CHAPTER I
A Marvelous Invention
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dmund Stonewall was the most ingenious man that ever lived.
In my private opinion he was the greatest human being that has ever appeared on this earth. I say this, despite the fact that against my will, and without my knowledge at the start, he took me and two of our friends in common on the wildest, craziest, most impossible and incredible adventure that ever imagination conceived.
I ought to hate Edmund Stonewall for what he did to me and to my friends; but, in fact, I reverence his memory.
Let me tell you the story, and then you will see the reason that underlies my feeling toward him.
In the first place, he made the most wonderful invention that ever the world heard of. In fact, until now the world never has heard all about it, and I shudder yet when I think of it.
It was, of course, based on electricity, for everybody knows now that electricity is at the bottom of everything. It came out of that discovery which made so much excitement at the beginning of the twentieth century—“radioactivity.”
What is radioactivity?
Heaven only knows. But it came near being the death of me; it has robbed me of my dearest friends; and I don’t know but that, if Stonewall had kept on, it might have put a finish to this old earth of ours!
Stonewall was always bothering himself about “power” and “energy” and what not. He knew machinery and engines as a boy knows craps and marbles. But he was dissatisfied with everything.
“Men are fools,” he said. “They might be like gods. They ought to run the globe, and steer it where they like.”
You remember the old “Keeley motor?” Well, Edmund believed in it, but said Keeley had got hold of the wrong end, and would never make it go that way.
All the while he was experimenting himself. He had money from a rich uncle, I guess, and he built himself a laboratory, and once in a while he would invite Jack Ashton, Henry Darton, Will Church, and me to come and watch some of his experiments. It was all Greek to us, but it never failed to make us stare. We saw some wonderful things there, that people knew nothing about. Edmund took up Tesla, too, with his communication with Mars idea, but after a while he dropped that, and then came “radioactivity.”
This story is a classic by the well-known scientist and writer, Professor Serviss. It is one of the first real scientific space-flying stories ever written, and remains one of the best. The story was originally published in 1909, and caused a small sensation at that time. About that time radium and atomic energy theories came into public vogue, and this gave a great impetus to the imagination. Even today, seventeen years after the story was first published, it remains a scientific masterpiece, it being unnecessary to make any corrections whatsoever to bring it up to date. With true prophetic vision, Professor Serviss has penned a masterpiece that will remain so for generations to come. There is not a paragraph which is not packed full of interest. This story will keep you in constant suspense.
Radium and Thorium and Atomic Energy
When the discovery of radium in uranium ore, and other things came out, the rest of us would never have known anything about it but for Edmund. We used to skip that part in the papers, and I can’t say that his explanation made it much clearer; but, anyhow, he made the thing very inspiring to our imagination.
“Listen to this, boys,” he said to us. “Here’s Professor Thomson declaring that a single grain of hydrogen contains in its padlocked atoms enough energy to lift a million tons three hundred yards high. But Professor Thomson doesn’t know how to get at the energy, and neither does Professor Rutherford, nor Lord Kelvin. But somebody has got to get at it, and I guess it will have to be me.”
“But what would you do with it if you got it, Edmund?” asked Jack in his good-natured, drawling manner.
Edmund’s eyes shone strangely, but he replied only:
“I would do what Archimedes dreamed of.”
None of us knew anything about the dreams of Archimedes, and we dropped the subject.
But Edmund Stonewall did not drop it. He simply went to work at it. He used to be at our club every evening, but after he got this new idea we would not see him for weeks on end. And when we did see him he was as mum as an oyster. But what a look he had in those deep eyes! Somehow, with all his eccentricity, we never connected the idea of craziness with Stonewall. He was different from other human beings, that was all.
One evening, after a long absence, Edmund suddenly turned up at the club, and mighty glad we were to see him. We couldn’t understand his talk half the time, but it charmed us just the same. We never laughed at his extraordinary ideas. There was a depth in him that awed us. This time he showed an animation that we had never noticed before.
“Well, boys,” he said, shaking hands all round, “I’ve got it.”
“Got what?” drawled Jack.
“The interatomic energy under control. I’ve arrived where a certain Professor Duncan dreamed of being when he wrote that, ‘when man knows that every breath of air he draws has contained within itself power enough to drive the workshops of the world, he will find out some day, somehow, some way of tapping that energy.’ I’ve tapped it.”
“Indeed!” said Jack. “Well, as I asked you once before, what are you going to do with it?”
I have just been telling you that we never thought of making fun of any of Stonewall’s ideas, but there was something so extravagant in his words and manner that we all fell into Jack’s half-bantering mood, and united in demanding:
“Yes, Edmund, tell us what you are going to do with it?”
Unintentionally we nettled him and, without knowing it, we probably laid the foundation for the astounding thing that happened to us. He did not
