Exertion is so easy.'
"'Well, Chapman,' I answered, while my eyes rested on the water, through
which an approaching barge rose like a vessel of frosted or burnished
white metal, 'we were taught on the earth that, with gravitation reduced
one-half, the same weight on Mars would seem only half as heavy as on
the earth, and that the effort which there carried us eight feet would
here send us sixteen.'
"'It is true,' returned Chapman, 'but that doesn't explain everything.
We sleep less here, we scarcely touch meat, and yet exertion, prolonged
by hours, scarcely accelerates the blood or vexes the nerves, and
generally we don't grow old. Our bodies are light; the texture,
apparently firm and resisting, is somehow diaphanous. I've seen the
light through the palm of my hand. And then again I haven't. Somehow
mind works in the body here and changes it, and changes it different at
different times. Why, Dodd, the other day at the Patenta, a student
jumped up with a cry of delight at something, and stumbled and fell from
a window to the ground, but he stood up without a bruise or hurt of any
kind. His exultation, his emotional excitement made him buoyant, I
think, and he fell to the earth like a thistledown. There was no
concussion.'
"'Well,' I responded, 'I cannot tell. I know very little as yet. I feel
wonderfully active and vitalized. My senses are acute. I see further,
hear further, smell further than I ever did on earth, and it even seems
to me I can anticipate things.
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