The pilots are now calling the crew. They are using screens over the
ship in calling them, and here comes the crew. The pilots are talking
with them. Now they are all going into the ship and seem to be taking
their positions. One of the pilots tells the chieftain they are going
to take us all up for a short trip through space to show us how their
ship operates, if we would like to go.
We are delighted.
Here we go! The run we made in starting up was more than four thousand
feet. Remember, the ship is twelve hundred feet long. Now we are in the
air! This ship has no wings. It is a bullet type and makes no noise of
any kind. We are travelling through space like a streak of light. The
ventilators have been opened and one of the pilots is manipulating an
instrument board. We are beginning to feel a difference in the air.
They are heading for upper stratosphere and here on the screen is shown
a fine line ahead of the ship, just like a highway. One of the pilots
tells us this is like the light they follow to Venus or to any other
planet. The ship is actually operating by the energy of light, which is
the only fuel it uses for propulsion.
We looked forward and saw no light ahead anywhere.
Quickly we were told, "naturally your physical eyes could not see this
fine invisible light, but it is there, and only this screen shows it.
This is the beam by which we are travelling. Since we are not heading
for our homeland, this light beam is just one of the suns in space,
so-called stars. Just now we are headed for nowhere. If we were going
home, the screen would show the reflected light of our planet, by which
we would travel. Now we are going to show you something."
And they did. They set the controls on the ship and left their pilot
seats, then we all went back to the dining room where we were given a
drink of a liquid that tasted like mulberry juice only it was white,
and not intoxicating. All the time we were in the diner, the ship was
speeding at one and a half million miles per hour through space, yet we
were just as comfortable in it as if we were right at home. We were
told that they could continue travelling just this way, forever. The
only time they would stop would be when they reached the destination
from which the light was focused, or reflecting, which would be the end
of the light beam.
We asked them if they used any other fuel.
"Never. This is the only energy we use," was the answer.
Then we commented that they surely must be constructed slightly
different in body build than we are from the Earth, since our pressures
differ so much, our atmospheric conditions. How is it, that in this
ship we are made so comfortable, as if we were on Earth, and yet they
too are equally comfortable.
The reply was, "we have learned to adapt ourselves to atmospheric
pressures ranging from six pounds per square inch to twenty pounds per
square inch. Therefore, when the ventilators were adjusted to your
comfort, we, too, are comfortable."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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