The Fitzgerald Contraction

Roy Glashan's Library
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MILES J. BREUER

THE FITZGERALD CONTRACTION

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First published in
Science Wonder Stories, January 1930

Reprinted in Startling Stories, January 1942

This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2025
Version Date: 2025-08-27

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Science Wonder Stories, January 1930,
with "The FitzGerald Contraction"

Here is, truly, a most remarkable science-fiction story. We could easily wax enthusiastic over it, but would rather have you do so; and if the editor is not mistaken, this story will cause no end of comment. One thing, the story is based on pure science; and, in this case, the science comes pretty close to assuming the impossible, as it very often does. It us usually that which is unknown to us that we identify with the "impossible." But very often the impossible becomes the commonplace.

The Fitzgerald contraction theory is today accepted by all scientists; but, like many other branches of pure science, the contraction theory has never been translated into practice. Dr. Breuer has taken a difficult subject and made a wonderful story from it.

Chapter I. [Untitled]
Chapter II. The Bright Body
Chapter III. An Arrival from Space
Chapter IV. An Obstruction
Chapter V. The People from Outside
Chapter VI. Why They Were Surprised
Chapter VII. The Fitzgerald Contraction

CHAPTER I

I REMEMBER Wendelin's words vividly to this day. I had been lecturing him for being a moody recluse, and had been trying my best to get him to come out to spend an evening in the society of young people. He sat with his back turned toward me, his head bent over a blue-covered book, and paid no attention to me. Suddenly he slammed the book face down on the table and wheeled ponderously around at me.

"You mean a man is in love, not with a particular girl but with a type," he demanded in his slow, deliberate way! "Is that it?"

"All these fellows who would die for the only girl in the world," I replied, "could die quite as devotedly and enthusiastically for any other girl of her particular physical and dispositional type. And yet here a fine, well-situated young fellow like you goes moping because three years ago your fiancée was suddenly killed in an unfortunate accident. Any competent artist or novelist—one who knows his business—or movie producer, could pick out dozens or hundreds of her type who could make you just as happy and cause you to act just as foolish, as she did. But, since you won't hire a qualified expert to select your type for you, you've got to get out and mix with people. You can't find her by grinding around here."

"You mean well, Bill," he said in a low voice. "I'm grateful to you. You may possibly even be correct about your types. But not for me. Listen, Bill." He stopped a moment and looked at me gravely: "There isn't a girl in this world that I could love!"

I didn't pay any exceptional attention to that at the time. It sounded like the same thing that any man would say under the circumstances; and Wendelin, being dogged and ponderous, was taking three years to get over his sorrow, where another would have forgotten it in as many months. I kept on trying to persuade him to go out for the evening with me. It was only later that memory brought back to me the deep reverberation of his solemn words. He placed a slight accent on the "this":

Fate has a curious way of astonishing us with things which she has plainly prophesied to us long before. When the time came and Wendelin married a girl who was not of this world, nor even of this time, his slow, tolling words came vividly back to me. Just now, I was intent on getting him to sally out with me.

Wendelin looked stolid, but he was clever. With his fair hair rumpled and his blue eyes absorbed in the book, the huge mountain of him slouched in his chair, he may have looked formidable physically, but certainly not intellectually. And yet here is what happened to me.

Seeing me determined to get him out into feminine society, he quit arguing. He gave me a generous slap on the shoulder.

"You're a good pal, Bill. You would like to see me as happy as you are, spending an evening with your sweetheart. I understand you. But I can't be happy that way. Just now, this stuff is fascinating me more than the company of girls possibly could. I almost hesitate to show it to you for fear it will make you forget your own sweetheart."

The Lost Continent

HIS words made me look in dubious surprise at the blue-covered book, as though it held some powerful mystery.

"Hindoo hieroglyphics, or Arabic hen-tracks, or something. And some ugly stone gods." I seized the book and looked at its title.

"Something that mathematical physicists ought to know more about," he said, slyly. "This is an account by a Colonel James Churchward[*] of some remarkable evidence which he discovered in an ancient and hidden Hindoo temple. On the basis of this evidence he spent several years investigating among the islands of the Pacific, and has accumulated a mass of data indicating that a continent once existed in the Pacific Ocean. The Continent of Mu—so long ago that it makes Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria, and even India and China with their ancient civilizations seem like little sprouts of yesterday—had a population as great as ours today, and a civilization that was probably more advanced than ours. This continent with its civilization has completely disappeared. Only a few traces are left—

"Now recollect what geologists say about that part of the Pacific. This is not part of Churchward's book, but is nothing new. The tremendous depth of the ocean, the vast stretches of deep water without an island, the resemblance of the island volcanoes in the surrounding islands to similar structures on the Moon—what became of Mu and its civilization? Was it the fragment of the Earth that broke off to form the Moon?"

"Interesting," I admitted, "but not enough to keep me from going to the Trianon with Wilma."

"The continent of Mu," he continued, "was evidently the real birthplace of the human race. Our present culture started in Himalayan India, and has descended to us from some fragment or colony of this civilization that somehow got across to Eurasia. This colony or fragment perpetuated, through many vicissitudes, the culture of the parent civilization after the cataclysm which destroyed the latter."

"But how do you reconcile dates?" I asked. "The Moon got loose somewhere between a quarter and a half million years ago. The human race has not existed that long."

"Only some people say that," he replied. "On the contrary, there are many indications that the human race has existed that long. There is evidence in Churchward's book, and among the findings of other Pacific explorers that at a time when we commonly think that man was an ape-like brute, he was at least as highly civilized as we are now. Look! Some of the ancient philosophy handed down in India (no doubt considerably disfigured during the handing-down process) looks very similar to the Einstein stuff that you are so much concerned in teaching your students. It is expressed in different words; two ways of telling the same Truth."

"For instance: In the Theory of Relativity you have some trouble about identity. Is a definite particle really the same thing all the time, or does it just maintain position and attributes, like a wave in the water?[*] Now tell me how that differs essentially from the Buddhist conception of all individuality being submerged in Nirvana? Or, take the cycle within cycle of electrons, atoms, molecules, solar systems, universes—aren't those the various 'planes' of the Theosophical system?"

[*] Author's footnote: "Permanent identity of particles is a property of matter which Lord Kelvin sought to explain in his vortex-ring hypothesis. This abandoned hypothesis at least teaches us that permanence should not be regarded as axiomatic, but may be the result of elaborate constitution. There need not be anything corresponding to permanent identity in the constituent portions of the aether; we cannot lay our finger at one spot and say: 'This piece of aether was a few seconds ago over there.'" A.S. Eddington, in Space, Time, and Gravitation, Cambridge University Press, 1921.

For a moment I stood in thought, somewhat puzzled to catch his idea. These fanciful discussions had not been uncommon between us during the two years that we had shared an apartment; and were doubly interesting because I was a theoretical scientist while his contact with science was practical and applied. Probably for that reason his discussions were always wild fancy, while I usually strove to keep my feet on solid ground. It usually works out that way.

I stood there puzzling to catch his idea. Then I suddenly caught it. I looked hurriedly at my watch.

He stood there in his dressing-gown and grinned. He had deliberately held me, killing time with his wild ideas, until it was too late for me to expect him to get ready to go out for the evening, and until I just barely had time to dash out and keep my own appointment. Which was a much more enjoyable way for him, of winning his point, than by arguing about a subject which was to him painful and uncongenial. And then people thought he was dull.

But I didn't. For, "tomorrow" the bright body appeared, and the next day Wendelin found the photon-ship. For Wendelin (as you will now guess, that is not his real name) is the late Superintendent of the Cicero Airport in Chicago, the man who found the photon-ship and who was so sensationally involved with some of the strange people who came out of it.

CHAPTER II
The Bright Body

"THE Lost Continent of Mu" lay tossed aside in neglect on a corner of the table. As I opened my eyes and yawned and stretched in bed, I saw it through the bedroom door and Wendelin up and dressed. This was natural, for he had been sound asleep the night before when I had come in. Anyway, I had had a good time.

Then, when I awoke more fully and noticed Wendelin more clearly, I sat bolt upright in bed. His tense, eager attitude as he bent over the morning paper meant something. What was up? He seldom took more than a casual and contemptuous interest in the daily newspapers.

I might have known that a couple of grunts would be all that I got. But he motioned for me to come and look for myself. Over his shoulder I saw the headlines; they held the right-hand column of the front page:

Of course that was what had captured his attention. The new British cabinet, or the railway merger lawsuit were hardly capable of getting a second glance out of him. He grunted again as I put a hand on his shoulder.

"Occasionally the newspapers print something that redeems the crime of their existence," he offered.

"Professor MacQuern of Yerkes Observatory was the first to report yesterday at 7:10 P.M., the appearance of a bright body at one side of the moon. It was distant from the limb about half the moon's diameter and showed in the telescopes as a small disc. Its brilliance was remarkable. The astronomers made no attempt to explain its nature; obviously they haven't the least inkling of what it might be. In reply to inquiries they state that it, corresponds to no object known to science.

"Could it have arrived from interstellar space? Perhaps; but if so, it must have come at an unimaginable speed, a speed exceeding enormously that of any known celestial body. For, the night before, it was nowhere visible; plates made the previous night had been promptly and carefully studied and did not contain it. Yet, tonight it is here, brighter than the moon itself; so bright, that, traveling at ordinary astronomical speeds, it must have appeared as a faint star at least several days ago. If it has arrived from interstellar space in twenty-four hours, from invisibility to a brightness considerably greater than what is known as 'the tenth magnitude' it must have come with a speed greater than any other body in the heavens."

