“You have asked me questions about the heavenly continent: how thick, if pierceable etcetera. At least one more test is needed before I can answer accurately, but I can now tell you what is imaginable and what is likely.
“Classical astronomy would regard the heavenly firmament as the inner surface of a glassy shell carrying the moon. But a rigid shell would be shattered by the speed of its rotation and our air would not stop a liquid shell falling to the earth below. The classical model only holds good if the sky is made of transparent vapour, at once lighter than air and as dense as molten metal. Such a vapour is impossible.
“So let us imagine there is a dense, transparent fluid filling the entire universe. Our earth occupies a bubble of air in this fluid, a bubble at the centre of a whirlpool. The heavenly bodies are floating round us in different currents at different speeds, the nearest current carrying the moon. This idea is both attractive and convincing: until we remember that the light of the farthest and steadiest stars would be reaching us through fluid moving in different speeds and directions. This would give the highest heavens a warped and shifting aspect they do not possess.
“I offer you a third model. You perhaps know that all water has a skin protecting it from air. This skin is invisible to the human eye, impalpable to human touch, yet tough enough for small insects to hang from, walk across, and build upon. Imagine, then, that there is a light vapour which lies upon air as air lies upon water, and reacts with air to create a tense surface, perhaps only a few atoms thick. This surface has properties which human insects cannot understand before they have sampled the vapour on the far side, but it moves with the moon because the moon pulls it along as it pulls the oceans of the world below. The greater speed is explained by the absence of shores and a solid bottom.
“This is the likeliest model of the world we occupy, and I ask leave to test it by the following means.
“Only flame impresses the heavenly surface, so let us build in our summit a furnace with a ring of burners, and let us direct against the sky a circle of flame five feet in diameter. If this does not cut a hole into the upper universe let us keep the furnace burning for a lunar month of 28 days. This should engrave a fault-line round the inside of the cosmic egg-shell, perhaps splitting it open long enough for us to grab a sample of what lies beyond.
“This test should endanger nobody, unless, perhaps, those beside the burners, foremost of whom will be myself. The sky will suffer no great injury. Flames mark it, yes, but since the start of the world it has been pierced from above, every night, by jagged meteorites of white-hot stone and iron. The heavenly surface would be scarred all over if these had done lasting damage. You can authorize my test in the knowledge that the natural forces maintaining the sky will start repairing it as soon as we relax our efforts. Man can no more destroy the sky than he can destroy the ocean.”
The chief laid his paper on the table. The president muttered, “You shouldn’t have mentioned the ocean. The excrement from our factories and refineries has poisoned most of it.”
The chief seemed not to hear. He folded his arms, leaned back in his chair and remarked conversationally, “Our utmost skill, of course, may fail to pierce this barrier. In which case your great summit will soon be equalled by all the others in the work.”
There was a long silence. The eyes of nearly everyone round the table seemed to be staring inside themselves. Then a director spoke in a low voice which gradually grew very loud.
“I am a religious man. That sky we gazed upon less than an hour ago — that moving sea of heavenly blossom — was the loveliest work of God’s hand I have ever beheld. I am certain that this sky, like everything else men have not corrupted, exists for a great good reason. Humanity has lived beneath this dome, been sheltered by this dome from the dawn of creation. And you, professor, ask us to rip it open tomorrow like a can of beans? You have given us three little toy pictures of the universe, and told us to believe in the safest one, and asked permission to test it. The fact that you need to test it shows your ignorance. Your test may destroy something essential and beautiful which you did not make and cannot replace. Mankind has taken the whole of human history to reach this height. Why should we not pause for a couple of years and consider the situation carefully?”
“Because of the co-ops!” cried the commander of the armed forces. “And because of our so-called allies. Believe me, that sky is going to be shafted by someone sooner or later, and whoever reaches the far side first will have a colossal military advantage. Just now the advantage is ours. The co-ops know everything we know, but they can’t float a furnace on a smoke-filled envelope. Give them a month or two, though, and they’ll carve their way through and claim the upper surface for themselves. We’ve got to get there first and claim it for free people everywhere. Then we can hold it against all comers.”
“Gentlemen,” said the president, “I do not wholly agree with my military adviser. The sky is not a territory we should defend against other summits — that would unite the whole world against us. But the sky must be pierced, not to give us advantages in a future war but to prevent war beginning here and now. Our entire structure is committed to growth. All wealth which does not go into building goes into weaponry. If we do not expand upward we must do it sideways, which means absorbing the bases of the neighbouring summits. In a quiet way our company is doing that already, but at least we have the excuse of needing the extra ground to build higher. Without that excuse our enlargement will be an obvious act of naked aggression. Professor, make this burner of yours as big as you can. Employ all the skill and manpower you can, use more than you need, build several damned furnaces in case one of them goes wrong. Blast a hole the entire axletree can use. And maybe we’ll be able to maintain a stable state for another twenty years. By that time the world will have run out of building materials. But it won’t be our problem.”
There was a director who served on an international committee which attended to plumbing in the axletree’s basement. He compensated for this squalid work by writing wildly hopeful poetry about the future of mankind. He said, “Mr. President, your description of our unhealthy state is accurate, but you suggest no cure. It is clear that for many years continuous expansion has done us great harm. The highest summits in the work contain the greatest extremes of wealth and poverty, the greatest expenditure on soldiers and policemen, and the greatest fears for the future, as your speech has demonstrated. The safest summits are a few low ones whose tops can still be seen by people on the ground outside, structures whose comforts and opportunities are shared by a whole community. I realize we cannot halt the whole great work by simply refusing to build, so let us announce, today, that we will leave the sky intact and build no higher if other companies and societies will stop building too. And let us call for the formation of an international parliament to rule the heavens, and let us give our highest platforms to that parliament. Then the sky can be tested, not rashly and rapidly, but carefully, over a period of years.”
“You have not understood me,” said the president. “If I even hint at halting our building programme the shareholders will withdraw their money from the constructive side of the work and invest it in the destructive side, the military side, which consumes nearly half our revenue already. Then allies and enemies will think we are about to make war, and will over-arm themselves too. In a matter of weeks this will lead to the catastrophic battle everyone dreads, the battle which destroys the whole axletree.” “But we are the most powerful company in the world!” said the poet. “Let us make our shareholders invest in things which do people good! Directly or indirectly we control the world’s labour force, yet most labourers live very poorly. Mountains of grain rot in our warehouses while thousands of families die by famine in the lands outside.”