After examining the building, Gilbert remarked,— “You mentioned last night, Oakland, that the gravity of the ship and the earth were equal; consequently she possesses no weight and could be floated off. Have you tried strong blasts of air? Theoretically, a breath would waft her.” “I have had fans and blowers, but the strange force around her stops everything. I have even made fires underneath, thinking to sink her by rarefying the air (and so causing her to settle as the air became thinner), but she did not move. It is exasperating when one knows she would divulge everything if one could but get aboard. She is also such a source of danger and terrible care to have on one’s mind, that if you cannot win her it is possible you may find some means of destroying her; I really don’t mind which! But there she stands in the most aggravating fashion, quietly defying everything and everybody,” and Dennis’s annoyance was evident and excusable. “As you say, Oakland,” remarked Ross, “she’s a tough nut to crack, full of apparent anomalies and impossibilities and, while uncontrolled, dangerous in the extreme. Have you tried to register the strength of the current?” “Yes, but it is unregisterable. Nothing, no matter how strongly insulated, can pass the zone, in which there is no demarcation. The dial shows no current at all till it reaches the protecting belt, not even when moved by micrometer screws working in gear, and there is a point when nothing is recorded; the next turn forward, even of a two-millionth of an inch, and the whole apparatus is vapour. I have used some scores in this way, but these are expensive experiments. “I have thought several times of encasing myself in an exceedingly effective insulating suit and making a dash for the ladder, or dropping on deck from above, for then I might get below to the safe, but when I tested the suit first, filled with sawdust, by dropping it from the roof, it never reached the deck but became vapour, so I was glad I had experimented with a dummy.” “Not a bad way of getting rid of rubbish,” said Ross, laughing. “Yes, but a little too dangerous,” replied Dennis, “especially if it had been me instead of the sawdust,” and he laughed boisterously, when, seeing the others looked slightly mystified, he stopped abruptly and continued soberly,—“Do you think, Ainley, that you could do anything to crack this nut if Eastern helped you?”