Page:The world set free.djvu/305

 "I am interested," said Karenin. "I suppose in a little while men will cease to be tired. I suppose in a little time you will give us something that will hurry away the fatigue products and restore our jaded tissues almost at once. This old machine may be made to run without slacking or cessation."

"That is possible, Karenin. But there is much to learn."

"And all the hours we give to digestion and half living; don't you think there will be some way of saving these?"

Fowler nodded assent.

"And then sleep again. When man with his blazing lights made an end to night in his towns and houses—it is only a hundred years or so ago that that was done—then it followed he would presently resent his eight hours of uselessness. Shan't we presently take a tabloid or lie in some field of force that will enable us to do with an hour or so of slumber and rise refreshed again?"

"Frobisher and Ameer Ali have done work in that direction."

"And then the inconveniences of age and those diseases of the system that come with years; steadily you drive them back and you lengthen and lengthen the years that stretch between the passionate tumults of youth and the contractions of