The sensation was frightful. For a
full minute neither of us could do aught but cling with the proverbial
desperation of the drowning man to the handrails of our swinging seats. Then Perry
glanced at the thermometer.
Perry glances at the thermometer
"Gad!" he cried, "it cannot be possible--quick! What does the distance meter read?"
That and the speedometer were both on my side of the cabin, and as I turned to take a reading from the former I could see Perry muttering.
"Ten degrees rise--it cannot be
possible!" and then I saw him tug frantically upon the steering wheel.
As I finally found the tiny needle
in the dim light I translated Perry's evident excitement, and my heart sank
within me. But when I spoke I hid the fear which haunted me. "It will be
seven hundred feet, Perry," I said, "by the time you can turn her
into the horizontal."
"You'd better lend me a hand
then, my boy," he replied, "for I cannot budge her out of the
vertical alone. God give that our combined strength may be equal to the task,
for else we are lost."
I wormed my way to the old man's
side with never a doubt but that the great wheel would yield on the instant to
the power of my young and vigorous muscles. Nor was my belief mere vanity, for
always had my physique been the envy and despair of my fellows. And for that
very reason it had waxed even greater than nature had intended, since my
natural pride in my great strength had led me to care for and develop my body
and my muscles by every means within my power. What with boxing, football, and baseball,
I had been in training since childhood.
And so it was with the utmost
confidence that I laid hold of the huge iron rim; but though I threw every
ounce of my strength into it, my best effort was as unavailing as Perry's had
been--the thing would not budge--the grim, insensate, horrible thing that was
holding us upon the straight road to death!
At length I gave up the useless
struggle, and without a word returned to my seat. There was no need for
words--at least none that I could imagine, unless Perry desired to pray. ..
But to my astonishment I discovered
that with death staring him in the face Abner Perry was transformed into a new
being. From his lips there flowed--not prayer--but a clear and limpid stream of
undiluted profanity, and it was all directed at that quietly stubborn piece of
unyielding mechanism.
"I should think, Perry," I
chided, "that a man of your professed religiousness would rather be at his
prayers than cursing in the presence of imminent death."
"Death!" he cried.
"Death is it that appalls you? That is nothing by comparison with the loss
the world must suffer. Why, David within this iron cylinder we have
demonstrated possibilities that science has scarce dreamed. We have harnessed a
new principle, and with it animated a piece of steel with the power of ten
thousand men. That two lives will be snuffed out is nothing to the world
calamity that entombs in the bowels of the earth the discoveries that I have
made and proved in the successful construction of the thing that is now
carrying us farther and farther toward the eternal central fires."
I am frank to admit that for myself
I was much more concerned with our own immediate future than with any
problematic loss which the world might be about to suffer. The world was at
least ignorant of its bereavement, while to me it was a real and terrible
actuality.
"What can we do?" I asked,
hiding my perturbation beneath the mask of a low and level voice.
"We may stop here, and die of
asphyxiation when our atmosphere tanks are empty," replied Perry, "or
we may continue on with the slight hope that we may later sufficiently deflect
the prospector from the vertical to carry us along the arc of a great circle which
must eventually return us to the surface. If we succeed in so doing before we
reach the higher internal temperature we may even yet survive. There would seem
to me to be about one chance in several million that we shall
succeed--otherwise we shall die more quickly but no more surely than as though
we sat supinely waiting for the torture of a slow and horrible death."
I glanced at the thermometer. It
registered 110 degrees F. While we were talking the mighty iron mole had bored
its way over a mile into the rock of the earth's crust.
"Let us continue on,
then," I replied. "It should soon be over at this rate. You never
intimated that the speed of this thing would be so high, Perry. Didn't you know
it?"
"No," he answered. "I
could not figure the speed exactly, for I had no instrument for measuring the
mighty power of my generator. I reasoned, however, that we should make about
five hundred yards an hour."
"And we are making seven miles
an hour," I concluded for him, as I sat with my eyes upon the distance
meter. "How thick is the Earth's crust, Perry?" I asked.
"There are almost as many
conjectures as to that as there are geologists," was his answer. "One
estimates it thirty miles, because the internal heat, increasing at the rate of
about one degree to each sixty to seventy feet depth, would be sufficient to
fuse the most refractory substances at that distance beneath the surface.
Another finds that the phenomena of precession and nutation require that the
earth, if not entirely solid, must at least have a shell not less than eight
hundred to a thousand miles in thickness. So there you are. You may take your
choice."
"And if it should prove
solid?" I asked.
"It will be all the same to us
in the end, David," replied Perry. "At the best our fuel will suffice
to carry us but three or four days, while our atmosphere cannot last to exceed
three. Neither, then, is sufficient to bear us in the safety through eight
thousand miles of rock to the antipodes."
"If the crust is of sufficient
thickness we shall come to a final stop between six and seven hundred miles
beneath the earth's surface; but during the last hundred and fifty miles of our
journey we shall be corpses. Am I correct?" I asked.
"Quite correct, David. Are you
frightened?"
"I do not know. It all has come
so suddenly that I scarce believe that either of us realizes the real terrors
of our position. I feel that I should be reduced to panic; but yet I am not. I
imagine that the shock has been so great as to partially stun our
sensibilities."
Again I turned to the thermometer.
The mercury was rising with less rapidity. It was now but 140 degrees, although
we had penetrated to a depth of nearly four miles. I told Perry, and he smiled.
"We have shattered one theory
at least," was his only comment, and then he returned to his self-assumed
occupation of fluently cursing the steering wheel. I once heard a pirate swear,
but his best efforts would have seemed like those of a tyro alongside of
Perry's masterful and scientific imprecations.
