devised, because there was no means to
experiment with them. The production of those forces was still the
secret of our enemies. But Mr. Edison had no doubt that if we could not
resist their efforts we might at least be able to avoid them by the
rapidity of our motions. As he pointed out, the war machines which the
Martians had employed in their invasion of the earth, were really very
awkward and unmanageable affairs. Mr. Edison's electrical ships, on the
other hand, were marvels of speed and of manageability. They could dart
about, turn, reverse their course, rise, fall, with the quickness and
ease of a fish in the water. Mr. Edison calculated that even if
mysterious bolts should fall upon our ships we could diminish their
power to cause injury by our rapid evolutions.

We might be deceived in our expectations, and might have overestimated
our powers, but at any rate we must take our chances and try.

A multitude, exceeding even that which had assembled during the great
congress in Washington, now thronged New York and its neighborhood to
witness the mustering and the departure of the ships bound for Mars.
Nothing further had been heard of the mysterious phenomenon reported
from the observatories six months before, and which at the time was
believed to indicate the departure of another expedition from Mars for
the invasion of the earth. If the Martians had set out to attack us they
had evidently gone astray; or, perhaps, it was some other world that
they were aiming at this time.

The expedition had, of course, profoundly stirred the interest of the
scientific world, and representatives of every branch of science, from
all the civilized nations, urged their claims to places in the ships.
Mr. Edison was compelled, from lack of room, to refuse transportation to
more than one in a thousand of those who now, on the plea that they
might be able to bring back something of advantage to science, wished to
embark for Mars.

On the model of the celebrated corps of literary and scientific men
which Napoleon carried with him in his invasion of Egypt, Mr. Edison
selected a company of the foremost astronomers, archaeologists,
anthropologists, botanists, bacteriologists, chemists, physicists,
mathematicians, mechanics, meteorologists and experts in mining,
metallurgy and every other branch of practical science, as well as
artists and photographers. It was but reasonable to believe that in
another world, and a world so much older