Chapter XI: The Roof of Waters

The next thing I knew I was lying on the floor, with a torrent of icy water falling on my face. I sat up, sputtering. Sam was bending over me with a relieved grin on his face.

"Care for any more?" he asked, emptying the pail.

"That's quite enough, thanks," I sputtered. "Where are we?"

"Right here."

"Talk sense," I pleaded, trying to get up, and rubbing the bump in my head.

"Really, I hardly know," he said, soberly. "It's rather queer. We're afloat on a smooth, warm sea! The sky is red!"

I stared at him stupidly.

"It's a good thing we had the rockets! If we hadn't used them, we'd have hit this water like a concrete pavement!"

"Queer, you say! My eye! We're both crazy! It can't be!"

"You might get up and see for yourself."

"You say we've fallen through the Pacific and into another sea?"

"I only know what I can see."

"We did seem to come out of the water into a red mist."

"So it seemed."

"But the Pacific Ocean overhead! We must have come through six miles of water! And water won't float on air!"

"We have several interesting questions before us."

I got uncertainly to my feet, walked past the calm old scientist, and climbed out on the narrow deck. Indeed it was a weird and incredible sight that met my eyes. Overhead arched a great dome of crimson fire. In all directions it reached down to the dark, warm sea on which we were floating. Nothing in sight but red sky and dark waves! There was a light, hot breeze, but the strange sea was very still. Its color was a blue-black, splashed weirdly with the reflected light of the crimson sky. It stretched out on every hand to where the red sky rose, utterly lifeless--lonely and dead.

We had fallen into an unsuspected and incredible world! Miles of water lay between us and our fellow men. Suddenly I felt an absurdly great loneliness, a vast homesickness for the world we had left--even if my fellow men had never meant very much to me! I felt an ineffably intense desire for the sunshine, for blue skies and green plains, and for the busy, cheerful cities of men! In fact, I almost burst into tears.

It was not so much that I was afraid. But the place seemed so strange, that even after I was dead my soul could not find a way out!

If there had been a rock, or an island to break the monotony of the ghostly, silent sea, it would not have been so bad. But there were none. The strange dark desert of waters stretched out as far as my eye could reach! The eerie, scarlet radiation of the sky beat down with intense heat, and the wind was damp and sultry.

Abruptly Sam stepped out beside me. There was almost a grin on his lean, tanned face, and he looked somehow very confident and resourceful. I felt a great wave of faith in him and in the wonderful machine beneath our feet, rocking silently in the strange, smooth sea. Impulsively I reached out my hand to him, and he took it with a smile.

"I know how you feel, Mel. But we're still kicking!"

"But the ocean?" I asked again. "What could hold it up?"

"I've been doing some pretty stiff thinking along that line. I have a theory that might help you, even if I have missed the point. You know we came through the red gas that makes the curious sky we see. The gas was just below the water. It's evidently radioactive, or it wouldn't be luminous. Its emanations might change the gravity of the water above!"

"Negative gravity or levitation?"

"Something of the kind. You know that science has held for a long time that there is no reason, _per se_, to doubt the existence of substances that would repel instead of attracting one another. In fact, the mutual repulsion of the like poles of a magnet is, in a way, an illustration of that very thing. Even assuming the existence of substances of negative gravity, they would not be found on the surface of the earth, for they would escape into space as fast as liberated. The phlogiston of the old alchemists, by the way, was supposed to be such a substance.

"But suppose the gravity of the water is negatived by the gas. Water, you know, has the property of becoming radioactive after it has been exposed to radium emanations, and it is logical enough for it to assume the qualities of the gas. The water next to the gas may support that above."

"But it looks as if the gas would bubble out, like air under water," I said.

"That was the principal objection to the theory. But we know from our pressure readings that the water is not resting heavily on the gas. If it is supported by the negative gravity of its lower stratum, the equilibrium is very delicate, but it would be naturally maintained.

"Suppose the roof of water is lifted. The gas and atmosphere below, being given more room, would expand. Consequently the gas would be brought less intimately into contact with the water, the negativing effect would be reduced, and the balance would be restored. Conversely, a sinking would compress the gas, increase its effect, and bring back the balance. Even if the water sank in one place and was lifted in another, the difference in the density of the gas at various altitudes would maintain the equilibrium."

"Yes. Yes, I believe I see. A thousand thanks! It makes me feel a lot better to see how it could be," I said, admiring the wonderful readiness with which he had formulated his theory. "But can you say how the gas came to be here, and how there happens to be breathable air beneath it?"

"Both might have been manufactured by the intelligences we have come to investigate. More likely, however, the gas comes from the disintegration of the radium in the earth, and has been rising out of fissures in the ocean floor and collecting here for ages. The oxygen of the air may have come from the decomposition of rocks--the earth's crust is nearly fifty per cent oxygen. This place may be as old as the sea. That alien power may have been growing up in here through all the ages that man has been developing outside!"

"You think there may be living things here?"

"No reason why not. In fact, this is the logical habitat for your Green Girl. Red and green are complementary colors. If there are people here, green would be the natural color for the protective pigmentation against this red light!"