supported by four beams rose in the middle of these ruins.
“Without thinking of the danger to which I exposed myself,—I was no more aware of it than nothing—I penetrated under this wavering platform which might collapse at any moment.
“Suddenly, while raising my head, I saw three small metal spheres which adhered to the ceiling. At first I did not attach much importance to that. Those tiny blocks had undoubtedly been projected as molten metal and had been welded to the boards which they had met on their trajectory. Nothing could be more natural.
“However, I believed I noticed that these spheres were not motionless. They moved slightly. I rubbed my eyes and looked with more attention.
“Indeed, they were stirring.
“Half a broken table was close to me. I propped it up by using stones and I clambered up this impromptu scaffolding.
“By extending my arm, I managed to seize one of the spheres; it detached without difficulty, but I felt, however, when bringing it close to me, a slight resistance comparable with that of a magnet held close to an iron plate.
“Suddenly my scaffolding collapsed and I rolled on the ground. While falling, I had released the sphere which I had held in my hand! Immediately I sought it in the debris, stirring up boards and rubble, but I failed to find it. I was sure it could not have fallen far.
“I then had to resume my gymnastics. But when I raised my arm to seize one of the small blocks of metal, I was amazed.
“There were still three spheres on the ceiling. But I had removed one of them, one which I had dropped to ground!
“I hastily seized the nearest one and jumped to bottom of my scaffolding. I then closely examined the small ball. It did not seem particularly unusual.
“To observe it more closely, I placed it in the hollow of my hand and then—what I will say to you will appear amazing! extraordinary!—it rose gently until it stuck to the ceiling!
“I uttered a cry of triumph that Fred heard in the nearby hangar and I began to dance—to gambol like a madman!
“When Fred arrived, I said to him at once:
“Quickly! quickly! Bring me those balls that you see above your head. But do not throw them. Do not throw, you hear! Pass them to me. If you drop them, they”ll go back into the air.
“Fred looked at me with a flabbergasted air; nevertheless he obeyed without saying a word and handed me, one after the other, the three small spheres.
“I put two in my pocket, held one in my hand, and then went out on to the road.
“Stooping, I placed the ball on the ground, and, after having released it, I righted myself with a jump. It rose at once and when it was level with my chest I caught it.
“I then again placed it on the ground, and again let it free but this time I did not stop. It use until it was higher than my head, then rose more and more quickly.
“Soon I lost sight of it!
“It had disappeared in space!
“O happiness! O miracle! I had found not only a substance refractory to gravitation, but a metal which, upsetting all the natural laws, seemed to be repelled by the force which attracts other bodies towards the ground
“I had managed to remove gravity—you hear me well: gravity! I could now coat a body with this marvellous substance and impart to it a rectilinear, uniform, infinite speed—i.e. a constant speed that nothing in the ether could oppose!
“You are certain that you will be able,” I ventured to say, “to reconstitute this body when you wish?”
“Not only I am certain, but I already have at home several blocks of this metal which I cast without difficulty You even touched one of them.”
“Ah! yes: the famous block which weighs less than a feather.”
“It is that. I thoroughly analyzed the small spheres which remained to me and I now have the formula for this new substance, which I named “Repulsite” because instead of being attracted by gravity it is pushed back by it and makes use of it to rise, like a fulcrum.
“Oh! I will need a lot of this Repulsite in order to try the voyage that I dream of achieving, because this discovery gave me the idea of a great aerial crossing which will seem to you certainly fantastic:—I want to go to the planet Mars
“That is not an ordinary excursion, indeed,” I answered, “but I do not see how, with your Repulsite, you will be able to achieve this long journey through space.”
“All is planned, dear friend, and if you want to come to my laboratory, I will show you some of the extremely curious plans on which I have already worked. You must know them since you will be part of this voyage. That is, if you have decided to accompany me?”
“Now more than ever!”
“Well! let us go!”
Half an hour later, I was again in the laboratory of Doctor Omega.
