“Having found out how to harness this element, we were well supplied with light and power on our planet. These lights you see are run by radio current from several plants in our workings, each dynamo, if I may call it that, generating a powerful radio wave which is caught and utilized by each of these crystals. The crystals are considerably larger the further away they are from the source of power, for distance demands more filament to catch the power waves.
“A fortunate discovery, though with tragic consequences to the discoverer, revealed the possibility of utilizing this element with another in such proportions as to repel anything in front of the wave generated by their intermixing. That was the beginning of our centuries of work on an interplanetary machine. It is obvious that if the ray generated by these two elements will repel anything in its path, then by proper control, intensifying and reducing it at will, enough force could be made to repel us away from Venus and toward the earth, using auxiliary rays to repel any stray meteorites. And there are plenty of those. But the exhaustive calculations! Nothing could be left to chance. The best brains of our people worked ceaselessly on the problem until everything was figured out.
“I do not think it is of much use to try to explain to you the workings of the interplanetary machine, since you are unfamiliar with the element responsible for its success. All I can say is, each of the two combining elements are kept in finely powdered form in separate containers negative to their power as lead is to your X-ray. The proper amount of each to be combined is let carefully into a tubular apparatus, separated by a thin sheet of negative metal which is then withdrawn by a special device. The power wave produced by the resulting combination is carefully calculated, and the charge is renewed in another tube at just the right moment. A battery of auxiliary tubes is always kept here for any unexpected occurrence which might take place at any moment.
“My parents told me that the take-off was most exciting. Countless thousands of my fellow Venusians were crowded as close as they could get to obtain a last glimpse of the travelers. At exactly the right moment, the big projectile soared slowly into the sky, gradually gaining momentum as it left the stratosphere and entered outer space. Faster and faster it went, with its meteorite detector busily at work spotting and repelling these menaces, and its tubes taking larger and larger quantities of the precious elements. You can judge for yourself the speed they attained when I tell you it took exactly six of your months for my people to get here.”
“Pardon the interruption,” I said, munching a piece of the bread that tasted exactly like a dry waffle, “but how did you know where you were going to land? Suppose you had dropped into the ocean, or even in the midst of a populated district? How and why did you hit this part of New Mexico?”
“That is explained by the atomic telescope, an invention of my great-great-grandfather’s. Using the element similar to radium as a base, we wash a sensitive plate with this certain mixture containing a large proportion of that element. In order to save time, let us call this element ‘Venusite’ which, though not the name we have for it, is more descriptive and makes it easier for you to understand. This telescope is tremendously long, and contains a series of condensing reflectors of such accuracy and delicacy that when it is trained on a certain spot, an image on your earth, 30,000,000 miles away, is recorded on an inconceivably small part of the sensitive plate. This plate is then treated by an agent which causes the atoms in the ‘Venusite’ to start breaking up, and as they do so, an enlarged image is thrown on a screen. By exposing various parts of the sensitive plate in rapid succession, a series of images is obtained. We thus succeeded in exploring the surface of your earth thoroughly, proving to our own satisfaction that we could not only live on your planet, but live better than on our own. We saw that this region was practically uninhabited, and had the advantage of possessing enormous caverns suitable for housing us. It remained only to calculate the proper time for leaving in order to hit this spot. A slight error put my people several hundred miles west of here, but by a skillful handling of the ‘Venusite’ they managed to bring their machine down by the entrance of a huge limestone cave. The rest was easy.”
DURING the latter part of this conversation I noticed that Oomlag reached under his jacket several times and made the funny rustling sounds I had heard before. I asked him what he was doing.
“Oh, yes, our portable wireless, by means of which we can communicate with anyone else in the workings.”
He unbuttoned his jacket, exposing a contrivance about 18 inches square at the base, with a dome-like top, suspended from his shoulders and held in place by a strap around his waist. This explained the pouter-pigeon appearance of these people. Several slits about half an inch wide radiated from the center of the dome, and from these slits little flashes of light darted with bewildering rapidity. Several little knobs or buttons protruded from all sides of the square base, and these Oomlag was manipulating with his long, tapering, yellow fingers. As each button was pressed, it gave out a slight, crackling sound.