First there was a loud singing noise in my right ear, pitched in a high key. Presently this pitch became lower and the sound resembled the rattle of[15] rolling car wheels on a track, and they seemed to be approaching. I suddenly realized that they were advancing to the place where I lay, and greatly startled, I sprang to my feet. I was none too quick, for a train of four cars rolled rapidly over the very spot where I had lain. I saw they were filled with gay well dressed people evidently on a pleasure excursion. As I gazed after them toward the west along the gleaming rails, I remembered there was no locomotive with the train. Of course not, thought I, the road is run by electricity. But there was no overhead wire and no trolley. O, I see, these cars are propelled by storage batteries that they carry with them. I felt no surprise at this, nor at the fact that the road had been built after all, for it all seemed to be a matter of course. Turning toward the east where the line penetrated the ridge that lies between the bay and the lake, I saw on the edge of the cut the tall white mile post so illuminated by the direct sunshine that the number 24 in large black figures could be made out, although the distance was a third of a mile or more. While I was still gazing in that direction I suddenly became aware of a strange looking object coming through the cut and around the curve. It was a four wheeled vehicle something like a hand car, but it was not being “pumped” nor were there any handles for propelling it in that way. The idea suddenly came to me that this car like the first I had seen, was propelled by a storage battery concealed somewhere about its anatomy. But the interest created by the car was quickly eclipsed by that inspired by its occupant; and a more remarkable creature I never read about or dreamed[16] about. He sat bolt upright on the seat at the rear end of the car and while he was at a distance, I took him for a rather stiff dignified and odd specimen of a man. But as he approached and I got a better opportunity for observing details, I directly came to doubt if he could be a man at all. When I first saw him, I observed what seemed to be a large fan-like appendage projecting from his back, which I then took to be some peculiar garment streaming out behind. But as he approached, this appendage separated into two, and spreading out to the right and left acted like brakes against the wind and rapidly checked the speed of the car, reminding me of the action of the wings of a bird, when it alights. In short to my great astonishment it turned out they were wings. I instinctively stepped back two or three paces to allow this strange apparition to pass, but to my surprise the car stopped directly opposite to me and its occupant with a slight flutter of the aforesaid wings, hopped lightly out of it and stood beside the track so near to me, that I could have touched him. For a moment or two he busied himself with some arrangement about his car, the nature of which I did not observe, as my attention was absorbed chiefly by himself.
In the description, that I shall now give of him, will be included a number of details that I did not observe at first, but which showed themselves during the progress of our interview. The large wings mentioned above were at least six feet in radius, and each was nearly a semicircle. They could be folded like a fan and when in that position they lay down along his back from his shoulders to his heels[17] and when fully extended reached from his heels to a point nearly five feet above his head. They were of a soft semitransparent, but thick and tough membranous material, full of veins and nerves and supported by stiff elastic ribs, radiating from their articulation at the shoulder to the circumference.
Besides these wings, he had two other pairs similar in texture, but much smaller. One pair was attached just in front of the principal pair and ordinarily they were directed upward beside his head and reaching above it. But he could also extend them laterally, so as to cover his face, as well as the back of his head and did so repeatedly while he was with me, apparently to shield himself from the rays of the sun. The other two were attached just below the main wings and extended downwards alongside of the body to the feet. But they too were extensible laterally and could be made to cover the entire lower half of the body. In short, these four minor wings were equivalent to clothes, and the numerous nerves by which they were traversed, indicated that they were also delicate organs of the sensations of heat and touch.
