the nearest depôt I can get an air boat and fly with it as long as I require it, leaving it at the nearest depôt when done with. If I take it the whole fifteen thousand miles it will be just as much a chattel of the government and just as much at home as now. Its use for the time I have had it will be debited to me, that is all. I am under no obligation to return it. If articles get congested in one place they are redistributed; but this rarely happens. My freedom causes the depôt to debit the government, for they have to give an account to the Central.
I do not take an air boat, for the weather is cold and the mode of travel lonely. Besides, in flying eternal vigilance has to be manifested and occasional descents made to resupply electricity. We carry a chemical generator for an emergency, such as being caught in mid air with no means of controlling descent, and so having to fall. In some places supply wires are thirty miles apart. It is possible to pass one and be unable to reach another; it is therefore necessary to know how far you can go and how far you have gone.
Another mode is by the swift air boats that carry despatches and special messengers. These go through the upper air, above the level of ordinary traffic, at an average speed of one hundred miles an hour; on emergency they go at twice the speed. Even that is slow compared with the rate of a dozen centuries ago, at which period everything used to go in a greater hurry. It was discovered, however, that the rapidity of travel made drivers nervous, and materially impaired their health and shortened their lives. A parliament was convened and the question of rates of travel fully discussed. The result is we travel slower and live longer. It is a matter of history that one of the government air boats, about twelve hundred years ago, went round the planet in four days, That is, it travelled over three hundred miles an hour.
I decided not to go by the government boat. My medal would pass me, but my journey to the metropolis was not of State importance, and to have used the boat would have been to tax my prerogative to the utmost. Fifteen thousand miles is a long journey in any case.
Two more ways lay open; by rail, skirting the south of the Central Ocean, and by rail and sea, taking a warmer and more northerly route. The latter I selected.
Our lines all run underground, so that travellers by rail see nothing of the country, and have no night nor day. The propelling force is the usual one. The cars are well lit and supplied with every convenience. In them you can eat, drink, sleep, read, bathe, work, write; in short, make yourself at home. The maximum rate of travel is one hundred miles an hour, and the cars are suspended between the wheels, so that motion is scarcely felt. The sound also is deadened so much that ordinary conversation is heard as
