Read Ebook: They Reached for the Moon by Oberfield William McCauley Harold W Harold William Illustrator

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Ebook has 104 lines and 6339 words, and 3 pages

"That's what I'm tellin' you," Jones shouted. "We ain't got no worry at all. All we gotta do is not let them guys up there sidetrack us."

"I hope you're right," said Moore.

They fell silent, looking down at the reeling Earth. On the ground, two hundred miles below, at every tracking and control station around the world, men worked without pause, trying to make their tired minds outrace a speeding rocket. Night side and day side, messages flashed through the ether. They reported in: position, time, corrections made, passing the rocket quickly, from one to another like a hot potato.

On its last lap around the world before flinging itself moonward, the rocket screamed across the much worn boot of Italy. It climbed swiftly up the sky of the Holy Land and plunged down in the east, drawing a blue pencil line across the heavens that faded slowly.

At last it turned upward, and breathing streamers of fire and light, shot into airless space, a silver arrow gone from the bow and dead on its mark.

"It sure seems quiet," said Moore.

They looked through the glassite port into the great distances.

"Quiet, and empty."

"Yeah!"

"Do you feel different?" Jones asked suddenly.

"I don't know. Maybe. In a way."

"Like you can think a lot better?"

"Something like that," Moore said.

They sat and thought about it. The rocket was now fifteen hundred miles up, climbing swiftly.

"For one thing," Moore said, "we are lighter. What do they call it? Gravity? Gravity is less."

"I don't like it," cried Jones. "I don't like it at all!"

"What?" Moore looked at him.

Jones stared back, frightened. "It's nothing like I thought it would be. Maybe we'll get so light there won't be anything left! Where is everything? It's so empty it don't make sense. Something's wrong, Bob. Let's try to turn back before we die like the others! I don't want to die! I want--"

Moore reached over and slapped the other's face, hard. Jones focused glassy, unsteady eyes, surprised and hurt. "Why did you do that?"

"You called me yellow a while ago," Moore said, disgusted. "Now it's you who are acting like a woman or a child. You would really kill us, trying to turn back at this velocity."

"I'm still afraid," Jones said, but not wildly. "I don't know what's happening to me. I can remember things that happened years ago; things I hardly noticed. I'm starting to understand things I never understood before, and some of the things are hard to take."

"Don't you think I feel it, too?" Moore looked out at space in a new way, understanding.

For a while there was silence, a little strained, while the rocket sped another thousand miles. After that it was not so strained. It was more an atmosphere of concentration, of two men, thinking within themselves. There was no more fear.

"So this is what happened to the others," Moore said finally. "But what do we have to fear?"

Jones shrugged. "I'm not afraid anymore, but maybe I should be." He leaned back and looked at Moore. "Have you any idea what is happening to us?"

"I'm not sure," Moore frowned.

"It's as if some great obstacle to clear thinking has been removed. Have you noticed how we have been speaking? Our memory has so improved that we are able to use words we may have seen or heard used only a few times. And the new sharpness of mind that enables us to use these words properly also makes us able to grasp quickly new ideas and to reason logically. As to what causes the change, I do not know."

"I have been thinking about gravity," said Jones, reflecting. "It seems to me that the change in mental power is just about inversely proportioned to change in gravity. That might, in some way, have something to do with it."

Moore sighed, frowning. "You may be right. But, granting that you are, we are still in the dark as to the nature of the danger we must face."

"I think I'm beginning to get some idea," said Jones. "I wouldn't be surprised if my first crude idea, in a way, was very nearly right."

Moore showed surprise. "You still think those others found someone out here who made them kings, or some such?" He laughed.

"Not exactly," Jones said. "But there may be even stranger things." And he would say no more.

At fifty thousand miles they had lost all thought of danger. They spoke of space and the unseen medium that must be there. After forming the only logical conclusion about the nature of this, they passed on to matters of relativity and the nature of time and of life itself, understanding each in its turn.

They became so absorbed in conversation they did not even notice when they stopped talking and conversed in pure thought. Not even did they realize that a golden glow had come to their faces and bodies that was not simple light. And they were content in knowing they would never return to earth, knowing also that they would not die.

The rocket carried them one hundred thousand miles through space before it happened.

"There is someone behind us," Jones said, simply.

They looked, and beheld a man standing in space. He was hardly a man anymore, as men are called, but one like themselves. A golden glow seemed to blend with him. He smiled.

"Welcome!"

"We have been expecting you," said Moore, smiling in return. "Your voice, your thoughts reached us. We know you are one of those who came out in a rocket before us. But your name is not clear."

The being seemed mildly surprised. Then he laughed; a thing that was as the tinkle of small bells, as the dew of a cool meadow before the rising sun or the joyous song of a nightingale.

"I am one of them," he said, "and all of them. We who have overcome the chains of gravity, who have become one in thought and find it impossible to do otherwise, have no need for individuality."

"But you have a body," said Jones. "Surely that gives you some sort of individuality."

"Yes, if one's mind is bound, controlled by matter. But the mind working without resistance is a perfect machine. It is able to control matter in every respect. We take this form or that form as a matter of expedience."

"We have reasoned that all this is due to release from gravity," Moore reflected. "But we do not understand completely. Will you tell us?"

"Even those on Earth know that gravity hampers the mind," the being said. "This they have learned through observation of mental factors in relation to the gravitational pull of the sun and moon. But look into my mind and you will see more clearly."

They looked, and saw a copper disk turn before a powerful magnet. And they saw resistance caused by electric currents induced in the copper, so that a great deal of power was required to turn the disk, even slowly. This, the thoughts indicated, was a principal well known to those yet on Earth.

Next came the relationship between magnetism and gravity, clearly demonstrated.

They then saw a human brain, locked in the powerful embrace of gravity. And the tiny pulsations and complex motions, the processes of thought, were, as with the disk, sluggish--in large portions not even present. They watched a brain come alive as gravity decreased. It bulged, the tempo of motion rising, parts long dormant surging with power. They saw and they understood.

"If only we could go back and help them," sighed Jones. "If we could overcome that gravity on Earth!"

Again the being smiled his kind smile. "If you returned it would be to the same mental prison. You could not, in your crude manner, convince them."

The two knew what they must do, even before the being spoke again.

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