In addition to these wings, there were six other limbs, two of which were legs and two were arms, in much the same position in which they occur in man. The third pair of limbs were attached to the thorax between the arms and legs, and were ordinarily folded across the thorax. I came to the conclusion these limbs could be used either as hands or feet as occasion required, but while he was with me he made little other use of them than to occasionally give me a sly poke with one of them—usually[18] the right—in the side—usually the left side—about the position of the second rib from the bottom. As these gestures always came about in connection with some humorous or ludicrous idea, it occurred to me in a whimsical way to call these limbs his jokers. His head was immense, possessing, I should say, double the capacity of the largest human head. The top part was globular, and the lower part, which might be called the face, was long and wedge shaped, tapering down to the jaws. The jaws were strong and well set with teeth and worked laterally instead of vertically as with us, and the slit forming the mouth was vertical and in the middle. There was no chin. The eyes were placed just above the mouth and at the base of the upper dome shaped portion of the head. They were of enormous size fully two inches in diameter, half globular and set far apart, forming as it were the corners of the face. They were not movable as ours are, because every part of the surface of the eye was equally good to see with; and their position enabled their owner to see three-fourths of the horizon without turning his head. The face had not one particle of expression or mobility to it, but this was compensated a hundred times by the expression of the eyes. Their usual expression, when at rest, was one of supreme kindliness and benevolence with a slight element of humor. But when the mind was in activity, the eyes beamed with good natured wit, were suffused with tender sentiment or flashed with intellectual brilliancy to a degree I would never have imagined possible. Under each of the wings there was an opening leading into the body, those of the middle wings[19] being nearly three-fourths of an inch in diameter, and the others very much smaller. All were protected by movable lips. I soon discovered that these were for the purpose of breathing, the air being constantly inhaled and exhaled through them. I have no doubt the lining membrane of these breathing tubes was sensitive to odors and was therefore an organ of smell. As to ears, there was one plainly to be seen on the upper part of each arm, and I observed him move his arm in the proper directions to catch the sound. In the long conversation I had with him I cannot say that I heard any articulate voice. There was a slight humming noise, rising and falling in very agreeable musical cadences, and these appeared to accompany the enunciation of his ideas and thoughts when he addressed me. When I spoke to him, I used articulate words in plain English and he appeared to hear in the ordinary way. But his thoughts came to me like waves or pulsations and appeared to be injected bodily into my brain without any distinct sensation of hearing them. In short I directly came to perceive that it was a case of the telepathic transfer of ideas, experiments in which are known to most people, but which was in this case vastly more complete and perfect than I had ever imagined possible. In the report of the conversation between us that I give herein it is to be understood that I do not quote his language, but give the impression of his thoughts upon me in my own language, and the best I have been able to do, I am sensible, forms a very inadequate dress in which to set off the beauty of his sentiment or the strength of his reason.
[20]
When my visitor had finished whatever arrangement he was making with his car, he turned partly around and I saw he had in his hand a small spool of copper wire, two strands from which connected with the car. Next he performed some slight manipulation with his coil of wire, the nature of which I could not make out, but which produced the surprising result, that the car slowly rose from the track continuing upward till stopped by the wire, then my visitor drew it gently to one side and pushing a stout iron pin into the ground, he attached the spool and coil to it and left it there, picketed out, precisely as a cow-boy pickets his mule, except that the car floated in the air gently pulling on its tether. I had for some moments been casting about in my mind for some appropriate manner in which to address my singular visitor. The more I observed his actions, the higher my opinion rose of his character, abilities and position in the scale of existence. Royal and aristocratic titles, such as Your Majesty, My Lord etc., are very awkward in the mouth of an American and seemed by no means sure to be appropriate in this case. Then I thought of our American titles, General, Colonel, Major, Judge, Squire, Governor, none of which of course would do. But the surprise and curiosity excited by this performance of picketing the car in the air would in another minute have overcome the tension of diffidence and doubt and I should have addressed him as something, even if no better title than plain Mister occurred to me.
But he saved me this necessity, by opening the[21] conversation himself. He seemed to know what I had been thinking of.
“A title of address,” said he, “should be significant of facts. It is ridiculous to call a man Honorable, because you have sent him to the legislature, or to congress, or another person ‘Majesty’ whose understanding is below mediocrity. You may call me, ‘Sir,’ which title as you know means simply an older person and I will call you by some title, that means young—if it means quite young, it will still be very appropriate, eh?”
