Lost on the Moon Part 3

"Did you see that?" cried Jack.

"Sure," a.s.sented Mark. "Guess he didn't want to wait for us. Why, he's running to beat the band!"

"Let's take after him," suggested Jack, and, nothing loath, Mark a.s.sented. The two lads broke into a run, but, as they leaped forward, the man also increased his pace, and they could hear his feet pounding out a tattoo on the hard road.

The two youths reached the bridge, and sped across it. They glanced hastily on either side, thinking possibly the man might have had some companions, but no one was in sight, and the stranger himself was now out of view around a bend in the highway.

"No use going any farther," suggested Jack, pulling up at the far side of the bridge. "There are two roads around the bend, and we couldn't tell which one he'd take. Besides, it might not be altogether safe to risk it."

Mark and Jack, on their return, told Professor Henderson and the German scientist something of their little excursion.

"But who could he have been?" asked Mr. Roumann. "Perhaps if you ask the boy who brought the note he can tell you."

"We'll do it in the morning," decided Mark.

"It's peculiar that he wanted Mark to meet him," spoke Amos Henderson.

"Have you any enemies that you know of, Mark?"

"Not a one. But what makes you think this man was an enemy, Professor?"

"From the fact that he ran when he saw you and Jack together. Evidently he expected to get Mark out alone."

They discussed the matter for some time, and then the boys and the scientists retired to bed, ready to begin active preparations on the morrow, for their trip to the moon.

There was much to be done, but their experience in making other wonderful trips, particularly the one to Mars, stood the travellers in good stead. They knew just how to go to work.

To Was.h.i.+ngton was entrusted the task of preparing the food supply, since he was to act as cook. Andy Sudds was instructed to look after the clothing and other supplies, except those of a scientific nature, while the two young men were to act as general helpers to the two professors.

As the _Annihilator_ has been fully described in the volume ent.i.tled, "Through s.p.a.ce to Mars," there is no need to dwell at any length on the construction of the projectile in which our friends hoped to travel to the moon. Sufficient to say that it was a sort of enclosed airs.h.i.+p, capable of travelling through s.p.a.ce--that is, air or ether--at enormous speed, that there were contained within it many complicated machines, some for operating the projectile, some for offence or defence against enemies, such as electric guns, apparatus for making air or water, and scores of scientific instruments.

The _Annihilator_ was controlled either from the engine room, or from a pilot house forward. As for the motive power it was, for the trip to the moon, to be of that wonderful Martian substance, Cardite, which would operate the motors.

The projectile moved through s.p.a.ce by the throwing off of waves of energy, similar to wireless vibrations, from large plates of metal, and these plates were the invention of Professor Roumann.

Perhaps to some of my readers it may seem strange to speak so casually of a trip to the moon, but it must be remembered that our friends had already accomplished a much more difficult journey, namely, that to Mars. So the moon voyage was not to daunt them.

Mars, as I have said, was thirty-five millions of miles away from the earth when the _Annihilator_ was headed toward it. To reach the moon, however, but 252,972 miles, at the most, must be traversed--a little more than a quarter of a million miles. As the distance from the earth to the moon varies, being between the figures I have named, and 221,614 miles, with the average distance computed as being 238,840 miles, it can readily be seen that at no time was the voyage to be considered as comparing in distance with the one to Mars.

But there were other matters to be taken into consideration, and our friends began to ponder on them in the days during which they made their preparations.

CHAPTER IV

AN ACCIDENT

Was.h.i.+ngton White was kept busy getting together the food for the voyage, and he had about completed his task, while Andy Sudds announced one morning that his department was ready for inspection, and that he thought he would go hunting until the projectile was ready to start.

"Well, if you see anything of that queer man who sent me the note, just ask him what he meant by it," suggested Mark, for inquiry from the boy who had brought the message, developed the fact that d.i.c.k did not know the man, nor had he ever seen him before. He was a stranger in the neighborhood. But, as nothing more resulted from it, the two lads gave the matter no further thought.

"How soon before we will be ready to start?" asked Jack one day, while he and his chum, with the two professors, were working over the projectile, which was soon to be shot through s.p.a.ce.

"In about two weeks," replied Mr. Roumann. "I want to make a few changes in the Cardite plates, which will replace the ones used on the Etherium motor. Then I want to test them, and, if I find that they work all right, as I hope, we will seal ourselves up in the _Annihilator_, and start for the moon."

"Are you going to try to go around it, and land on the side turned away from us?" asked Mark, who had been studying astronomy lately.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Jack. "Doesn't the moon turn around?"

"Not as the earth does," replied his chum; "or, rather, to be more exact, it rotates exactly as the earth does, on its axis; but, in doing this it occupies precisely the same time that it takes to make a revolution about our planet. So that, in the long run, to quote from my astronomy, it keeps the same side always toward the earth; and today, or, to be more correct, each night that the moon is visible, we see the same face and aspect that Galileo did when he first looked at it through his telescope, and, unless something happens, the same thing will continue for thousands of years."

"Then we've never seen the other side of the moon?" asked Jack.

"Never; and that's why I wondered if the professor was going to attempt to reach it. Perhaps there are people there, and air and water, for it is practically certain that there is neither moisture nor atmosphere on this side of Luna."

"Wow! Then maybe we'd better not go," said Jack, with a s.h.i.+ver. "What will we do, if we get thirsty?"

"Oh, I guess we can manage, with all the apparatus we have, to distill enough water," said Professor Henderson, with a smile. "Then, too, we will take plenty with us, and, of course, tanks of oxygen to breathe.

But it will be interesting to see if there are people on the moon."

"If there are any, they must have a queer time," went on Mark.

"Why?" asked Jack, who wasn't very fond of study.

"Why? Because the moon is only about one forty-ninth the size of the earth. Its diameter is 2,163 miles--only a quarter of the earth's--and, comparing the force of gravity, ours is much greater. A body that weighs six pounds on the earth, would weigh only one pound on the moon, and a man on the moon could jump six times as high as he can on this earth, and throw a stone six times as far."

"What's dat?" inquired Was.h.i.+ngton White quickly, nearly dropping some packages he was carrying into the projectile. "What was yo' pleased t'

saggasiate, in remarkin' concernin' de untranquility ob the densityness ob stones jumpin' ober a man what is six times high?" he asked.

"Do you mean what did I say?" asked Mark solemnly.

"Dat's what I done asked yo'," spoke the colored man gravely.

"Well, you didn't, but perhaps you meant to," went on the youth, and he repeated his remarks.

"'Scuse me, I guess I'd better not go on dish yeah trip after all,"

came from Was.h.i.+ngton.

"Why not?" demanded Professor Henderson.

"'Cause I ain't goin' t' no place whar ef yo' wants t' take a little jump yo' has t' go six times as far as yo' does when yo' is on dis yeah earth. An' s'posin' some ob dem moon men takes a notion t' throw a stone at me? Whar'll I be, when a stone goes six times as far as it does on heah? No, sah, I ain't goin'!"

"But perhaps there are no men on the moon," said Mark quickly. "It is only a theory of astronomers that I'm talking about."

"Oh, only a theory; eh?" asked Was.h.i.+ngton quickly.

"That's all."