Manned space flight -- Fiction; Moon -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space flight to the moon -- Fiction; Space ships -- Fiction
Thus they went from one town to another, finding the population in
crowds upon their passage saluting them with the same acclamations, and
showering upon them the same "bravoes." They thus travelled over the
east of the Union through Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts,
Vermont, Maine, and New Brunswick; north and west through New York,
Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin; south through Illinois, Missouri,
Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana; south-east through Alabama and Florida,
Georgia, and the Carolinas; they visited the centre through Tennessee,
Kentucky, Virginia, and Indiana; then after the station of Washington
they re-entered Baltimore, and during four days they could imagine that
the United States of America, seated at one immense banquet, saluted
them simultaneously with the same hurrahs.
This apotheosis was worthy of these heroes, whom fable would have placed
in the ranks of demigods.
And now would this attempt, without precedent in the annals of travels,
have any practical result? Would direct communication ever be
established with the moon? Would a service of navigation ever be founded
across space for the solar world? Will people ever go from planet to
planet, from Jupiter to Mercury, and later on from one star to another,
from the Polar star to Sirius, would a method of locomotion allow of
visiting the suns which swarm in the firmament?
No answer can be given to these questions, but knowing the audacious
ingenuity of the Anglo-Saxon race, no one will be astonished that the
Americans tried to turn President Barbicane's experiment to account.
Thus some time after the return of the travellers the public received
with marked favour the advertisement of a Joint-Stock Company (Limited),
with a capital of a hundred million dollars, divided into a hundred
thousand shares of a thousand dollars each, under the name of _National
Company for Interstellar Communication_--President, Barbicane;
Vice-President, Captain Nicholl; Secretary, J.T. Maston; Director,
Michel Ardan--and as it is customary in America to foresee everything in
business, even bankruptcy, the Honourable Harry Trollope, Commissary
Judge, and Francis Dayton were appointed beforehand assignees.
THE END.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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