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Horizons, v. 1, issue 3, April 1940
Page 6
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HORIZONS THE TIME SPIRAL vehicle, once set in its course, runs itself, and requires very little watering. We can sit and talk for hours, or sleep in perfect safety. Unless, by some remote chance, we should collide with a wandering meteor, the chances of accident are negligible. "If only Mel and Chalmers were with me, my happiness would know no bounds, but it was not to be, and I am happy that I have you instead. But it matters little to you how we made the ship, or how we toiled to make the anti-gravity engine perfect, or why we wanted to do this thing. Still, I am sure you will love my time televiser, and I will explain why I had to come out into space to use it. He pulled aside a dark curtain, and Elsie saw a globe about six feet in diameter; a globe representing the earth, showing continents and oceans in splendid detail. Before it was a glass disk which was intended to magnify the scenes to be enacted on the globe to life size. "Look through the globe," he said, "and I will show you a scene in Paris. I will have to use my telecaster this time, a few hours more and we shall not need it. See, I am turning the globe around, so you can locate the right place on the map, now." She looked, and while he operated the small telecaster saw the city, which she knew to be Paris. Houses and people appeared, almost as large as life, showing the natural coloring, and appearing to be three dimensional, as though it were really being enacted in her presence. "That's fine, Rom," she praised him. "That's better than anything i have seen at the cinemas. Of course, that is what you have there -- a projector?" "Yes, but we won't need it long. You may have heard the theory that what happened yesterday, or a thousand, or a million years ago is pictured in ether. It has been said that if a man a million light years from the earth could see the earth, he would see it as it was a million years ago. Because he would see the light from the earth as it was then, when the light began its journey. That is the theory, but it is not quite true according to my findings, and the mathematics of Chalmers. "If we should see the earth, or the light of it, a million light years away, we would see not the earth, but its image. For if the earth had traveled a million years, it could not possibly be in the same place in open space. The path of any object in space is a spiral, and even the speed of light will never show us a star until it has been gone from the place where we see it. But we may see their image, or their ghost, many ages after a star has ceased to exist at all. "The imagine, once made, does not travel, or recede into space; it is we who recede away from it. It is Chalmers who figured how far away from the earth the images of the earth would be at stated times -- say last year, for instance. If we can make a space-ship to travel in the spiral which was the earth's orbit, and could have a televisor of sufficient power, we could see the images left in space. And that is what we are doing now, and that is how I shall write the history of our planet. How different from hunting up old manuscripts of doubtful authenticity, written by historians biased from seeing only one side of an argument." Elsie sat in silence. The ideas were beyond her grasp, but she was beginning to feel the glow of the man's enthusiasm, which was different from anything she had every known. "But why travel in space to see the earth's history?" she asked. "Why not visit other worlds." "Because there are so few of them worth going to," he answered. "Mars, Jupiter, Saturn -- all uninhabitable at present. The moon -- the same. Believe me, other worlds are not so easy to find. Even the suns of space are dying out. Nothing will make them hot again except what seems a cosmic calamity -- namely, collisions with comets and with each other, thus generating enough heat to make them flare up for a few million years. Even our own sun will be cold in a million years, unless a comet comes along and knocks a few planets into it.
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HORIZONS THE TIME SPIRAL vehicle, once set in its course, runs itself, and requires very little watering. We can sit and talk for hours, or sleep in perfect safety. Unless, by some remote chance, we should collide with a wandering meteor, the chances of accident are negligible. "If only Mel and Chalmers were with me, my happiness would know no bounds, but it was not to be, and I am happy that I have you instead. But it matters little to you how we made the ship, or how we toiled to make the anti-gravity engine perfect, or why we wanted to do this thing. Still, I am sure you will love my time televiser, and I will explain why I had to come out into space to use it. He pulled aside a dark curtain, and Elsie saw a globe about six feet in diameter; a globe representing the earth, showing continents and oceans in splendid detail. Before it was a glass disk which was intended to magnify the scenes to be enacted on the globe to life size. "Look through the globe," he said, "and I will show you a scene in Paris. I will have to use my telecaster this time, a few hours more and we shall not need it. See, I am turning the globe around, so you can locate the right place on the map, now." She looked, and while he operated the small telecaster saw the city, which she knew to be Paris. Houses and people appeared, almost as large as life, showing the natural coloring, and appearing to be three dimensional, as though it were really being enacted in her presence. "That's fine, Rom," she praised him. "That's better than anything i have seen at the cinemas. Of course, that is what you have there -- a projector?" "Yes, but we won't need it long. You may have heard the theory that what happened yesterday, or a thousand, or a million years ago is pictured in ether. It has been said that if a man a million light years from the earth could see the earth, he would see it as it was a million years ago. Because he would see the light from the earth as it was then, when the light began its journey. That is the theory, but it is not quite true according to my findings, and the mathematics of Chalmers. "If we should see the earth, or the light of it, a million light years away, we would see not the earth, but its image. For if the earth had traveled a million years, it could not possibly be in the same place in open space. The path of any object in space is a spiral, and even the speed of light will never show us a star until it has been gone from the place where we see it. But we may see their image, or their ghost, many ages after a star has ceased to exist at all. "The imagine, once made, does not travel, or recede into space; it is we who recede away from it. It is Chalmers who figured how far away from the earth the images of the earth would be at stated times -- say last year, for instance. If we can make a space-ship to travel in the spiral which was the earth's orbit, and could have a televisor of sufficient power, we could see the images left in space. And that is what we are doing now, and that is how I shall write the history of our planet. How different from hunting up old manuscripts of doubtful authenticity, written by historians biased from seeing only one side of an argument." Elsie sat in silence. The ideas were beyond her grasp, but she was beginning to feel the glow of the man's enthusiasm, which was different from anything she had every known. "But why travel in space to see the earth's history?" she asked. "Why not visit other worlds." "Because there are so few of them worth going to," he answered. "Mars, Jupiter, Saturn -- all uninhabitable at present. The moon -- the same. Believe me, other worlds are not so easy to find. Even the suns of space are dying out. Nothing will make them hot again except what seems a cosmic calamity -- namely, collisions with comets and with each other, thus generating enough heat to make them flare up for a few million years. Even our own sun will be cold in a million years, unless a comet comes along and knocks a few planets into it.
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