Wendelin looked at me with a wide grin as he folded the newspaper to get at the inside sheets. For, the last two sentences had caused me to put down my razor and stand there with face lathered trying to understand the thing. Every year I devoted half an hour in lecturing on the subject of the maximum velocities, theoretically attainable by matter.

"It must be true! The newspaper says so!" he said ironically and continued reading:

"By 8:30 P.M. the wandering spot had entered the moon's disc, against which it shone clearly as a much brighter area. By this time several of the larger observatories had calculated its diameter as something around two hundred feet, all agreeing to within a few yards. Every fifteen minutes the Associated Press dispatched bulletins reporting the progress of the spot across the face of the moon. By 8:45 P. M. it had traveled across the entire diameter of the moon's disc, and was reappearing against the sky beyond the further rim. Then it disappeared behind the rim. It was revolving around the moon, and was now on the dark side!

"A sub-satellite! A moon of the moon! Whatever the mystery of whence it came or how, one thing is plain: it is going to be a tiny satellite to our moon. Its speed of revolution is unusually high, but not impossible. Though it had arrived from space at a speed too high for astronomers to understand, the velocity of its progress about the moon is at least a perfectly admissible astronomical quantity.

"Perhaps then it has not arrived from space. Perhaps it is a mass ejected from the moon itself. Perhaps some dying spasm of our decrepit satellite has shot it out volcanically into space where we now saw it. That would explain its extraordinary brightness: it is incandescent, just as a volcanic mass would be expected to be.

"At 12:30 this morning reports came in of its reappearance at the edge of the moon where it had originally appeared, and later of its second entrance into the visible disc of the moon. Then reports stopped. Therein comes the mystery, for traveling as a free satellite it should have reappeared much sooner.

"The Associated Press has continually sought to obtain a statement from all known observatories by telephone. Astronomers, however, decline to give out any more information. One and all, as though they had mutually agreed on it, they refused to say anything. Why? Is the strange object so bizarre, that astronomers are so uncertain as to their interpretation and significance, that they are unwilling to make any statement?

"From 12:30 until four o'clock this morning the body has been seen only once. It described a circle on the disc of the moon with a radius about half that of the moon's disc, and concentrically with it. Then it traveled to the center and remained there."

A Lecture in Probabiliy

"Now what is the thing? It's up to us to decide, isn't it?" I had recovered my equanimity and gone on with my shaving.

"I know you'd love an argument," Wendelin said: "But I've got to get started toward work, and so do you. But, it might be an incandescent fragment blown off the moon, and fallen back again."

"You're a darned good atmospheric aviator; and I take pleasure in paying you the compliment," I answered : "But flying through interstellar space is something different."

"Possible, perhaps," I admitted. "But probable? The chances against its probability are the square of a million to one. There's only one chance in a million that there is another inhabited planet in the universe; and given that probability, only one chance in a million that its inhabitants could make a space vehicle and get over here in it."

"Oh, I know. You have read lots of stories in the science-fiction magazines. But we're talking about the real probability in the real universe."

"I'll tell you, but I'll have to make it brief, for we've got to get to work. You realize, do you not, that this is a subject that comes into the domain of my everyday teaching?

"Scientific thought [*] is fairly well agreed at the present time that the possibilities of intelligent beings anywhere else in the universe, are mighty rare, if any; the accent being on the if any. Why?

[*] This argument is taken from the following: Maunder: Are the Planets Inhabited, Chapter XI: Harpers, 1913; A. S. Eddington: The Nature of the Physical World, beginning page 169; Macmillan, 1929; James Harvey Robinson: The Mind in the Making, Harpers, 1921. These books are all of a popular-scientific nature, and can be understood and appreciated by the non-technical reader.

"The basis of life is protoplasm. To exist, protoplasm needs definite conditions within extremely narrow limits as compared with the wide range of conditions as they exist in general in the universe: heat, light, moisture, oxygen, and gravitation. These factors must all be exactly right. If only one of them is a little off, life cannot exist. 'One black ball rejects.' Three different experiments were made on this planet before intelligent being evolved: reptiles, birds, and mammals. The mammalian, and still more, the human form must be associated with life, before a high type of intelligence can be produced.

"Conditions sufficiently like those on earth, which are necessary to support mammalian life, do not prevail on any other planet in the solar system. Mercury is too hot. Venus has one face to the sun, too hot and steamy; the other eternally cold and dark. Mars, the only planet on which we can discern a solid surface, is cold and dead; there is neither enough air nor water nor light enough to support a civilization. The rest of the planets are too dark and far away, and probably not yet solid.

"The Earth is unique in the solar system, For instance, our moon is 1/80 of the mass of the Earth; the next largest moon in the solar system, Saturn's moon Titan, is 1-4000th of the mass of its planet. It must have been a rare and unusual combination of circumstances that produced our moon. And, if it had not been broken off from the Earth, forming the great cavity filled by the Pacific Ocean, the whole surface of the Earth might be covered with water. Then where would man be?

"Now, of the hundreds of millions of stars outside our solar system, is it rash to say that somewhere the same conditions exist as on Earth, favorable to life and intelligence? We cannot say that they do not exist; but we can say that they are extremely rare, if they do exist; that our Earth is the exception in the universe, not the rule.

"One star out of three is a double or binary; and, to the best of our knowledge, it is not possible for double stars to have a planetary system. In fact a solar system like ours is not a typical product of the development of a star, nor even a common variety of development. It is a rare freak. It could be formed if only at a certain stage of condensation an unusual accident had occurred; say the approach of another star within a distance not far outside the orbit of Neptune, and at just the right velocity. Such encounters must be rare. The density of stars in space is comparable to that of twenty billiard balls roaming the whole interior of the Earth. The accident that produced the solar system would occur with about the same probable frequency as would the approach of two of these balls within a few feet of each other.

"Man, therefore, is a rare accident in the universe. His existence depends on a series of rare accidents, so that the chances against the repetition of the evolution of Man are expressed by the product of the chances against all the individual accidents. Is it anything different for Nature to waste a million pollen grains for each one that finds its way to fertilize a pistil, than for her to expend a hundred million stars so that she may make a planet for man to live on?

"Therefore, the chances against last night's bright spot being a space vehicle from another planet are about one to 10¹²[*]."

CHAPTER III
An Arrival from Space

AT 8 o'clock in the morning I plunged into my work at the University and did not come up for air until eleven. Classes, interviews with students, reports and lectures, kept me submerged. At eleven I recovered consciousness, so to speak; and dashed across the street for a newspaper. I selected a Post as being the most conservative and accurate. The story now covered two columns of the front page:

"Late dispatches from nine observatories, as daylight put an end to observation, report the strange celestial wanderer discovered last night, as having increased about twenty per cent, in apparent size. That would indicate that it is approaching the earth at a tremendous velocity. Astronomers are unwilling to accept the alternative hypothesis, that an actual increase in the size of the body has taken place. The idea of an approach toward the earth is supported by the change in color that occurred in the bright body as soon as it stopped moving across the telescopic field and began to increase in size. From a yellowish-white, exactly like that of the moon, it took on a faint but definite blue-violet tinge. This is just what would occur in a luminous body approaching the observer at a high velocity, because of the apparent decrease in wave-length of the emitted light. In spectroscopic work it is termed the Doppler effect.

"Just as we go to press, photometric observation confirms the idea of an approach toward the earth by the bright body. It has almost doubled in brilliance, which would approximately correspond to a thirty per cent, nearer approach, if we remember that the brightness would increase with the square of the distance approached. At its present rate of progress, the bright body will reach the earth just before dawn tomorrow."

The rest of the article I shall not quote. Its writer did not neglect to make the most of his sensational opportunity. Where would it strike? What was it composed of? If it were an incandescent mass of mineral, suppose it struck a city? Would Omaha or Kansas City be the target? With fiendish realism the writer painted the havoc it could wreak on impact, and described in gloating detail the appearance of the place after a huge meteor struck Siberia in 1914. The correspondent did suggest that it might be a space vehicle from a distant planet, and presented arguments on both sides of that question.

For some reason, the reports of that tiny bright speck, too small to be seen except in the big telescopes, gave me a strange thrill. I would have liked to keep my mind on it and speculate as to its nature and its strange journey. It seemed unfair that for four hours of the afternoon I should have to submerge the increasing flow of intriguing thoughts in a sodden flood of routine work. The pressure upon me was so intense that from one to five in the afternoon I hardly knew where I was or who I was. Then at five, like a diver emerging from a long underwater swim, I dashed eagerly out of the oppressive rooms, away from the oppressive routine into the open air and freedom for thought.

The evening edition of the Post held a long list of dispatches from European observatories, which had picked up the body just as it had ceased its erratic performances and struck out for the Earth; but these really told me nothing new. Then suddenly a boy came tearing down the street with a huge bunch of newspapers that seemed big enough to crush him flat to the sidewalk. He was yelling and stirring up a commotion as though he had been beset by assailants and was being beaten.

I seized a paper and yanked it open, while the boy plunged on into the quadrangle to meet the press of emerging students and faculty members. The headlines screamed:

"The Daily News reporter at Boston succeeded in getting a few words with Professor MacQuern at eleven this forenoon, and was told that the spectrum of the bright body contained no Fraunhofer lines! This may not mean much to the average citizen, but was a knockout for the astronomers.

"'It means light from undissociated matter,' Professor MacQuern said. 'Such a spectrum can come only from a solid, incandescent body.'

