XII
BETTER THAN ALCHEMY
I come now to a part of my narrative which would have been deemedaltogether incredible in those closing years of the nineteenth centurythat witnessed the first steps towards the solution of the deepestmysteries of the ether, although men even then held in their hands,without knowing it, powers which, after they had been mastered andbefore use had made them familiar, seemed no less than godlike.
For six months after Hall's departure for San Francisco I heardnothing from him. Notwithstanding my intense desire to know what hewas doing, I did not seek to disturb him in his retirement. In themeantime things ran on as usual in the world, only a ripple beingcaused by renewed discoveries of small nuggets of artemisium on theTetons, a fact which recalled to my mind the remark of my friend whenhe dislodged a flake of the metal from a crevice during our ascent ofthe peak. At last one day I received this telegram at my office in NewYork:
"SAN FRANCISCO, May 16, 1940.
"Come at once. The mystery is solved.
"(Signed) HALL."
As soon as I could pack a grip I was flying westward one hundred milesan hour. On reaching San Francisco, which had made enormous stridessince the opening of the twentieth century, owing to the extension ofour Oriental possessions, and which already ranked with New York andChicago among the financial capitals of the world, I hastened toHall's laboratory. He was there expecting me, and, after a heartygreeting, during which his elation over his success was manifest, hesaid:
"I am compelled to ask you to make a little journey. I found itimpossible to secure the necessary privacy here, and, before openingmy experiments, I selected a site for a new laboratory in anunfrequented spot among the mountains this side of Lake Tahoe. Youwill be the first man, with the exception of my two devotedassistants, to see my apparatus, and you shall share the sensation ofthe critical experiment."
"Then you have not yet completed your solution of the secret?"
"Yes, I have; for I am as certain of the result as if I had seen it,but I thought you were entitled to be in with me at the death."
From the nearest railway station we took horses to the laboratory,which occupied a secluded but most beautiful site at an elevation ofabout six thousand feet above sea-level. With considerable surprise Inoticed a building surmounted with a dome, recalling what we had seenfrom the Grand Teton on the roof of Dr. Syx's mill. Hall, observing mylook, smiled significantly, but said nothing. The laboratory properoccupied a smaller building adjoining the domed structure. Hall ledthe way into an apartment having but a single door and illuminated bya skylight.
"This is my sanctum sanctorum," he said, "and you are the firstoutsider to enter it. Seat yourself comfortably while I proceed tounveil a little corner of the artemisium mystery."
Near one end of the room, which was about thirty feet in length, was atable, on which lay a glass tube about two inches in diameter andthirty inches long. In the farther end of the tube gleamed a lump ofyellow metal, which I took to be gold. Hall and I were seated nearanother table about twenty-five feet distant from the tube, and onthis table was an apparatus furnished with a concave mirror, whoseoptical axis was directed towards the tube. It occurred to me at oncethat this apparatus would be suitable for experimenting with electricwaves. Wires ran from it to the floor, and in the cellar beneath wasaudible the beating of an engine. My companion made an adjustment ortwo, and then remarked:
"Now, keep your eyes on the lump of gold in the farther end of thetube yonder. The tube is exhausted of air, and I am about toconcentrate upon the gold an intense electric influence, which willhave the effect of making it a kind of kathode pole. I only use thisterm for the sake of illustration. You will recall that as long ago asthe days of Crookes it was known that a kathode in an exhausted tubewould project particles, or atoms, of its substance away in straightlines. Now watch!"
I fixed my attention upon the gold, and presently saw it enveloped ina most beautiful violet light. This grew more intense, until, attimes, it was blinding, while, at the same moment, the interior of thetube seemed to have become charged with a luminous vapor of a delicatepinkish hue.
"Watch! Watch!" said Hall. "Look at the nearer end of the tube!"
"Why, it is becoming coated with gold!" I exclaimed.
He smiled, but made no reply. Still the strange process continued. Thepink vapor became so dense that the lump of gold was no longervisible, although the eye of violet light glared piercingly throughthe colored fog. Every second the deposit of metal, shining like amirror, increased, until suddenly there came a curious whistlingsound. Hall, who had been adjusting the mirror, jerked away his handand gave it a flip, as if hot water had spattered it, and then thelight in the tube quickly died away, the vapor escaped, filling theroom with a peculiar stimulating odor, and I perceived that the end ofthe glass tube had been melted through, and the molten gold was slowlydripping from it.
