the corfaleena, was still kept in use for higher journeys, and the flight-families set themselves the problem of inventing a means of propulsion through space without the aid of air. One dealt with the possibilities of electric currents, and experimented on the method of alternating attraction and repulsion, using the repulsion in the rear of the car and the attraction in front. Another dealt with the possibilities of the rays of light that were ever traversing space, experimenting on their power of starting machinery _in vacuo_ and keeping it in rotation. A third made effort to test the capacities of the ether, which was the basis and medium of all things, a more difficult and problematical path of investigation, yet one not to be abandoned without certain proof of its impossibility; for many apparently insoluble problems had been solved in a manner that made incredulity hide its head. CHAPTER VII LEOMARIE AS I was attached to Leomarie or the science of earth-seeing, I did not follow up their experiments in the building of air-cars; I only saw the results when at last they came out perfect from their hands, and greatly admired the easy and swift action of their corfaleena. Over the hills and valleys and plains we flew close enough to see what was going on upon the earth below. Again and again we passed over long wisps of steam or columns of dense smoke. I conjectured that the steam indicated the heat wells like that which penetrated the rock near the house of my proparents, and supplied every chamber with heat or power as required. It went down some miles into the crust of the earth, and could be closed or opened at will by a huge lever worked by the steam it emitted itself. The denser brooms of smoke I took to indicate the sinking of their artesian power wells by the leomoran.