"That can mean only that the bright body is an incandescent mass of mineral. Star spectra as observed by astronomers contain numerous transverse colored lines, known as Fraunhofer lines, and are produced by matter in the gaseous state.

"The latest checks on the course of the bright body confirm previous statements. It is headed toward the central portion of the United States, and is due to arrive shortly before dawn tomorrow."

In all truth there should have been a panic throughout the Mississippi Valley. With the terrible body headed straight for that region, some vast catastrophe was destined to occur. And there was no way of preventing it. Human effort was absolutely powerless to do anything to protect the threatened area. This part of the country is so densely populated that destruction of property and loss of life were bound to occur; there would be the rarest of chances for it to fall somewhere where it would do no harm whatever. There was a very fair probability of its falling into some city, in which case the death and destruction would be appalling.

One would have expected people to rush pell-mell from the threatened area. But no one did. No one knew whence to rush or whither. Should one flee, the body might strike the place to which he fled, quite as readily as the one from which he fled. I did not feel much fear, and I doubt if anyone else did. The chances of its hitting me seemed small; I lived in a sort of faith and hope that it was bound to strike somewhere else.

But I was eager to get a glimpse of it. The newspaper reports and a bulletin from the Yerkes Observatory posted on the board in the Administration Building, stated that it would be visible to the naked eye about eleven P.M. But, great crowds of us stood and watched and searched the heavens, and saw nothing. At one-thirty in the morning a group of us decided to go downtown; the bulletin boards of the Tribune and Examiner told us that the bright body had not been seen in any telescope. Surging crowds packed Madison Street around the newspaper offices, as they do on election nights or football nights. There were dispatches galore, but they all said that the bright body had not been seen at all that night. It had vanished.

Bulletin-board dispatches are not voluble; but in my own mind I could picture the thing, hurtling straight toward the Earth, even though invisible. It might be invisible because in the terrific cold of space it had rapidly cooled. Being no longer incandescent it no longer gave off light. But it was still coming. I went home to bed and fell sound asleep from the strain and exertion of the day.

In our modern civilized life, we keep up with what is going on simultaneously over the entire world. Every morning we Chicago folks have to know what happened last night in New York or Denver, or Calcutta or Bloemfontein. We would be seriously distressed if we were deprived of this contact with the whole world at our breakfast table. Therefore, we are dependent on the newspapers. Were it not for their rustling, ink-fragrant pages, we would be as isolated as a villager of the Fourteenth Century.

So, in the morning, eager to know what had become of the bright body, I dashed out for my Tribune. But, with a gradually sinking sensation, I realized that there was no news. There was a protesting-against-Fate sort of an editorial, marveling at the sudden disappearance of the object that for twenty-four hours had set the world agog. All the information that reporters, importuning at the observatory doors, had gotten was that the bright body was nowhere to be found. All the searching with telescopes had revealed—nothing! There was nothing to do but wait till it crashed.

At noon I emerged from the oblivion of my classes, and as it was Saturday I was through for the day. I hurried to a newsstand, for by this time, somewhere, the huge meteor must have fallen, splashing up tons of dirt, and spreading destruction and havoc far and wide.

But as I turned the pages of the Post, scanning rapidly up and down column after column, I found no mention of it. I tried a Daily News and an American in the same way, and finding nothing, threw down the whole mass of papers in disgust. A disgraceful way for a meteor to let down the suspense of an anxious reading-public!

I reasoned that if it were going to fall at all, it would have struck by this time. Therefore, the only explanation was that in its erratic way it had struck off from the Earth, and was going somewhere else, or had fallen into the ocean. Our little draught of excitement was quaffed and done with.

"Back to the old humdrum life, and to trying to get Wendelin interested in some girls," I thought, as I headed towards my room.

As I stepped into the corridor of the apartment house, the telephone operator stopped me on my way past her desk.

"Mr. Wendelin telephoned asking if you would come to the field as soon as you got here. Says he has something that will interest you. Seemed to be excited."

Snatching a hasty lunch, I was soon on the cars, bound for the Cicero airport. There, after some search, I found Wendelin near the center of the vast field, standing still and staring toward the west.

"The last mail-ship has just left and I'm free till 4:30," he said as I came up. He seemed immensely pleased at my arrival. "I've been pretty busy, but my curiosity has been run ragged as to what that thing is." He pointed to the southwest corner of the field.

"Look! Aren't the fence-posts brighter in that corner? As though a bright light shone on them?"

They were. Just as though a brilliant searchlight had been turned on them. In spite of the daylight, they glowed with illumination. I looked about for its source.

"I assure you there's no light around here that could do that," Wendelin said. "I can't tell you where it comes from. Now look again. Do you see any fence just to the north of the corner? Or just a hazy, distance-like effect?"

"There's a break in the fence," I hesitated, "but one wouldn't notice it without looking closely."

"That fence was intact at ten o'clock this morning, and I've been out in this field all the time since, and didn't see anything happen to it. Well, look some more. Just back of the break in the fence is the Ford Assembling Plant. It has always been there, and was there at ten this morning. Do you see it?"

"I do not!" I gasped, remembering that I had seen it there many times. "What in thunder—?"

"Finally, look at the ground just in front of the gap in the fence. That corner isn't used much. The water-grass and Russian thistle are as thick there as they are right here. Do you see them?"

"No!" I exclaimed: "It looks distant, vapory. Not like ground at all. Like the end of things. What has happened to that place?"

"That's what I've been studying since I noticed it a couple of hours ago; but I've been too busy to get to it. I have come to the conclusion that there is something there. Something as big as our apartment house, but camouflaged or invisible. You can't see it, but you can see it's there. Because you can't see through it, and it blocks off the things behind it."

I peered intently. He was right. A huge, vague chunk of the ground and background as blocked off, as though indeed something invisible stood in front of it.

CHAPTER IV
An Obstruction

IN a moment both of us were striding toward the queer dimness in the southwest corner of the field. The nearer we got to it, the more convinced we were that there was something there; although we could see nothing. What the mystery of its invisibility was we could not conjecture even sufficiently to begin a conversation about it. We were both determined to walk right up to it and see if we could feel anything with our hands.

"After we know more about this," Wendelin panted, walking quickly, "we'll find out that it's got something to do with the bright thing against the moon."

"Now then," I said as I half ran, "suppose it turns out that you are right? Suppose the thing really is a space machine? Why is it that you know about it before the rest of the world? Is it because you are endowed with some sort of mysterious prophetic powers, or because you can subconsciously see hidden truth across space and time—?"

"Aw, cut the comedy, Bill. It's just because I've got some imagination, and have the nerve to conceive things that the rest of you are too hide-bound to admit. It's the explanation that fits the facts best, and I'm not afraid of it—"

His speech and our run were cut short by a terrific flash of light. Ahead of us there sprang into our vision a huge ball of yellowish-white blaze, so intense that we were instantly blinded. I stumbled to my knees and a great pain burned into my brain. I heard Wendelin give a hoarse shout beside me. It felt as though we had suddenly run up close to the glaring ball of the sun itself.

It was many minutes before I could force myself to open my burning eyes. I made the attempt with my back turned toward the direction from which the glare had come. All I could see were flashes and glows and dancing lights and glares. In a moment I realized that these were from my own paralyzed retina; and I settled down to a wait of several minutes to give my eyes time to recover from the shock. In about ten minutes I could look about and see things fairly well; though when I closed my eyes, I was still conscious of a glare. And when I could see, I felt a mild surprise to note (with my back still turned to the place of mystery) that the field, the hangars, and the buildings beyond the fence were all in order, just as they always had been.

Then it dawned on me that the blaze was gone. If it had still been there, there should have been a black shadow of me stretching out ahead, and a glare all around. There weren't any. At the same moment I perceived that Wendelin was also turning around warily. Cautiously I turned, first the corners of my eyes, and then my full vision, to that southwest corner.

The whole end of the field was filled by a huge, looming bulk. Now, it looked solid and heavy; a sort of dark, bluish gray. A good look at the gloomy thing showed it to be a huge polyhedron of metal, with octagonal faces as big as the size of a house. In diameter it was a city block, possibly just a little less. It towered hugely above us as we approached; but we kept on toward it.

The first glance at it disposed of any possible doubt as to its artificial origin. The straight, smooth edges of metal, the flat plates between them, the half-dozen glass windows, the huge bolt-studded door, all positively precluded the idea of its being an inorganic meteor. It was something that had been made by intelligent beings.

Shouts behind us caused me to turn around. There were people running toward us. I had thought that the field was deserted; but there is no such thing. In Chicago, no matter what happens, a crowd will collect in thirty seconds.

As I turned my eyes back to the huge polyhedral thing, I gasped. The big door in the octagon next to the ground was open a little. It continued to open further. We weren't over thirty yards away, with the dark bulk looming almost over our heads; and we could hear the grating of some sort of mechanism as the heavy door swung open. Out of the yellow-lighted circular opening slid a ramp or gangway, that touched the ground. With our eyes popping out of our heads in amazement we continued to walk mechanically ahead as a group of people walked out of the gloomy thing down the gangplank.

Wendelin and I plodded ahead, studying the people meanwhile. At first glance, we thought they were Chinamen. Three of them wore soft, silken, gorgeous blouses of green with red, brown, and black designs; and loose, pajama-like trousers. The other two had nothing in common with Chinamen. They looked like Grecian maidens, in beautiful silky tunics; one blue, one pink. Their legs were bare. All of them moved heavily, as though walking were a task.

