"There is one unique place, I am sure you will be interested in." Ralph led the way to the elevator and they quickly shot up to the roof, where they boarded one of Ralph's flyers and within a few minutes were heading north. The machine rose until they were up about 20,000 feet. The cold made it necessary to turn on the heat in the enclosed cab. In the distance, just ahead there shortly appeared a brilliant spot of light suspended in the dark sky, which quickly increased in size as they approached. From a distance it appeared like an enormous hemisphere with the flat side facing the earth below. As they drew close, they could see that it was a great city suspended in the air apparently covered with a transparent substance, just as if a toy city had been built on a dinner plate and covered with a bell-shaped globe.
They alighted on the rim, at a landing stage outside the transparent covering. They were soon walking along a warm, beautifully laid out street. Here was neither bustle nor noise. The deepest calm prevailed. There were small houses of an old-fashioned design. There were shops in great profusion. There were playgrounds, neatly-laid-out parks, but without looking at the humans that were walking around, the visitors felt as if they had gone back many centuries.
There were no power roller skates, no automatic vehicles. There were no aeroflyers beneath the glass ceiling. Instead a serene calm prevailed, while people with happy expressions on their faces were leisurely walking to and fro.
Very much puzzled, Alice wanted to know what this mysterious glass-encased city was.
"This," explained Ralph, "is one of our many vacation cities that I hope will soon dot every part of the world. People are living entirely too intensely nowadays and with the many functions that they have to perform, with all the labor-saving devices they have, their lives are speeded up to the breaking point. The businessman or executive must leave his work every month for a few days, if he is not to become a wreck. Heretofore we have sent him to the mountain tops or to the seashore; there he found no rest. The noise, even on top of the mountains, due to aeroflyers and other vehicles, did not give a man a real rest. On our floating city there is absolute rest. There is no noise, no excitement, not even a radio telephone.
"The city, 20,000 feet above the ground, is floating in perfectly clean and uncontaminated air. This air, while less dense than that further down, is renewed automatically every few hours. It is invigorating, just the same as mountain air with all its benefits.
"The roof is made of steel lattice work, thick glass panes being fitted in between the steel frames. The shape is in the form of a huge dome covering the entire city, which measures about a little over a mile in circumference. The height of the center of the dome from the floor of the city is about 200 feet. At night the city is illuminated by cold light from high frequency wires running below the dome, similar to the system now used to light up our cities.
"The floor upon which the entire city rests is steelonium, and the city is held up by means of anti-gravitational impulse. By neutralizing the gravity for the area below the floating city and a little beyond it, it is possible to keep the floating city at any distance from the earth. In other words, we use a gravitational 'screen,' and then build a city on top of this screen.
"By charging the gravitational screen at a very high potential, we nullify gravity and as the city no longer has any weight it can be placed on any level and remain there practically indefinitely. A few air propellers keep the city from being blown away by storms or wind.