He welcomed me in the Palace of the Stars. He showed me the treasures of the city—the results of the studies of thousands of astronomers for many ages past, and inspired me with his interest and curiosity to know more. At last he showed me, in Azoniel's hall (where his works of mechanism were stored) the globe for a voyage through space. It was a sphere of some twenty feet diameter, of strongest polished steel. At its top there was a rounded door which could be lifted up, and around its equator were four crystal windows, to observe as we travelled through space. Within were copies of my instruments for conquering gravitation, but of enormous power. Mighty electromagnets were there, and within there was a room with every comfort for the travellers during their long and perilous voyage. In the side were a thousand instruments of every kind for observing, measuring, registering natural forces, and so forth. A long bar pierced the base of the sphere in which were the explosive forces to impel or direct the sphere. It was a wonderful triumph of skill—a little artificial world, as it were, fitted to dart through interplanetary space with every triumph of our skill and science comprised within its globe and stored in its many cells. All accidents appeared