Then we perceived their heads and faces. Their faces were certainly not Chinese. They were perfectly Caucasian in shape and color; and they were very noble-looking faces, more like those of the ancient Greeks than anything I can compare them with. Since then, I have been asked many questions about them, and the only way I can express it is, that they were more like us than we are ourselves. If there was any marked difference, it was that their skins looked very much tanned, as though they had been in the sun a great deal.

The Visitor From Space

WHEN we were a dozen feet away from them, they stopped and looked at us. We stopped also. If human faces can register utter bewilderment, theirs certainly did. They looked at us; they looked at the people running behind us; they looked about the field, at the distant buildings, and up at the sky; and they looked at each other. They frowned and shook their heads slowly, and looked about again, for all the world as though they hadn't the least idea of what it was all about. They spoke a few short, breathless words to each other. One of them shook his head sidewise, another nodded up and down, and both seemed to be agreed in their perplexity.

Then suddenly a little shriek came from among them. It was a sudden, startled shriek; not a frightened one, but rather a happy, feminine gurgle. It came from the blue-tunicked young woman, who, with her companion, looked to me very comely. Following the shriek there was a streak of silky blue, a flash of bare legs, and the next thing I knew, she had her arms about Wendelin's neck. She clung to him with all her might, buried her face in his shoulder, and softly crooned to him, twice over, something that sounded like:

Poor Wendelin! I never saw anyone's eyes bulge out so far, nor anyone's face turn so many colors, as did his in the next few seconds. For a moment he stood as if paralyzed, his arms stuck stiffly out at his sides. In his baggy white "coveralls" he looked ineffably huge and clumsy as compared with the delicate pink-and-blue creature that clung to him.

Then the girl held him off at arm's length for a moment, as if to enjoy the sight of him. The look of joy in her face melted into a confused, inquiring expression. She studied him as he stood there dumb as a fire-plug, and her face changed from doubt to perplexity, and then suddenly to horror. She uttered another shriek, this time a piercing scream of fear, and whirled and ran swiftly back to her own people. There she wept on the shoulder of one of the green-pajamaed men, one with gray locks and wrinkled brow; and we could see her shoulders shaking with sobs.

"Mistook you for her friend," I ventured to Wendelin. But he stood as if in a daze, his eyes seeming as though they would start from their sockets and fly straight toward the sobbing girl.

By this time several of the approaching people had arrived and were standing there, panting and staring. Most of them had seen what had happened, and they gazed at Wendelin with varying expressions. Some were rude and leering; others seemed sympathetic and genuinely sorry for the dazed man and the weeping girl. Others who had not seen what had happened came running up and stared at the whole tableau in amazement. There was a gabble of excited voices.

The silk-clad people from the machine huddled close together with the same expression of intense perplexity on their faces, except that the old man was leading the weeping girl back up the gangplank and through the door. As they disappeared within, I could see that he was patting her shoulder, and trying to comfort her.

Wendelin suddenly came to and barked sharply at one of the airport mechanics who had come running up.

"Telephone!" he ordered, "and make it snappy. First, the police station: two squads of guards out here, pronto. Emergency. Second, the Chancellor's office at the University of Chicago. Have them locate Chancellor Burkett, give him my name, and ask him to get out here as quickly as possible!"

"Yes, sir!" the man said, and was on the run before Wendelin had finished talking.

The crowd gathered swiftly. The whole landing-field was sprinkled with people who had appeared out of nowhere, running toward us; and already the dense press behind us was gradually crowding us closer to the silk-clad group. To the sides of us, the crowd pushed forward and was surging against the huge machine, examining its walls, tapping and scratching them.

I was thoroughly disgusted with the behavior of the people. They abandoned themselves—taking the mob as a whole—purely to animal curiosity, with never a thought of consideration or courtesy. Here were guests from a distant, evidently highly-civilized planet, landed in what they supposed to be a civilized city of our Earth; and yet, instead of being courteously welcomed, they were about to be trampled by a herd of wild buffaloes.

The strangers consulted rapidly among themselves for a few minutes. They shook their heads and pondered, and seemed at a loss as to what to do. Then they slowly turned and walked up the gangplank, and disappeared within their vehicle. The gangplank slid inside and the door clamped shut.

Wendelin and I turned toward each other. I did not know what to say or do. He smiled, a transparent attempt at jocularity. Obviously the incident had sunk deeply.

"Wasn't bad while it lasted," he laughed; and the laugh sounded strained: "I wonder if we'll ever see them again?"

"You certainly showed presence of mind to send for the police," I said. "This mob will tear that thing up, purely from dumb curiosity, if they're not held back."

With a terrific commotion in the crowd, some thirty minutes later, a couple of dozen policemen pushed toward us. The retreat of the strangers into their machine had removed the crowd's last modicum of inhibition, and we were being squeezed against the walls of the huge vehicle. The substance of which the walls were composed was cool, and felt like lead. The policemen formed a circle around the huge object—I still hesitate for a name to give it—and by dint of much shouting, shoving, and threatening, they gradually cleared a space for a hundred yards around the machine.

Becoming Acquainted

"I'M afraid the harm's already done," Wendelin said. "Look's as though we've scared them in."

"I wouldn't blame them for picking up and leaving the solar system," I said: "In another ten minutes the crowd would have carried them away and their machine piecemeal for souvenirs."

We waited patiently for something to happen, but the machine remained huge, silent, inscrutable. The mob surged and gabbled, and grew constantly bigger. Wendelin delegated subordinates to look after his evening duties, and had lunch-boxes brought over to us. At 6:30 Chancellor Burkett arrived, and with him, Mayor Johnson. Both of them had already been acquainted with what had happened.

"I called on you," Wendelin said to the Chancellor, "because this is a situation in which many experts and specialists in various lines will be required. You are the best man to find the right people quickly, so that we might make an effort to understand these people, their machine, their language and their journey."

"Well, here's one of my experts right here," the Chancellor said, laying his hand on my arm: "He is pretty thoroughly acquainted with the deep places in the Universe."

I bowed acknowledgment. And we waited some more. It grew dark, and the airport's floodlights were turned loose upon the scene. Wendelin and I walked over into the empty space around the machine, and beckoned and made signs of welcome. But the silence of the tomb met our efforts.

Then, when it had become pitch dark, the door finally opened, the gangplank slid out, and two of the men in green silk pajamas walked heavily out. We stood hesitating until one of them made an unmistakable gesture, beckoning us to come; and then held up a hand with five fingers spread out.

Wendelin and I, the Mayor and the Chancellor stepped forward. The Chancellor motioned to the burly police sergeant, and I also felt that he would be a good man to have along in case we needed physical assistance. The strangers repeated their beckoning gesture and retreated within the doorway.

The others eagerly followed me as I led the way up the gangplank. We found ourselves in an empty room, lighted by a bright globe. One of the strangers was directly in front of me, and I marveled at the softness and lightness of his clothing, especially as compared with the clumsy, heavy woolen things we wore. Wendelin, in his baggy canvas coveralls, was the only one whose dress compared with theirs in the way of comfort. The stranger in front of me was a brisk, bright looking man of about forty, with power and intelligence showing in his face. He addressed himself to me, laying his hand on my shoulder, then motioning me with his hand, as though motioning me to watch what he was going to do. Then he touched a button and plunged the room into darkness.

Some of our group stirred and growled in suspicion. But in an instant the light was on again. Then my interlocutor pointed outdoors and made a sweeping, circular gesture—I surmised to indicate the outdoors; and again put the light out. He turned it on again promptly, and drew a small telescope out of his clothing. This he put to his eye and looked intently upwards through it for a moment. Then he lowered it, pointed to the light globe; and shook his head and made a negative gesture with palms downward. Again he pointed out doors, and again put the light out.

"He wants us to put out the floodlights," I said. It is much more difficult to render his gestures in a written description, than it was to interpret them as we watched him. "The light interferes with their observations."

Wendelin—it was characteristic of him to be recklessly obliging—sprang to the door to give the order. The man from the machine took both my hands and shook them formally. Then he led me to his companion, who did the same. This was repeated with all the members of our party.

"Sort of an introduction, I suppose," I ventured. "From it I gather that we're going to be friends."

Just as the lights were extinguished outdoors and darkness closed over us, the two men in green beckoned us, and we followed them. Through long corridors, up metal stairways, it seemed interminable distance, they led us. Wendelin, who walked beside me, kept peering into all recesses and doors, turning his head as we went round corners, and craning his neck whenever we passed other silk-clad strangers. But we saw nothing of the beautiful girl! What a jolt he had gotten!

They Decide to Stay

FINALLY we reached the top. Here in a large room was a beautiful eight-inch telescope, mounted in a way that delighted my heart. The room was a marvelous astro-physical laboratory; many of the instruments looked quite familiar to me. At the telescope sat a man calling out strange words; at a table sat two men, one manipulating some sort of a calculating machine, another covering sheets of some sort of parchment with figures. All of them had on their faces that look of blank, hopeless perplexity, as though some terrific inexplicable event had overtaken them.

Instinctively I went over to look at the figures on the paper. Of course the symbols were utterly strange to me, but they were in orderly rows and columns. In a moment the calculation seemed to be finished, and the man with the papers announced the result. The others stood as if petrified. One of our conductors spoke a word or two of what seemed protest. The other pointed to the papers and made a gesture of finality.

It was several moments before they turned to us; and now, calm resignation showed in their faces. All of them looked and acted as though they had made some sort of a decision, perhaps to accept this strange fate that they could not understand.

