THE JAMESON SATELLITE
By NEIL R. JONES
The mammoths of the ancient world have been wonderfullypreserved in the ice of Siberia. The cold, only a few milesout in space, will be far more intense than in the polar regionsand its power of preserving the dead body would most probablybe correspondingly increased. When the hero-scientist ofthis story knew he must die, he conceived a brilliant idea forthe preservation of his body, the result of which even exceededhis expectations. What, how, and why are cleverly told here.
PROLOGUE
The Rocket Satellite
In the depths of space, sometwenty thousand miles fromthe earth, the body of ProfessorJameson within its rocket containercruised upon an endlessjourney, circling the giganticsphere. The rocket was a satelliteof the huge, revolving worldaround which it held to its orbit.In the year 1958, ProfessorJameson had sought for a planwhereby he might preserve hisbody indefinitely after his death.He had worked long and hardupon the subject.
Since the time of the Pharaohs,the human race had lookedfor a means by which the deadmight be preserved against theravages of time. Great had beenthe art of the Egyptians in theembalming of their deceased, apractice which was later lost tohumanity of the ensuing mechanicalage, never to be rediscovered.But even the embalming ofthe Egyptians—so ProfessorJameson had argued—would befutile in the face of millions ofyears, the dissolution of thecorpses being just as eventual asimmediate cremation followingdeath.
The professor had looked fora means by which the body couldbe preserved perfectly forever.But eventually he had come tothe conclusion that nothing onearth is unchangeable beyond acertain limit of time. Just aslong as he sought an earthlymeans of preservation, he wasdoomed to disappointment. Allearthly elements are composed ofatoms which are forever breakingdown and building up, butnever destroying themselves. Amatch may be burned, but theatoms are still unchanged, havingresolved themselves intosmoke, carbon dioxide, ashes,and certain basic elements. Itwas clear to the professor thathe could never accomplish hispurpose if he were to employ onesystem of atomic structure, suchas embalming fluid or other concoction,to preserve another systemof atomic structure, such asthe human body, when all atomicstructure is subject to universalchange, no matter how slow.
It glowed in a haze of light, the interior clearly revealed.He had then soliloquized uponthe possibility of preserving thehuman body in its state of deathuntil the end of all earthly time—tothat day when the earthwould return to the sun fromwhich it had sprung. Quite suddenlyone day he had conceivedthe answer to the puzzling problemwhich obsessed his mind,leaving him awed with its wild,uncanny potentialities.
He would have his body shotinto space enclosed in a rocketto become a satellite of the earthas long as the earth continued toexist. He reasoned logically. Anymaterial substance, whether oforganic or inorganic origin, castinto the depths of space wouldexist indefinitely. He had visualizedhis dead body enclosed ina rocket flying off into the illimitablemaw of space. He wouldremain in perfect preservation,while on earth millions of generationsof mankind would liveand die, their bodies to molderinto the dust of the forgottenpast. He would exist in this unchangedmanner until that daywhen mankind, beneath a coolingsun, should fade o