Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/325

 basic earth. No doubt we have, since these commencing times, greatly improved in this latter art and science, when we have had to find our way, projectively, to bodies so much further off than the moon—to bodies, in short, whose disks, reduced by distance, were so hard to strike, even with the guidance of the closest astronomic calculation, that the expense of this other kind of "fishing" would at times exceed all its saving benefit.

The cross-electro protective surrounding was, in this first trial, and at much cost with the novel experiment, quadruplicated for full safety against any probable—almost even any possible—meteoric impact. Not altogether without anxiety did the present travellers contemplate the possibility of some rarely huge meteorite plunging unchecked through all the four successive layers of the cross-electric protective, and dashing the whole concern to pieces. The momentum of the smaller bodies, encountered in outside space, is easily and safely dealt with, in being instantaneously converted into, and dispersed as, ordinary electricity by the successive protector batteries which encased the vessel. The great unmanageable masses, although doubtless existing and ever a possible danger, are so exceedingly rare as to cause now but slight alarm, more especially as we can now fairly herald and obviate their approach by throwing out, and maintaining for some distance ahead, a slight and comparatively inexpensive cross-electro outrider, whose disturbed pulsation almost instantaneously reports the intruder and the precise direction and speed of his intrusion.