The man who had first interviewed me, now confronted me again. He pointed to himself with an up and down gesture indicating his whole body; then likewise to me, and the same way to several of the other men, both in their party and ours.

I subsequently heard the same query so many times that I learned it thoroughly. At the moment I did not at once comprehend. I stood in silence, wondering what he meant. So he took my hand and pointed to it, then to his hand, and repeated his:

Then he pointed to the telescope, to the light globe, to the table, asking each time:

Finally the light broke upon me. The change of expression on their faces to one of patient resignation, and now the queries in connection with common objects.

"They've decided to stay and learn our language!" I exclaimed. "He's asking the names of these things!"

"We'll have some of the Education people down here tomorrow," the Chancellor said, "Also a philology man to pick up their language."

"But, by the way they act," I continued, "they seem to think they have come to the wrong place. They look as though they hadn't expected to find things this way; but they've decided to stay anyhow and look into it."

Wendelin stood right behind me, and I heard a faint, involuntary sigh escape him.

CHAPTER V
The People from Outside

"DO you think," asked the Chancellor, of Professor Andrews, head of the School of Philology, "that we could get their story most quickly if we learned their language, or if we taught them ours?"

We were holding a little conference in the Chancellor's office. There were about a dozen of us from different departments of the University, and a representative from the Mayor's office. Gray and experienced veterans like Chancellor Burkett, and Fielding the astronomer, and young fellows like myself and Fahrenbruch the psychologist, all exchanged opinions and offered ideas and contributed wisdom or ingenuity, toward forming some sort of plan for handling our visitors in the proper manner. All of us were anxious to show them the utmost cordiality, and to be of all possible service to them; but none the less we were equally eager to learn their story, and find out where they had come from and how. It was difficult to keep our curiosity about them from dominating our entire attitude toward them. But we were unanimous in agreeing that hospitality must come first.

The Chancellor's query was not definitely answered just then; and it answered itself later. However, four of us were detailed to establish communication with our mystery-enshrouded visitors; we were to act as a sort of liaison committee, with Dubuque of the Education Department as chairman; and Andrews the philologist, Fielding the astronomer, and myself as members.

The next decision of the Chancellor's conference was to make an attempt to persuade our visitors to move their machine to the Midway, just beside the campus. Most of us who would have to come in contact with them daily, lived near the University, and would have to make long and tedious trips to the Cicero flying field. Obviously they had selected the airport as a landing place because it had appeared to be such an inviting location. We had no doubt that the machine could move itself with but little trouble. And there was plenty of room on the Midway.

It worked out beautifully. Our committee visited them the next morning, and were met by the same five people who had stepped out of the machine on the first occasion. I was selected as spokesman because the visitors already knew me. With pencil and paper in my hand, I indicated that I had something to communicate to them. I sketched a map of southern Chicago, putting in the landing field and their vehicle in one corner. I sketched its polyhedral character, and then pointed to it, around the room, at them, and to the floor. I looked at their faces to see if they understood, and they nodded comprehension. Then I sketched in the University, besides the broad Midway, and indicated with gestures the connection between ourselves and the University buildings. Again they nodded their understanding of my idea. Then it required but a simple gesture to indicate the moving of their vehicle to the Midway. The man who had made overtures to me the day before seemed to grasp it first, and rapidly explained it to the others. I could tell by the expressions in their faces that they acquiesced in the idea. So we conducted them to an airplane and flew them over to where the Midway lay, and showed them the resting place we had selected for them. They regarded our airplane with a curious interest; but it seemed to me that they did not consider it worthy of wonder or admiration. Possibly it looked as primitive to them as a rickshaw looks to us.

The moving of the vehicle was a spectacular performance. There was always more or less of a crowd of curious around their machine, beyond the ring of police. The space-travelers closed their door, having motioned us away and warned us by placing their hands across their eyes.

"Look out for the light!" I warned. The police shouted their warning to the people in the vicinity, protecting their own eyes with their hands. With my eyes closed and my hands over them, I was still conscious of a bright light, which lasted the merest instant and was gone. When I looked again, the huge, gloomy polyhedron was no longer there. Looking closely, I noted the vague area of emptiness that obstructed the view of the distant buildings. But in a moment that had thinned and cleared, and I could see the Ford Assembling Plant again, and the fence was in plain view all the way around the corner. When we arrived at the Midway, the machine was there, dark and ponderous on the lawns, with a ring of police holding off a chattering crowd.

We felt much more encouraged because we had gained the friendly confidence of the strangers and made ourselves understood sufficiently to have succeeded in securing their cooperation with our plans. It looked like a good beginning. We were further encouraged when they invited us into their machine and took us on a tour of inspection through it.

As sufficiently detailed descriptions of their vessel have been published by numerous writers, both popular and scientific, I shall omit such purely descriptive material in this account, which purports to be an interpretation of the significance of their achievement.

The word photon-ship seems to have been most widely used and accepted as an appellation for their vehicle; and the public knows all about the thirty people who came in it, the comfortable and luxurious living-quarters, with carpets, wall-hangings, couches, books, pictures, all giving the impression of an Oriental refined artistry; the solarium, the gymnasium, the swimming-pool, and all the ingenuity expended for the purpose of keeping up the health and morale of passengers who would have to remain confined within the vessel for a long time; the marvelous astrophysical laboratory, the solar motors, the huge electric generators and field-coils for transmuting elements.

Learning English

BUT there were things about the photon-ship that impressed me more than the engines did; and they were not conspicuous in the popular accounts. For instance, there was the freshness and newness about everything. A room lived in even for a week begins to have a sort of mellow, human air, a sort of slight disarrangement of the absolute order and finish which is evident in a perfectly new one. These people, no matter what terrific speed their machine attained, must have been on their way at least a month; and I couldn't see how it could possibly have been other than a good many months. Yet no room that we saw showed traces of a month's occupancy, of walking, sitting, handling, of dust, wear, etc. The machinery was new; enamel was intact, there were no traces of heat or oil; it looked as though it had hardly been run at all. The food supply room was full. There was food there for thirty people, for years it seemed. It had not been drawn upon at all. The people's clothing showed no signs of wear. The people themselves did not look fatigued as though from a long journey. They looked fresh, full of zest. Our gravity seemed just a little more than they were accustomed to, yet they seemed to be rapidly adjusting themselves to it.

Taken altogether, it looked as though they had not been on their way very long. Could they be from our own solar system? All our scientific knowledge prohibits such a possibility. Nowhere in our solar system do conditions prevail which could produce beings so perfectly like us. Yet, how explain these people otherwise? The mystery became so keen that we tried all sorts of artifices to ask them where they came from; but we did not succeed in making them understand our query until they had learned some English.

Their method of learning was certainly a highspeed one. The five people whom we had met on the first day were our direct pupils. Subsequently we noted that everything that these five learned each day was common property among the rest of the thirty by the next day. They evidently had efficient methods of transmitting knowledge as well as of acquiring it.

"What do you make of it?" Fahrenbruch asked me: "All of them drilling in English? Looks as though they meant to stay here some time, doesn't it?"

On the first day of instruction, the man who had previously taken the initiative with me—I shall call him by the name I subsequently learned for him: Addhu Puntreeahn—gently took a newspaper out of my pocket, asking permission with his eyes. He pointed to the first "T" in the title, "The Chicago Tribune," and looked at me interrogatively: Surmising that he wanted the name or sound of the letter, I pronounced it for him. He nodded and noted it down in a little metal book. Similarly he noted down in rapid succession a couple of hundred words that I pronounced for him from the newspaper. Seeing what he was after, I wrote out the alphabet for him, giving him the sounds, which he noted down by a wiggly-looking symbol of his own. He then tried to pronounce words out of the newspaper. The results were amusing, as they naturally would be, for there is no logical system about English pronunciation. They were also embarrassing to me; I had to shake my head and repress an amused expression at each of his efforts.

Finally it dawned on him that there was something wrong with our alphabet or with our pronunciation. He tore out his notes and threw them in a waste-basket, and went over and spoke a few words to his companions. Then, in the same way as before, he asked me to pronounce entire words, and made notes. Carefully, I read for him a couple of columns, indicating each word for him with my finger, while he made notes. When this was done, he read out of his notebook to me: "Real Estate Interests Pushing New Subway Project," and "New Peace Agreement in the Orient," with an excellent pronunciation, though as yet he did not know what the words meant. But he pronounced them almost exactly as I had done. Obviously they had a highly perfected phonetic system of recording sounds. He separated his words more than one would in conversation, and there was a slight broadening of the vowels and softening of the consonants, such as one hears in the English of a cultured Japanese or Hindoo.

Then he rapidly inquired for a couple of hundred verbs; such as "walk," by walking and asking:

His companions were also busy pumping our committee and filling their notebooks.

He seemed pleased at my astonishment. His pronunciation was correct; somewhat too much so. But he reproduced our Mid-Western accent quite faithfully. And he proceeded to ask me, one after another :

"What is the word for one period of the earth's revolution around the sun?" All of these words were concrete words which could be learned by signs, and had evidently been picked up either by himself or his companions; and he was progressing toward abstract ideas.

"You are on this earth; everything you do, you do on the earth. What is the word for that?"

"Ah yes. You are very intelligent indeed. You also live in this city? Is that correct? Then, what is a place where you live?"

And so, building up from known words to unknown, from concrete to abstract, from words to sentences, he kept climbing and building up, always noting everything in his book. The others were busily doing the same, acquiring a vast store of our language, which in the evening they would distribute among themselves.

From the Moon!

