An Earthman on Venus (Originally titled "The Radio Man") — John Shaqi
An Earthman on Venus (Originally titled "The Radio Man")Farley, Ralph Milne
Science
An Earthman on Venus (Originally titled "The Radio Man")
Farley, Ralph Milne
Life on other planets -- Fiction; Science fiction; Venus (Planet) -- Fiction
We could not let slip such a good opportunity to get some newspaper
publicity for our farm. And so on the following Friday a full account of
the meteoric visitation appeared in the _Vineyard Gazette_, with the
result that quite a number of summer folks walked across the island from
the bathing beach to look at the hole.
And there was another result, for early the following week I received a
letter from Professor Gerrish, of the Harvard Observatory, stating that
he had read about the meteor in the paper, and requesting that I send
him a small piece—or, if possible, the whole meteor—by express, collect,
for purposes of analysis.
Anything for dear old Harvard! Unfortunately all the black splinters had
been carried away by tourists. So I set the men to work digging out the
main body. Quite a hole was dug before we came to the meteor, a black
pear-shaped object about the size of a barrel. With rock tongs, chains
and my pair of Percherons, we dragged this out onto the level. I had
hoped that it would be small enough so that I could send the whole thing
up to Harvard and perhaps have it set up in front of the Agassiz Museum,
marked with a bronze plate bearing my name; but its size precluded this.
My wife, who was present when we hauled it out, remarked: “It looks just
like a huge black teardrop or raindrop.”
And sure enough it did. But why not? If raindrops take on a streamline
form in falling, why might not a more solid meteor do so as well? But I
had never heard of one doing so before. This new idea prompted me to
take careful measurements and to submit them to Professor O. D. Kellogg,
of the Harvard mathematics department, who was summering at West Chop
near by. He reported to me that the form was as perfectly streamlined as
it was possible to conceive, but that my surmise as to how it had become
so was absurd.
While making these measurements I was attracted by another feature of
the meteor. At one place on the side, doubtless where it had struck the
big rock, the black coating had been chipped away, disclosing a surface
of yellow metal underneath. Also there was to be seen in this metal an
absolutely straight crack, extending as far as the metal was exposed, in
a sidewise direction.
At the time the crack did not attract me so much as the metal. I vaguely
wondered if it might not be gold. But, being reminded of Professor
Gerrish’s request for a sample of the meteor, I had one of the men start
chiseling off some pieces.
The natural spot to begin was alongside of the place where the covering
was already chipped. It was hard work, but finally he removed several
pieces, and then we noticed that the crack continued around the waist of
the meteor as far as had been chipped. This crack, from its absolute
regularity, gave every indication of being man-made.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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