“The cable was so injured where it had been wound up that they were afraid it would break if they loosened it, and so they concluded to make a new one. There did not seem to be any great hurry about it, and so it dragged along for four years without much being done. By that time almost 700 miles of cable had been wound up and Deimos had been drawn up that much nearer to Mars. Some thought this a good thing and proposed to let him wind himself down within a hundred miles or so of Mars, so that he would be of some account as a moon, for he gave very little light where he was. Others wanted him pulled down to the ground so they could cut him up and get the gold, silver, iron and other valuables he might contain; enough they said to make all the Martians rich. But the more prudent pointed out that if he was pulled down too far he would interfere with Lucy Phobos and spoil her work. It had been observed that the cable had been getting slower and slower and was now moving only a little more than half as fast as it did at first, and the industries depending on it were getting short of power. The mathematicians figured that Deimos would never wind himself up any closer than 12,700 miles or 1,847 miles from where he was in the first place, for the reason that drawing him in towards Mars increased his speed so that when he was wound up to 12,700 miles he would revolve around the planet in 24 hours and 40 minutes, the same time it takes Mars to roll over. Consequently Deimos would appear to stand over the same spot all the time, the cable would cease to move and the winding up process would stop, and of course all the machinery connected with it would stop too. After a full discussion of the matter, it was concluded to let Deimos get back to his original orbit, so that the manufacturing that had been started and was operated by the power furnished by the cable might not suffer any further loss. The New Cable.