“Today is August 24th,” said the doctor. “It is necessary that we leave the Earth on April 18th.”
“Why on April 18th”? I asked, astonished.
“Because I have calculated that by leaving on this date we would reach the planet Mars at the exact moment when it will be only 56 million kilometers from the Earth.”
“That is already a pretty distance!”
“Yes, but it is relatively tiny if one thinks that, when this planet is at its aphelion, it is 400 million kilometers from our globe. It will take us just seventeen days and two hours to arrive at Mars.”
“And how did you manage to determine this time so exactly?”
“Nothing could be simpler! You know the law of gravity? You know the law of falling bodies, do you not? You know that any body left to itself is affected by a constant force called gravity and falls to the ground at a uniformly accelerated motion.”
“Perfectly.”
“During the first second of its fall, this body will travel 4 m. 90; it will have traversed 19 m. 60 during the two first seconds; 44 m. 10 during the first three; 78 mr. 40 during the first four and so on.
“The Repulsite, as its name indicates it, is not attracted towards the ground, but is pushed back by a force quite as constant as gravity.
“It thus takes a uniformly accelerated movement, but in a contrary direction.
“It goes up instead of falling and the speed of sound rise is exactly that which a body subjected to the laws of attraction would take.
“It will thus rise 4 m. 90 during the first second; 19 m. 60 during the second; 44 m. 10 during the third; 78 m. 40 and so on, according to the well-known formula:
until the moment when we will penetrate the zone of attraction of the planet Mars, after approximately eight days and thirteen hours of travel.
“At this time we will be traveling at a rate of 800 kilometers a second.”
“But,” I objected, “before arriving at this zone of attraction, as our speed will increases to fantastic proportions, are we not likely to burn up?”
“No, because when we take a close look at this danger, we will see that we will have gone beyond the extreme limits of the atmosphere, which hardly exceed a hundred kilometers.”
“Ah! very well,” I said. “But you haven’t told me what kind of vehicle you will employ to make this voyage.”
“I have just gotten to that point,” answered the doctor. “We will leave in a shell.”
“Like the heroes of Jules Verne?”
Doctor Omega shrugged his shoulders.
“I speak to you seriously,” he said. “You will compare an imaginary voyage with ours? The design of Jules Verne was purely hypothetical, while mine...”
“Continue, doctor, please.”
“I said that we would leave in a shell. It is the truth, and you can believe that this projectile will be marvelously built.
“Here the few plans which I have outlined, and if you want it know all about this, you would be well to examine them closely.”
Doctor Omega placed under my eyes small sheets of paper on which were represented in various drawings a very lengthened shell provided with complicated accessories.
“See,” the scientist told me, “here our vehicle. It will be 13 meters long and 3 in diameter. But it will not be strictly a shell-projectile only: it will be a submarine and automobile in turn.”
My eyes widened like saucers.
“Yes, I said automobile and submarine. Before reaching the mountains of Mars it will be necessary for us to cross the immense seas which surround this planet; then we will have to traverse this unknown world quickly in order to transport us towards the inhabited center.
“You believe that there are inhabitants of Mars?”
“We will know it soon enough. But look further at my plans...
“The projectile will be surrounded by a layer of Repulsite five centimetres thick. Under this is a second shell of light steel which can be, when we wish it, absolutely independent of the outer jacket, which we will be able to shed gradually. But I will explain that to you later.
“Four rooms,” continued the doctor, “will be spared in the interior of our vehicle which we will illuminate by means of lights actuated by a dynamo and an eight cylinder, 200 horse power motor. The floors of each of these rooms rests on a gimbal. You know that a body maintained by this system always remains in its normal position, whatever the slope which one gives to the apparatus, thanks to a set of concentric circles which oscillate one within another around perpendicular pivots between them.
“Our port-holes, our windows, if you prefer, instead of being furnished with panes which would diminish the upward force, will be made of transparent Repulsite. See this double helix now?”
“Yes.”