"I carried it a little too far," said Hall, ruefully rubbing the backof his hand, "and when the glass gave way under the atomic bombardmenta few atoms of gold visited my bones. But there is no harm done. Youobserved that the instant the air reached the kathode, as I forconvenience call the electrified mass of gold, the action ceased."
"But your anode, to continue your simile," I said, "is constantlyexposed to the air."
"True," he replied, "but in the first place, of course, this is notreally an anode, just as the other is not actually a kathode. Asscience advances we are compelled, for a time, to use old terms in anew sense until a fresh nomenclature can be invented. But we are nowdealing with a form of electric action more subtile in its effectsthan any at present described in the text-books and the transactionsof learned societies. I have not yet even attempted to work out thetheory of it. I am only concerned with its facts."
"But wonderful as the exhibition you have given is, I do not see," Isaid, "how it concerns Dr. Syx and his artemisium."
"Listen," replied Hall, settling back in his chair after disconnectinghis apparatus. "You no doubt have been told how one night the Syxengine was heard working for a few minutes, the first and only nightwork it was ever known to have done, and how, hardly had it started upwhen a fire broke out in the mill, and the engine was instantlystopped. Now there is a very remarkable story connected with that, andit will show you how I got my first clew to the mystery, although itwas rather a mere suspicion than a clew, for at first I could makenothing out of it. The alleged fire occurred about a fortnight afterour discovery of the double tunnel. My mind was then full ofsuspicions concerning Syx, because I thought that a man who would foolpeople with one hand was not likely to deal fairly with the other.
"It was a glorious night, with a full moon, whose face was so clear inthe limpid air that, having found a snug place at the foot of ayellow-pine-tree, where the ground was carpeted with odoriferousneedles, I lay on my back and renewed my early acquaintance with theromantically named mountains and 'seas' of the Lunar globe. With mybinocular I could trace those long white streaks which radiate fromthe crater ring, called 'Tycho,' and run hundreds of miles in alldirections over the moon. As I gazed at these singular objects Irecalled the various theories which astronomers, puzzled by theirenigmatical aspect, have offered to a more or less confiding publicconcerning them.
"In the midst of my meditation and moon gazing I was startled byhearing the engine in the Syx works suddenly begin to run. Immediatelya queer light, shaped like the beam of a ship's searchlight, butreddish in color, rose high in the moonlit heavens above the mill. Itdid not last more than a minute or two, for almost instantly theengine was stopped, and with its stoppage the light faded and soondisappeared. The next day Dr. Syx gave it out that on starting up hisengine in the night something had caught fire, which compelled himimmediately to shut down again. The few who had seen the light, withthe exception of your humble servant, accepted the doctor'sexplanation without a question. But I knew there had been no fire, andSyx's anxiety to spread the lie led me to believe that he had narrowlyescaped giving
away a vital secret. I said nothing about mysuspicions, but upon inquiry I found out that an extra and pressingorder for metal had arrived from the Austrian government the very dayof the pretended fire, and I drew the inference that Syx, in his hasteto fill the order--his supply having been drawn low--had started towork, contrary to his custom, at night, and had immediately foundreason to repent his rashness. Of course, I connected the strangelight with this sudden change of mind.
"My suspicion having been thus stimulated, and having been directed ina certain way, I began, from that moment to notice closely the hoursduring which the engine labored. At night it was always quiet, excepton that one brief occasion. Sometimes it began early in the morningand stopped about noon. At other times the work was done entirely inthe afternoon, beginning sometimes as late as three or four o'clock,and ceasing invariably at sundown. Then again it would start atsunrise and continue the whole day through.
