At the Earths Core | Page 6

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. 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