Then there was the wonderful discovery itself to be published, the Professor’s notes, crowded upon the pages of a notebook he had most carefully preserved, to be given to science. Goritz before his death yearned for the gratification of indulgences to be purchased by his new wealth, and, as he thought, his new knowledge. I revolted at the surroundings, the snakes and the periodic sacrifices, and feared an inevitable distrust and collision. Hopkins loved Ziliah, but he had found in this rara-avis a positive promise of supreme adaptation to the best life he could give her in the world. At any rate he wished to try it.
Our discontent increased, our impatience chafed our nerves, and in hastily stolen conferences we determined upon a supreme effort to escape. We were tormented by the espionage and ruffled manners of the Council of Thirty, who interminably buzzed about us, and had probably shrewdly detected our hidden restlessness. And the utter dullness of the life! Never before have I so unspeakably realized that even if you cannot live in the current of life, you must live near it, hear its murmurs, watch its waves, and rejoice in knowing those who swim either with or against it. We had all been dreadfully disappointed in the Radiumopolites.
Again and again we planned to break away under some pretence of revisiting our celestial home, hurrying off and disappearing completely, though now we had made up our minds to return with big reinforcements of assistance and to turn over this new continent to the examination and gaze of science. It seems a cruel decision. But why not? Krocker Land could not in any case remain much longer concealed, and we were entitled to the fruits of our adventure, while we were reasonably confident we could make its investiture by our civilization safe, humane, undisturbing. I think differently now, but that was our conclusion.
“This Ascension business,” as Hopkins called it, was just humanly possible by the use of balloons, and it was apposite that at the Professor’s enthronement, the aeronautics of the Radiumopolites were displayed at last. It very oddly turned out that only the smaller race played with the balloons. The word is deliberately correct. These balloons were a kind of household furniture or means of diversion, as a bicycle is with us. They furnished inexhaustible amusement to the little people, but even there their use was limited to the very daring or the very light. Almost every family possessed one. And yet more curiously it was in the balloon line that experiment and invention were actually stirring these ludicrous people to improve and add to what they knew. This activity sprang from the unsatisfactory discrimination their present aeronautical knowledge made between light and heavy weights.
This ballooning in Krocker Land is in every way anomalous and extraordinary, and like their knowledge of transmutation partakes of the miraculous, certainly the previously unsuspected. Science here is again in the presence of a New Departure. The balloons are filled with a gas having a far greater buoyancy than pure hydrogen and it is derived from gas wells, themselves of very moderate depth, but evidently supplied from far more deeply seated sources. It is incontestable. A balloon not three feet in diameter will levitate thirty pounds!
Except for the astonishing transmutation this physical fact invades the realm of the unbelievable more deeply than anything else.
No evidence of this wide-spread predilection appeared before the Professor’s enthronement. The suppression of the sport had something to do with the ceremonial rites of visiting the tree shrines, I believe, the winter solstitial feeding with human bodies of the saurians, and awaiting the spring planting of grain. The opening of the season, so to speak, is inaugurated by the ascent of the entire Areopagus, and after that the amusement becomes general.
All of the Aeropagites are not equally expert, and many, after a sufficient aerial excursion to meet the ceremonial requirements, which are de rigueur, subside and retire. But the art of sailing the air is traditionally a matter of pride, and the leaders do very well. It was an adventuresome trip for them to have attempted reaching the outskirts of Krocker Land when we met them softly settling down on the Deer Fels, and it later proved almost indubitable that they were the customary political bosses, Javan, Put, Hul, Peleg and Hadad, though a closer inspection of these worthies corrected some of our first impressions, expressed before in that chapter of this narrative.
The experimental efforts at improvement arose from the discontent and envy of the heavier individuals over the glad pastimes and disportments of the lighter ones. You see the method involved the use of at least three balloons, one from each shoulder and one from the waist, and as three feet diameter was the maximum size, safely manipulated, those weighing over ninety pounds—and there were a great number of these, almost all adults of the taller race, and many women of the smaller—were simply excluded from this diversion. Hinc illae lacrymae, and hence also the energy of invention to overcome this disparity.
When the sports began, nothing could have been more interesting and spectacular. Groups would rise together, separate, and reunite. This air-swimming was effected by fans attached to the wrists. But the Aeropagites revealed a superior guidance, at least we imagined so, for when their floating shapes had thrown shadows on the illumined summits of the Deer Fels, they had been provided with those inexplicable tubes, and up to the moment of my escape these miracles had not been repeated. And the NEW tubes—where were they?