“Well, why all this excitement here on the planet Venus?” asks one of the members.
Professor Longrin answers: “After all the years that we have taken to perfect our instruments so we could reach the planets and suggest to them better management, giving them our experiences, helping them to originate telegraphs, telephones, everything we could imagine that would civilize them, when, lo and behold, the Great Ruler of the Universe chose a millionaire to expose the whole money scheme, chose one who obtained his money by the same methods that he now denounces. Nothing could be more convincing to the rest of the world that lets other people do their thinking for them, than this. I believe we can leave the results with those who are awakened on a part of the earth at least, and now friends we will direct our effort toward showing them the remedy. The remedy is to organize a society that will protect them from all dangers, poverty heading the list.”
WE ARE GOING TO BE INSPECTED.
BY GARRETT P. SERVISS.
(This clipping was taken from a newspaper in the winter of 1905.)
There is something on the cards for this winter of wider interest than social functions, theater parties, Wall street plunges, politics, and even war—it is an inspection of which the whole earth will be the subject. The inspector can already be seen approaching, lantern in hand (for it is a nocturnal job), peeping over the rim of the world at sunset. This inspector is the planet Venus.
Venus, we have excellent reasons for thinking, is a world crowded with intelligent inhabitants, and as, for several months to come, it rises higher every night, and beams more and more brilliantly, we may almost feel the eyes of those inhabitants fixed curiously upon us. For if we think of them, can they fail to think of us?
But their opportunity for observation is far better than ours. It is customary for us to consider other planets only as they present themselves to the earth. Quite as interesting, and infinitely more novel, is it to consider the earth as it presents itself to other planets, and particularly to Venus, its nearest planetary neighbor, and its closest counterpart.
Once grant that there are intelligent beings on Venus and the conclusion follows with irresistible force that they must study our globe with an intensity of interest and application proportional to the ease with which their observations can be made. And this is exactly the particular in which they possess a great advantage over us. In fact, there is no place in the entire solar system where an astronomer could have so favorable a position for examining another world than his own as he would have on the planet Venus.
The reason is very simple; it is because when Venus is nearest to the earth—about twenty-six million miles away—she lies between the earth and the sun. At that time we cannot see her at all, because our eyes are blinded by the flood of sunshine which envelops her. But, on the other hand, at that time the earth is in the middle of Venus’ midnight sky, blazing with light reflected from its continents and oceans and polar snows, and looming so large and splendid that the sight must be unutterably magnificent—such a sight as a terrestrial astronomer would sit up all night to gaze at, and then feel that the swift pace of time had robbed him.