s
horses would rejoice! Adieu forever to all cranes, derricks, capstans,
jack-screws, and even hotel-elevators! We could dispense with all
ladders, door steps, and even stair-cases!"

"And with all houses too," interrupted Barbican; "or, at least, we
_should_ dispense with them because we could not have them. If there was
no weight, you could neither make a wall of bricks nor cover your house
with a roof. Even your hat would not stay on your head. The cars would
not stay on the railway nor the boats on the water. What do I say? We
could not have any water. Even the Ocean would leave its bed and float
away into space. Nay, the atmosphere itself would leave us, being
detained in its place by terrestrial attraction and by nothing else."

"Too true, Mr. President," replied Ardan after a pause. "It's a fact. I
acknowledge the corn, as Marston says. But how you positive fellows do
knock holes into our pretty little creations of fancy!"

"Don't feel so bad about it, Ardan;" observed M'Nicholl; "though there
may be no orb from which gravity is excluded altogether, we shall soon
land in one, where it is much less powerful than on the Earth."

"You mean the Moon!"

"Yes, the Moon. Her mass being 1/89 of the Earth's, her attractive power
should be in the same proportion; that is, a boy 10 years old, whose
weight on Earth is about 90 lbs., would weigh on the Moon only about 1
pound, if nothing else were to be taken into consideration. But when
standing on the surface of the Moon, he is relatively 4 times nearer to
the centre than when he is standing on the surface of the Earth. His
weight, therefore, having to be increased by the square of the distance,
must be sixteen times greater. Now 16 times 1/89 being less than 1/5, it
is clear that my weight of 150 pounds will be cut down to nearly 30 as
soon as we reach the Moon's surface."

"And mine?" asked Ardan.

"Yours will hardly reach 25 pounds, I should think," was the reply.

"Shall my muscular strength diminish in the same proportion?" was the
next question.

"On the contrary, it will be relatively so much the more increased that
you can take a stride 15 feet in width as easily as you can now take one
of ordinary length."

"We shall be all Samsons, then, in the Moon!" cried Ardan.

"Especially," replied M'Nicholl, "if the stature of the Selenites is in
proportion to the mass of their globe."

"If so, what should be their height?"

"A tall man would hardly be twelve