Page 115 of 124
where it is largely because all the stars and nebulae of the cosmos are pulling on it, and they are pulling on it in all conceivable directions. It is as if a million million million little wires were attached to the pipe symmetrically all around it and are pulling it equally at the same time in every direction. Similarly, as I throw my pencil across the room it goes in a straight line (aside from earth's gravity) because it it being pulled at every right angle to the direction of its flight by the totality of matter in the universe, by all the stars or nebulae. Thus inertia in the familiar world is really gravitation but not the gravitation of the earth or of any single big body near us, but the gravitation of every particle in the universe; it is the sum effect of gigantic push, pull, or field depending on how you regard the still elusive gravitational mechanism. But how, you ask, does this help us explain how flying saucers fly? If the owners of the saucers have been able to devise a revolutionary means of anti-gravity, say an electro-magnetic screen which they put around their craft, this will mean that as the earth's gravity is overcome the gravity-inertia of all the rest of the universe will be overcome also. If the gravitons or ultra particles or fields which account for the gravitation of the earth are screened out the gravitational effect of the rest of the universe will be screened out also. Thus the saucers, with their anti-gravity screen, will be able to fly above the earth and they will be able to ignore the laws of inertia. They will be literally floating in a little cup or envelope where neither gravity nor inertia play any role. If the creatures who have built and man the saucers have mastered gravity they must, according to Einstein, have overcome inertia, also. The key to the rather strange thing I have just said is to think how an atom or a molecule, or a group of them which make up an object will behave if no inertial influence can reach them. The pipe on my desk, now at the slightest touch of my finger, may fly across the room. Similarly, if I now throw my pencil across the room the slightest breeze will send it off at a right angle toward the other side of the room. In other words, we may assume that the atoms and matter in an inertia-free area will become almost totally free in their environment. They can move in one direction as easily as in another. They have no tendency to remain in the rigid envised position which inertia would ordinarily hold; they can fly away freely in any direction in which a slight force impels them. I think this explains how the saucers can accelerate from zero to thousands of miles an hour and decelerate at the same rate, how they can engage in the dramatic maneuvers reported. Once a force, of whatever kind, impels them in a direction different from their line of movement, there is no tendency for their atoms and molecules to continue moving in their former direction, Thus, there is no strain upon the structure of the ship and the molecular binding forces of its material are not torn apart. Again, its occupants, if they can live in such an inertialess world, are not crushed in the slightest or even disturbed by the