"For a long time I was unable to account for these eccentricities, andthe problem was not rendered much clearer, although a startlingsuggestiveness was added to it, when, at length, I noticed that theperiods of activity of the engine had a definite relation to the ageof the moon. Then I discovered, with the aid of an almanac, that Icould predict the hours when the engine would be busy. At the time ofnew moon it worked all day; at full moon, it was idle; between fullmoon and last quarter, it labored in the forenoon, the length of itsworking hours increasing as the quarter was approached; between lastquarter and new moon, the hours of work lengthened, until, as I havesaid, at new moon they lasted all day; between new moon and firstquarter, work began later and later in the forenoon as the quarter wasapproached, and between first quarter and full moon the laboring hoursrapidly shortened, being confined to the latter part of the afternoon,until at full moon complete silence reigned in the mill."
"Well! well!" I broke in, greatly astonished by Hall's singularrecital, "you must have thought Dr. Syx was a cross between analchemist and an astrologer."
"Note this," said Hall, disregarding my interruption, "the hours whenthe engine worked were invariably the hours during which the moon wasabove the horizon!"
"What did you infer from that?" "Of course, I inferred that the moonwas directly concerned in the mystery; but how? That bothered me for along time, but a little light broke into my mind when I picked up, onthe mountain-side, a dead bird, whose scorched feathers were bronzedwith artemisium, and sometime later another similar victim of amysterious form of death. Then came the attack on the mine and itstragic finish. I have already told you what I observed on thatoccasion. But, instead of helping to clear up the mystery, it rathercomplicated it for a time. At length, however, I reasoned my waypartly out of the difficulty. Certain things which I had noticed inthe Syx mill convinced me that there was a part of the building whoseexistence no visitor suspected, and, putting one thing with another, Iinferred that the roof must be open above that secret part of thestructure, and that if I could get upon a sufficiently elevated placeI could see something of what was hidden there.
"At this point in the investigation I proposed to you the trip to thetop of the Teton, the result of which you remember. I had calculatedthe angles with great care, and I felt certain that from the apex ofthe mountain I should be able to get a view into the concealedchamber, and into just that side of it which I wished particularly toinspect. You remember that I called your attention to a shining objectunderneath the circular opening in the roof. You could not make outwhat it was, but I saw enough to convince me that it was a giganticparabolic mirror. I'll show you a smaller one of the same kindpresently.
"Now, at last, I began to perceive the real truth, but it was sowildly incredible, so infinitely remote from all human experience,that I hardly ventured to formulate it, even in my own secretmind. But I was bound to see the thing through to the end. It occurredto me that I could prove the accuracy of my theory with the aid of akite. You were kind enough to lend your assistance in that experiment,and it gave me irrefragable evidence of the existence of a shaft offlying atoms extending in a direct line between Dr. Syx's pretendedmine and the moon!"
"Hall!" I exclaimed, "you are mad!" My friend smiled good-naturedly,and went on with his story.
"The instant the kite shrivelled and disappeared I understood why theworks were idle when the moon was not above the horizon, why birdsflying across that fatal beam fell dead upon the rocks, and whence theterrible master of that mysterious mill derived the power ofdestruction that could wither an army as the Assyrian host in Byron'spoem
"Melted like snow in the glance of the Lord."
"But how did Dr. Syx turn the flying atoms against his enemies?" Iasked.
"In a very simple manner. He had a mirror mounted so that it could beturned in any direction, and would shunt the stream of metallic atoms,heated by their friction with the air, towards any desired point. Whenthe attack came he raised this machine above the level of the roof andswept the mob to a lustrous, if expensive, death."
"And the light at night--"
"Was the shining of the heated atoms, not luminous enough to bevisible in broad day, for which reason the engine never worked atnight, and the stream of volatilized artemisium was never set flowingat full moon, when the lunar globe is above the horizon only duringthe hours of darkness."
"I see," I said, "whence came the nuggets on the mountain. Some of theatoms, owing to the resistance of the air, fell short and settled inthe form of impalpable dust until the winds and rains collected andcompacted them in the cracks and crevices of the rocks."
"That was it, of course."
"And now," I added, my amazement at the success of Hall's experimentsand the accuracy of his deductions increasing every moment, "do yousay that you have also discovered the means employed by Dr. Syx toobtain artemisium from the moon?"
"Not only that," replied my friend, "but within the next few minutes Ishall have the pleasure of presenting to you a button of moon metal,fresh from the veins of Artemis herself."