Will H. Gray

“ Brilliant rockets were fired off in thousands, and countless, coloured balloons of every shape and size were thrown from machines doing the most extraordinary gyrations in the air. They were able to act together in perfect unity just as trained armies do after several years of drill and practice. A hundred machines acting together represented a great wheel rolling slowly across the sky. Others would rush into the sky in a group, and then suddenly spread out like a bursting rocket. ”

“ If you had told your great-grandfather that some one would fly from New York to Paris in 33 hours, you probably would have been called a lunatic, or worse. Yet Lindbergh flew only at the rate of about 110 miles an hour, whereas airplanes have raced as fast as 266 miles per hour. Thus, in the present story, you will find a really excellent amount of science in such superabundance as is seldom found even in the best of scientifiction stories. New ideas seem to tumble all over each other at such a fast rate that it leaves you, at times, bewildered. ”

“ The words of his host came forcefully back to him, "How do you expect a clever, high spirited girl to marry a man rated below 23?" And he was rated only twenty-one units of intelligence out of a possible hundred. And she had eighty-seven!
She saw the look of misery cross his face, and felt glad.
"He must like me," she thought, "for he is sad that our combined intelligence stands between us." ”

“ No one seemed to bother about Roger Wells, the old world man, except a medical health officer who tested his mentality, and innoculated him against every known disease. A little later, while he stood leaning over the rail of the yacht, a great projectile hurtled down with a roar like a thunderbolt not a hundred yards away, and pulled itself up so that it only went about twenty feet under water. It bore an eminent engineer direct from Italy.
The dent in the rusty submarine had been noticed by those on the yacht, from a distance, and they had unerringly come to the right conclusion. ”

“ I feel sorry for this girl pilot, because she is of abnormal intelligence. She ranks in the eighty-seven zone, and when you remember that there are only seven hundred people on the earth who have reached the ninetieth, you see how she is wasting her talents piloting for us. ”

“ A century ago when eugenics were first brought into use, we tried to breed infant prodigies and mathematical marvels, but through our mitakes, we got instead a crop of lunatics; now we limit the combined intelligence to one hundred and ten, and get splendid results. Therefore the poor girl must choose a man of the twenty-third degree of intelligence or less—corresponding to the clever men of nineteen-ten to nineteen-twenty. ”

“ Usually these charts show slight ups and downs, so that even the characteristics of the individual pilot can be recognized, just as the flight of a certain pilot could be told on your day."
"All this is clear enough now that you explain it, but I cannot conceive anyone quick enough to turn on the air blast that shoots out of the nose of your projectiles at the exact instant that will check it as it touches the ground."
"Intelligence and practice, nothing else. If you hadn't the intelligence you couldn't do it; practice is all that is necessary. ”

“ She gazed at him in bewildered astonishment, and then—: "In that case there is nothing to stop us getting married at once," she replied.
"Nothing," he agreed, "if you can stand a husband of such low mentality."
She laughed joyously, "Intelligence tests and rating may be necessary in this age, but they have very little to do with real love. However we must hurry, for I feel sure that they will realize that a mistake has been made; then they will send another doctor, or appoint a commission to go into your case thoroughly. ”

“ We are up against the human element again. I've had the thought-recording machine on her twice now, and each time I got a negative graph. It just means that she thought resistant to these old type recorders. Several times I've asked the directors for one of the newest machines. But you know how hard it is to persuade the heads of these big companies to keep abreast of the times. In fact they said that any one who had sufficient intelligence to resist the old machine, either didn’t need watching, or was too good for the job, and should be promoted. ”

“ But besides all that, there are automatic controls that turn on the front air blast at the exact time required to counteract the velocity. I am told that the pilots do not consider it good form to use the automatic controls except in emergencies."
"What went wrong with this projectile?"
"Ah well, you see a woman is still an unknown quantity. I'll admit they are much more brainy, but for dependability and consideration, I prefer the man. This woman pilot has missed her vocation, because she is too clever. In this age very clever people are seldom matrimonially inclined. ”

“ It was evening, the storm had died away, and the yacht was again floating on the slightly heaving surface of the ocean. The owner and his family had retired, and the ship was heading leisurely south for Bermuda. In the moonlight Miss Morgan and Roger Wells slowly paced the deck. They were not talking very much, but they were thinking a great deal. He was wondering if men proposed and got married in this age as they had in the beginning of the twentieth century. ”

