Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 05.djvu/14

sky, was the most tremendous thing I ever looked upon!

Soon afterward Edmund changed the course again. We had not come upon the expected meteors in any great numbers, and Edmund said he felt safe now in running into the planet’s shadow, and making a landing on her night hemisphere.

You see, Venus, as Schiaparelli had found out, doesn’t turn on her axis once every twenty-four hours like the earth, but keeps always the same face to the sun. The consequence is that she has perpetual day on that side, and perpetual night on the other. I asked why we didn’t land on the daylight side, but Edmund said his plan was safer. We could easily go from one hemisphere to the other, he declared.

But it didn’t turn out to be as easy as he thought.

“I hardly expect to find any inhabitants on thé dark hemisphere,” he said. “It must be fearfully cold there—too cold for life to exist, perhaps. But one can never tell. Anyhow, I am going to find out. We’ll just stop for a look at things, and then the car will carry us round to the other side. We can thus approach the inhabitants, who, I am sure, exist on that side, from behind, as it were, and that will give us a chance to reconnoiter them a little, and plan our arrival safely.”

“If Venus is rightly named,” said Jack, “I’m for getting where the inhabitants are as soon as possible.”

When we swung round into the shadow of the planet we got her between the sun and us. Then she completely hid the sun, and appeared like an immense black circle, blacker than the sky itself. But all round this black circle appeared a most beautiful ring of light.

“That’s her atmosphere,” said Edmund, lighted up by the sun from behind. But, for the life of me, I can’t tell what those great flames mean.”

He referred to a vast circle of many-colored flames that blazed and flickered with all the hues of the rainbow at the inner edge of the ring of light. It was the most awful, and at the same time beautiful, sight that I ever gazed at.

“That’s something altogether outside my calculations,” Edmund averred. “I can’t account for it at all.”

“Perhaps they are already celebrating our arrival with fireworks,” said Jack, always ready to take the humorous view of everything.

“That’s not fire,” Edmund responded. “What it is I cannot say. But we’ll find out. I haven’t come all this distance to be scared off.”

Our approach was so rapid that the immense black circle grew, hour after hour, with portentous swiftness. Soon it was so large that we could no longer see its boundaries through the peep-hole.

“We’re within a thousand miles,” said Edmund finally. “We must be close to the upper limits of the atmosphere. The atmosphere of Venus is denser and more extensive than that of the earth, and if we rush into it we shall be burnt up by the effects of friction. I’ll have to slow down.”

He slowed down a little more rapidly than was comfortable. It was jerk after jerk, as he dropped off the power, but at last we got down to the speed of an ordinary express-train. Being out of the sunshine now, we had to use the electric-lamp to illuminate the car.

At length we got so close that the surface of the planet became dimly visible. We were settling very slowly by this time, and as we drew gradually nearer we began to notice singular shafts of light, that seemed to issue from the ground beneath us, as if it had been covered with so many iron foundries.

“By Jove!” cried Edmund; “I believe there are inhabitants on this side after all. I certainly don’t believe that those lights come from volcanoes. I’m going to make for the nearest one, and will soon know what they are.”

Accordingly, he steered the car for one of the gleaming shafts. It grew brighter as we approached, and threw a faint illumination upon the ground around it. Everything seemed to be very flat and level, as if we were dropping down upon a prairie. But no features could be clearly made out in the gloom.

Edmund boldly approached within a hundred feet of the light and, with the slightest perceptible bump, we touched the soil of Venus.

“It’s probably frightfully cold outside,” said Edmund; “and we’ll put on these things by way of precaution.”

He dragged out of one of his innumerable receptacles a lot of thick fur garments and gloves, as if we were going among the Eskimos, and made us put them on, while he dressed himself in similar fashion. Then he handed to each of us a pair of big automatic pistols, telling us to put them in our side-pockets. These preparations having been made, he cautiously opened the door, after having, as he said, electrically anchored the car to the ground.

The air that rushed into the car as the door was opened almost hardened us into icicles. It was colder than ten thousand icebergs!

“It won’t hurt you,” Edmund exclaimed. “It can’t be down to absolute zero, on account of the atmosphere. I’ve kept it so warm inside the car that you’ve become pot-boiled. You’ll soon be used to this. Come on!”

And he led the way out.

After glancing round us for a moment we cautiously approached the shaft of light.

It issued from an irregular round hole.

As we drew near the edge we saw that there were rough steps at one side of the pit, leading downward.

In another instant we were frozen stiff. Not with cold, but with amazement. My heart for a moment stopped beating.

Standing on the steps, watching us, with eyes as big and luminous as moons, was a creature shaped like a man, but more savage-looking than a gorilla!