CHAPTER 2

The Making of Cavorite, and the Building of the Sphere

But Cavor's fears were groundless, so far as the actual making was concerned. On the fourteenth of October, 1899, this incredible substance was made!

Oddly enough, it was made at last by accident, when Mr. Cavor least expected it. He was coming one day to my bungalow for our afternoon talk and tea, and I was waiting for him on the verandah, when, all of a sudden, the chimneys of his house rose to heaven, smashing into pieces. The roof and furniture followed, and then came a huge white flame. The trees about the house shook violently and sprang towards the fire, and my ears were struck with a deafening noise.

I stepped out towards Cavor's house, and a violent wind instantly caught me and drove me violently towards him. At the same moment the discoverer was seized, whirled about, and flew through the air. Then the storm fell swiftly, and I became once more aware that I had breath and feet.

Presently I saw Cavor rise, all covered with mud, and stretching two bleeding hands towards me. His face was full of emotion. "Congratulate me," he said breathlessly; "congratulate me!"

"Congratulate you!" said I. "Good heavens! What for?"

"I've done it."

"You have. What on earth caused that explosion?"

"It wasn't an explosion," he said.

When we had managed at last to reach the shelter of my bungalow, he explained to me what had happened. He had fused together a number of metals and certain other things, and intended to leave the mixture on the fire for a week, and then allow it to cool slowly. The last stage in the making of Cavorite would occur when the stuff sank to a temperature of 60 degrees Fahr. But unintentionally he had made the stuff in a thin, wide sheet. As soon as its manufacture was complete, the air and roof above it ceased to have weight or pressure, while the air around it had a pressure of fourteen pounds and a half to the square inch. The air all about the Cavorite crushed in upon the air above it with irresistible force, and forced it upward violently. Then, in its turn, it lost weight, was forced upward and blew off the roof.

I stared. As yet I was too amazed to realize how all my expectations had been upset. "What do you mean to do now?" I asked.

"In the first place, if you will allow me, I will have a bath. It will be wise, I think, if nothing were said of this affair beyond ourselves. I know I have caused great damage—probably a few houses may have been ruined here and there upon the countryside. But I cannot possibly pay for the damage I have done. One cannot foresee everything, you know. If no other explanation is offered, people will probably think that it was a cyclone. As to my three assistants, if they are still alive, I doubt if they have the intelligence to explain the affair. And if you would let me lodge temporarily in one of the vacant rooms of your bungalow—"

He paused and regarded me. While he was having his bath I considered the question alone. It was clear Mr. Cavor's society was dangerous. But I was young and reckless, and my affairs were in a mess. I decided to let him stay with me and see the business through.

We set to work at once to reconstruct his laboratory and proceed with our experiments. Cavor talked more on my level than he had ever done before. One day he said to me: "I have a vague idea of another method of making Cavorite. Last time I made this stuff in a flat tank with an edge that held it down. And directly it had cooled all that uproar happened, and the roof was blown off. But suppose there is no roof, and the substance is free to go up?"

"It will go up at once!"

"Exactly. With no more disturbance than firing a big gun."

"But what good will that do?"

"I'm going up with it!"

I put down my teacup and stared at him.

"Imagine a sphere," he explained, "large enough to hold two people and their luggage. It will be made of steel lined with thick glass, and smoothly coated on the outside with Cavorite."

"But how will you get inside?"

"That's perfectly easy. An air-tight manhole is all that is needed. There will have to be a valve, so that things may be thrown out, if necessary, without much loss of air."

"I begin to see," I said slowly. "And you could get in and screw yourself up while the Cavorite was warm, and as soon as it cooled it would become unaffected by gravitation, and off you would fly, in a straight line—" I stopped abruptly. "What is to prevent the sphere from travelling in a straight line into space for ever?" I asked. "You are not sure to get anywhere, and if you do—how will you get back?"

"I've thought of that," said Cavor. "The inner glass sphere can be air-tight, and, except for the manhole, continuous. But the steel sphere can be made in sections, each section capable of rolling up in the same way as a roller blind. These blinds can be easily worked by electricity. So you see, the Cavorite exterior of the sphere will consist of windows or blinds. When all these windows are shut, no light, no heat, no gravitation will get at the inside of the sphere, it will fly on through space in a straight line. But open a blind, imagine one of the blinds open! Then at once any heavy body that chances to be in that direction will attract us."

"I see. That's clear enough. Only I don't quite see what we shall do it for!"

"Surely! For example, one might go to the moon."

"Is there air there?"

"There may be. And we are not confined to the moon. There's Mars—clear atmosphere, new surroundings. It might be pleasant to go there."

"Is there air on Mars?"

"Oh, yes!"

An extraordinary idea came rushing into my mind. Suddenly I saw, as in a dream, the whole solar system connected together with Cavorite liners and spheres. "This is tremendous!" I cried. "I haven't been dreaming of this sort of thing."

We hurried off to the laboratory to start the drawings that very night. Dawn found us both still at work. Even our three men, who, luckily, had not perished in the explosion, were infected with our enthusiasm.

The glass sphere had arrived in January, in a huge packing case. We had it now in position under the crane that would lift it and lower it into the steel shell. All the bars and blinds had arrived in February, and the lower half was bolted together. The Cavorite was half made by March. When the bolting together of the sphere was finished, Cavor proposed to remove the roof of the laboratory and build a furnace around the sphere. So the last stage in Cavorite making, in which the paste is heated to a dull red glow, would be accomplished when it was already on the sphere.

And then we had to decide what provisions we were to take—concentrated food, steel cylinders containing oxygen, an arrangement for removing carbonic acid from the air, water condensers, and so forth. At last, except for the heating in the furnace, our work was finished.