The First Men in the Moon Page #2

energy.

Opaque...

Er, yes. Um...

Er, glass, for example.

Transparent to light,

much less so to heat, so that

it's useful as a fire-screen.

You see?

Yes. Yes, I see.

But where is all this leading?

Patience, patience. Now,

all known substances

are transparent to gravity,

are they not?

Gravity, obviously.

You can use screens of various kinds

to cut off light or heat.

You can shield things from Marconi's

radio waves using sheets of metal.

But nothing, nothing will cut off

the gravitational attraction

of the sun or of the Earth.

Of course not.

Hmm!

Nothing until now.

Come along.

Cavorite!

Cavorite?

Well, yes, I suppose so.

Isn't that the usual form?

One invents a thing and then...

It's not merely a theory, then?

Not at all! Not a bit of it!

Out of the way, Faraday!

Ohhh.

Couldn't be more perfect.

One in the eye for Newton, eh?

Gravity, you see.

The force that pulls everything,

including you and me,

down to the ground.

Without gravity,

we would be weightless.

And over Cavorite,

air itself is weightless.

Is it safe?

Oh, the stuff is completely inert

as long as it's kept at the right

temperature.

Once it's cooled...

Yes...?

..all the air above the apple

will cease to have any weight.

There were one or two alarming

moments in the manufacturing

process.

Oh? Yes.

I made a thin sheet of Cavorite,

you see,

and all the air above it

had nothing to pull it to Earth,

so it rushed upwards.

More air poured in to replace it,

and the same thing happened.

Ah! You begin to see.

It formed a sort of

atmospheric chimney.

And if the sheet of Cavorite

hadn't been loose, the air would

have...

fountained into space,

on and on and on.

It would have whipped the air

off the world as one peels a banana.

It would have been the end

of all life on this planet.

And that would have been awful.

Really?

Really.

At any rate, I've worked through

all those little problems.

It's not bananas we're concerned

with now, though, it's apples.

Look here, Cavor, are you serious?

Sir Isaac Newton taught us why

An apple falls down from the sky

And from that fact it's very plain

All other objects do the same

A brick, a bar, a boat, a cup

Invariably fall down, not up.

My dear Cavor...

This is incredible!

It's fantastic!

You really think so?

Well, of course it is.

Think of the practical applications.

Oh, practical applications.

Are there such things?

My God, don't you see?

It's a miracle. A revolution!

If you wanted to lift a weight,

however enormous,

you'd only have to put

a sheet of your Cavorite under it

and you could lift it with a straw.

A child could lift a dreadnought.

Heavens! I-I hadn't thought.

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