“ She had disturbed the man just at the climax of a good yarn, when no man likes to be interrupted. Jumping into the saloon, she twisted the big wheel with might and main. Glancing out through the forward port hole of quartz glass, she was horrified to see water where blue sky should have been. The projectile was heading earthward with frightful velocity. The broken vane had done it. Springing back with lightning agility, she hit two buttons simultaneously. One operated the forward air blast to check the speed, the other an S. O. S call. ”

“ She could not reconcile herself to the idea of a husband with a mentality of only twenty-three out of a possible hundred units of intelligence. Her beauty was most striking in spite of the severity of dress demanded by the strenuous, mechanical age, and many men had looked at her and regretted the barriers. ”

“ The transmission of power—mostly tide and water power—could be directed through space by means of a sort of beam wave concentrated on the receptive point and kept there by a whole series of delicate relays. Of course, storage of electricity had greatly improved, liquid electrolyte having long been displaced by a heavy gas impregnated with radium salts; the grids were of the finest metal gauze. Every airship had not one but several sources of reserve power, so that they could travel for days independently of the central station. ”

“ Machines hovering above fanned away the steam, so that it would not fall in a drenching, tropical rain on the operators.
All this time Roger Wells, the ancient man, watched and observed and grew accustomed to all these strange, new wonders.
His host in the pleasure yacht was very kind. He even sent to the New York zoo, and had some animal flesh sent out for his guest to eat. However Roger decided to turn vegetarian when he noticed the horror of his host's children when they saw him eat 'dead animal,' as they put it. ”

“ The TIDE PROJECTILE TRANSPORTATION Co.
By Will H. Gray
Author of "The Star of Dead Love"
Even in this age of wonders, people still turned aside, or came out of their houses to witness the start of Number Two, just as two hundred years before, people had looked up whenever an airplane buzzed overhead. . . . With a tremendous jar and shriek of parted air, the huge projectile was hurled nearly on the vertical into the blue sky. . .
HOW would you like to fly from San Francisco to New York in about 17 minutes? Impossible! ”

“ A slight jar was the only effect of that gigantic air blast, so well did the shock absorbers and antigravitators do their work. These shock absorbers depended on the wonderful resilient qualities of rubber foam, a substance similar to, but many times lighter than, rubber sponge. The inner casing of the projectile rested on many layers of this aerated material; each succeeding layer taking up the pressure when the preceding ones had been pressed almost flat. ”

“ There was still another source of reserve power in everyday use that astonished the old-world man by its simplicity—just the ordinary coil spring that drove the watches and clocks and phonographs, and pressed up the street car trolley poles when they slipped off the wire. ”

“ Other things that we buy are charged to our accounts which can be verified almost instantly. The luxuries that we enjoy are in proportion to the service we perform for the good of the public. We will just inquire how you stand. ”

“ Miss Morgan, the pilot, being an exceptionally clever young woman, at once set to work rebuilding the broken equipment. Considering her tools and lack of spare parts, her skill in repairing the sending set is considered a very clever piece of work. The projectile contains oxygen for five days and food tablets for a month, beside the chemical in the medicine chest for suspending animation in case of necessity. The noted engineers now assembled have calculated that three days will be sufficient to complete the rescue. ”

“ The human element is holding us up more every day; the people of the last couple of centuries applied their science to everything but themselves. Every thing was thought except—— There's the whistle Settle down on the pontoon ”

“ Yes, but it's a nuisance digging them out of holes, and fishing them out of the sea, and there's always a chance that some one may get hurt, and then of course there's an inquiry and a lot of fool questions and still more foolish suggestions for the future by old fogies who have never in their lives travelled faster than five hundred miles an hour. ”

“ He might have wanted to kill every one he didn't like, or take somebody's wife, or do a hundred things that weren't done in your day. Many changes have been effected since your time, so you musn't mind being regarded with suspicion until you are better known. ”

“ She ranks in the eighty seventh division, and as the maximum for husband and wife is one hundred and ten, you see she would have to marry a man of twenty three units or less. How could you expect a pretty, highspirited, clever girl to be willing to do that? ”