“It will be enough to press on a lever to make it leave the projectile instantaneously; it is connected to the engine by a drive shaft made of steel.”
“And these wheels which I see there?” I asked.
“They are the wheels of the car. When we want to make our shell a terrestrial vehicle, it will be enough to trip this release, so that at once this frame you see tinted in red will lower by one meter, sliding in grooves in the bottom of the shell.
“This descending movement will operate four openings in the sides of the projectile thus allowing the wheels to contact the ground. Then, instead of directing the vehicle using a rudder, as when it is underwater, we will steer it by means of this wheel. Finally, two powerful brakes will give to our planetary shell all the qualities of a car.”
“Everything is marvelously conceived!” I exclaimed. “Ah! doctor, you are a genius! An innovator whom one will in a few months look like one of our national glories!”
The scientist did not answer, but I saw in his small eyes a gleam of pride.
“Be assured,” he continued, “that everything will have its place in our metal coach. Nothing will be missing.”
“But how will we breathe? It will be impossible to open the port-holes to renew our provision of air?”
“You suppose I did not forget the main thing? We will carry with us sufficient tubes of oxygen to carry us through the outward journey and the return.”
But the scientist hesitated a few seconds before pronouncing that last word.
Perhaps, despite all the confidence he had for the start of our journey, he didn’t look at the future without some concern.
Finally, he took from a drawer an immense sheet on which was drawn our future vehicle.
I had hitherto seen only the separate parts of the Great Whole which was to compose the air projectile
This time, instead of being represented horizontally it was slightly tilted, i.e. in the position which it was to occupy in space.
I noticed it was separated along its length, below the ogival part to the base, by a kind of metal partition divided into three floors with small doors communicating between them.
Imagine a building resembling a mosque on the left of which curves an iron staircase.
The cabin at the bottom was reserved for provisions, because the doctor, who thought of everything, had not forgotten the food. We would carry with us a quantity of hams, salted meats, preserves and biscuits, bottles of pale ale, champagne, wine and mineral water.
The second floor, surrounded by small square cupboards, contained two beds and a mobile table posed on a gimbal.
The third floor, i.e., the front, was to be the conning tower. It would be there that the doctor would supervise the movement of his projectile.
The other compartment—I said that the shell was divided into two down its length—also contained three parts. I do not know by what system, but it was enough to press on a lever so that immediately the floors were folded back against the wall of the vehicle.
While I looked at this plan with attention, Doctor Omega observed me over his glasses.
Finally I exclaimed:
“All this is fairy-like! Provided you can actually carry out this imposing project!”
“Nothing prevents me,” answered the scientist. “I sacrificed my fortune to conclude this business.
“I have already contacted telegraphically the establishment of Creusot; soon I will send a copy of these plans to them and they will begin work at once.”
* * * * *
For nearly three months we worked without slackening. The scientist remade all his calculations, modified part of his plans and I recopied the figures which he had hastily scribbled
Finally, on November 27th, I left for Creusot, in company with the doctor and Fred.
When we arrived at the factories, the enormous projectile had already been run in the moulds, but since, of course, one had not been able to cast it in a single block, it was divided into three parts which were to be joined together using bolts and hoops.
The doctor examined this work attentively and appeared satisfied, then began a lengthy discussion with the factory’s engineers.
I thought they believed my friend to be insane. Nevertheless, since he was paying, they followed his instructions to the letter.
For six months, thirty workmen were attached to the service of the doctor, and about the middle of March our vehicle was almost finished.
Nothing remained but to cast the envelope of Repulsite. There the difficulties really started.
One had to transport the projectile under a very low hangar whose roof had been strongly consolidated, because the pieces of Repulsite which left the moulds went up at once in the air like sheets of paper and stuck to the higher beams.
April 2nd, the projectile was entirely covered with its anti-gravitational armor. I would not have you believe, however, that the envelope of Repulsite was welded to the shell.
On the contrary, it was mobile and could, thanks to a simple operation, quickly slip around the vehicle.
This is important to remember.