In the Year 2889 | Page 4

With their heads bent down over their electric computers, thirty
scientific men were absorbed in transcendental calculations. The
coming of Mr. Smith was like the falling of a bomb among them.
"Well, gentlemen, what is this I hear? No answer from Jupiter? Is it
always to be thus? Come, Cooley, you have been at work now twenty
years on this problem, and yet--"
"True enough," replied the man addressed. "Our science of optics is
still very defective, and though our mile-and-three-quarter telescopes."
"Listen to that, Peer," broke in Mr. Smith, turning to a second scientist.
"Optical science defective! Optical science is your specialty. But," he
continued, again addressing William Cooley, "failing with Jupiter, are
we getting any results from the moon?"
"The case is no better there."
"This time you do not lay the blame on the science of optics. The moon
is immeasurably less distant than Mars, yet with Mars our
communication is fully established. I presume you will not say that you
lack telescopes?"
"Telescopes? O no, the trouble here is about inhabitants!"
"That's it," added Peer.
"So, then, the moon is positively uninhabited?" asked Mr. Smith.
"At least," answered Cooley, "on the face which she presents to us. As
for the opposite side, who knows?"
"Ah, the opposite side! You think, then," remarked Mr. Smith,
musingly, "that if one could but--"
"Could what?"

"Why, turn the moon about-face."
"Ah, there's something in that," cried the two men at once. And indeed,
so confident was their air, they seemed to have no doubt as to the
possibility of success in such an undertaking.
"Meanwhile," asked Mr. Smith, after a moment's silence, "have you no
news of interest to-day?"
"Indeed we have," answered Cooley. "The elements of Olympus are
definitively settled. That great planet gravitates beyond Neptune at the
mean distance of 11,400,799,642 miles from the sun, and to traverse its
vast orbit takes 1311 years, 294 days, 12 hours, 43 minutes, 9 seconds."
"Why didn't you tell me that sooner?" cried Mr. Smith. "Now inform
the reporters of this straightway. You know how eager is the curiosity
of the public with regard to these astronomical questions. That news
must go into to-day's issue."
Then, the two men bowing to him, Mr. Smith passed into the next hall,
an enormous gallery upward of 3200 feet in length, devoted to
atmospheric advertising. Every one has noticed those enormous
advertisements reflected from the clouds, so large that they may be
seen by the populations of whole cities or even of entire countries. This,
too, is one of Mr. Fritz Napoleon Smith's ideas, and in the Earth
Chronicle building a thousand projectors are constantly engaged in
displaying upon the clouds these mammoth advertisements.
When Mr. Smith to-day entered the sky-advertising department, he
found the operators sitting with folded arms at their motionless
projectors, and inquired as to the cause of their inaction. In response,
the man addressed simply pointed to the sky, which was of a pure blue.
"Yes," muttered Mr. Smith, "a cloudless sky! That's too bad, but what's
to be done? Shall we produce rain? That we might do, but is it of any
use? What we need is clouds, not rain. Go," said he, addressing the
head engineer, "go see Mr. Samuel Mark, of the meteorological
division of the scientific department, and tell him for me to go to work
in earnest on the question of artificial clouds. It will never do for us to

be always thus at the mercy of cloudless skies!"
Mr. Smith's daily tour through the several departments of his
newspaper is now finished. Next, from the advertisement hall he passes
to the reception chamber, where the ambassadors accredited to the
American government are awaiting him, desirous of having a word of
counsel or advice from the all-powerful editor. A discussion was going
on when he entered. "Your Excellency will pardon me," the French
Ambassador was saying to the Russian, "but I see nothing in the map of
Europe that requires change. 'The North for the Slavs?' Why, yes, of
course; but the South for the Matins. Our common frontier, the Rhine,
it seems to me, serves very well. Besides, my government, as you must
know, will firmly oppose every movement, not only against Paris, our
capital, or our two great prefectures, Rome and Madrid, but also against
the kingdom of Jerusalem, the dominion of Saint Peter, of which
France means to be the trusty defender."
"Well said!" exclaimed Mr. Smith. "How is it," he asked, turning to the
Russian ambassador, "that you Russians are not content with your vast
empire, the most extensive in the world, stretching from the banks of
the Rhine to the Celestial Mountains and the Kara-Korum, whose
shores are washed by the Frozen Ocean, the Atlantic, the
Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean?