I said to him earnestly, that I would give anything I possessed to be able to understand and apply these principles as he did. “I have no doubt at all of that,” said he, “but it is our secret, and I could commit no more heinous act of treason against my people or our planet, than by divulging it.” “For goodness sake,” I exclaimed, “tell me what planet you inhabit, and what harm could result from giving this invaluable information.” “My home is the moon,” he said quietly, and I have ever since wondered how I came to receive the announcement without the slightest degree of surprise as if it were an every day occurrence to meet people from the moon. “The discovery you wish me to reveal to you, was made by our ancestors over a million years ago,” he went on, “the population of the moon was then as great as the planet would support in comfort, and its regulation and maintenance had been reduced to a strictly scientific basis. It was seen at once and soon experimentally proved that our people could by the use of this principle easily visit the earth, and if the discovery should be communicated to the earth people, there would be nothing to prevent flooding the moon with an undesirable horde of adventurers, who would like a swarm of seventeen year locusts proceed to lay claim to everything in sight and seriously disturb the lunar peace and prosperity. And so the communication of this secret was forbidden on pain of the terrible punishment of projection.” My inquiring look showed that I did not understand this, and he continued. “Projection is the extreme penalty of our laws. In it the criminal is locked up in a spherical shell of cast iron having two small glass windows and furnished with compressed air in alumina flasks, and food sufficient to last from a few days to two years according to the severity of the sentence, the larger amount of food going with the more severe sentence. After he is fastened in, the repulsion of gravitation is turned on and the ball instantly projects itself into space bounding off at a terrific speed. Yet no matter what direction it takes it can never come into collision with any body whether planet or sun, but whenever it approaches one it is instantly repelled, and thus it continues to be hurled from one to another forever, and the longer the criminal lives to perceive and reflect that he is an outcast from all worlds, the greater his punishment is supposed to be. It is a theory of some of our scientists that a projected person continues to be repelled from sun to sun till at last he reaches the edge of creation and is hurled completely out of the universe. However this may be, the friends of a projected person never know where he is.” “I hope,” said I, “that you are not often under the necessity of inflicting such a terrible punishment as that.” “No one has been projected for over forty years, but 500,000 years ago the punishment was frequently resorted to.”