1889: Journey To The Moon (The Far Journey Chronicles) Read Online Free PDF Page A

“I’ll tell you, Mr. Tesla. It’s not the fact that it mimics a man, and is yet not one, or that it reminds me that I am part machine.” Ross held up his right arm for emphasis. “It’s that it is too much of both. There is something...unnatural about them. It is against the natural order of things, I mean. Jude, there will come a day when such things are outlawed in the land. There will be troubles over them. Mark what I tell you. On one hand you can replace the slave and the worker with a...a automaton. So then one day there will be no workers. And the day following that, there will be robots giving orders to men. When that day comes...it makes me shudder to think about it. I’ll have that sip of whiskey after all, if you don’t mind.”
    Merkam poured Ross a drink and handed it to him. Ross reached for it across his body with his right hand, even though retrieving it with his left would have been simpler. Possibly, it would have proven the other side of his argument, if he had. Ross tossed off the drink and sat the glass down.
    “Jack,” Merkam said, “I want a test flight. We’ll not leave for the Moon from Colorado. We’ll depart from San Antonio, Texas.”
    “San Antonio? What the hell for?”
    “We have something there we’ll need to retrieve. Something that cannot be transported overland because of its size. Also, it’s so large we’ll have to attach it to the outer hull. I know this will throw off the calculations, but I have the exact figures on tonnage—”
    “Tonnage?” Tesla piped in. “You mean to say, you intend to take on more than an additional two thousand pounds of ballast and attach it to the aircraft?”
    “Spacecraft,” Merkam replied. “And it’s not ballast. It’s...what you might call armaments.”
    Tesla laughed. “Are you going to war, Judah, or have you been drinking too much of that whiskey?”
    “I hope not to go to war, but if we must, I want to be ready.”
    Ross raised his mechanical left arm and the other two men immediately became quiet. “I will want those figures, before you give them to Koothrappally. I will want to know exactly what we are taking on. I will want to see the plans for it, and know its nature from stem to stern.”
    Merkam reached up to the top of his desk and lifted a rolled up tube and handed it to Ross.
    “It’s called an armored buggy. But this, my friend, will not be used for the Sunday picnic.”
    “Have you named it?” Ross asked. “I know your affinity for naming mechanical things.”
    “I have. It is named Ares.”
    Jack unrolled the paper and pinned the edges. The colored drawing of the Ares carried a sense of its danger, and for some reason, reminded Jack of a sleek, black leopard. “So now we will be sailing to the moon with the God of War. Jude, are there things you aren’t telling me?”
    Merkam didn’t answer.

     
    [ 4 ]
     
    Ekka said, “Billy, if you have any belongings, go get them now and bring them on board. We will leave tomorrow, and we will both be too busy to manage our own affairs after tonight.” She didn’t wait for an answer and walked to the closed gates where there was someone talking loudly on the outside.
    Billy leaned against the side of the open cargo hatch. He watched Ekka tell the two enormous guards to open the gate and when they drew them open, four men entered, two walking and two driving a wagon filled with two steamer trunks and several tubular canvas bags.
    Of the two walkers, one was large and barrel-chested, with a walrus moustache. He wore a brown suit of fine weave. He was crying. The other man was strikingly handsome, clean shaven, and as lean as a leopard. He was average height and wore a brown, flat-brimmed hat canted at a rakish angle over one eye. A white silk scarf wrapped once around his neck and the loose ends reached to his belt. As he walked into the compound, the unbuttoned black, knee length frock coat flowed behind him like a cape. Polished boots reached his knees. Billy