Across the Zodiac | Page 9

like gravitation through an indefinite distance and in a void--act upon a
remote fulcrum, such as might be the Earth in a voyage to the Moon, or the Sun in a more
distant journey. As soon, then, as the character of the apergic force was made known to
me, its application to this purpose seized on my mind. Experiment had proved it possible,
by the method described at the commencement of this record, to generate and collect it in
amounts practically unlimited. The other hindrances to a voyage through space were
trivial in comparison with that thus overcome; there were difficulties to be surmounted,
not absent or deficient powers in nature to be discovered. The chief of these, of course,
concerned the conveyance of air sufficient for the needs of the traveller during the period
of his journey. The construction of an air-tight vessel was easy enough; but however
large the body of air conveyed, even though its oxygen should not be exhausted, the
carbonic acid given out by breathing would very soon so contaminate the whole that life
would be impossible. To eliminate this element it would only be necessary to carry a
certain quantity of lime-water, easily calculated, and by means of a fan or similar
instrument to drive the whole of the air periodically through the vessel containing it. The
lime in solution combining with the noxious gas would show by the turbid whiteness of
the water the absorption of the carbonic acid and formation of carbonate of lime. But if
the carbonic acid gas were merely to be removed, it is obvious that the oxygen of the air,
which forms a part of that gas, would be constantly diminished and ultimately exhausted;
and the effect of highly oxygenated air upon the circulation is notoriously too great to
allow of any considerable increase at the outset in the proportion of this element. I might
carry a fresh supply of oxygen, available at need, in some solid combination like chlorate
of potash; but the electricity employed for the generation of the apergy might be also
applied to the decomposition of carbonic acid and the restoration of its oxygen to the
atmosphere.
But the vessel had to be steered as well as propelled; and in order to accomplish this it
would be necessary to command the direction of the apergy at pleasure. My means of
doing this depended on two of the best-established peculiarities of this strange force: its

rectilinear direction and its conductibility. We found that it acts through air or in a
vacuum in a single straight line, without deflection, and seemingly without diminution.
Most solids, and especially metals, according to their electric condition, are more or less
impervious to it--antapergic. Its power of penetration diminishes under a very obscure
law, but so rapidly that no conceivable strength of current would affect an object
protected by an intervening sheet half an inch in thickness. On the other hand, it prefers
to all other lines the axis of a conductive bar, such as may be formed of [undecipherable]
in an antapergic sheath. However such bar may be curved, bent, or divided, the current
will fill and follow it, and pursue indefinitely, without divergence, diffusion, or loss, the
direction in which it emerges. Therefore, by collecting the current from the generator in a
vessel cased with antapergic material, and leaving no other aperture, its entire volume
might be sent into a conductor. By cutting across this conductor, and causing the further
part to rotate upon the nearer, I could divert the current through any required angle. Thus
I could turn the repulsion upon the resistant body (sun or planet), and so propel the vessel
in any direction I pleased.
I had determined that my first attempt should be a visit to Mars. The Moon is a far less
interesting body, since, on the hemisphere turned towards the Earth, the absence of an
atmosphere and of water ensures the absence of any such life as is known to us--probably
of any life that could be discerned by our senses--and would prevent landing; while
nearly all the soundest astronomers agree in believing, on apparently sufficient grounds,
that even the opposite hemisphere [of which small portions are from time to time
rendered visible by the libration, though greatly foreshortened and consequently
somewhat imperfectly seen] is equally devoid of the two primary necessaries of animal
and vegetable life. That Mars has seas, clouds, and an atmosphere was generally admitted,
and I held it to be beyond question. Of Venus, owing to her extraordinary brilliancy, to
the fact that when nearest to the Earth a very small portion of her lighted surface is
visible to us, and above all to her dense cloud-envelope, very little was known; and
though I cherished the intention to visit