"What is it," I said.
I awoke and tried to collect my thoughts.
Before me stood a man; I don't like to confess it, but a glance told me a much better man than myself.
I was just awakened.
Then gradually there stole into my mind the past facts.
"What year is it?" and the man lifted his eyes and looked straight into mine.
Was he a mesmerist? Something from his look seemed to wander around my brain and try to find an entrance.
"Two thousand one hundred and forty-three," I said.
A ridiculous guess, I thought at the same moment.
Again the man lifted his eyes, and before I could think again I said to myself, "You are right".
I was abashed, and turned my eyes to the ground.
Then it all came back to me.
In the year one thousand nine hundred and fifty my dearest friend, John Malcolm Weir, the greatest chemist of his day, had given me the sleeping draught: it should tie up the senses - life itself - for an indefinite period; and when the appointed years were over life might again be awakened ... but-what! - did someone speak? - did someone say - "The one thing we have not yet found out?"
I looked at my companion.
He had grand eyes, and now they were bent on me with a wonderful power and interest.
"Confound the man, does he think I am a woman?" My hand naturally sought my chin; the large growth of hair quite relieved me.
I looked again - the man before me looked up.
He had evidently been blushing - I looked hard.
Good God! he had no hair on his face; he was very young.
His eyes fell to the ground.
His garments were the garments of a man; but-what - I must confess my thoughts did wander wild.
Yet, as my eyes returned and once again met his - yes, his - I knew it instantly; if I had been sleeping a thousand years I should have known it.
If I had been lying on a couch for ten thousand years I should have jumped up, as I did then, as he advanced towards me.
"Why will you make me speak? - Why do you think so animal-like of woman? If you have no curb for your spirit, know that almost every one you meet can read your thoughts."
We are startled out of exclamation and fear when some sudden immense fact breaks like light on the mind.
I looked hard at my companion as he stood before me - a wondrous, glorious feeling - awe, benevolence, love, enjoyment, seemed to come round about me, almost to enter into my life, as I met his steady gaze.
I was on the point of speaking; something - I cannot recollect what - was rising in my brain, when he again opened his lips; - "Why do you want to speak?" I could only gaze in astonishment.
He continued - "I thought it must be so."
Then, in a still sweeter tone, he said - "We do not often speak now"; and, as his face grew troubled, "Your mind is more than irregular; try to cleanse and calm it while only I am here; it will hurt you else in after years to think that others saw it thus.
Yes, I believe it would have been better to have made your sleep death, soon after your friend left this world; but the older men would not hear of it.
You first started the mechanical world on this new track.
You found out that power which so swiftly drives us through the air and over the earth; so - not to seem ungrateful even to a straying thought, we let you sleep on."
I have many times felt a thrill of pleasure when, in doubt or difficulty, a trusted friend has taken my hand, and I have been assured that through everything he would stand by me.
But that was but a semblance - a faint sketch - of the thrill that went through me as my companion stretched out his hand to me, and a voice seemed to wind round me again, saying - "Think nothing you would be ashamed to put into words and acts; no, not even in a desert, for, though your friends may be now on the other side of the world, they may afterwards catch the imprint of your thoughts."
But yet the man was only looking at me. It was confusing.
I said to him - "How old are you?" He would not speak, but smiled.
I said to myself - "Twenty-one."
"Yes," he replied, "cannot you think with me?" But as I did not answer, he went on - "We need not to speak for utility, only when we wish for the melody of the voice; we can read so well each other's thoughts, conversing for hours, without a word . . ."
Later in the book, our hero has left this world to journey across the solar system ...
Our greatest danger lay in the meteors - the principal streams that circulated round the world were pretty well known, but should all that immense space be strewn with them - 'twould add another danger.
We had established an intense magnetic current in the Star Climber - for that was her name - so that any metallic alrolite would so affect our boat and be, unless very large, so affected itself, that a collision was at all events placed farther off.
Thus, if you raised the Star Climber steadily on her third pair of pinions, or hovers, as they were named - say with her head to the north - she would spring backward at the rate of fifty miles an hour.
Stop her and turn her round she would be at the North Pole in twelve hours.
This, however, was nothing to our intense motive power.
Fancy a humming bird five hundred feet long of burnished silvered steel.
You may then begin to comprehend what the Star Climber was like.
She was truly a glorious boat.
Her main pinions ninety feet long, whose slowest motion was after the first five seconds invisible, whose fine steel feathered points and edges, though more delicate than the most fragile fan, could not even be bent by the human hand, yet such was their flexibility and temper, that the last ten feet, the real pinion, was packed in a box scarce double the old fashion pillbox.
We never expected to use a hundredth part of our power.
Once into space, our acquired motion would not need augmenting till we came within the attraction of some other planet.
Yet here lay our danger: we might perish miserably on some large but airless planet as the mad voyagers DeReef and Frenzy did on the moon.
This excerpt from The Great Romance: A Rediscovered Utopian Adventure is reproduced by permission of the University of Nebraska Press.
