Albert Adams, Chester Deming and James Roverton were the names of the mutineers. Adams and Deming were quite young, and Roverton was now verging upon early middle-age. Their very presence in Volmar’s crew was proof of intellectual ability and prime physical fitness, for all had been subjected to examinations of the most rigorous and prolonged order. A high knowledge of mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy and other branches of science had been required, as well as a mastery of mechanics; and perfect sight, hearing, equilibrium and a flawless constitution were likewise requisite. Also, it goes without saying that they belonged to a most active, adventurous type: for no ordinary men would even have volunteered for such a project as Volmar’s. Innumerable voyages had already been made to the moon and the nearer planets; but, previous to this, aside from the one trip made to Alpha Centauri by the Allan Farquar expedition, no one had dared the outer deep and the constellations.
Volmar and the three who had remained faithful to him were all of the same breed: men of religious, well-nigh inhuman devotion to an idea, scientists to whom nothing mattered apart from science, who were capable of martyrizing themselves and others if by so doing they could prove a theory or make a discovery. And in Volmar himself there was a spirit of mad adventure, a desire to tread where no man had been before; the cold flame of an imperial lust for unexplored immensitude. The mutineers were more human; and the years of bleak confinement in the space-flier, among the terrific pits of infinity, remote from all that is life to normal beings, had broken down their morale in the end. Few, perhaps, could have endured it as long as they.
“Another thing,” the chill voice of Volmar went on: “I shall put you off without weapons, provisions or oxygen-tanks. You will have to shift for yourselves—and of course, the chances are that the atmosphere, if there is any, will prove unfit for human respiration. Jasper will now proceed to truss you up, so that there won’t be any more foolishness.”
Alton Jasper, a well-known astronomer, who was first mate of the flier, stepped forward and bound the hands of the mutineers behind them with rope. Then they were locked in a lower apartment of the vessel, above the man-hole that gave entrance and egress. This apartment was insulated from all the rest; and the man-hole could be opened from the higher rooms by means of an electrical device. There the mutineers lay in absolute darkness, except when someone entered with a meager allotment of food and drink.
Aeons seemed to pass, and the three men abandoned all efforts to keep a reckoning of time. They spoke little, for there was nothing to speak of but failure and despair and the dreadful unknown fate ahead of them. Sometimes one of them, particularly Roverton, would gallantly try to crack a jest; but the laughter that answered the jest was the last flare of a courage tried almost beyond human endurance.
One day, they heard the voice of Volmar addressing them through the speaking-tube. It was far-off and high and thin, like a voice from some sidereal altitude.
“We are now approaching Delta Andromedae,” the voice announced.“It has a planetary system, for two worlds have already been sighted. We shall make a landing, and put you off on the nearest one, in about two hours.”
The mutineers felt a sense of comparative relief. Anything, even sudden death from the inhalation of some irrespirable atmosphere, would be better than the long confinement. Stoically, like condemned criminals, they prepared themselves for the fatal plunge into the unknown.
The black minutes ebbed away, and then the electric lights were turned on. The door opened, and Jasper came in. He removed the bonds of the three men in silence; then he retired, and the door was locked upon them for the last time.
They were aware, somehow, that the flier had slackened its speed. They tried to stand up, with their stiffened limbs, and found it hard to maintain their equilibrium, for they had long been habituated to a rate of movement far beyond that of any cosmic body. Then they were aware that the vessel had stopped: there was a sudden jolt that flung them against the wall, and a cessation of the engines’ eternal drone.The silence was very strange, for the throbbing of the great electro-magnetic motors had long been as familiar to them as the beating of their own blood, and as little to be noticed.
The man-hole opened with a harsh, metallic screech, and there was a faint glimmering of bluish-green light from without. Then there came a gust of acrid air, and a waft of indescribable smells that were unlike anything on earth. The mutineers heard the voice of Volmar once more:
“Out with you—and make it quick. I’ve no more time to waste on rubbish.”
Holding his breath, Roverton approached the man-hole, crawled through, and climbed down the steel ladder that ran along the outer side of the flier. The others followed him in turn. They could see little, for apparently it was night in the new world on which they were being landed. They seemed to hang over an indefinite abyss with no bottom, but on reaching the end of the ladder, they found solid ground beneath their feet. The air, though sharp and unpleasant to the nostrils, was apparently breathable. They took a few careful steps, keeping close together, on a surface that was smooth and level to their tread. While they were trying to adjust their senses to the dim surrounding, they saw the vague bulk of the flier begin to move, and then heard the prodigious roar of its ascent to the skies.
II
“Marooned!” said Roverton, with a short laugh.“Well, there’s one safe bet—we’re the first mutineers who have ever been put off in Andromeda. I vote that we make the most of the experience. The air hasn’t killed us yet, so evidently it contains a proportion of hydrogen and oxygen not too dissimilar to that of the earth’s atmosphere. And, with such air, there is a good chance of finding plant-life, or even animal-life, of types that will afford edible substances.”
The three men peered about, straining their eyes in an effort to penetrate the blue-green darkness. None of them was unimaginative; and they felt the thrill of an eeriness beyond all parallel, an overpowering strangeness that preyed upon their nerves with a million intimations of unrevealed and formless things never before conceived by man. Their situation was unthinkably desolate; but behind the desolation there seemed to lurk the multitudinous and multiform teeming of unearthly life. However, they could see nothing tangible, except some vague unmoving masses that resembled large boulders. The air was a little chill, and its acrid character became more noticeable, in unison with a peculiar darkness. The skies above were faint and vaporous, with a few stars glowing dully in their depths. Some of the stars were momentarily obscured and then disclosed, as if there were some movement or change in the occluding medium. Everywhere there was the sense of abysmal and immeasurable distance; and the mutineers were conscious of an odd, terrific vertigo, as if the horizontal spaces on all sides might draw them in like some unfathomable gulf.
Roverton stepped forward toward one of the boulder-like masses, taking careful note of the gravitational pull exerted by the ground. He was not quite sure, but thought that he experienced a sense of weight, of difficulty in locomotion, slightly beyond that which is felt on our earth.
“I think this world is a little larger or heavier than our own,” he announced. The others followed him, and were aware of like sensations. They stopped uncertainly, wondering what was to be done next.
“I suppose the sun will rise some time,” observed Deming. “Delta Andromedae is a sizable affair, and seemingly the warmth it affords is comparable to that of our sun. Doubtless it will yield a similar illumination. In the meanwhile we might as well sit down and wait, if this is a bona fide boulder.”