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know them. We have dense water which is heavier than earth or rock. But if it
becomes lighter than the solid ground beneath it, through the dissolution of
its firmer elements by heat, then it rises as high as possible and naturally
flows uphill. The seas have heavy salt water which always remains at the
bottom.
"Our planet also has a very heavy air and a very slight power of attraction.
On our moons, it is quite different, for there you feel yourself held down to
the ground. It is pos-
sible that water would not flow uphill there, provided there were water to be
found."
"Can you fly as far as your moons?" inquired Mitzie. "We can but we do not,
unless it is necessary; for they are not suitable for living beings. They lack
plant-life and water, they are like luminous flowers, but they are dead and
fit only for the dead. Also, their strong power of attraction makes walking
and flying there very difficult."
"How do you manage to fly, anyway?" asked Munchhau-sen, turning to Fliorot.
"We breathe air into our flying-lungs," he replied. "Just try it some time: as
soon as you are filled with air, you float aloft by yourself and sink down
again when the valves are opened. We practice this from our childhood. Why
don't you do the same?"
"For the simple reason that we haven't such a remarkable second lung,"
retorted the Captain.
"I thought as much," asserted BIeodila, the housewife. "This internal organ is
an advantage we have over the animals, which can only jump, or else must have
wings in order to fly."
"And does the filling of your balloon lungs make you so light that you can fly
to the moons?" Mitzie continued.
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"No, not that!" she was answered by the master of the house instead of his
wife. "Further up, the air becomes so thin and light that it no longer buoys
us up; if we want to go higher we must make use of machines impelled by
repulsive power until we shut off the power and, attracted by the moon, drop
to its surface."
"Aha! My centrifugal power!" exclaimed Flitmore. "And don't you travel any
farther with it than to your moons?"
"That we are unable to do. The air in between, up to the green moon, the one
closest to us, is already scarcely enough
for breathing; only very few bold and tenacious voyagers have ever reached the
blue one; as for the rose moon, which is twice as far away, nobody has ever
reached it. The air becomes so thinned that you must either turn back or die
in the attempt."
"But if you were to rise in an enclosed conveyance filled with air?" asked
Lord Flitmore.
Gabokol reflected. "That would be an idea! Nobody has ever attempted that," he
said. "Is that how you came to
us?"
"Yes!" confirmed Flitmore, briefly.
"A far distance!" declared Fliorot, and looked towards the sky.
"You can't see our earth!" laughed Schulze, who followed the line of his gaze
and could not but reveal his admiration at the fact that the lad seemed to
know exactly where the earth was to be looked for in the firmament, in the
event that it were visible. But, of course, even with the strongest telescope
nobody could ever have discerned that small dark planet.
But Fliorot replied: "Oh, yes, I can, I see it quite plainly. I am well
acquainted with the position of your solar system.
You have but one sun. At first there are two small plan ets--"
"Mercury and Venus," said Hank.
"Then comes your earth, as you call it," continued Fliorot, "I can even see
its moon."
"Yes, Fliorot has keen eyes," Gabokol bore him out. "I myself cannot recognize
the moon of your earth by daylight, only at night."
"But here is where all science does come to an end!" exclaimed Schuize, who
observed with astonishment how the eyes of the lad were protruding slightly
and staring into the
far distance. "There's a range of vision which puts our best telescopes in the
shade, and compared to which the visual faculties of the last inhabitant of
Mars are as nothing! If this youngster is able to distinguish the earth and
the moon as two separate bodies, then it is an optical parallaxis surpassing
the fabulous. His eyes must be capable of distinguishing the incline of two
lines to each other amounting to one third of an inch to the mile!"
Gabokol now led our friends to his smithy and explained to them how the flames
arose, from the combination of two gases which he produced out of the earth by
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the admixture of metals and acids.
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