ONE morning three weeks after they had come they were talking to us in English. They spoke slowly and carefully in calculated sentences, stopping to think frequently. But the English was correct, the pronunciation was correct, and our understanding perfect. I was the one who sprung the bomb.

"We can understand each other fairly well, now," I said. "I cannot wait any longer to ask you from what planet you came to the earth?"

The whole group heard it. Our committee was aghast at my temerity, but listened in eager breathlessness. The visitors seemed struck dumb for a moment. Again they looked puzzled. No one seemed to know just what to say. Finally Addhu said:

"Ah yes," I said. "I know. We saw you stop at the moon. But to the moon, from where did you come?"

"Your machine can travel faster and farther than that," I suggested. "The distance from here to the moon is a mere footstep for it."

"You are right. We did travel fast and far," Addhu answered slowly, with a deep reverent tone, as though not yet over all of his former astonishment.

"Draw it, and show us," Fielding suggested, and began to sketch the solar system.

"I cannot even do that. Drawing gives us two dimensions. Our journey involved four dimensions."

"But," the Chancellor urged, "there is no civilization on the moon capable of building a ship like yours. We know that much." Fielding's question had been asked from an astronomer's standpoint, whereas Chancellor Burkett remained true to form as the excellent historian that he was.

"Alas, you are right. There is not." There was a strange break in Addhu's voice: "We shall try hard to learn the vocabulary of your sciences, so that we may explain to you as soon as possible. In a week, perhaps, we can explain."

Suddenly one morning the young woman who had lavished the mistaken greeting on Wendelin, spoke to me. She and her companion in pink had both been in the English study class every day. She, the blue-clad one, was the daughter of the expedition's commandant, and her name, as near as I can manage to write their words, was Vayill Dhorgouravhad. I had come to know her by sight pretty thoroughly. She always wore blue, while the other young woman, who was the wife of one of the men, had varied her costume several times already. Vayill's hair was a blue-black, and her eyes were a very dark blue, whereas the other's had a tendency to brown. Vayill had a tendency to be sad, melancholy, self-contained; the other one was always gay and enthusiastic. But, Vayill was the more interesting of the two; she glowed with intelligence, and many little signs showed me that she was a very determined little character.

"Where is the gentleman who was with you the first day?" she asked, coloring a little under her very excellent self-possession. "I have not seen him since, and I should like to."

"Well, there won't be any trouble about that!" I exclaimed with an enthusiasm that might have surprised her: "I'll bring him this afternoon."

Wendelin jumped out of his chair when I told him. He walked swiftly around the room a couple of times, and then threw off his coat and proceeded to shave. After careful study, he laid out the niftiest of Norfolk suits, and an elegant combination of necktie, shirt, and handkerchief. He was quite unconscious of his eagerness, as he hurried me toward the photon-ship. I couldn't resist the temptation.

"I never knew your former sweetheart," I said. "Was she quick and determined, and did she dress in blue a good deal; dark hair, and a mind as intelligent as they make 'em?"

"Why, er—" he paused meditatively, and looked at me. Then he noticed the expression on my face.

"Aw, go to hell!" he growled, and refused to speak to me any more for the rest of the walk.

When the two young people faced each other in that roomful of human commotion, they were a little constrained and hesitant. The girl was inclined to flush and look the other way, and Wendelin to be awkward and embarrassed. But, with a fine courage, she stepped forward and spoke to him.

"I want to tell you that I am sorry for my behavior on that first day," she began.

"Oh, not at all! Oh, that's all right!" Wendelin stammered. The rest of us made a show of turning away and occupying ourselves with something else.

"I thought you were—" her voice broke just a little: "You looked so much like—" her eyelids fluttered rapidly, and a little redness spread around them.

"How do you like this Earth of ours?" Wendelin asked briskly, in a matter-of-fact tone. I have said before that there is nothing the matter with his method of handling people, though externally he appears stolid. In another five minutes he had arranged with her to take her out in his car and show her the city. Ten minutes after that, he was gone. Before we left, a blue-suited woman from Marshall Field's had driven up in a Ford coupe and was measuring Vayill for some apparel in which she could appear in public places. It was a highly delighted Vayill the next afternoon who, stepping in unfamiliar high-heeled shoes, walked down the gangplank, and took her place beside the beaming Wendelin in his yellow roadster.

During the coming week, Wendelin was in the photon-ship several times, and Vayill wore Marshall Field things and rode in the roadster more than once. However, the rest of the visitors also got rides and clothes. The Tribune voiced the suggestion on its editorial page, and in two days there were funds enough pouring in to dress up a hundred people like dukes. I spent an afternoon driving around Addhu and Drahnapa Dhorgouravhad, the old commandant.

"I hardly know what to say," the old man pondered. They were now speaking English fluently. "It is interesting, certainly. But, what a haphazard scramble. No plan, no system—" He trailed off, feeling that he had already said too much for courtesy.

On the thirtieth day after their arrival, Addhu, who seemed to be a sort of adjutant, announced that they were ready to tell their story. They not only felt that they had sufficient command of the English language; but they had had the opportunity to clear up some of the mysteries that they themselves had not at first fully comprehended. They felt that they could now make it all clear to us. They suggested that we invite about fifty of our scientific men to an informal meeting, to be held in some lecture-room where there were blackboards, charts, globes, and other such necessities. His story was as follows:

CHAPTER VI
Why They Were Surprised

WE are of the same race as you; we have a common origin and a common ancestry with you. Because of a most unusual occurrence, which, however, is quite in accord with well-known principles of Nature, you are vastly further removed from these ancestors than we are. We resemble them accurately; and they looked exactly like us. You have changed a great deal—I refer now to the aggregate of your race, as far as I can judge it by the people of this city. These human changes are intensely interesting; during the thousands of years that have passed, the human race must have had some strange biological adventures.

In order to show you our common birthplace, I shall use this globe, representing the Earth. Your ancestors and mine lived on a continent about the size of this one, here called Australia, and situated to the north and east of Australia, in about the middle of this ocean, the Pacific, where now there is no land except a few scattered islands. The Earth, as our ancestors know it, looked very little like this globe. It was mostly water. All the land in your Western Hemisphere was a line of bleak islands from the northwest to the southeast. There was a large fertile island in what is now the middle of Asia. And then there was the continent of Mo. where our ancestors lived.

A hundred years before the Great Catastrophe occurred, our ancestors had predicted it. For a century they expected it and were preparing for it. The regular coincidence of the solar tides and of the natural free period of vibration of the Earth[*] created an immense stress, right in the region of the only inhabited and inhabitable portion of the globe. The people of Mo colonized the large northern island of Hin, took precautions against the constant and terrific earthquakes, and prepared to endure the sudden shocks and atmospheric changes that they expected.

We had perfect records of this period. Our ancestors evidently took infinite pains to make their records clear and permanent and to safeguard them against destruction. Therefore, there were in our libraries accurate and vivid accounts of the Great Catastrophe, written on the spot and at the time, by people who saw and felt and experienced it all. Reading these accounts sends cold shivers through one's body, prickles the skin and raises the hair in horror. Man is a fragile and helpless mite among the huge, roaring, cataclysmic powers of Nature, swept aside like a dry-leaf in a hurricane. Winds, waters, earthquakes, and electrical phenomena all broke lose at once and created an abysmal chaos on a scale so vast and terrible that it is difficult to understand how any human being survived it.

Only in chambers hundreds of feet down in solid rock, prepared generations in advance, was it possible to live at all. There the people spent terrific days, buffeted and banged hither and thither as though all of them had been dumped into a huge churn. The whole continent heaved and quaked. People were intensely ill most of the time, in the throes of utter terror, suffering for lack of air; and after some days only partly conscious, so that they were no longer aware of the din and the heaving.

Finally, with the coming of consciousness, they awoke to a perfect peace and quiet, a strange physical lightness, a tightness across the chest and a difficulty in breathing. Those who made their way slowly out of the burrows, over countless prostrate bodies and out into the open air, and saw the oddly foreshortened horizon, felt the terrific heat in the sun and the icy cold in the shade, who saw the majestic, brilliant sphere filling a vast portion of the darkened sky—they suddenly realized that the expected had happened. The land of Mo had broken off from Mother Earth and flung out into space; it was now spinning around her as a satellite. Forever separated from their native planet, which now floated up there in the sky with strange, new continents visible on it, they were now inhabitants of the Moon, a new institution in the solar system.

This all happened thousands of years before I and my fellow-travellers were born. At first our little salvaged fragment of civilization had a difficult time. Half of them were killed by the shock of the Great Catastrophe; there were millions of dead. Much of the machinery and supplies that had been accumulated against the emergency, were destroyed. Yet, the people of Mo were the better off of the two terrestrial settlements. Their telescopes showed them that the island of Hin was now the center of a vast continent; but that it had been swept by huge tidal waves, and its civilization destroyed. Through the centuries they observed the region of Hin, and eventually learned that men lived there, our people, our brothers. But their numbers were pitifully few, and they had been cast back into savagery of the most primitive kind. Complete destruction of their civilization had thrown them on their bare hands. How grateful it makes us feel, seeing you, to realize that men eventually climbed out of that savagery, and redeemed their civilized status.

Within a thousand years, our moon people had recovered from their material damage, made good their numerical losses, and become fairly well adapted to their altered physical environment. And they had begun to forge ahead again and make material and scientific progress.

