"This proposition, this plan to go out to Neptune itself, may seem to
you impossible. For greatly as our scientific knowledge has risen in
the last decades, we have been unable to bridge the gulf to even the
nearest of the planets. True, we have managed to send rockets to our
moon and explode flares there by means of them, but never yet have any
of us reached even the nearest of our neighboring planets. And thus to
propose to go out to Neptune, the farthest and outermost of all the
planets, the last outpost of our solar system, may appear to you quite
senseless. But it is not so, for now, at last, there is given to us
the power to venture out into the gulf of space to other planets! And
that power is given to us by the very doom that now threatens us, since
it is the force-ray or vibration with which the beings of Neptune are
turning our sun faster, which we can use to cross the gulf of space!
"For since his instruments first received and recorded that vibration,
the weak reflected pulsings of the great ray, Dr. Whitely has studied
it intensively, and has been able, by reversing the hook-up of his
receiving and recording instruments, to produce similar vibrations, a
similar ray, himself! He has been able to devise small generators which
produce the same force-ray, and on that principle larger generators
also can be devised and constructed, to shoot forth a force-ray of
immense power. With such a force-ray, generated from inside a strong,
hermetically-closed flier, one could shoot out at will into the great
void! For if such a flier, resting on Earth, turned its powerful ray
down upon Earth, that ray would strike Earth with terrific force. Being
so vast in mass, and the flier from which the ray is shot down being
so small, it would not be Earth that would be perceptibly moved by the
ray, but the flier itself would be shot instantly up and outward into
space by the ray's great pushing reaction!
"It would be necessary only to head the space-flier out toward the
desired planet upon starting, and the pushing force of the great ray,
constantly turned on, would so accelerate the flier's speed that it
would be pushed out toward that planet at a terrific velocity, a
speed which could be controlled by the power of the pushing ray. To
escape the attraction of other planets among which it might pass, the
space-flier would need only to shoot a similar great force-ray out
toward whatever planet was attracting it, and the pushing force of that
ray would hold the flier out from it. And when the space-flier neared
the planet that was its goal, it could gradually slow its progress by
means of a ray shot ahead toward that planet, braking its forward rush
thus, and being able to land smoothly and without harm upon that planet!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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