CHAPTER II.

How can we get to the other planets?

The next evening promised well, and I kept my appointment, but unfortunately a slight haze gathered in the sky and prevented us from making further observations.  While hoping in vain for it to clear away, Professor Gazen and I talked over the possibility of journeying to other worlds.  The gist of our argument was afterwards published in a conversation, entitled “Can we reach the other planets?” which appeared in The Day after To-morrow.  It ran as follows: 

I. (the writer).  “Do you think we shall ever be able to leave the earth and travel through space to Mars or Venus, and the other members of the Solar System?”

G. (Checking an impulse to smile and shaking his head), “Oh, no!  Never.”

I.  “Yet science is working miracles, or what would have been accounted miracles in ancient times.”

G.  “No doubt, and hence people are apt to suppose that science can do everything; but after all Nature has set bounds to her achievements.”

I.  “Still, we don’t know what we can and what we cannot do until we try.”

G.  “Not always; but in this case I think we know.  The celestial bodies are evidently isolated in space, and the tenants of one cannot pass to another.  We are confined to our own planet.”

I.  “A similar objection might have been urged against the plan of Columbus.”

G.  “That was different.  Columbus only sailed through unknown seas to a distant continent.  We are free to explore every nook and cranny of the earth, but how shall we cross the immense void which parts us from another world, except on the wings of the imagination?”

I.  “Great discoveries and inventions are born of dreams.  There are minds which can foresee what lies before us, and the march of science brings it within our reach.  All or nearly all our great scientific victories have been foretold, and they have generally been achieved by more than one person when the time came.  The telescope was a dream for ages, so was the telephone, steam and electric locomotion, aerial navigation.  Why should we scout the dream of visiting other worlds, which is at least as old as Lucian?  Ere long, and perhaps before the century is out, we shall be flying through the air to the various countries of the globe.  In succeeding centuries what is to hinder us from travelling through space to different planets?”

G.  “Quite impossible.  Consider the tremendous distance—­the lifeless vacuum—­that separates us even from the moon.  Two hundred and forty thousand miles of empty space.”

I.  “Some ten times round the world.  Well, is that tremendous vacuum absolutely impassable?”

G.  “To any but Jules Verne and his hero, the illustrious Barbicane, president of the Gun Club."[1]