The progress made by our civilization on the moon was very swift. Knowledge, intelligence, skill, and technology advanced more rapidly than they had ever grown in Earth civilization, either before or since. There was a reason for this: the stimulus of necessity. We knew that the period of habitability of the Moon for the human race was limited. Scientists observed that it was losing its atmosphere and cooling rapidly, and that some day—relatively soon in astronomical terms—the Moon could not support human life. The race would have to die out or move away.

A Daring Plan

A THOUSAND years after the birth of the Moon, and when we thirty space travelers were living there, conditions had already become less comfortable than they had originally been. The cold was objectionable and breathing was difficult We had developed red blood-corpuscle counts of eight to ten million per cubic millimeter, and hemoglobin percentages of 150 to 200; our normal respiratory rate was 40 and our normal pulse rate, 120. Our compensatory training in forced respiration was beginning to be inadequate[*]. Science was striving desperately for some method of prolonging the life of the human race and the duration of civilization. Naturally, our eyes were turned toward the Earth. There was plenty of land there now, and only a few tribes of the most primitive kinds of savages. It was a wonderful opportunity. If we could only get there somehow.

[*] Physiology at Low Barometric Pressures, Editorial, Journal of the American Medical Association, Volume 93, No. 8, August 24, 1929, page 613.

In respect to mechanical progress we had possibly not reached the stage you have now; you are ahead of us in transportation, in flying in the air and digging in the ground, in making vast quantities of machines and other articles. But, in scientific thought we had outdistanced you considerably. We had a fair grasp of the Universe and of our place in it, whereas you still seem to be struggling in the darkness of confusion.

However, you are making excellent progress. For instance, you are beginning to realize that gravitation is not a mystic "force" but merely the relative State of a body by virtue of its remaining on a world-line. It has already come to your attention that light, heat, electricity, and other forms of energy are not continuous effects, but occur as definite units or corpuscles. It is still a little difficult for you to comprehend time, but it is gradually dawning on you that time is not an absolute entity; for most physical processes can go equally well in both directions, except where entropy is involved; therefore that entropy determines the direction of the time-coordinate. You are making encouraging progress in the understanding of space; you are beginning to see that space cannot be adequately understood on the basis of elementary geometry; that it is curved in the neighborhood of material particles and flat only at an infinite distance from matter.

Of course, space was of especially vital interest to us. Somehow, to save our racial life, we would have to get out into space, and traverse it. So, we had thoroughly developed ideas of space which you are just beginning to grasp. We were thoroughly familiar with the idea of the Universe as the curved, three-dimensional surface of a four-dimensional sphere. We live in and comprehend only the three dimensions of the surface, just as you might imagine two-dimensional beings living on the curved, two-dimensional surface of the Earth, a three-dimensional sphere. The two-dimensional beings would deduce the third dimension, but they could not perceive it nor be conscious of it.

This brings us down to the work of my own group, which is now in your midst. We are the ones who conceived the idea of circumnavigating the Universe, and carried it out. Mathematics is clear on this point: if you start out in space and travel in a straight line, you will eventually get back to your starting-point. That ought to be quite clear from the two-dimensional analogy of circumnavigating the surface of the Earth, by going ahead continually in a straight line.

The material problems of circumnavigating the Universe were solved by six men of our group. Of course their work gave us the means of travel from the Moon to the Earth—our long sought-for goal. This part of the problem was, however, turned over to other workers. We went on with the pure-science problem of circumnavigating the Universe. Whether the others have ever succeeded in getting to the Earth or not, we have never learned.

Two of our group were mathematicians, who worked out the equations for the relationship between electrons (or matter corpuscles) and photons (or light corpuscles)[*]. Four others were physicists who confirmed the mathematical hypothesis experimentally; who carried out in the laboratory the transmutation of electrons into photons and vice versa, that mathematics had shown to be possible; and who worked out the integration of photons into "mass", and produced "matter" made of photons or light corpuscles, analogous to matter made of electrons.

[*] Compton, Arthur D. What Is Light. The Scientific Monthly, April 1929, page 289.

They built up a series of "elements" out of photons, with a regular Periodic System, analogous to that of the chemical elements. So far, they had produced sixty-seven light-elements, and marvelous substances some of them are. At the lower end of the Periodic System they are not visible at all; at the upper they are quite too bright for human eyes. They do not fulfill the electro-magnetic-gravitational equations[*], nor are the tensors [†] applicable to them. They do not follow geodesics and are not subject to the action of electricity and gravitation.

It was of these elements that substances were evolved that could float on a light-wave, and were used for building our ship to circumnavigate the Universe. A light wave is not, as many of your scientists still seem to think, a beam of corpuscles traveling in one direction. The only thing that travels in a constant direction, is the front or peak of the level of energy; just as a wave in water moves forward, though the particles of water do not move forward, but merely up and down. But, the water wave can carry forward a stick, or something light enough to float on it, with great speed.

Our photon-elements can float on a light wave, and are carried forward with the speed of a light-wave (186,000 miles per second), even though the photons do not have that velocity. In practice we found that our photon vehicle was carried with a speed slightly less than that of light. Had the speed of our vehicle been equal to that of light, it seems to us as we think back, our adventures might have been far different. And, as our photon-elements do not follow world-lines of geodesics, they are not subject to the laws of electricity or gravitation.

Transmutation

THE idea of circumnavigating the Universe took shape as the means for accomplishing it were built up. It was the most brilliant and courageous project that the human brain had ever conceived. The tremendously discouraging feature of it was that even at the speed of light, it would take one hundred million years to make the trip. We got around that difficulty in two ways. The first was to select a "high latitude" for the trip, and thus shorten it; just as you may travel around the Earth in less distance on the Arctic Circle than at the Equator. The second—as it would take a century or more anyway—was to go in a ship large enough and with a group numerous enough, to be self-sufficient. Thus, several generations would live and die in our ship before it came back. It was a bold idea, but we were all prepared to do it; to start out and spend our lives in space, destining our children and our children's children to do the same, until some remote generation of our descendants would get back home.

It took a hundred years to build the ship and perfect our plans. The ship that we made, you have seen. One important item of the equipment we did not show you: the automatic signal to give warning when the ship got back to the solar system. We reasoned that the ship would be traveling at such speed that it would be very difficult to get bearings and determine location. Therefore, in order that the occupants might know for certain that they were back at the solar system, we devised an apparatus which I think is very ingenious. Telescopic images of the constellations operate a grid-glow tube when just the proper configuration occurs, and to check it and make it doubly certain, an image of the solar spectrum operates another grid-glow-tube. The grid-glow tubes sound bells and turn on lights. Once set, the apparatus requires no further attention, and remains on guard for hundreds of years, absolutely dependable to raise the alarm and light up the vessel as soon as it got within the confines of the solar system. We could picture what a happy day it would be for our descendants when the bells began to ring and the lights went on. The ship could then come to an automatic stop by means of the transmutation apparatus.

By far the largest portion of the machinery that you saw is needed, not for propelling the ship, but for transmuting the electron-elements and photon-elements back and forth, one into the other. The photon-elements are inconvenient to handle and disconcerting to live among. The electron-elements obey gravitation and are visible. Also, stopping the movement of the ship depends upon changing from photon-elements to electron-elements; that causes the ship to become incapable of floating on the light wave, and it "sinks", if I may speak of it that way. This transmutation is an intricate, in many respects a clumsy affair, and is accomplished by completely rearranging the equilibrium between electrons and protons on the one hand and photons and protons on the other hand. You have seen the brilliant and bizarre effects that occur when we operate these transmutations.

All of us in the ship are married couples, except the commandant, who is a widower, and his daughter. Poor Vayill! The start of our ship from the moon, such a festive occasion for our whole race, was a tragedy for her. On the day before the start she was to be married to a young engineer—who was the perfect physical counterpart of your airman yonder, Mr. Wendelin. But on that day he suddenly fell ill of a cosmic-ray burn, so frequent and so fatal among our moon people. Of course he would have to be left behind.

Vayill had to make a quick decision. The start of the ship could not be delayed for one or two people. It was a sight to rend the hearts of the stoutest of us, as she trembled there in the pallor of indecision. Two or three hours she spent thus. Suddenly she straightened up and set her lips. She shut herself up with her lover for an hour. Then she came into the ship and announced that she was ready to go.

"I told him good-bye," she said. "We should have had to part soon anyway, as he cannot live long. There is nothing to serve by my remaining here. We talked it over. He wanted me to go."

Her eyes closed several times, trying to hold back the tears, and the rest of us turned away, lest we betray our weakness.

The next day we closed and sealed the door and threw the switches. There had been ceremonies and ovations, speeches, flags and parades, all very embarrassing and tedious to us. Now it was over. The motors were humming.

That was what our start was like. We looked out of our windows, but there was no chance to take, a good-bye look at our home. Everything disappeared instantly. Outside our windows there was just a blank. We could see nothing. Of course, it was because of our speed—as we thought then. On all sides of us was a gray emptiness.

I remember every second of that trip. There were four of us at one of the windows. We stood looking in the direction in which the moon city had been visible a few instants ago. Now there was a gray blank. We talked a while, rather astonished that we could see no stars. We had expected to go rapidly past wonderful constellations, and had hoped that the sight of them would be a recompense for the deadly monotony of the trip. We discussed one or two possible causes of the phenomenon. We spent fifteen minutes at the window. Then we walked into the general living-room.

As soon as we arrived there, we decided that we were hungry. That was not surprising. Now that we had suddenly relaxed, the fatigue of the strain of the past days was apparent. What was more natural or human than to want to eat at such a time?

Then suddenly, one day the gongs clanged! The whole ship was filled with their ringing, and in each room and corridor the signal lights blazed out.

