A Thousand Years Hence/Chapter 16
Old White would say "that he should not wonder if our descendants got outside the world altogether, and voyaged far and away upon the Ether ocean."—Author, chap. i.
I offer here, in the first place, just a few preliminary reflections on the scientific retrospect. Although our nineteenth century scientists, especially towards the end of the century, are reputed to have thought themselves very acute, and the progress of their time very rapid and striking, yet, in looking back, and after all due allowances, one is impressed by the dulness of mental grasp about that time, even where there had already been reached many of those elementary facts which have since served us so well as leverage for further steps of science-progress. Take, for instance, the electro-light speed, which, after all, is simply proportionate to speed of ordinary light as compared to speed of sound, both of the latter being facts perfectly well known of old. Then, again, the electro-light speed once determined, we were already halfway to that other wonderful fact, so important in our exploration of, and speculation upon, far-off space, namely, that this speed is identical with that of the action of gravity. And, once more, the transference of energy, in form of motion, from ordinary matter to ether, and vice versâ—a department of science afterwards so fertile of results, ought, as one would now think, to have been caught up much earlier, seeing that, even in the nineteenth century, the two media were perfectly recognizable and distinguishable, and their quality respectively—as, for example, in regard to light and sound transmission—more or less well known. Look at the result of this last step! We speak, as we all of course know, by means of air. The air-energy is exactly transferred to the ether; and thus the voice is carried, at electro-light speed, in any desired direction, to be afterwards, at its destination, retransferred to air, and to enter there the listening ear, even billions of miles away.
This beginning of our hold upon, or rather say, our actual handling of, ether, was followed by other marvellous results, when we could deal optically with that attenuated medium, isolating it from ordinary matter, presenting an ether surface for light-refraction and reflection, and thus, as by an ether microscope, catching a hugely magnified view of ordinary atoms and molecules. We thus knew, not only the shape and aspect of these bodies, but their intervening distances; and thus also, by a compound equation with other known facts, we found the interval between ether points, as well as much other knowledge, including, in particular, that of the reduction of gravity itself, in certain directions at least, to the common condition of ordinary interchangeable energy. But how simple all those things now appear, after the ways of them are known! and how we wonder at the dulness of our ancestors of the nineteenth century, and even later on, in not discovering them sooner!
At length came the crowning discovery, by which our electro-light energy could impart locomotion to bodily substance, as it had previously been able to do only to the ether vibration. This discovery was reserved for my illustrious old friend Black, the renowned ex-chemical professor of our greatest university, who has thus given immortality to his name, and who still survives, in his honoured old age, to witness the marvellous results of his magnificent exploit. When, long ago, the duplication of the cross gave us the reversion-power that brought responsively back to us the missives or messages which we sent into far-off space, it was, even then, shrewdly surmised, that a further step in the cross-electric, completing, in fact, the full bi-cross, must superadd, inter alia, locomotive power over corporate substance. Indeed the more speculative minds, even at this early time, advanced still further, even to the idea of the ter-cross, with powers that seemed, for the l)resent at least, and while within only bi-cross purview, to be entirely superhuman. These earlier and sanguine predictors have long passed away, and the full bi-cross attainment has involved perhaps a longer interval than they had, over-sanguinely, anticipated. But when the great discovery we now have to deal with did at last come, how marvellous its simplicity! How were we to advance upon the duplication? Why, simply, as Black showed, by the Reduplication!
Black's intimation of his discovery caused the profoundest astonishment, alike in other worlds as in our own. Wonder was now often expressed that our comparatively small world should have thus pre-eminently distinguished itself. But as to this, many calculations have fairly agreed as to the practical advantage of a happy medium, in combined light, heat, electricity, and gravity, and the advantage of such mean state, for business purposes at all events, over partial or irregular predominations, or over even that general superiority in some main elements, which no doubt helps the purely scientific, and possibly, too, the moral perception and development, while less favourable to the vigorous business element. Rumours were not wanting, too, that the discovery in question was not really new in the universe, but had been long familiar, as was much other such advanced knowledge, to a still higher life than ours in that wide and varied universe. We shall return, further on, to this most interesting question. Meanwhile, let us follow Black in the steps he took after the public intimation of his discovery.
By my worthy father's good business advice, I myself not having yet even entered my teens, Black got matters in readiness, so as to have a good start over all possible rivals, before letting the public of the universe fully into his secret. For my part, also, I don't see the use of throwing all one's possible good things away. Our friend White was of very great service in giving practical effect to Black's discovery; and in fact this was the opening of White's grand fortunes, and the beginning of all those magnificent "Liners" which his joint stock companies have since established for interplanetary voyaging and traffic.
Black boldly announced that, at a day and hour which he named, he would launch off for the moon, with such party as had the courage to accompany him. The passage-money, too, as I recollect, while I clinked some small energy-change in my little pocket, was no trifle. The very first volunteer to present himself was White, then a youth, busily engaged in what was still called "the coasting trade," or the shorter-range aerial voyaging. We have since more appropriately extended the term "coasting trade" to our entire globe, as distinguishing its limited range from that wide trading outside which Black's discovery at once opened to us. None was so helpful as White to his principal, in preparing the little barque which was first to navigate the boundless ether ocean.
