The Radio Planet

by Ralph Milne Farley

Up, up, he shot through the dense blackness, up to a height which in earth would have filled his blood with air bubbles, and have suffocated his lungs. But on Poros, with its thicker atmospheric shell and its lesser gravity, the change was not so evident.

Far to the eastward he saw the lights of Yat, the city of the beasts; but this was his only landmark. There was nothing but his gyro-compass to tell him exactly which was north, and south, and east, and west; nothing but his clinometer to indicate whether he was going up or down; nothing but his altimeter to indicate his approximate height above the surface of the planet. And these instruments he must read by the flickering light of a primitive open wick stone lamp on the floor of the cockpit.

What if this faint illuminator should become extinguished? He certainly could not leave the controls for long enough to use flint and steel to rekindle it.

During the early part of his stay in Vairkingi he had always gone to some one of the constantly burning lamps which were the primitive fire source of the furry Vairkings. Later he had found several pieces of flint, when investigating a small chalk deposit as a possible alternative for limestone in his smelting operations. After the manufacture of steel had begun he had practiced striking a light in this more modern method, and thereafter had always carried flint and steel and tinder with him in one of the pouch pockets of his leather tunic. It was with these crude implements that he had kindled his oil lamp for the present flight.

But this fire source would avail him little if a gust of wind should extinguish his primitive lamp. In such event, what could he do?

This question was immediately put to the test, for his ship struck a small air pocket and dipped. Out went the light! Now he could no longer read his compass nor his altimeter, but—happy thought—he could determine the inclination of the plane from time to time by touching his clinometer. So, on upward he kept.

Presently he found it difficult to breath, and this difficulty was soon increased by a damp fog, which choked his nostrils and windpipe, causing him to cough and sneeze. The water condensed on the airship, and dropped off the rigging onto the matted hair and beard of the earth-man. Yet still he kept on up.

Finally he breathed clear air once more. He pushed back the dripping locks from his forehead, and wiped out his water-filled eyes with the back of one wrist. All was still jet darkness, yet in front of him and above him there glowed some tiny points of light. Rubbing his eyes, he looked again. Stars! The first stars he had ever seen on Poros—a sky full of stars!

With some surprise Myles Cabot noted that above him were swung the same constellations with which he had been familiar on earth, among them the two dippers, Orion and Cassiopea.

He strove to recall the inclination of the axis of Venus to the ecliptic, but all that he could remember was that it did not differ appreciably from that of the earth. This information was enough for his present purposes, however, for it meant that the star which we call the pole star on earth was approximately north on Poros, and that its altitude above the northern horizon would give approximately the latitude of the location of the observer.