Produced by Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. A COLUMBUS OF SPACE BY GARRETT P. SERVISS [Illustration: "Standing on the steps ... was a creature shaped like a man, but more savage than a gorilla."] TO THE READERS OF JULES VERNE'S ROMANCES THIS STORY IS DEDICATED Not because the author flatters himself that he can walk in the Footsteps of that Immortal Dreamer, but because, like Jules Verne, he believes that the World of Imagination is as legitimate a Domain of the Human Mind as the World of Fact. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. A MARVELOUS INVENTION II. A TRIP OF TERROR III. THE PLANETARY LIMITED IV. THE CAVERNS OF VENUS V. OFF FOR THE SUN LANDS VI. LOST IN THE CRYSTAL MOUNTAINS VII. THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN VIII. LANGUAGE WITHOUT SPEECH IX. AN AMAZING METROPOLIS X. IMPRISONMENT AND A WONDERFUL ESCAPE XI. BEFORE THE THRONE OF VENUS XII. MORE MARVELS XIII. WE FALL INTO TROUBLE AGAIN XIV. THE SUN GOD XV. AT THE MERCY OF FEARFUL ENEMIES XVI. DREADFUL CREATURES OF THE GLOOM XVII. EARTH MAGIC ON VENUS XVIII. WILD EDEN XIX. THE SECRET OF THE CAR XX. THE CORYBANTIA OF THE SUN XXI. THE EARTH LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS "Standing on the steps ... was a creature shaped like a man, but more savage than a gorilla" "We were in the heart of the _Crystal Mountains!_" "'Who and what are you, and whence do you come?'" "It curled itself over the edge of the hovering air ship and drew it down" CHAPTER I A MARVELOUS INVENTION I am a hero worshiper; an insatiable devourer of biographies; and I say that no man in all the splendid list ever equaled Edmund Stonewall. You smile because you have never heard his name, for, until now, his biography has not been written. And this is not truly a biography; it is only the story of the crowning event in Stonewall's career. Really it humbles one's pride of race to see how ignorant the world is of its true heroes. Many a man who cuts a great figure in history is, after all, a poor specimen of humanity, slavishly following old ruts, destitute of any real originality, and remarkable only for some exaggeration of the commonplace. But in the case of Edmund Stonewall the world cannot be blamed for its ignorance, because, as I have already said, his story remains to be written, and hitherto it has been guarded as a profound secret.