Outside the world altogether, as White predicted, voyaging far and away upon the Ether-ocean.—Author, chap. i.
Young Brown and I had completed our home tour, and were safely back again within forty-eight hours. Time is money in these busy days. But the next section of our business tour is not quite so promptly despatched. We were now, in short, to get ready for the foreign tour, and I had certain plans of my own in regard to it, which I must here allude to. First, we would begin with the outer circuit. In taking, lastly, the inner circuit, I must needs gratify an old ambition I have indulged to visit the sun. That was still a difficult, nay, even a dangerous voyage, and, consequently, I never could get my wife's consent to embark upon it, even although I held out the prospects of solid profits in Helium exchanges and other solar trading. The fact is, that the reputed danger constituted still the protection of the solar trade, while that of the planets, the more adjacent of them particularly, was already ground down to the very smallest return, by universal competition, that bane of all modern business.
I meant, in fact, on this opportune occasion, to slip off quietly without fully apprising my old lady of my whole intentions—blessings on her anxious but warm heart! I had now, in fact, quite a host of projects in view, in taking advantage, to the full, of the convenient excuse I had armed myself with, of escorting our young friend, in whom both wife and self were now so equally interested. First, then, young Brown and I would take the outer circuit by ourselves, making Mars our first stage; and, after a visit to the First Jovian (to use our smart commercial phrase for Jupiter's first moon), returning home by way of one or two of the larger planetoids circulating between Jupiter and Mars. That would comprise our outer circuit, and would embrace the chief fields of interplanetary trading as yet in that direction, Jupiter's further moons being too little advanced in organic life for trading purposes, while Saturn's system involves, besides even a still more backward lunar condition, the time and cost of a much greater travel distance.
Next, as to the inner circuit, I meant to bribe old Brown to accompany us. My special object was to have his company and counsel, shrewd old business head as he had on his shoulders, in my proposed solar visit. The relative positions of the inner planets, about the time of our proposed journey, would enable us best to take Venus and Vulcan outwards, touching at Mercury on our way back. Our young friend's business projects took him with us as far only as Vulcan, where we proposed to leave him, old Brown and I going onwards to the sun, and the party rejoining at Mercury, en route homewards. And, lastly, I had made sure that our distinguished friend, White, was to take personal charge, on this particular occasion, of his splendid solar liner, which was to go in its turn at the time about which we had calculated to be ready.
Let me here allude for a moment to my excellent and intimate old friend White, whose nautical genius had now raised him to the highest position in the great ether-ocean navigation of our day. He is, in fact, at the head of the great companies and chief fleets of shipping for both the outer and the inner circuit. And advanced though he now is in years, yet the fire of youth still smoulders within the old tar. Still, he assumes the helm on special or great occasions, and this was one of these, in consideration of some of the company, I rather flattered myself that my being of the party had its weight to stimulate the redoubted old navigator into action, to say nothing of any additional weight in friend Brown. I had a good joke with both about keeping the matter quiet to my wife.
Brown was not a bird so easily caught. He was much more of a stay-at-home than either White or myself. I had to make a solid bargain with the chary old chap, and here was the way I got over him. Besides the prospect of some profitable jobbing in solar wares, a book of our solar adventures was to be written, and Brown was to have full half profits. Brown had a profound idea of my powers of pen. He would even say, contented mortal that he was, that this was one thing about which he grievously envied me. Consequently, I was to engage to do all the writing. But as I knew the fellow to be a shrewd common-sense observer of things in general, and in a business way in particular, I reckoned on Brown for endless padding to our projected volume. Thus I bribed him for his very acceptable company, reckoning the while that as much as I gave I would get out of him somehow in return.
Passing the Stock Exchange vicinities one day during my preparations, I just contrived to get once more a sight of Bullings. Fain would I have interviewed the great man of the place and the day; but surrounded as he was by many others bent on the like mission, and in face of the wary old fellow's practised adroitness in not wasting his time over the smaller to the sacrifice of the larger orders, a mere casual in that line like myself had no chance. The boldness and luck of the man were astounding, and filled people's minds with admiring awe. He was said to be at that very moment deep in a huge speculation, to buoy up still further the already extraordinary premium of the Great Consols Sub stock, and to have everywhere routed his ever-dogging enemies the Bears, His contangoes and carry-overs, and his borrowings, in general on the smallest margins, were upon a scale as unprecedented as was the fortune which he was thus enabled, by anticipation, on balance, already to call his own.
Young Brown and I had booked our passages for Mars in one of White's regular mail liners. There is already a large business done by our earth with that little but active neighbour of ours, whose people, although with some odd and peculiar ways, which I shall have presently to allude to, get on with us very fairly. There is already also a wonderful bustle of shipping. By White's kind help I secured very comfortable berths, and I had, in my own case at least, a special object in so doing, in connection with yet another design in these travels. There must, after all, be something in Brown's notion of my turn for the pen, as that potent implement is ever in my hand upon any leisure occasion. And now with well on to a whole week before me as we voyaged to Mars, I was ready to enter upon an old project—no less than that of sketching out a retrospective history of the last thousand years. I am often wondering what is to be the state of things in and about our world a thousand years hence; but there is much interest, and a good deal more of reality, in ascertaining and comparing the changes of the like interval just passed. Such, then, is the vocation I propose for myself during the interval of leisure in crossing inter-Marsian space, and the still more considerable spaces that are to follow; and, as I have revolved the subject for many a past day, I am now quite ready to fall to work.
There was a goodly throng of passengers. Mars was not quite at his nearest to us just at this time, so as to give us the shortest possible voyage, but he was approaching that relative point as between his orbit and ours, and consequently the usual busy season of Marsian intercourse had set in. Of course it is at such times of the relative approach of the two worlds that there is most intercommunication. The greatly longer voyage at other times is usually too costly, both in time and money, for most traders and passengers. Keen business competition in these days keeps us to close calculations and all possible economies in this way. Young Brown and I amused ourselves for a few spare minutes in watching the scientific preparations for departure; the former, however, intermingling a business view of the case, as he was interested in certain late improvements in the more accurate projection of the protective cross-electric lines to be thrown out towards Mars, alike to guide our direction, and to indicate, warn and shelter us as to meteoric dangers.
Away we go. There is at first a constant racket and bustle as we thread our path through the travelling throng which, passing by us in all directions, occupies our lower atmosphere. Even when we had got above and outside the denser mass of all this locomotive life, and could then, of course, much accelerate our speed, there was still some noise in the mere rapid cleaving of the air, greatly attenuated although it now began to be. Soon, however, we cleared these very outermost limits of our planet, and entered upon the perfect peace of purely ethereal space. Many have written, poetically, ardently, and otherwise, on this subject, and upon the marked and extraordinary change of the traveller's surroundings. For my part, reducing all that sort of thing to the common sense of a business view, I find the striking change in question both useful and agreeable. One gets back all the fresher to one's office, with renovated powers for work, after such outside trips to a neighbouring planet, or even the short crossing to our moon.
Some of our party still found amusement in watching our earth, as we now rapidly receded from it. Of course, half a century ago, when our illustrious Black first discovered, by help of the reduplication of the cross-electric, the means of our material locomotion in outside space, all such sights were novelties and marvels. But, now that habit has blunted the edge of that sort of thing, and business pervades its every corner, we leave this every-day sight-seeing to our school-boys, or to those high poetic flights which can make mental food out of any mortal thing, common or uncommon, in either earth or heaven.
We are not, on this occasion, in the very fastest express, otherwise we should do our distance in somewhat less than the five days we expect to occupy. But having use for the extra time, in view of my literary efforts, I the less grudge it. The cheaper fare, too, of our present mixed goods and passenger mail train was not altogether out of calculation, the higher speeds of the solely passenger expresses requiring more costly management and apparatus, and being thus altogether more expensive. After a good dinner on board, which is given in fair style, considering the narrow and elongated quarters stewards have to deal with in ether-ocean shipping, I retreat to my own quarters and prepare to begin my labours. But before that, I must needs allow myself just one parting glance at our cross-electric protective panoply. It surrounds us like a light but mysterious auroral mist, to protect from meteorite impact and from other space-filling dangers our slight and fragile craft. All seeming in order there, imparting a comfortable security, I take, ere turning in, just one last fond look of our retreating earth, already dwarfed by half a million miles interval, and already also somewhat out of line with our direction, through the progress meanwhile in her own orbit, as she rolls everlastingly along her grand circumsolar highway.
Let me here also glance at our accommodations, and our other navigation arrangements in general, all of which would have much amazed and perplexed our travelling forefathers of a thousand years ago. Our main cabin is, of course, perfectly air-tight; and the air-supply, at the accustomed degree of pressure, is maintained in constant purity and fulness of supply by the anticarbonic rectifiers and the oxygen reserves. But if we want perfect quiet—which was, for example, an object with myself in view of my prospective studies—we can at once completely void our little separate airtight berths, and thus, freed from sound-conveying air, sit when we choose in the silence of very death. And this void or vacuum we usually make, not by the wasteful method of rushing out all the elastic precious breathing element, by the discharge-tap into space, but by the almost equally prompt cross-electric solidification of the air components, which are thus made handy, in small cakes or bars on the shelf, ready to be reconverted into air at will as required. We have also convenient dress and other arrangements by which we pass and repass between the main cabin and these small separate berths, without permitting air into the desired vacuum. And again, when sitting in the vacuum, in the absence of accustomed air-pressure, we substitute for our outer man a certain pressure of elastic clothing, while the inner is regulated by the separate breathing apparatus. Every passenger is precautionarily supplied with this separate and independent apparatus, in case of any unforeseen fracture, either from within or from without, by which all our cabin air-supply might suddenly vanish like a whiff of smoke.
Practice, as well as necessity, makes us wonderfully efficient in all these complex artificial arrangements of our advanced modern civilized and scientific life. I soon got to be quite charmed with this perfect quiet of vacuum, which was often, in fact, of a very striking character—as when groups of passengers, only a few inches away from me, and separated only by the thinnest of sheet-diamond partition, would seem to be carrying on a perfectly mute show of animated talk or still more animated laughter; and I was presently making very fair progress with my projected historical retrospect.