CHAPTER VII.
RAPID TRANSIT ON MARS.
Here Thorwald paused and said he should be obliged to leave us a shorttime to attend to some duty in the management of the vessel. When hereturned I remarked that neither he nor his companions seemed to have towork very hard.
"That," he answered, "is just the thought I want to speak of next, asthe doctor has said many earthly troubles arise from severe labor. Herethere is no hard work for us. It is all done by some kind of mechanism.Look at the handling of this ship, in which, as you say, no one isburdened. The hard and disagreeable parts of the work are taken outof our hands and are put into the hand of machinery, which in itsperfection is almost intelligent. It is so in all departments of work.Inventions looking toward the saving of labor have closely followed eachother for so many years that their object is about accomplished, and allthe pain and sorrow accompanying daily toil are things of the dead past.Even our animals are relieved from distressing labor and share withus the blessings of an advanced civilization, every heavy weight beingraised and every burdensome load being drawn by an arm of steel oraluminum, which neither tires nor feels. We do not need to pity amachine. Why should flesh and blood, whether of dumb beasts or of moreintelligent beings, suffer the agony of labor when the work can bebetter done by mechanical means?
"While speaking of the lower animals I may as well say here that we haveno wild beasts. All have been tamed; not merely brought into subjection,but made the friends and companions in a sense of our higher race. Everyanimal, large and small, has lost its power and will to harm us. Thewasp has lost its sting, the serpent its poison, and the tiger itsdesire to tear. And not only is their enmity to us all gone, but they nolonger prey upon each other. Perfect peace reigns in this realm also."
"What has brought about this highly interesting condition?" I asked."Was there a natural tendency toward perfection on the part of thebeasts?"
"No," replied Thorwald, "I think not. The change has been accomplishedby us. Nothing that has life could help being uplifted by contact withour ever-expanding civilization. We believe the chief factor in workingthis great betterment in the animal creation has been our success inentirely eliminating flesh as an article of food. We early came to seeit was not necessary for ourselves and that without it we were muchbetter prepared to assume the higher duties belonging to our advancedlife. We then began to experiment with the animals nearest us. It wasa slow and discouraging task at first, but finally we obtained resultsthat gave us hope of success. We found in the course of many years thatthe digestive organs of the animals on which we were experimenting weregradually becoming accustomed to a vegetable diet. We continued thework, extending it to one class of animals after another, until in timeall carnivorous instincts disappeared."
This interested the doctor exceedingly, and he remarked that he shouldthink there would have been some kinds of animals that would resist allefforts to work such a change in them; but Thorwald answered:
"I have never read of such cases, but if there were any the species musthave become extinct, for now, in all this world, no conscious life istaken to support another life. No blood is let for our refreshment andno minutest creature is pursued and slain to appease the appetite of itsstronger neighbor."
"Does this condition extend even to the fish of the sea?" inquired thedoctor.
"Even to the fish of the sea," answered the Martian.
"Now that you discover," he continued, "what improvement has beenwrought in the lower animals, you can understand that their comfort isan object of our solicitude, and that we take great pleasure in knowingthat they are relieved from all hard labor."
"But you haven't told us," said I, "what is the source of the power thatdoes all your work."
"Let me ask," replied Thorwald, "if you have begun to use electricityyet?"
"Yes," I answered, "we are trying to harness it, but it is still farfrom obedient to us."
"I perceive," said our friend, "from this and other things you havetold me, that your development is going on in about the order which hasprevailed on Mars. Do not be discouraged in your efforts to bring thatmysterious and wonderful agent, electricity, into complete subjection.You will find it your most useful servant, and in connection withaluminum it will enable you to solve numerous problems and remove manydifficulties from your path of progress.
"Here we have made full use of both of these valuable helps. Electricityenters into every department of life.
"It runs our errands, takes us from place to place, builds our houses,cooks our food, and even is applied to the growth of our food when weare in haste for any article. Its laws are so well understood that thereis no fear of personal injury from its use, and I will show you howfamiliar an aid it is to us. Here," he continued, taking from hispocket a brightly polished case of metal, "is a compact storage battery,containing, not electricity itself, of course, but elements so preparedthat a simple touch will start into motion a powerful current, able toperform almost any task I may ask of it. This case, you see, is so smalland light that it is no burden, and yet it contains power enough toserve me for many days. Of course, all our work of a fixed characterhas appliances with the power permanently attached, and these portablereservoirs are carried about with us only for detached and unexpectedtasks."
To my experienced eye the doctor's face looked a little skeptical atthis last remark, and he said:
"But how can the power be applied in these emergencies? Suppose, forexample, it were necessary for you to go from here to the other end ofthis vessel in half a second, how would the electricity in your box helpyou do it?"
