Read 1889: Journey To The Moon (The Far Journey Chronicles) for Free Online Page B

Merkam stated. “The other problem was the obviously foreseeable buildup of breath gasses.”
    “Ah. Carbon dioxide,” Tesla intoned.
    “Why along the side?” Billy Gostman asked.
    Merkam continued, “What are the walls now will be the floors or ceilings later on. I think you’ll find them a nice cushion, should they ever need to be used as such.”
    “Impressive,” Denys Jay-Patten said. To Jay-Patten’s right was Abigail Ross, the steam engineer’s wife.
    “Not as impressive as the cost for all this,” Mrs. Ross stated. On the surface it seemed an offhand remark, but she was known for her scalpel wit—especially when Merkam was around. The two had a history of sorts, this was plain. Merkam ignored her.
    “Not only carbon dioxide, but water vapor. With nine people breathing in such limited space over the course of some days or weeks, a regular cloud would form in here, and I would prefer having no weather during this trip.”
    “Weeks...” Tesla began, but his voice trailed off.
    “Right, now if you’ll come this way, I’ll show you the true beating heart of the Arcadia .” Merkam climbed four short iron steps, stepped up onto the railed landing at the top of the massive cylinder, and waited. When everyone was present, he proceeded. “Now, if you’ll look down there, you’ll see Steam Ross busy making last-minute adjustments to the transmogrifier.”
    “Trans-what?” Jay-Patten asked.
    “I am so very much thinking that no such word is of existence in the English,” Koothrappally said.
    “True, Professor Koothrappally. But in engineering, we take a word and give it a bit of a twist to explain a thing that has not heretofore existed, as you so eloquently put it. Trans would mean travel, of course. The –ier suffix should be sufficient in itself.”
    “What about the Mog? Or the Mogrif?” Billy Gostman asked. Leave it to Billy to ask exactly the wrong question.
    Merkam patted his chest and made a show of clasping his open vest. He nodded a few times. “Well. That is a good question. We’re not exactly sure what you would call what it does. It defies the language. You are all familiar with Sir Isaac Newton, I’m sure.”
    “Never met the hombre,” Billy said.
    The others chuckled, and Billy blushed.
    “Quite,” Merkam continued. “You see, according to gravity theory, we and every object on this Earth is held down by the force of gravity. But say that you were to suspend that force somehow. What would happen?”
    “Yes. What?” Tesla asked.
    “We do know that the Earth travels around the sun in a fairly circular fashion and returns to its exact starting point in roughly three hundred and sixty-five days, give or take. Therefore, the Earth is traveling at an amazing velocity.”
    Koothrappally began dotting the air with his finger. His eyelids fluttered for a moment and he spoke in a whisper, “Ninety-three million times pi squared...orbit of...” his voice trailed off, then, “divided by three hundred sixty five...my goodness gracious, but I am seeing six thousand and six hundred miles in the hour. But then the thing is spinning on itself at one thousand miles in the hour, and...oh my goodness!”
    “Well put,” Jay-Patten said.
    “It is safe to say that if such a force were applied to instantly break the iron bonds of what we call gravity—but which I assure you is a singular lie—then the Earth, and the moon itself, which is bound to the Earth, would fly away from us, leaving us stranded in space.”
    “We’d have to wait a year for it to come back around,” Billy said. “That sounds about right.”
    “No, we would be stranded forever,” Merkam said. “All of my astronomical research shows that the stars are moving through the ether at an alarming rate. The constellations, for instance, of the ancient Egyptians and the Mayans show the stars in slightly different quarters than they exist today.”
    “I don’t know about taking this trip all of a sudden,” Abigail Ross