Limanora the island of progress
act, nor consciously reject it, they only left off giving weight to any
of its commands or suggestions; not that they might not be true or on
the side of all that was best; but that it had so often discredited its
authority by prompting, or allowing itself to be used as the pretext
for, retrogression or baseness. They preferred to take every step in
life on ground made sure by investigation and proof that appealed to
reason.
And here they were again on the limits of the unknown and vague. This
sense that was closest to the portal of the soul, their filammu, had
brought them to face an intelligence that came they knew not whence,
and to stand in the presence of an infinite darkness that flashed
out at times the lightning of noble impulse. They were by no means
unwilling to listen to its report, but gladly received it as a sure
and trustworthy revelation; however dim the region into which it
was about to lead them, they were eager to follow, if only they set
each step upon solid fact. If there was anything unverifiable in
this new leading, they would soon be done with it. It now became one
of the duties of the astrobiological families to watch for these
extra-terrene vibrations of the will-telegraph, and to investigate the
circumstances and conditions.
These families had been the first to feel the new impetus to discovery,
for they were the couriers who went out to the borders of the
atmosphere and watched for signs of energy and life in the infinite
beyond. Again and again had they brought back specimens of microscopic
and attenuated life, which seemed to float in interstellar space.
Again and again had they analysed the beams of light shooting through
it, but without much result. Now they were to be rewarded for their
patience. They had taken out with them one of the new faleenas made of
transparent and colourless irelium like glass; and as an experiment
they sent it up by means of electricity far above themselves. As it
rose above the limit of the earth’s atmosphere, they saw all over its
surface a strange fluorescence, which grew unearthly in its beauty and
brilliance. Rainbow colours played through its texture as if they were
threads thrown by the shuttle of some hand out of heaven. Its wings
moved at lightning pace, and yet soon it began to fall towards the
earth. Again it struck upwards, and again the prismatic weavings gave
it more brilliant life. They watched it as it rose and fell between
the denser and the rarer medium. And when finally they caught it and
brought it down to earth, upon its wings both within and without there
was imprinted, not the iridescent web that had been weaving over it,
but a hieroglyph of faint, half-distinguishable forms, some familiar,
some strange, inextricably mingled.
They investigated the phenomenon, and came to the conclusion that the
faleena, in the comparative vacuum which lies on the borders of our
atmosphere, had acted with its electric motors like the lavolan, one
of their medical instruments for the inspection of the inner tissues,
whilst the wings acted like the films of a photographic apparatus,
and retained a shadowed impress of the inner structure of all the
beings or forms coming between them and the body of the car. A new
world was opened up to them beyond even their electric sense. Outside
of the denser envelope of our orb the rarefaction of space meant no
longer lifeless desolation traversed only by beams of light, electric
impulses from other worlds, and the flight of occasional meteors. Now
they knew that there were ethereal beings living in infinite space, and
that their inner structure differed in density from their enveloping
material. Some of this life was manifestly minute and attenuated,
unsuited to the medium in which it floated, waiting for some fit orb to
land on. But under their powerful clirolans it was as clear that there
were highly developed organisms fitted to this element in which they
swam, organisms probably higher than any to be found on the earth, yet
too ethereal and shadowy to touch any of even the latest-evolved senses
of the Limanorans.
What possibilities this glimpse into the vast unknown opened up for
them they shrank for a time from imagining, lest they should again
enslave themselves to superstition and absurd fancy. For astrobiology
they saw at a glance there was begun a new and lofty career. Soon
would they modify and improve the lavolan to fit the conditions of
interstellar space, and the faleena, if not their own organs, for
venturing far into the rarest ether. And then what reports, what
pictures of the invisible universes would they bring before the eyes
and the firlas of their fellow-islanders! How would they ever have time
to investigate and classify the genera and species that inhabited the
ether? What limit was there to the ambitions and ideals they would be
able to set before the race?
