No oxygen comets had been met with, but in our system there were not a few of the smaller of these members of the family composed, wholly or mainly, of nitrogen; and one of them had, not long before, been wholly captured, and piloted, by cross-electric conduction, safely into our earth, where it was duly intermixed with an oxygen stream similarly and simultaneously conducted from Jupiter. The State authorities had made large contracts in this way, and many contractors had made large fortunes. Both Brown and I had contrived to secure a share.
But the progress which surpassed all else, and which ever commanded the deepest interest of that time, was that of outside travel, which had now passed far beyond the puny distances of the realities of our own time, and within our own system. My old friend White turned up here also once more, and this time making voyages, not merely to our next-door neighbours the planets, but to the stars. The nearer systems in fact were reached within the few days or weeks that are now occupied in our interplanetary travel. A very grand scheme was in contemplation, under White's redoubtable leadership—no less than a public excursion to the nebula in Argo, in order to survey, from some near but sufficiently safe position, the marvellously stupendous movements that are of late developing there, in the gradual process of evolving a huge solar system. This system, in its foreshortened position, as regarded our point of view, had long seemed to be carrying on many incomprehensible antics. But, latterly, we had clearly demonstrated the whole case; and the result was a very general inclination to know more of the subject