This was accompanied, by a queer, but decidedly jolly and good natured expression of the eyes and a gentle poke with his right middle hand described above.
“Then,” said I, “you think you are the older. The fact is, I am so well preserved, that almost everyone rates me ten or fifteen years younger than I am, and perhaps you do.”
“I am nineteen,” he said.
“Why,” I exclaimed, “I am more than three times that old.”
“Nevertheless, I am very much older than you,” he replied.
“You talk in riddles,” said I, “I don’t understand you.”
“Well, I will explain. You understand, that every race is made by its environment and the same is true of each individual of the race.”
“Certainly, that is my pet theory.”
“Well, the environment of the race is in reality, the environment of every individual in it, for every individual inherits the impress made upon the race[22] during all past ages. For this reason a human infant just born is a being of far greater experience than a mature elephant; the experience of the race is his and it is expressed in the structure of his brain and body. In like manner an individual of our race has the long life of his race behind him and is older at birth than a human being is at 80, because our race has a vastly longer history and experience than yours.”
“Your idea is ingenious, but yet it must be admitted that a mature elephant knows more than a new born human infant.”
“That depends on what you mean by knowledge,” he replied. “The most knowing person has no knowledge when he is asleep, but he possesses the potentiality of getting it when he wakes up, and when he is awake, his knowledge extends only to the things about which his brain is active for the moment, while as to other things, the most that can be said is that, he may possess the potentiality of knowing them when the activity of his brain is directed to them, by appropriate stimulations. In like manner the potentiality of all the knowledge belonging to his race, slumbers in the new born infant; and as he gradually wakes up in the process of his growth and development, this knowledge, upon proper stimulation of the brain, flashes into view. Therefore everything depends upon the race to which one belongs. Our race had already reached a high degree of cultivation before yours was distinguishable from four footed beasts.”
My disposition to generalize, unwittingly influenced no doubt by my early Sunday School education,[23] here led me to make an observation, that a moment later I perceived to be crude and ill considered. It was to the effect that this great age to which his race had attained, had made their superior mental development possible and had given the time necessary for their physical evolution through and from the human form.
His answer to this was a loud and prolonged, ha ha ha! That is to say, I heard nothing quite like that, but was impressed by a sensation that his mental state exhibited in human expression would be laughter loud and long.
Said he; “the conceit of the human race is the laughing stock of all our people, but you are a very young race and you will know a great deal more when you get older. Individuals of our race and kindred races have visited the earth, and allowed themselves to be seen. And descriptions of them have been attempted by some of your ancient seers.
“The human race having become dominant on earth, they have entirely overrated their importance and not only fancy that they will some day own the rest of the solar system, but imagine that they will sprout wings and develope into beings like us; but any of you that have studied natural history and your new theories of evolution, ought to know that beings having twelve limbs could never be evolved from a race having but four. The only possible evolution by which your race could ever possess wings, would be the conversion through use and habit of your arms into wings, which has actually occurred in the case of your bats and birds.
“The families on earth that are related to and[24] resemble us are the insect tribes. In fact we trace our origin back to an ancestry, which according to many of our best scientists is exactly parallel with that of your insects, and they alone of mundane inhabitants could ever expect to evolve a posterity at all like us, and they never will, for the conditions on earth will forever keep them in a subordinate position to the present dominant race.”
During this speech, notwithstanding its intense interest to me I was becoming impatient and nervous with the apprehension that he might leave me without telling me where he was from and how he made that car of his disregard the law of gravitation. In the solution of this last riddle especially I could readily see a utilitarian outcome of overwhelming importance. I am afraid that my questions were put with an undignified eagerness and precipitancy, which no doubt he observed, for he first proceeded to say that he had much information to communicate to me and was glad to see me desirous of receiving it.