All this is but half a century ago. I was then a schoolboy, and I still gratefully recollect the half holiday given to all the neighbouring schools, mine included, to enable us to witness the grand event of the day—Black's departure for the moon. I was able that day to squeeze my then much smaller bulk into
X a good position. Before me was a long, narrow, boat-shaped, slightly-made vessel, wholly covered in like a tight cabin, and, as was explained to us, perfectly air-tight. By an ingenious arrangement, the cabin remained air-tight, even with free ingress and egress. This was soon to be put to proof, after quitting our atmosphere; for then there was no longer air pressure outside to balance that within the cabin, so that any chink, however small, would prove fatal to retention of the inside air. Of course, there was ever the possible fracture of the fabric by any passing meteorite or other discourteous fellow-traveller encountered in outside space, in case our earlier precautions as to these encounters proved inadequate. Towards obviating all such possible accidents, each traveller, on this occasion, was separately provided with his own independent air-breathing head-gear. Indeed, it is not, even now, deemed safe to dispense with this contingent safeguard. Inside the cabin, the air was kept pure by the usual carbon-absorbents, which we are so familiar with in ordinary ventilation, and by a store of cross-electro consolidated oxygen.
But the great marvel of the case was the cross-electro apparatus, alike for protection and locomotion. We all gazed curiously at a slight, hardly perceptible, aurora-looking mist or haze that surrounded the vessel; and, at the same time, we could just discern the outline of the long electro-line that had already been thrown out and happily anchored to the moon; thus allowing of the proposed voyage being effected with more general certainty, more celerity, and at much less energy-expenditure, than by the alternative course of simple cross-electric projection from our basic earth. No doubt we have, since these commencing times, greatly improved in this latter art and science, when we have had to find our way, projectively, to bodies so much further off than the moon—to bodies, in short, whose disks, reduced by distance, were so hard to strike, even with the guidance of the closest astronomic calculation, that the expense of this other kind of "fishing" would at times exceed all its saving benefit.
The cross-electro protective surrounding was, in this first trial, and at much cost with the novel experiment, quadruplicated for full safety against any probable—almost even any possible—meteoric impact. Not altogether without anxiety did the present travellers contemplate the possibility of some rarely huge meteorite plunging unchecked through all the four successive layers of the cross-electric protective, and dashing the whole concern to pieces. The momentum of the smaller bodies, encountered in outside space, is easily and safely dealt with, in being instantaneously converted into, and dispersed as, ordinary electricity by the successive protector batteries which encased the vessel. The great unmanageable masses, although doubtless existing and ever a possible danger, are so exceedingly rare as to cause now but slight alarm, more especially as we can now fairly herald and obviate their approach by throwing out, and maintaining for some distance ahead, a slight and comparatively inexpensive cross-electro outrider, whose disturbed pulsation almost instantaneously reports the intruder and the precise direction and speed of his intrusion.
But to return to our subject. The hour of departure now strikes, the travellers haying taken their seats in their hermetically closed cabin, and the signal to start having been given. Those of the onlookers who stood near saw Black duly at his post, and grasping with firm hand the electrics which were to regulate the speed. The vessel is first to run upwards a short way upon a sloping pier; and having thus acquired speed, is to be launched off into air, and so pursue her further course. And now every eye watches this testing transition from the terra firma of the solid pier to the air and the ether. A simultaneous shout indicates the moment of trial, and the prolonged applause tells its success. In a few more seconds all eyes are already straining to following the small and rapidly diminishing object, as it wings its pioneering way to an outside world.
The first voyage to the moon was, of course, an era in our earth's history; and the telling of the story, which was most deservedly secured, by a protracted patent, to our illustrious Black, made equally an era in its author's fortunes. The subject is, of course, all thoroughly way-beaten by this time, as the Lunar "Bradshaw" of to-day may indicate. Nevertheless, there is still an interest in glancing back at a few particulars of this great pioneering expedition. In spite of all precautionary mental preparation, the appalling blackness of space, on emerging clear of the earth's atmosphere, was something barely endurable to unaccustomed feeling, and from which the passengers gladly sheltered themselves within the stained and smoked glass department of their narrow quarters. The blazing sun could not be looked at by the unprotected eye, through the clear diamond window-frames of the other part of the cabin. But when the fierce direct solar rays were screened off from the eye, all space was in the funereal darkness alluded to, with the striking variety of countless stars, above, around, and underneath, shining like brilliant points out upon the great jet-black buckler.
The look back upon the earth, after twenty or fifty thousand miles' distance, was indeed grand and interesting in its entire novelty. The best observations of that kind were made, however, on the return voyage, when the passengers' minds had become more used to the situation, and were, therefore, better composed. Meanwhile the keenest excitement arose, as the party approached the moon. Our colour-photography had long ago perfectly realized to us the moon's surface aspects; but still many questions awaited that critical solution, which only personal observation could give. No difficulty was met with in landing. Of course the party took to the area that was sun-lighted for the time; but they were careful to land at first upon the margin of the heated expanse, until, with their as yet unpractised hands, they could adjust themselves, and their protective apparatus, to the sun's scorching rays, untempered by intervening atmosphere, and to the sun-heated lunar ground. Each being duly arrayed in his independent breathing apparatus, and other panoply, the vessel was brought to anchor on the ragged projection of a small crater, and the whole party at once landed, and with eager curiosity commenced observations.