"If I really thought, Doctor, you wanted to be rid of me I would betempted to try it; but, as I told your companion just now, you hadbetter learn all you can of our history before you begin to see what wecan do.
"I haven't told you half of the wonders performed by this marvelouspower. It has long been our chief reliance for rapid traveling. You findus in this ship; but, although navigation is a perfected science, thismode of traveling is tedious, and ships are used only for pleasure andsuch out-of-the-way trips as this. Journeys from place to place overestablished routes are made in large tubes, in which the cars arepropelled by electricity. These tubes run both on land and water, beingsuspended in the latter a little way below the surface. Both tubes andcars are air-tight, and the adjustment is so perfect that the cars slidealong with the greatest ease. Riding in an air-tight chamber would notbe pleasant if much time were to be occupied in that way, but the carsare propelled so swiftly that the time from one station to another ishardly appreciable. At every stop the cars are opened and apparatus setin motion which changes the air completely almost in a moment. Where thetubes run under water shafts for air are put in at the stations. Thereis always a double line, one tube for each direction. No chance is leftfor accidents.
"Of course we navigate the air, swiftly and safely. If not in too muchhaste we always take the aerial passage, and often on a pleasant day thesky over a great city will be as full of air ships, or balloons as westill sometimes call them, as its harbor is of pleasure boats. In thisdepartment inventors had a fruitful field, the use of aluminum offeringabundant opportunity for the greatest variety of devices, and thedevelopment of the flying machine was one of the most interestingfeatures in the march toward our present high civilization. Perhaps thepresence of so many electrical machines in the air and the utilizationof so much electricity on land and water have, after thousands of years,done much toward freeing us from the thunderstorm, with its deadlylightning. We have fairly robbed the clouds of their electricity andtaught it to do our work.
"Swift and economical as our modern electric cars are, there is onemode of traveling sometimes adopted which is more rapid still, andthe cheapest and in some respects the easiest way of getting over thesurface of the globe ever dreamed of. It was discovered by accident,just before accidents entirely ceased, in the following manner:
"A couple of scientific enthusiasts, of the kind we call cranks--I don'tkno
w what you call them on the earth--conceived the idea that theycould find something better to take the place of the highly purified andbuoyant gases which we used in our flying machines. They observed, inthe lofty flights they were accustomed to make into the air, that asthey ascended the atmosphere grew lighter, and this led them to thinkthey might go far into the upper regions, collect large quantities ofrarefied air, bring it down, and use it for floating flying machines. Ofcourse, they understood that any vessel this thin air was put into mustbe strong enough to prevent being collapsed by the weight of the denseratmosphere on the surface. But they thought small spherical vessels ofvery thin metal could be made that would withstand this pressure andstill hold enough to float and carry some weight besides. They had alarge number of these hollow balls made and started on a trial trip,expecting to bring down only a small quantity each time. But, in theirendeavor to obtain the very best quality of lifting material possible,they went much higher than they intended, although this did not causethem as much inconvenience as might have been expected, since they wereprovided with the latest improved breathing apparatus. The result oftheir adventure, however, was a discovery of such magnitude that itdrove from their minds all thought of their real errand and we neveragain heard of that project. After remaining at an extreme height a fewhours, the surface of the planet being hidden by clouds, they beganto descend, and when they were near enough to see the features of thecountry below them, everything looked strange and unknown. They couldnot account for this, but continued their fall, fully persuaded that itmust be their own world and not some other which they were approaching.But even if they had not been correct in that, they could hardly havebeen more surprised than they were to find, on landing, that they werealmost exactly on the opposite side of the globe from the place wherethey made the ascent. They seemed to have traveled half way around theworld in that incredibly short space of time, when in reality they hadremained stationary and the world had traveled around them. The fact is,they had risen above all the denser portion of the planet's atmosphere,and had reached a stratum of extremely rarefied air, which, it seems,does not accompany the globe in its revolution. Of course, the factswere at once heralded to the four quarters of the world, and the twoaerial travelers found themselves famous. But they did not wish tolet such an astounding discovery rest upon the results of a singleexperiment, and so they proved themselves worthy of their new fameby going home the way they came. That is, they mounted their flyingmachine, rose again to the same lofty height, remained there about thesame time as before, descended, and were near their home."
Here the doctor asked:
"And has this singular mode of traveling become popular, Thorwald?"
"For long distances east and west it is often resorted to. But I presumeyou are asking yourself whether you could introduce it on the earth.When you return and begin to think it over you will probably see so manypractical difficulties in the way that you will not attempt it. You musthave patience. All these things will come to your race in time."