"
"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.
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