![]() “It’s a fine idea,” I said, “but it strikes me as a large order all the same. “We should see-Oh! consider the new knowledge.” “And when one got there? What would you find?” “Surely! For example, one might go to the moon.” “I don’t quite see what we shall do it for! It’s really only jumping off the world and back again.” “Practically we shall be able to tack about in space just as we wish. Then at once any heavy body that chances to be in that direction will attract us” But open a window, imagine one of the windows open. Well, when all these windows or blinds are shut, no light, no heat, no gravitation, no radiant energy of any sort will get at the inside of the sphere, it will fly on through space in a straight line, as you say. So you see, that except for the thickness of the blind rollers, the Cavorite exterior of the sphere will consist of windows or blinds, whichever you like to call them. These can easily be worked by springs, and released and checked by electricity conveyed by platinum wires fused through the glass. The inner glass sphere can be air-tight, and, except for the manhole, continuous, and the steel sphere can be made in sections, each section capable of rolling up after the fashion of a roller blind. “That’s what I meant when I said the thing is finished. “You’re not safe to get anywhere, and if you do-how will you get back?” “What is to prevent the thing travelling in a straight line into space for ever?” I asked. “You would go off in a straight line-” I stopped abruptly. “And you could get in and screw yourself up while the Cavorite was warm, and as soon as it cooled it would become impervious to gravitation, and off you would fly-” “Like Jules Verne’s thing in A Trip to the Moon.” That, of course, will have to be a little complicated there will have to be a valve, so that things may be thrown out, if necessary, without much loss of air.” An air-tight manhole is all that is needed. “There was a similar problem about a dumpling.” And enamelled, as it were, on the outer steel-” ![]() It will be made of steel lined with thick glass it will contain a proper store of solidified air, concentrated food, water distilling apparatus, and so forth. “Imagine a sphere,” he explained, “large enough to hold two people and their luggage. With no more disturbance than firing a big gun.” And directly it had cooled and the manufacture was completed all that uproar happened, nothing above it weighed anything, the air went squirting up, the house squirted up, and if the stuff itself hadn’t squirted up too, I don’t Know what would have happened! But suppose the substance is loose, and quite free to go up?” “Last time I ran this stuff that cuts things off from gravitation into a flat tank with an overlap that held it down. But after he had taken tea he made it clear to me. I hadn’t the ghost of an idea then of his drift. I saw I was out of it, and for a time I let him talk in his own fashion. “Mean? Why-it must be a sphere! That’s what I mean!” Suddenly he shouted, “That’s it! That finishes it! A sort of roller blind!” We were returning to the bungalow for tea, and on the way he fell humming. He had had intimations of it before, but at the time it seemed to come to him in a rush. I REMEMBER the occasion very distinctly when Cavor told me of his idea of the sphere.
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