Of course we now know a great deal in that way about the moon, to which we are ever excursioning nowadays, much as our ancestors of a thousand years ago were wont to do to Brighton; but on that first visit everything aroused interest and wonder. The great shrinkings and deep and lengthened cracks of the lunar surface enabled the more adventurous of the party to make successful subterranean exploration, and bring up from the depths no small lunar information, geological and even historical. Already, even from this first visit, could science conclude, in confirmation of previous theory, that the moon, millions of years ago, had been fully peopled, having possessed then an atmosphere and seas like our earth; but that air and water having been both nearly all absorbed since, all the higher-structure animals and plants had died off, leaving only a few dwarfed and stunted animal forms, which hybernated with the cold of the long lunar nights, and crept out into the light and warmth of the long day. The lunar world was thus found to be nearly cold as well as nearly dead. At the bottom of the cracks and fissures lay the contracted remnants of the lunar waters, now possessed by only a few surviving small fish, mostly blind. A remnant of thin atmosphere rested upon these waters, and gave breath to certain low-class, slug-like animals, clustering in the fissure sides. During the long lunar day, the heated and expanded air overflows from the fissures in a thin and all but impalpable layer. And thus we had been unable, from the earth's, standpoint, to detect previously either air or water.
The moon had balanced her forces and entered upon organized life much sooner than our earth. While the latter was in cloud-boiling condition, such as Jupiter and Saturn still are, the moon was already a peopled world. Her atmosphere had, probably, at first, resembled our own, although much less dense, but it was afterwards changed in composition, and mostly absorbed. By help of the ready-made geological sections supplied by the fissures, we have been able to trace both the advent and the departure of man upon the moon. "The man in the moon" has at last been established as a real personage, at least in the past geological sense. He was of slighter frame than his brothers of the earth, and also less in height, and with a head, to our view, comparatively large to his body. After much subsequent research, we could trace in the various exposed strata, the gradual advance of the lunar animal world, with its highest culmination in man, and whence, by increasingly unfavourable conditions thereafter, it gradually retrograded, and became, as at present, all but extinct.
Some of the larger of the lunar slugs had been picked up on this first visit, with an eye to business, by a brother in the great provision trade, who had been ambitious and courageous enough to accompany the pioneers. These curious creatures lived upon moss-like vegetation in the fissures and cavities below the lunar surface, and upon certain other and smaller animals. From being afterwards prepared in a particular way, suggestive of old North-British curing practice, they got the name of "kippered lunites," and were so greedily taken by the market, that the brother provisioner in question made a rapid fortune. Many a gourmet amongst us, as he turned from what he, perhaps rather fastidiously, is pleased to call common laboratorial fare, to the naturally grown kippered lunite, exclaimed with a slight alteration of ancient Shakespeare, that "one taste of nature made all stomachs kin."
Our pioneering party spent a week upon the moon, and being mostly men of high scientific attainment, the week was a busy one, the moon traversing one of her quarters meanwhile, and bringing the party into the full glare of the fierce sunshine. All were, however, prepared for every trial; and some of the more youthful of the party, by way of practically showing their complete and easy adaptation, became quite frolicsome, as they exercised their limbs by jumping up to fifty or sixty feet from the ground, in illustration of the comparatively small gravitation upon the lunar surface. But at length they all pack up, re-embark, and start back for home.
That home had been, indeed, during all this interval, a grand object before them—so huge, with all its land and water markings, and snow-white poles, varied by the light but ever-passing clouds, that they could hardly realize the said home to be nearly a quarter of a million of miles away. Returning at a comparatively swift pace, the chief interest now centred in the rapidly enlarging form of the earth. No less than fifteen hours had been precautionarily occupied in the outward voyage—a voyage we to-day easily make in an hour, inclusive of slacks! But the return was effected at much less sacrifice of valuable time, even including the pull-up, as the vessel began to near our earth, in order to behold at leisure the grand spectacle of the ever revolving world. For a whole hour together the party looked down with profoundest interest upon the swiftly passing scene. Black had timed their arrival so as to give this hour until the landing-place had come round. And now they are once again into downward motion, as they see the place of destination approach, and make ready, with all due precaution, to enter our atmosphere.
By a slanting movement of the vessel, in view of obviating the rapid rush of the air under the axial motion, the atmosphere was entered in perfect safety, and the descent thereafter easily accomplished. Their telescope had already revealed to the travellers a waiting crowd beneath, showing that the time of return had not been unexpected. The time at this landing-place was just, in fact, about ten in the morning, and most people were on their way to business. The landing was safely effected, and upon the very pier from which the party had started but eight days before.
With this first expedition to an outside world, which followed so promptly upon the discovery of the reduplication, I now conclude this chapter. In the next I have to pass on to all the tide of external intercourse into which our great discovery had launched us.