And it is within the bounds of
possibility that in doing so they may inaugurate a wider fellowship of
created beings than the limits of this world permit; a fellowship, a
friendship, and, as the _Astronef_ entitles us to believe, even a
physical communication of world with world which, in the dawn of the
twentieth century, may transcend in sober fact the wildest dreams of all
the philanthropists and the philosophers who have sought to educate
humanity from Socrates to Herbert Spencer."
CHAPTER VI
After the _Astronef's_ forward searchlight had flashed its farewells to
the thronging, cheering crowds of Washington, her propellers began to
whirl, and she swung round northward on her way to say goodbye to the
Empire City.
A little before midnight her two lights flashed down over New York and
Brooklyn, and were almost instantly answered by hundreds of electric
beams streaming up from different parts of the Twin Cities, and from
several men-of-war lying in the bay and the river.
"Goodbye for the present! Have you any messages for Mars?" flickered out
from above the _Astronef's_ conning-tower.
What Uncle Sam's message was, if he had one, was never deciphered, for
fifty beams began dotting and dashing at once, and the result was that
nothing but a blur of many mingled rays reached the conning-tower from
which Lord Redgrave and his bride were taking their last look at human
habitations.
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