“You understand the law of the attraction of gravitation”—I nodded assent—“but you know nothing of the repulsion of gravitation.” Indeed I did not. I had never heard of such a thing.
He continued: “All polar attractions are accompanied by repulsions. This you see in magnetism and in electricity, and it is equally true in gravitation. The force with which bodies fall toward each other consists merely of the difference between the attractive and the repulsive force. Ordinarily the attractive force takes hold of the near ends of the molecules of ether contained in solid or fluid[25] bodies, and the repulsive force affects only the further ends of the same molecules, so that by reason of the difference in the distances over which these two forces operate the attractive force always over-powers repulsion. But we have discovered a way by which the action of these forces is reversed, so that the work of repulsion is performed on the near end of the molecules and attraction on the further end, and then attraction being the weaker of the two, the body, as a whole, is repelled. We imitate in fact the action that takes place when the attraction between two electrified bodies turns to repulsion. Repulsion also takes place between the sun and the tails of comets. The comet’s tail is attracted toward the nucleus of the comet and at the same time repelled from the sun. We have not been able to make bodies discriminating like that in their attractions.
“But,” said I, “it must take as much power to make this change as the changed condition yields after it is made and I cannot see where you get the power; you cannot make something out of nothing.”
“Very true,” said he, “but the resistance to the change is in reality—very small, and it is accomplished, even by neuro-magnetism in a wonderfully simple manner. The proportion of force required to do it is no greater than that required to move the slide valve in the steam chest of one of your steam engines, by which the enormous force of the steam is alternately shifted to first one end and then the other of the cylinder. We can generate the force required for this, in our own tissues and it accumulates in electric organs possessed by us[26] similar to those of your electric eels. I will show you.”
With that he reached out and touched me on the mouth. There was a flash and a sensation as if a coal of fire had touched me, and a smart shock passed through my limbs. I was easily enough convinced that he possessed large electric storage capacity, and he told me he could give me a shock 100 times as strong as the one I had received. I was willing to take his word for that. But I was by no means satisfied with his explanation of the reversal of the forces in gravitation. It seemed to me to involve a mechanical fallacy and I half suspected he purposely avoided giving me the true explanation. Although I have since given the subject considerable thought I have not been able to clear it up. Theorize as I might however, there was the fact that gravitation was somehow suspended, in the case of the car.
I said to him earnestly, that I would give anything I possessed to be able to understand and apply these principles as he did.
“I have no doubt at all of that,” said he, “but it is our secret, and I could commit no more heinous act of treason against my people or our planet, than by divulging it.”
“For goodness sake,” I exclaimed, “tell me what planet you inhabit, and what harm could result from giving this invaluable information.”
“My home is the moon,” he said quietly, and I have ever since wondered how I came to receive the announcement without the slightest degree of[27] surprise as if it were an every day occurrence to meet people from the moon.
“The discovery you wish me to reveal to you, was made by our ancestors over a million years ago,” he went on, “the population of the moon was then as great as the planet would support in comfort, and its regulation and maintenance had been reduced to a strictly scientific basis. It was seen at once and soon experimentally proved that our people could by the use of this principle easily visit the earth, and if the discovery should be communicated to the earth people, there would be nothing to prevent flooding the moon with an undesirable horde of adventurers, who would like a swarm of seventeen year locusts proceed to lay claim to everything in sight and seriously disturb the lunar peace and prosperity. And so the communication of this secret was forbidden on pain of the terrible punishment of projection.”
My inquiring look showed that I did not understand this, and he continued.
