Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World

and after a plain but exceedingly enjoyable supper we were shown to l

ur port in a few hours, and so we sat down as ea

text by opening the conve

a race of people so advanced, when so little thought is

opinion among you on that

red. "There is an almost universal indifference in regard to the matter. I think the c

e your own v

pped. We did not know, and thought we never could know, anything that could be called evidence pointing to the existence of life in the other planets or elsewhere, and we held that there was no advantage in speculation. We th

ring bodies lead you to believe that there are more, amo

nce? No one has ever come to us from those distant globes, and they a

ing that word, as you are, before our wonderful successes in astronomy. I believe you have not properly considered the subject, for it seem

dies as large as the earth and bearing any resemblance to it, there would be no improbability in the thought that they or some of

n a voyage of discovery, aided by your

tle group. While it is not the largest, neither is it the smallest. It is not the farthest from the sun nor the nearest to it. It is merely one among the number. And how much alike the members of this family are. Your telescopes do not point out any material differences, although each has its individual characteristics. Let us enumerate some of the many points of resemblance. They all turn on themselves as well as revolve around the sun. All see the night follow the day, and in most of them there must occur the regular succession of seasons. To each one the sun is the source of light and

bjects for us to look at

ndreds of times larger than your own globe, created merely to add a little variety to your sky, and to g

wered, "I can say I never heard that they were put to any other use. No o

that the myriads of stars were also m

they were not?" the

s of the earth. I think I know about what that knowledge is, from my acquaintance with the present state of your development. Astronomy has been our master science, and I can remember fai

odies, which you call stars. Your natural eye can tell but a small fraction of their number. For example, look at the constellation you have named the Pleiades and you see six or seven stars. View it through a three-inch telescope and you can count perhaps three h

e state of our knowledge. Our largest telescopes reveal i

, why was not the eye created of sufficient power to behold them? As it is, only a small proportion

discovered that the law of gravitation is universal and that the motions of the stars resemble those of th

mers that there are invisible bodies near them, evidently planets circling around a central sun. The theory is that the dark bodies cause slight perturbations in the star, which account for the irregularities in period, motion, etc.

elous story. That light, that has been for years, and perhaps for centuries, on its way to you, now discloses the very nature of the substances which compose those fiery globes. And what are those substances? It must have been a startling truth to the man who first read from the spectrum of the star he was studying, that it contained matter with which he was familiar, materials of which the earth itself is made. By this science you have learned be

of the experiments are so constant and uniform, that when it is asserted, for example, that such and such a metal is present in a state

d and think of it a moment. You have few things on your earth as interesting as this piece of metallic stone. What a world of questions it starts! What is its composition? Whence comes it? Once it was in existence, but not here. Where, then, was its home? Out, out in the depths of space, where burning suns roll and comets have their dwelling place. The stars have fallen indeed, and here is one of the pieces. Before it came to us

d question, when Thorwald rose and eagerly sca

ime, as we are nearing our port. I knew by other mea