Friedrich Mader Distant Worlds

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flint-glass layer. That the heat inside did not become entirely unendurable,
although the metal on the outside was melting, ought not to surprise us when
we remember that this is also the case with meteors."
The planet Mercury shone through the open window of the Zenith chamber with a
blinding radiance. The
Sannah was compelled to pass very close to it and it seemed to draw nearer at
enormous speed.
This planet, which enjoys perpetual day on three eighths of its surface, and
perpetual night on another three eighths, while only one fourth of it
alternates between night and day, which lasts on an average forty-four
earth-days, turned its almost fully illuminated side to the night-side of the
Sannah.
In order to be able to observe it for a longer period, as well as to escape
the heat of the sun, our friends proceeded, in accordance with the rotation of
the
Sannah, to that room in which midnight reigned. Every half hour this change of
room had to be made.
Schulze felt himself called upon to express some remarks about Mercury. "The
closeness of this planet to the sun,"
said he, "has placed the greatest difficulties in the way of observation of it
from the earth. From the changes which
Schroeter thought he perceived at the tips of Mercury's crescent, Bessel
calculated its period of rotation at twenty-four hours. In 1883, Schiaparelli,
on the other hand, deduced from spots and streaks which he perceived, a
rotation of eighty-eight days; that is, Mercury would always turn the same
side towards the sun, as the moon does to the earth, and would rotate around
itself in the same period in which it revolves around the sun.
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"Only it was proved that every sphere with a smooth, reg-
ularly colored surface shows dark streaks when it is incompletely illuminated,
streaks which are based upon a natural illusion, so that Schiaparelli's
calculations become questionable, since they were made upon the basis of
observations of these very streaks.
"Mercury displays alternating light forms, or phases, like the moon, but, like
Venus, it is fully illuminated when it is remotest from the earth, and appears
therefore to be brightest when it is only half illuminated but nearer to the
earth.
Yet even then it is visible only to very good eyesight, because of its
smallness and closeness to the sun; though it
was noted in antiquity and in the Middle Ages by our clear-sighted ancestors.
"The light-boundaries of its surface are very vague, which indicates a fairly
dense atmosphere. Its orbit is the most eccentric of all the planetary orbits,
that is, it is the orbit most remote from the circular form and appears to be
oval.
"Its density is one and a half times that of the earth, so that it may be
regarded as a sphere of cast iron. Its surface is about three times that of
the whole former Russian Empire. Its mass is only one twelfth that of the
earth, its force of gravity is only three fifths that of ours. It receives
seven times as much sunlight as we do and must suffer an intolerable heat on
its sun-side and a dreadful cold on its night-side. The light it gets from
Venus when closest, is 600
times feebler than the light we receive from our full moon."
This much Schulze was able to deliver in a short time. What was now seen of
the surface of the planet from the
Sannah was highly interesting; it looked like a smooth disc, not without hills
and mountains, but even these were almost smooth; a few prominent hemispheres,
which cast no shadow because the light, refracted a thousandfold by the
mirror-like areas, illuminated everything.
Vegetation, and even forests, could be seen, but trunks, branches, and leaves
glittered and cast off light to such an extent that at a great distance they
vanished completely in a sea of white radiance.
"If animals and people live here," said Schulze, "they must certainly be the
same kind of mirrorlike beings and this quality doubtless protects them from
the harmful effects of either too high or too low a temperature."
They sped away swiftly from this planet, which moves in its orbit around the
sun with a greater velocity than all the others. The
Sannah once more approached the orbit of Venus, but the planet was far off: at
the moment, the sun stood between it and the World-Ship.
LIII BACK TO THE EARTH!
LORD FLITMORE switched off the centrifugal and parallel powers.
The momentum of the
Sannah was still so tremendous that the power of attraction of the nearby sun
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