Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [49]
For a few moments the indicator stopped and trembled as the cables tightened, then it went forward again. They saw that it was registering six and a half miles an hour. This rose to seven, eight, and nine. Presently it passed ten.
“We shall do it, after all,” said Princeps. “You see, we’re going faster every minute. I wonder what the reason of that check was?”
“Probably the increased atmospheric friction on the surface of the balloons,” replied the Professor quietly, with his eyes fixed on the dial.
The indicator stopped again at ten, and then the little blue, steel hand, which to them was veritably the Hand of Fate, began to creep slowly backwards.
None of them spoke. They all knew what it meant. The upward pull of the balloons was not counteracting the downward pull exerted from the centre of the earth. In a few hours more they would come to a standstill, and then, when the two forces balanced, they would hang motionless in that awful gulf of everlasting night until the gas gave out, and then the backward plunge to perdition would begin.
“I don’t like the look of that,” said Princeps, keeping his voice as steady as he could. “Hadn’t we better let the engines go?”
“I think we ought to throw away everything that we can do without,” said Brenda, staring at the fateful dial with fixed, wide-open eyes. “What’s the use of anything if we never get to the top of this horrible hole?”
“That’s rather a disrespectful way in which to speak of the Axial Tunnel of the earth, Brenda,” said the Professor, with the flicker of a smile. “But we won’t get rid of the impedimenta just yet,” he went on “You see, as the mathematicians say, velocity is momentum multiplied into mass. Therefore, if we decrease our mass, we shall decrease our momentum. The engines and the other things are really helping us along now, though it doesn’t seem so. When the indicator has nearly stopped, it will be time to cut the weight loose.”
Then they had dinner, eaten with a mere pretence of appetite, assisted by a bottle of “Pol Roger ‘89.” The speed continued to drop steadily during the night, though Princeps satisfied himself that the balloons were filled to the utmost limit consistent with safety, and at last, towards the middle of the conventional night, it hovered between one and zero.
“I think you may let the engines go now, Arthur,” said the Professor, “It’s quite evident that we’re overweighted. Slip the hooks, and then go up and see if your balloons will stand any more.”
He said this in a whisper, because Brenda, utterly worn out, had gone to lie down behind the partition.
The hooks were slipped, and the hand on the dial began to move again as the Brenda, released from about six hundred pounds’ weight, began to ascend again. But the speed only rose to fifteen miles an hour, and that was eight miles short of the result the Professor had arrived at. The attractive force was evidently being exerted from the sides of the tunnel as well as from the centre of the earth. He looked at the dial and said to Princeps —
“I think you’d better go and lie down now. It’s my watch on deck. We’re doing nicely now. I want to run through my figures again.”
“All right,” said Princeps, yawning and shaking hands. “You’ll call me in four hours, as usual, won’t you?”
Professor Haffkin nodded and said: “Good night. I hope we shall be through our difficulties by the morning. Good night, Arthur.”
He got out his papers again and once more went minutely through the maze of figures and formulae with which the sheets were covered. Then, when the sound of slow, deep breathing told him that Princeps was asleep, he opened the trap-door in the floor and counted the unexhausted cylinders of gas. When he had finished, he said to himself in a whisper-
“Barely