Another investigation that followed from this discovery had as its
object the nature of the new forms of energy that evidently filled
interstellar space. This was the province of the families devoted
to astrophysics. They produced apparatus for isolating each type of
energy which seemed to have full action only in a vacuum, and they
experimented with it in an innumerable variety of ways so as to find
out its characteristics. The force of gravitation had been familiar to
them even in primitive ages, and had long been investigated so as to
reveal many of the qualities of its action that were unperceived by
ordinary senses. Electricity had been one of the commonest of their
phenomena, and recently a vast unknown region had been opened up by
them, lying between the verge of eye-awakening light and the verge of
firla-awakening electricity which their machines had made plain even to
untrained senses. For generations they had passed with ease in their
inamars or spectroscopes beyond the bands of colour that affected
their eye, and the unseen rays had yielded most of their secrets to
them. In their lavolans or vacuum-energy mirrors they had traced the
characteristics of the torrents of energy which tore away from the
negative pole of their batteries. And now they had to face a new form
of radiant energy, the product of these negative streams and of the
irelium which they struck. Experimenting with it in their lavolans
they found it different from its parent energy; by passing through
the irelium it had grown indifferent to the power of magnetism. This
peculiarity enabled them to investigate the inner nature of magnetism;
for on the two sides of an irelium sheet they had the same electric
rays acting differently towards a magnet; on the one side they could be
deflected by it, on the other they went on their way as if it were not
there. The difference was also used in producing a new kind of electric
motor, governed by an irelium film which closed or opened a channel
of magnetic influence. A third useful application of the discovery
was a new irelium-covering for the head and the body, that milked the
east wind of its deleterious qualities. And a fourth was an apparatus
for finding by the aid of a magnet the stuff of irelium with greater
certainty in their lava-wells.
But the discoveries that flowed from this were still more important.
By further experimentation they found another type of radiant energy
that behaved in a similar way towards gravitation. In a vacuum formed
within a vessel of an alloy of irelium it ceased to obey the force
of gravity; but as soon as it had passed through the side of the
vessel, it gave full heed to the force. Within a few months after
this had been discovered, there had been invented a faleena that
fell or rose according as the new rays were intercepted by a film of
the irelium-alloy or were allowed free passage _in vacuo_. The
energy in mass drove the car on indifferent to the earth’s influence,
or at the will of the guide brought the erfaleena, as they called
it, gently sloping downwards at any angle required to the surface of
the globe. A pioneering book at once developed the results of this
discovery and invention. It showed how a way was now opened to other
stars. For this new radiant energy was found to stream in and past the
earth’s atmosphere in vast currents. The denser the medium, the more
was it absorbed and lost, so that in the earth and the atmosphere it
seldom or never manifested itself. Hence the long ages of scientific
investigation before it was discovered. By means of these currents,
which evidently set through space in definite directions, they would be
able to guide their new anti-gravitation faleena to any point in the
interstellar ether, and be able to keep up the supply of force that
would drive it. And when they approached a new world they could by
means of their new machinery bring its force of gravitation to bear on
the car and so hasten its flight; and they would be able to hover over
the atmosphere by means of the alternating movements of their engine,
till they could find out its conditions, and see whether it would be
safe to land on it or not. What they wanted yet was the evolution of
their physical system in the direction of living in ether or in various
atmospheres indifferently. It pointed out to the physiological families
the way that would lead in this direction; and it showed how, though
it would take countless ages, it was yet within the scope of their
humanity.
For their knowledge of the constitution of the universe the discovery
of these two forms of radiant energy proved to be of great importance.
They were able to find out the relationships of gravitation,
electricity, the dark rays of the inamar, the negative rays of the
lavolan, light, heat, and the two new types of energy. And by means
of the similarities and differences found to exist between any two
of them they were enabled to resolve the molecules of any element
into their constituent atoms, and thus to reveal the characteristics
of the fundamental ether. They felt that they were at last in the
immediate presence of the medium which filled space, and they invented
an apparatus isolating the ether from all the forms it enters into, so
that it became manifest under their magnifiers to several of their
senses. In it they were able to make any one of the forms of energy
move and play. From it they were able to mould many of the terrene
forms of latent energy, and they hoped to mould most of the others with
which they were familiar.
One of the most immediately practical results that came from the
discovery of these two modes of energy was another kind of engine,
which almost doubled their store of force in Rimla. The main form of
it took advantage of the radiant energy that showed indifference or
obedience to gravitation according as it played in a vacuum or through
an alloy of irelium into the air. The new rays lifted a piston _in
vacuo_, and by an automatic arrangement they passed through a film
of the alloy and then allowed gravitation to pull them and the piston
with them back into its first position; the rapid alternations drove
magnetic machinery which produced and stored up electricity. Another
form of the new engine used the difference between the conduct the
other newly discovered radiant energy displayed towards magnets when it
played in a vacuum vessel of irelium, and when it had issued through
the vessel’s filmy side.
The increase and concentration of force in their island was one of
the great subordinate aims of their civilisation. For they knew
that the greater the power they had command of the more rapidly
could they advance towards higher and higher goals. Greater force
meant greater dominion over nature and her secrets and laws; and
this implied accelerated speed in progress. It had been one of the
primitive blunders of their civilisation, as it still was of all other