such a device?" I cried.

"My space ship is finished and ready for your inspection," he replied.
"If you will come with me, I will show it to you."

* * * * *

Hardly knowing what to believe, I followed him from the house and to a
huge barnlike structure, over a hundred feet high, which stood nearby.
He opened the door and switched on a light, and there before me stood
what looked at first glance to be a huge artillery shell, but of a size
larger than any ever made. It was constructed of sheet steel, and while
the lower part was solid, the upper sections had huge glass windows set
in them. On the point was a mushroom shaped protuberance. It measured
perhaps fifty feet in diameter and was one hundred and forty feet high,
the Doctor informed me. A ladder led from the floor to a door about
fifty feet from the ground.

I followed the Doctor up the ladder and into the space flier. The door
led us into a comfortable living room through a double door arrangement.

"The whole hull beneath us," explained the Doctor, "is filled with
batteries and machinery except for a space in the center, where a shaft
leads to a glass window in the bottom so that I can see behind me, so to
speak. The space above is filled with storerooms and the air purifying
apparatus. On this level is my bedroom, kitchen, and other living rooms,
together with a laboratory and an observatory. There is a central
control room located on an upper level, but it need seldom be entered,
for the craft can be controlled by a system of relays from this room or
from any other room in the ship. I suppose that you are more or less
familiar with imaginative stories of interplanetary travel?"

* * * * *

I nodded an assent.

"In that case there is no use in going over the details of the air
purifying and such matters," he said. "The story writers have worked
out all that sort of thing in great detail, and there is nothing novel
in my arrangements. I carry food and water for six months and air enough
for two months by constant renovating. Have you any question you wish to
ask?"

"One objection I have seen frequently raised to the idea of
interplanetary travel is that the human body could not stand the rapid
acceleration which would be necessary to attain speed enough to ever get
anywhere. How do you overcome this?"

"My dear boy, who knows what the human body can stand? When the
locomotive was first i