At least, the automatic machinery had done its duty. The ship had stopped (relatively speaking, of course). We could see the stars out of the window. And we were chagrined because so early on the voyage the machinery had proved untrustworthy, and were puzzled as to how long we could continue to have confidence in it. Eagerly, however, we looked out to see where we were, how far the first jump had gotten us.

The Dead World

THE signal had worked correctly! It was set to operate when we were within the solar system, and that is how it had worked. Only a few hasty observations were needed to identify the sun, several of the familiar planets, the Earth, and especially our home the Moon. Then we saw our observer gasp and turn pale, with his telescope turned toward the Moon. He did not reply to our anxious queries. He could not speak.

I was the first one to push him aside and look. Eagerly I put my eye to the telescope to get a glimpse of that home, across those empty miles of space. My blood froze to ice! What was that I saw? No blue seas! No green lands! No dotting cities! No refractile envelope, no atmosphere! A cold, frozen, lifeless Moon! Things turned black before me.

Doubtless your telescopes watched us approach the little world where we had lived, where we had left all our people and cities and the civilization dear to us. You saw us circle round, but you can not imagine the chill horror in our hearts as we gazed upon that bleak lifeless picture, or the terrible, swirling chaos in our minds, gasping, groping to understand what had suddenly happened in those few minutes. How any of us preserved our sanity, I do not know. It is a wonder that a ball filled with gibbering lunatics did not descend to this Earth, in place of us.

Then, we looked toward the Earth, and located the new lands that had appeared out of the waters, the countless cities, the numerous evidences of an advanced and teeming civilization that had sprung up, and again our senses reeled. What should we do?

There was only one answer. The Moon was dead. What had become of our race, no one knew. On the Earth were civilized people. We could not endure the suspense of remaining in space any longer. We must land on the Earth. We selected a portion of the land that seemed the most progressive and developed, chose the largest of its centrally-located cities, and looked for a landing-spot.

To see your spreading civilization was a shock of astonishment to us. To see yourselves, your faces, your resemblance to us—was enough to daze us completely. Is it any wonder that poor Vayill was confused, and thought Mr. Wendelin was her fiancé? We were too puzzled, too confused to know what to do. To gain time to think, we sought refuge in our ship.

We decided to wait until evening and check up on the constellations. Our observations and calculations showed us that radical changes had taken place in the configurations of the stars since we had last observed them, and that these changes must have required not less than two hundred thousand years of time!

CHAPTER VII
The Fitzgerald Contraction[*]

[*] The physical, astronomical, and mathematical conception on which this story is based, are so recent that they have not yet become widely distributed among amateur scientific readers. I am therefore appending a list of books from which the non-technical reader may become acquainted with them. The list is arranged in the order of difficulty, the easiest and most elementary works coming first.
• Serviss, Garrett P., The Einstein Theory of Relativity, Edwin Miles Fadman, Inc., New York, 1923.
• Einstein, Albert, Relativity, The Special and General Theory, Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1921.
• Eddington, A. S., The Nature of the Physical World, MacMillan Co., New York, 1929.
• Eddington, A. S., Space, Time, and Gravitation, Cambridge University Press, 1921.
• d'Abro, A., The Evolution of Scientific Thought, Boni & Liveright, New York, 1927.
• Steinmetz, Charles P., Relativity and Space, McGraw-Hill. [City and date missing from text.]

THERE was an expression of perplexed amazement on the face of Chancellor Burkett, as Addhu paused. The Chancellor turned his head from side to side, looking into peoples' faces. Then he turned to Addhu:

"But, I do not understand," he said, in a protesting sort of voice: "Or perhaps I did not hear you right. How long—I got the impression that you were in the proton-ship, as you call it, only a few days altogether."

"Our voyage lasted three days and a half by our watches," Addhu said. There was a queer smile on his face.

"Well, then," broke in Fahrenbruch the psychologist, "what's this about two hundred thousand years? How do you put that together?

"You look as if this meant something to you," he said to me: "Tell me at once, what kind of a hoax is it?"

In truth, a light had suddenly dawned on me. Across the aisle I could see old Fielding, the astronomer; his brows went up and he smiled. He also understood.

"The Fitzgerald Contraction!" Fielding and I exclaimed in the same breath. A pleased smile beamed on the face of Addhu. "Your scientists are very clever," he said to the audience as a whole: "Quite promptly they have surmised what happened. Just as we did, as soon as we had confirmed the facts that I have just told you."

"Utter impossibility!" Chancellor Burkett said impatiently. The Chancellor had been professor of history before he had assumed the reins of the university. He had a good scientific head on him, but merely was not posted on modern mathematical physics. His attitude was quite the natural attitude of the educated, intelligent man everywhere toward the phenomena of Relativity. Only those who become quite thoroughly acquainted with these phenomena can cease to regard them as ridiculous.

"Either this is some sort of a silly hoax," exclaimed the Chancellor, "or, due to the recent excitement, there are some candidates here for the State Psychopathic——"

"It is quite in accordance with a well-known natural law," I said. "Beforehand, I should never have thought of such a thing, just as they seemed to have completely failed to anticipate it. But, in the retrospect, it is just what one ought to have expected from theoretical considerations; in fact a beautiful experimental verification of a theory that has become fairly familiar in these days of Relativity."

The Chancellor nodded to indicate that he was listening. Others craned their necks; so I stood up that they might hear. I assumed my best lecture-room air.

"The fact that the voyagers felt that they had been on the way only three and a half days, whereas two hundred thousand years had actually elapsed while they were absent from this region, is perfectly explained by Fitzgerald's hypothesis of the contraction of a moving body. This hypothesis is one of the many startling things in the modern theory of Relativity, which Einstein has recently made so famous. This hypothesis states that a moving body is shortened in the direction of its motion; its new length is given by the expression:

"The original experimental evidence that put our scientists on the track of this hypothesis was obtained in the famous experiment of Michelson and Morley as far back as 1887, in which they attempted to determine ether-drift. It was repeated with much greater accuracy by Merely and Miller in 1905. The contraction explanation of the phenomena as observed, was proposed by Fitzgerald, and rendered very plausible by the theoretical researches of Larmor and Lorentz.

"All the attributes of the moving body are decreased or contracted, by the amount indicated in the formula. Thus, if a clock were traveling at the velocity of 161,000 miles per second, its diameter to us will be reduced to one-half of its original diameter, and its hands to us will move at one-half their former rate; time will, for that moving clock, go only half as fast as for us stationary folks. If a man moves at that velocity, his breathing, heart-beat, his perception of objects not in motion, and of time, will be reduced one-half. But, he cannot see his own shortening, nor be conscious of it; for his retina is shortened by one-half and exactly compensates for the shortening, so he looks natural to himself.

"At ordinary velocities, such as we experience here, the contraction is too minute to be detectable by experimental means. But at velocities like those of the celestial bodies, the effect is quite apparent. At the velocity attained by our guests, which was but slightly less than that of light, the effect must have been tremendous. Their length, the length of the photon-ship and of everything in it, must have been almost zero in the direction of their travel; they must have been a thin, flat wafer, invisible to ordinary observation. But they did not know it. Their measuring scales and rulers were all reduced by the same amount, and still measured true. The retinae of their eyes, the tactile nerve-endings in their fingers, were all equally contracted, and saw and felt everything the same as before. There was no way of detecting the change. To them everything looked natural.

A Honeymoon in Space

"LIKEWISE, while their chronology had decreased to V¹—V², which was almost zero, because V was almost equal to 1, they detected no change, because the rate of their clocks and watches was slowed down the same amount. All of their physical activities slowed down similarly; consequently they lived at so slow a rate that three and a half of their days were equivalent to two hundred thousand of our years.

"They must have reached the limit of our own galaxy, turned around because of some unknown forces, and returned to the solar system.

"Their high velocity is the sole explanation of why, during a period of relatively few days to them, their entire race became extinct, the Moon on which they had lived became dead and cold; while on Earth, continents were built up, and new races sprung up and became civilized.

"But they are to be envied their experience. They are all the richer for it, and with a little adjustment, will be perfectly well off in our world. They have been welcomed among us, and will all find their places and become valuable members of the social order. In fact, in this country, if they do not mind a little blatant publicity, a little talking on the radio, a picture on the cigarette ads, they can become wealthy as well as famous over night."

There was a slight smile on the face of the Chancellor and several of the others. The Chancellor rose to speak.

Suddenly there was a commotion of heavy, hurried steps out in the corridor. Whoever was coming, was obviously excited, for he was pounding the floor at a prodigious pace. The next moment there burst into the room the police sergeant who was in charge of the guards around the photon-ship. His sun-tanned face was a study in breathless astonishment, as he sought out the Chancellor and handed him a white envelope.

"Did you see it?" he gasped. "Nearly made me blind. Can't see good yet. And when I could open my eyes, the thing was gone! Melted away! And all the guards blinkin' at the empty place! Gone! It's gone, sir! And this flopped down on the ground in front of us.

The Chancellor was handing the letter to me, I noted through my daze. My name was scrawled on it in Wendelin's huge hand. With a quick, alarmed glance, I searched the room. Wendelin was not in the room. Nor was Vayill!

"Good-bye, Bill," it read. "Vayill and I have just been married. Vayill says she hasn't got the patience to live here. She wants to sail again, to taste adventure. A girl after my own heart. I'm going along. She says I'll never see you again. I don't know. That's why I'm telling you good-bye. Six of her people—the ones who refused to dress up in our kind of clothes—are going with us. Wendelin."

THE END