The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1911-08-26

visible-only the vast, fiat, circling
parade grounds, as smooth and naked
as tennis court or aerodrome.
In its midst rises the pylone, as
high as the Eiffel Tower The dwell
ling places of a veritable little army
of scientists, engineers, men of action
and superior workmen, the store.
houses and great halls of machinery
are all underground insulated from
the titanic waves of the pylone.
The pylone looks like a fantastic
Eiffel Tower. Innumerable thick ca
bles that become threadlike or in
visible as they mount spring from the
circumference to the legs and upper
portions of the pylone. And the eight
legs descend into the ground, leaving
round each an empty space that is
covered with an insulating alloy in
thin sheets.
Looking up, it seems a prodigious
mingling of metal beams and Orders
supporting eight enormous cables
whose ends protrude from the spaces
round the eight legs.
The only sound is a dull rumbling,
accompanied by muffled shocks in reg
ular cadence, while the entire surface
of the esplanade trembles. Down be-
low they live and work and tend their
formidable machines. The eight feet
of the pylone, descending, traverse. a
vast subterranean hall and finally rest
on eight cyclopean pedestals of mixed
cement, metal and crystal.
Enormous machines move. Great
disks of crystal turn in dazzling play
of luminous refractions. Levers rise
and fall. Cylinders groan with an in
terror tumult. Propellers fixed from
the ceiling whistle through the air,
doing unknown work. And every now
and then a cracking spark seven feet
long bursts from inexplicable appa'
ratus apparently resembling the con
densers of Oepinus.
In the center of this underground
hall there is group of eight twin
, machines from which extend the enor
nous cables mounting the legs of the
| pylone; and, Watching them, stand
always eight men, their eyes fixed or
, voltameters of unimaginable dimen
sions. Doors, walls, floors and cell
ings are coated with kind Of enamel
And up above, from the antennae oil
the pylones summit-like an immense
umbrella frame-flash ever the incred
able oxus-rays, out, out, perhaps in
/ finitely, into space.
| At a distance of, say, 34,162,OO(
t miles from the terrestrial station o.
l the Kongo, in interplanetary space
| and the attraction of Mars, four mel
| sleep in a moving radioplane. Tit
2 three others tend it. They have quit
ted earth seven days, four hours ant
l four minutes With his eyes on tn,
: twenty-four-hour chronometer, the cal
/ culator allows fifty-three more min
C utes to pass, then wakes the others.
e Chief" he says, Gin three hours W
j shall arrive.
J, 80
e Now the radioplane is scarcely 800
e 600 miles from the Isle Argyre-Mal
S tan station of which the dying Italia
2 heard much, but lived to tell little. A
d 1900 miles distant, they begin pre-
excessively slowing speed. Given ii
i record, the distance from Mars, an
d the laws of rotation and gravity, it
T. possible for them to calculate With
eight miles of the point of landing. A
n 7 a. m, thirty minutes and thirty-hv
e and one half seconds by the time o
II earth, the crystal machine gent
e touches the surface of a level plail
n glides on its runners, and stops.
II It is daybreak on Mars. Golden fire
d light the orient of an unknown worlt
g. The sky is pure pale blue, without
a cloud. Below, and melting into it,
n silver-blue sea bordered by reddis
8 land surrounds a great circular islan'
1t is Argyre-name which will one da
a echo through the world.
e A new life begins for the adven
a urers, powerful and dominating, in
a prodigious world which they count o
'e conquering entirely across the depth
t, of space. What new metals, chemici
D. substances, plants and living crea
ures they have found is still a scale
n book.
1t Is it thinkable?
le The dying Italian repeated certai
a. explanations which he had oyerheal
e. at the Kongo station,
,e He spoke of the impossbility
making average people apprecia
a. what the seeming emptiness OF spa'
I'd CONTINUED on page 2lD