Part IV Chapter 6 Doctor Dolittle's Garden by Hugh Lofting
CROSSING "THE DEAD BELT"
Throughout I tried very hard to realize and remember every detail of that night's voyage. For I knew that later on, if I survived, I would want to write it down. After all it was the great chapter in John Dolittle's astounding and eventful life. Also I knew the practical Doctor would never bother to remember those things that were not of scientific value to the world. Yet he and I were the only ones to see it who could write—though, as a matter of fact, both Chee-Chee and Polynesia remembered what they were able to see better than either of us.
Still I must confess for me it was not easy. The moon moth put on his greatest speed when the Doctor gave the order to go ahead the second time. The noise, the rush of air past our ears, was positively terrific. It actually seemed to numb the senses and make it almost impossible to take in impressions at all. Soon I found the air getting so thin that I had to keep my head almost constantly buried in the blossom; and communication with the Doctor became an impossibility.
But worse was to come. We finally reached those levels where there was no air at all. Then what happened is entirely confused in my mind and, for that matter, in the Doctor's also. Moreover, no amount of questioning of the moth afterwards enlightened us on how he had performed the apparently impossible feat of crossing that "dead belt" from where the air of the Earth left off and the atmosphere of the Moon began. I came to the conclusion at last that the giant insect did not himself know how the deed was done. But of course it may very well have been that the moth's lack of scientific knowledge and John Dolittle's faulty acquaintance (good though it was in the circumstances) with the insect's language, accounted between them for our never learning how an apparent impossibility had been overcome.
It is indeed no wonder that we, the passengers on this strange airship, saw and realized little enough of what was taking place during that phase. As we got further and further into the parts the Doctor had described as the dead belt, the moth's pace slackened till he was hardly moving at all. He kept working, in fact his great wings beat harder and faster. But the trouble was, that there was nothing there for him to beat against. And soon the gravity of the Earth itself, which was what he relied upon to maintain his position, seemed to grow fainter.
The result of this was that our flying ship seemed entirely to lose his sense of balance; and we, the passengers, all got desperately seasick. For hours, as far as I could make out, the great creature turned over and over, apparently helpless to get himself into any kind of position at all, utterly unable to go up, down, forward or backward.
For our part, we were occupied with only one thing; and that was making sure we got enough oxygen into our lungs to go on breathing. We hardly dared now to bring our noses out of the flowers for more than a glimpse. There was very little to see anyway. The Moon appeared to have grown much larger; and the Earth was just a tiny round pebble away, away off in space.
One curious thing was that we now had to make very little effort to stick on. It didn't seem to matter a great deal whether our heads or our heels were pointing to the Earth. The force of the gravity was so faint it seemed you could stay clinging to the moth's fur as long as you did not actually push yourself off. And even if you did that you felt you would merely move away a few yards into space and stay there.
We did not however, you may be sure, try any experiments of this kind. We just sat tight, breathed in the perfume of the flowers and hoped for the best. Never have I felt so ill and helpless in all my life. The sensation was something quite indescribable. It was as though gravity itself had been cut off and yet enough of it remaining to make you feel queer in your stomach every time you went round. Finally I just shut my eyes. My nose was bleeding like a running tap and there was a dreadful drumming in my ears.
How long we stayed wallowing there in space I have no idea. I felt as one sometimes does in bad weather at sea, as though the end of the world had come and that it didn't really matter so long as it hurried up and got finished with the job. I wasn't interested in anything. I just wanted to die—and the sooner the better.
At last, after what appeared like eternities of this helpless, aimless turning and tossing, our craft seemed to calm itself somewhat and I opened my eyes. Withdrawing my head a little from the depths of the moon flower, I took a peep outside. I could not look long because the lack of air made that impossible. It was almost as though some one were holding his hand over your mouth and nose—a very curious sensation in the open. But before I ducked my head into the flower again I bad from that short survey of my surroundings drawn great comfort. I had seen that the positions of the Earth and Moon were now reversed. The world we had left was over our heads, and the Moon, to which we were coming, was beneath us.
Of course this only meant that our moth had turned himself about and was headed towards the Moon, instead of away from the Earth. But, much more important than this, I realized that he now seemed steadied in his flight. And, while he still had only a poor atmosphere to work in, he was going forward and was no longer turning around helpless and out of control. As I popped my head back into the moon flower I congratulated myself that the worst stage of the journey was probably over and that very soon we should for the first time in human experience be able to feel and breathe the atmosphere of the moon world.
Also with our ship once more in control and flying forward on a level keel, I suddenly found that I felt much better inside. I could open my eyes and think, without feeling that the end of all things was at hand. I wondered how the Doctor and Chee-Chee were getting on; but as yet of course I could not get into communication with them.
Little by little I felt the gravity of the Moon asserting itself. At no time did it become nearly as strong as the Earth's, which we had left. But you cannot imagine what a sensation of comfort it was to be held by gravity at all. That feeling—happily past—that you were tied to nothing; that there was no "up" and no "down" and no "sideways"; that if you got up too suddenly you might never get seated again, which we experienced going through the dead belt was, beyond all question, the most terrible experience I have ever known.
My sense of time on this expedition was just as completely destroyed as my sense of direction and, indeed, of anything else. Later when communication became easier I asked the Doctor how long he thought we had taken over the trip. He told me that during the passage of the dead belt his watch had stopped. Gravity—or the lack of it again—we supposed accounted for it. And that later when we got within the Moon's influence and were steadily, if feebly, pulled towards her surface, his watch had started itself again. But how many hours it had remained without working he could not say.
He told me that probably our best instrument for reckoning how long we had been on the voyage was our stomachs. Certainly we were both desperately hungry shortly after we had passed the dead belt. But since we had all been seasick for many hours, that is not to be wondered at; and it did not help us much in determining how long we had taken over the trip.
The Doctor also later went into long calculations about the light: when the Earth was illumined by sunlight; when it grew dark; when the Moon ceased to show sunlight and began to show earthlight, etc., etc. He covered pages and pages, calculating. But the fact remained that during the passage of that dreadful dead belt we had all been so ill and confused that no observations had been taken at all. The Moon might have set and the Sun risen and the Earth both risen and set a dozen times, without any of our party knowing the difference. All we were sure of was that the Doctor's watch had stopped going as we passed beyond earthly gravity and recommenced when we came within lunar gravity.
Moreover, with the weaker strength of the lunar gravity, his watch probably went at an entirely new rate of speed after we left earthly influence. So, all in all, our calculations on the trip were not of much exact scientific value. Seasickness is a nasty thing.
From the time that I took that first glimpse out of my moon flower I began to keep a much more definite record of what was happening. As the moon air grew stronger I felt more and more myself. It wasn't the same as earth air. There was no question about that. It was much more, what should one call it?—"heady." This apparently was because it contained more oxygen than ours did.
I could see, as presently I grew bolder and took more frequent glimpses, that both John Dolittle and Chee-Chee were also picking up and generally taking notice. Polynesia, I found out afterwards, was the only one who had not been badly disturbed by the dead belt. Swirling in mid-air was to her, as it was to all the flying creatures, mere child's play. If she had only been scientifically educated she could have told us how long we had taken over the trip. But the old parrot had always had a curious contempt for human science, maintaining that Man went to a whole lot of unnecessary trouble to calculate things that birds knew by common sense, just as soon as they were born.
After a little the Doctor and I began to exchange signals. We did not yet attempt to leave our places as we still felt a bit unsteady on our legs. But, like seasick passengers in ships' deck-chairs, we smiled encouragingly at one another and endeavoured to show by gestures and signs that we thought the worst of the weather was over.