“Projection is the extreme penalty of our laws. In it the criminal is locked up in a spherical shell of cast iron having two small glass windows and furnished with compressed air in alumina flasks, and food sufficient to last from a few days to two years according to the severity of the sentence, the larger amount of food going with the more severe sentence. After he is fastened in, the repulsion of gravitation is turned on and the ball instantly projects itself into space bounding off at a terrific speed. Yet no matter what direction it takes it can never come into collision with any body whether planet or[28] sun, but whenever it approaches one it is instantly repelled, and thus it continues to be hurled from one to another forever, and the longer the criminal lives to perceive and reflect that he is an outcast from all worlds, the greater his punishment is supposed to be. It is a theory of some of our scientists that a projected person continues to be repelled from sun to sun till at last he reaches the edge of creation and is hurled completely out of the universe. However this may be, the friends of a projected person never know where he is.”
“I hope,” said I, “that you are not often under the necessity of inflicting such a terrible punishment as that.”
“No one has been projected for over forty years, but 500,000 years ago the punishment was frequently resorted to.”
“In traversing the space between the earth and the moon, I suppose you will first move by repulsion from the earth?”
“Yes, I use repulsion for the first part of the journey. This gives me a rapid send off from the earth. My speed constantly increasing till I reach the distance of 216,000 miles from the earth, at this point the repulsion of the moon—which by the way is exerted against me from the time I leave the earth—is just equal to that of the earth, but the momentum acquired by that time carries me almost home, the moon’s repulsions constantly diminishing the speed and at last bringing me to a stand still or sheering me off to one side. It is then necessary to turn on attraction, which causes me to approach[29] the moon with a speed which is easily checked and regulated by using repulsion when necessary.”
“The terrific speed with which you travel or fall, as we might say, from one planet to another, I should think would overpower you—take your breath away.”
“We have to guard against this, while we traverse the atmosphere, both at this and at the other end of the journey, but once clear of the atmosphere we fall through empty space without the slightest sensation of motion and realize that we are going only by the rapid decrease in the apparent size of the globe we are leaving and increase of the one we approach. It is impossible to conceive a more thrilling experience than is conveyed by the perception of the growth in a few hours of your earth from a ball six feet in diameter as it appears to us at the start, to the vast and illimitable expanse of variegated beauty it gets to be before we reach it.
“On the journey, it is necessary to guard against the blistering heat of the sun’s rays upon the side on which they fall, and the intense cold which we encounter on the shady side; and we must look out that neither ourselves nor any of the loose articles we carry in the car such as our flasks of compressed air, our food etc. are repelled from the car and allowed to fall to earth or moon by their ordinary gravity, for the change to repulsion only applies to the iron part of the car and not other things. It cannot be applied to wood or to animal or vegetable tissue etc. We guard against all these contingencies by having a stout cover over our car, supported by steel hoops, when we are on an intermundane trip.[30] When we travel on the ground, this is folded up and not used.”
“Then I suppose the wheels of your car come into use when you travel on the ground, for I can see no use for them in your “intermundane” journeys.”
“That is true. This car I have with me is my ordinary carriage at home. It is a railroad car as you see by the flanges on the wheels. Railroads with us are public free highways, built and maintained by the state. They have from four to twelve tracks. Every person who is qualified by his education and training to manage a car is furnished with one by the state. The propelling power is nothing but gravity either in attraction or repulsion, the former being used on down grades and the latter on up grades, the car having rollers that hook under a flange at the top of the rail to prevent the car from rising bodily from the track.
“The surface of our planet is very rough, but still the grading for roads is light, as it is possible to ascend grades of 100 per cent or even steeper. Level grades on our roads are always avoided, and in districts where this cannot be done, we use electric roads.
“The cars are so constructed that different parts are electrically insulated from each other, by which means a part of the car can be placed under the influence of attraction and the rest under that of repulsion. This is done on down grades. The weight of the load and of part of the car pulling down and the weight of the rest of the car holding back. It is always arranged to have the car heavier than its load, and the driver can regulate the force used by[31] balancing one against the other, so that a car of many tons shall press on the rails with the weight of only a very few pounds. Thus the wear and tear on road beds and rails is almost nothing and the roads are practically everlasting.”