The Voyage of the Asteroid by Laurence Manning

Author:Laurence Manning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-07-03T00:00:00+00:00

BACK in the vestibule again, I knocked off the neck of the second jar and stoppered it up with the gum Haworth had given me for that purpose. Then I was inside and getting out of the cumbrous helmet by myself—Haworth and Mason (selfish brutes!) eagerly rushing the jars to the little built-in laboratory in the pump-room.

By the time I got untangled and over to them they were talking to each other excitedly.

There passed several minutes of tense expectancy.

Suddenly Mason cried out and danced madly about in a circle.

“We can breathe it!” he shouted.

“You can’t exactly call it air. There’s no nitrogen in it—at least so little as to be not easily detected.”

He turned to Haworth excitedly. “Helium!” he explained.

Haworth paused in his own analysis and looked up interested.

“Almost three-quarters helium and the rest oxygen. But it’s breathable, just the same—good, life-giving air for all purposes. I’m so certain of it that I don’t believe we have to make any more tests!”

Eager as we were to look out and breathe the atmosphere of this new world, yet we waited for our leader to complete his tests on the water. Finally he straightened up, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Something queer here. It seems to be H2O, but it’s full of chlorine. Now why chlorine? Oh, of course! There’s not sufficient sodium on Venus to combine with it to make salt as it did on Earth. We’ll have to evaporate all water before drinking, anyway. Smelly stuff, isn’t it?”

But almost before his remarks were finished he was at the door—eager as any of us. We had both air-lock doors open within ten seconds and looked out over the ocean. We breathed recklessly of the air. The breeze was deliciously fresh, full of the taint of chlorine as it was. We could not see far at first for the swirling steam. Water in all directions—not blue or green, but black and rather depressing. The motion and sound of the waves were tremendously exhilarating after our months of utter stillness.

“If this fog would only lift, perhaps we could see something!”

Minute after minute went by. I stared with beating heart at the seascape, such of it as we could see through the whitish vapor. It was another world. The feel of the air, the appearance of the waves, the smell on the breeze and even something additional (perhaps the slight increase in air pressure our instruments recorded) all bespoke the unfamiliar.

After ten minutes peering through the blinding fog Haworth cleared his throat.

“Suppose this fog never does clear!”

A wild thought and great impatience possessed me.

“But if it doesn’t, then we can never see anything—never discover anything! Besides, why shouldn’t it clear?”

But I realized then, deep inside of me. For centuries the astronomers on Earth had gazed at this planet and never once could they say for certain they had seen anything but clouds. We knew that. Yet we never thought of such a dense fog as this. It was hot mist—in fact, steam.

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