Part 6 (1/2)
”Yes, it has,” he replied. ”In our histories we have full accounts of the long course of events when we were divided into hundreds of nations, each with its own pride and ambition, and each striving to build up itself upon the misfortunes or the ruins of its neighbors. You can perhaps imagine what a ma.s.s of material we have for reading and study.”
”We can,” spoke up the student doctor, ”and it fairly makes my mouth water. But tell us briefly, Thorwald, how you ever pa.s.sed from those troublous times to the blissful state in which we now find you.”
”The transition was exceedingly slow; it seemed, in fact, impossible that such a change could ever be effected. But it began with the establishment of universal peace, which was demanded by the growing spirit of brotherly love, and a.s.sisted by commercial reciprocity and a world language. Gradually national boundaries were found to be only an annoyance, and in time--a long time, of course--we became one nation and finally no nation. For now no one exercises any authority over his neighbors, since the need for all artificial distinctions has long since pa.s.sed away.”
”Then,” said I, ”you have no doubt lost all fear and anxiety over the conflicting interests of capital and labor.”
”Yes,” replied Thorwald, ”for we have no such distinctions in society as rich and poor, workingmen and capitalists. We all work as we please, but there is so little to do that no one is burdened, and one cannot be richer than another because all the material bounties of nature and art are common to all, being as free as the air. I suppose, as this seems to be strange talk to you, that you cannot realize what it is to belong to a society where everyone considers the interests of his neighbor as much as his own. You will find when you reach that point that most of your troubles will be gone, as ours are.”
”Our troubles!” said the doctor. ”Many of our troubles, to be sure, arise from our pa.s.sions and appet.i.tes--in other words, from our selfishness--and these will no doubt disappear when we reach that blessed state of which you have spoken, a condition prayed for and dimly expected by many of our race. But other troubles of ours come from sickness and severe toil, from accidents, famines, and the convulsions of nature. How, for example, can you have escaped the latter, unless, indeed, G.o.d has helped those who have so wisely helped themselves?”
”Your last thought is right,” answered our friend. ”Nature has certainly a.s.sisted us. While the crust of the planet was thin we know the central fires heaved and shook the ground and burst forth from the mountains, causing great destruction and keeping the world in fear. We do not know how thick the crust of the planet now is, but nothing has been felt of those inner convulsions for many ages. One of our feats of engineering has been to see how far we could penetrate into the surface of the globe. A well of vast size has been dug, the temperature being carefully noted and observations made of the many different substances pa.s.sed through--water, coal, gas, oil, and all kinds of mineral deposits. The work has progressed from one generation to another, and no one can tell when it will be called finished, as it is determined to dig toward the center of the planet as fast as our ever-increasing skill will permit.”
”Did you find out how thick the crust is?” I asked.
”No,” he answered, ”we are not much nearer the solution of that question than before, but we have made valuable discoveries as to what the crust is composed of. The temperature has gradually, though slowly, increased, and we believe the time will come when the work will have to be abandoned on account of the heat. We have gone far enough to know that when the fuel on the surface of our globe is all used up we shall only have to tap the center to get all the heat we want.”
”What a capital idea that will be,” I interrupted, ”to throw at some of our pessimistic friends on the earth, Doctor.”
”We see now, Thorwald,” my companion said, ”that your planet is too old to give you any more trouble from earthquake and volcano, but how about other natural phenomena, the tempest and cyclone for example?”
”Well,” replied Thorwald, ”we have a theory that time, the great healer, has cured these evils also. Let me ask, Doctor, if the earth ever receives any accretions of matter from outside its own atmosphere?”
”Yes, we have the fall of meteorites, foreign substances which we believe the earth encounters in its path around the sun.”
”I supposed such must be the case,” Thorwald continued. ”And now, when you consider the great age of Mars, perhaps you will not be surprised to learn that this new matter, coming to us from the outside, was sufficient to increase the weight of our globe and gradually decrease the rate of speed at which we were traveling through s.p.a.ce.”
”I am surprised, though,” said the doctor, ”because the acc.u.mulation of meteorolites on the surface of the earth is so exceedingly slow that it would take millions of years, at the present rate, to increase its diameter one inch.”
”But perhaps they came much faster in past ages. Let me ask you, Doctor, if it is not a fact that the rate of revolution of Mars around the sun is slower than the earth's? I suppose you are far enough advanced in astronomical science to answer that.”
”Yes,” replied the doctor, ”you are correct. I believe the earth speeds along at nineteen miles a second, while Mars travels only sixteen miles in the same time.”
”We know by our computations that our speed is much less than it once was, and our theory is that this has in some way hushed those terrible storms and winds which we know were formerly so frequent.”
Here the doctor thought he saw a chance to make a point, and spoke as follows:
”If the meteorites come in quant.i.ties sufficient to have caused such changes, it seems to me their fall must be as great a menace to your peace as the evils they have cured. They do not strike the earth in large numbers, but still we have a record of a shower of meteoric stones which devastated a whole village. I suppose all parts of your globe are by this time well populated, and how can you be entirely free from trouble when you are living in constant danger of the downfall of these great ma.s.ses of rock?”
”But we don't have meteorites now,” replied Thorwald.
”Oh, you don't?”
”No, they ceased falling long ago. Mars is going slow enough for the present.”
”Very kind of them, I am sure, to stop when you didn't need them any longer,” said the doctor; ”and I suppose you have some plausible reason to give for their disappearance.”
”Yes, we believe that the interplanetary s.p.a.ce was well filled with these small bodies, circling around the sun, and when their mult.i.tudinous and eccentric orbits intercepted the orbits of the planets, they came within the attraction of these larger ma.s.ses. Mars has merely, in the course of time, cleared for itself a broad path in its yearly journey and is now encountering no more straggling fragments.”
”There, Doctor,” said I, ”you are well answered. And now, Thorwald, tell us how you have escaped other evils, famine and fire for instance.”