"Indeed not," replied Graham. "In fact, I am honored to make your acquaintance. I've always wanted to meet a space person."
"Well," replied the other being, "you are a space person, too."
"I am?" said Graham incredulously. "I'm afraid you're mistaken … I am from earth."
"And where, my little friend, do you think earth is? Is it not suspended in space like all of the other planets? And does it not make a complete rotation upon its axis every twenty-three hours, fifty-six minutes and four point zero-nine seconds, and at a speed of a thousand miles per hour? And does it not orbit your sun every three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours and nine minutes and nine point five seconds, and at a speed of about twenty miles per second? And does it not revolve along with the moon, around a common center of gravity, and move with the entire solar system through your local star system at thirteen miles per second? And does not your local star system move within the Milky Way at the rate of two hundred miles per second, and does not the Milky Way drift with respect to the remote external galaxies at the rate of one hundred miles per second and in all different directions, and does not your galaxy itself make a complete rotation about an axis every two hundred million years? And does it not travel through space with over a hundred billion other suns of its galactic family, not to mention an untold number of other planets?"
Graham nodded meekly. "I knew our planet was in space. I just didn't know all the details."
"Well," continued the being, "even if you mortals could travel at the speed of light, it would still take you a hundred thousand years to cross your galaxy from edge to edge."
The spaceman motioned toward the craft. "However, our ship could visit the Andromeda galaxy, which is about two million one hundred thousand light years from earth, and return before you could say Stephen Hawking. I'd say that is a little bit faster than the speed of light. We could not afford to waste two million years—actually, over four million years round trip! We'd never get anything done."
"Now, wait just a minute," said Graham. "You can't go faster than the speed of light. They told us in school that would be against the laws of physics!"
"We learned long ago," replied the spaceman, "that the laws of physics kept us very tightly bound until we found we could gain dominion over those laws. You see, we earned that right over a long period of time. Dominion over physical law requires a certain knowledge of science beyond the physical as well as a working knowledge of the spiritual laws. The two must work hand in hand. For example, your scientists are working strictly from a physical perspective. They are totally unaware that the atoms—the building blocks of matter—have a counterpart of a higher frequency: one that falls outside of the realm of what you would term physical. In any event, without that counterpart the physical world as you know it could not exist.
"Now, I want to demonstrate to you the practical aspects of our knowledge. Our spaceship is vibrating at the atomic rate of the collective atoms that comprise the material makeup of said ship. Now, as we observe the ship, I am going to concentrate on this counterpart of the atom that your scientists might refer to as antimatter or antiparticle. These antiparticles are what we would call the pure state of the atom. You might say they are the inner core of the atom. You might even say that they are the very soul of the atom, since they furnish the power that maintains the motion of the atom. In any event, this is the medium we work with. Incidentally, if you could observe the motion of this counterpart to the atom, you would see that it is in constant motion as it conveys its power to the atom. It turns incessantly upon its own axis, spinning like a top. It is constantly pulsating, gyrating, and, I might even say, dancing in a most beautiful manner…. I might tell you at this point that the name we give to this wonderful animating force, is, quite naturally, the anim. Now I am going to concentrate on the atomic structure of our ship. I am going to raise the rate of vibration, or frequency, of the individual atoms to the higher rate of the anim state. As I do so, the ship will no longer be detected by your eye-to-brain circuits. To your limited senses it will be completely invisible to you. It is this little trick that plays havoc with the minds of your fellow mortals that occasionally catch a glimpse of our ships in your skies, only to see them disappear in an instant. Now, as I continue to concentrate, I am projecting the ship to a certain coordinate: namely, a specific planetary member of the galaxy Andromeda. This is done at the speed of thought, which is instantaneous. There…." The starship vanished in less than a blink. "Now it's back again!" the spaceman announced. And, indeed, it truly was! "Well, what do you think?"