Once more I tried my hand at the
wheel, but I might as well have essayed to swing the earth itself. At my
suggestion Perry stopped the generator, and as we came to rest I again threw
all my strength into a supreme effort to move the thing even a hair's
breadth--but the results were as barren as when we had been traveling at top
speed.
I shook my head sadly, and motioned
to the starting lever. Perry pulled it toward him, and once again we were
plunging downward toward eternity at the rate of seven miles an hour…The
mercury was rising very slowly now, though even at 145 degrees it was almost
unbearable within the narrow confines of our metal prison.
About noon, or twelve hours after
our start upon this unfortunate journey, we had bored to a depth of eighty-four
miles, at which point the mercury registered 153 degrees F.
Perry was becoming more hopeful,
although upon what meager food he sustained his optimism I could not
conjecture. From cursing he had turned to singing--I felt that the strain had
at last affected his mind…Already the heat was sufficient to give me a
foretaste of the hereafter. A few more degrees and I felt that I should lose
consciousness.
"What are the readings now,
David?" Perry's voice broke in upon my somber reflections.
"Ninety miles and 153
degrees," I replied.
"Gad, but we've knocked that
thirty-mile-crust theory into a cocked hat!" he cried gleefully.
"Precious lot of good it will
do us," I growled back.
"But my boy," he
continued, "doesn't that temperature reading mean anything to you? Why it
hasn't gone up in six miles. Think of it, son!"
"Yes, I'm thinking of it,"
I answered; "but what difference will it make when our air supply is
exhausted whether the temperature is 153 degrees or 153,000? We'll be just as
dead, and no one will know the difference, anyhow." But I must admit that
for some unaccountable reason the stationary temperature did renew my waning
hope. The very fact, as Perry took pains
to explain, of the blasting of several very exact and learned scientific
hypotheses made it apparent that we could not know what lay before us within
the bowels of the earth, and so we might continue to hope for the best, at
least until we were dead--when hope would no longer be essential to our
happiness. It was very good, and logical reasoning, and so I embraced it.
At one hundred miles the temperature
had DROPPED TO 152 1/2 DEGREES! When I announced it Perry reached over and
hugged me.
From then on until noon of the
second day, it continued to drop until it became as uncomfortably cold as it
had been unbearably hot before. At the depth of two hundred and forty miles our
nostrils were assailed by almost overpowering ammonia fumes, and the
temperature had dropped to TEN BELOW ZERO! We suffered nearly two hours of this
intense and bitter cold, until at about two hundred and forty-five miles from the
surface of the earth we entered a stratum of solid ice, when the mercury
quickly rose to 32 degrees. During the next three hours we passed through ten
miles of ice, eventually emerging into another series of ammonia-impregnated
strata, where the mercury again fell to ten degrees below zero.
Slowly it rose once more until we
were convinced that at last we were nearing the molten interior of the earth.
At four hundred miles the temperature had reached 153 degrees. Feverishly I
watched the thermometer. Slowly it rose. Perry had ceased singing and was at
last praying.
Our hopes had received such a
deathblow that the gradually increasing heat seemed to our distorted
imaginations much greater than it really was. For another hour I saw that
pitiless column of mercury rise and rise until at four hundred and ten miles it
stood at 153 degrees. Now it was that we began to hang upon those readings in
almost breathless anxiety.
One hundred and fifty-three degrees
had been the maximum temperature above the ice stratum. Would it stop at this
point again, or would it continue its merciless climb? We knew that there was
no hope, and yet with the persistence of life itself we continued to hope
against practical certainty.
Already the air tanks were at low
ebb--there was barely enough of the precious gases to sustain us for another
twelve hours. But would we be alive to know or care? It seemed incredible.
At four hundred and twenty miles I
took another reading.
"Perry!" I shouted.
"Perry, man! She's going down! She's going down! She's 152 degrees
again."
"Gad!" he cried.
"What can it mean? Can the earth be cold at the center?"
"I do not know, Perry," I
answered; "but thank God, if I am to die it shall not be by fire--that is
all that I have feared. I can face the thought of any death but that."
Down, down went the mercury until it
stood as low as it had seven miles from the surface of the earth, and then of a
sudden the realization broke upon us that death was very near. Perry was the
first to discover it. I saw him fussing with the valves that regulate the air
supply. And at the same time I experienced difficulty in breathing. My head
felt dizzy--my limbs heavy.
I saw Perry crumple in his seat. He
gave himself a shake and sat erect again. Then he turned toward me.
"Good-bye, David," he
said. "I guess this is the end," and then he smiled and closed his
eyes.
"Good-bye, Perry, and good luck
to you," I answered, smiling back at him. But I fought off that awful lethargy.
I was very young--I did not want to die.
For an hour I battled against the
cruelly enveloping death that surrounded me upon all sides. It must have been
an hour after Perry had succumbed that I at last came to the realization that I
could no longer carry on this unequal struggle against the inevitable.
With my last flickering ray of
consciousness I turned mechanically toward the distance meter. It stood at
exactly five hundred miles from the earth's surface--and then of a sudden the
huge thing that bore us came to a stop. The wild racing of the giant drill
betokened that it was running loose in AIR. Slowly it dawned on me that since passing
through the ice strata it had been above. We had turned in the ice and sped
upward toward the earth's crust. Thank God! We were safe!
Taken from “At the Earth´s Core”, Chapter
I : Toward the Eternal Fires, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Burroughs also wrote the Tarzan books.
Next: Our hero finds company…
Caroline Munro (as seen in the movie
version)
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