this to any part of the room where one chose to sit, and anchor it by lowering the counterbalancing weights underneath it. When hunger was satisfied, it only remained to push the table back and close the mMM
panel on it. The kitchens themselves *^^^5^
were mazes of ingenious devices for ^k SBLa handling the food and dishes, which Q'J ^^^^[l!^ for mechanical considerations were | l*lBlll^ll^ square rather than round. rjjWwrT ^(J U>W
SYNTHETIC FOOD K^h jhHJL^
But I never could cultivate a taste ^^^^^^ M ^1 for certain of the foods that were the 9^^V
product of synthetic laboratories. For 4^^K^^^
by this time less than half of all food ^^^^^^
_. ^ 1 r Tk « 1 1 MECHANICAL CHEF
stuffs came from the farms. Men had
learned to create the most nourishing of foods from minerals alone, by a process of disintegration and electronic recombination into complicated organic substances easily assimilated by the human system.
VANISHED FARMS AND ROADS
Indeed, most of the land was no longer under cultivation, for an area of a few miles radius around each city was all that was needed for agricultural purposes, so much of the bulk food was produced synthetically. In consequence the forests were growing again, and vast sections that had been highly
farmed in the old days were now stretches of woodland and prairie untouched by the hand of man, for even freight was not carried by rail, and there was no use for roads, although over the beauty of this wilderness the air routes hummed with the swift passage of freight and passenger traffic from one center of population to another, and occasionally outing parties or forest patrols could be seen leaping lightly over hill and dale with the aid of their jumping belts.
THE RED PLANET
But my interests were not confined to Earth. Stranger still than this world of the 2.5th Century were those other worlds to which my adventures carried me.
Mars, with its clear sparkling air, its cloudless skies and its pale, greenish yellow sunshine, its vast red deserts and great canals, many of them ten to twenty miles wide, sweeping in straight lines and immense curves, to form fascinating patterns when seen from the upper air levels; its peculiar beasts, its occasional jagged mountain ranges of crystal-clear quartz, and its amazing people, so like those of Earth in most respects, but so unlike them in certain of the customs and mental reactions.
MOONS OF SATURN
The Moons of Safur??, a little galaxy of worlds, some larger and some smaller than our dead, airless moon of Earth, were so close together that they appeared (from the inner ones) like great pale discs sliding perpetually in confusing orbits across a blue-
grey dome. And Saturn itself, always an amazing sight as it filled half the sky with its great rings looped around it. On these worlds I never knew whether to call it night or day, for the reflected light from Saturn was almost as great, although soft and diffuse, as the hard, clear light from the distant sun; and that from the other moons was much like the light of Saturn itself.
THE LIQUID-AIR OCEANS OF JUPITER
Jupiter, another amazing planet, where men lived on vast plateaus that were in reality the tops of mountain ranges thousands of miles above the valleys, in the mysterious depths of which the blue air liquefied under a pressure almost too great for the mind of man to comprehend. No Jovian had ever plumbed the depths of those valleys. No craft could
JOVIAN INTERCONTINENTAL FLYER
descend into them more than
a fraction of the way. No material existed in the universe of which a vessel could be made that would not crush like an eggshell under that super-pressure. So Jovian life was confined to the mountain tops that were continents surrounded by "seas" of air, across which the intercontinental flyers flashed on their weary journeys; for the distances were vast. Jupiter has a diameter about ten times that of Earth, and many an intrepid explorer has been lost thereon.
30 BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY
THE EROS MYSTERY
Then there was Eros, the cigar-shaped planetoid that swung end over end in an orbit beyond that of Mars, and on, and in which Wilma and I found things that staggered and shattered our imaginations.
ATLANTIS, THE CITY UNDER THE SEA
But there were wonders on Earth too, undreamed of back in the 2.0th Century, even though hints of them remained in old forgotten legends. The legend of Atlantis, for instance, the city and continent that sank beneath the sea in prehistoric times, and of whose original inhabitants many of the Caucasian races are descendants.
Atlantis still existed, under the ocean, inhabited by men who through the countless ages had become amphibian, who were equally at home in the artificially ventilated corridors and chambers of their submarine city, or in the water of the sea surrounding it, who had a civilization no less advanced, but strangely different from that of Earth's land races, from whom they had been living apart for eons.
It was Wilma and I who "discovered" Atlantis. It was there that one of our most desperate struggles with Killer Kane and Ardala occurred. Far beneath the surface of the Atlantic, these two super-criminals succeeded in balking our every move. However, it was we who finally succeeded in—but that is a story in itself.
THE ASTERITES
And there were the Asterites, tiny men not more than a foot tall, who came from outer space, and began with deadly determination their campaign of conquest and destruction of the planet Earth. And it was Wilma and I who bore the brunt of their first attack, with consequences that could not have been foreseen.
AND SO, it was among such surroundings and events as the foregoing that Buck Rogers, the lithe, sinewy, loth Century youth who by a strange trick of fate jumped the p time gap from the xoth to the 2.5 th Century, and Wilma, that dashing, fearless lovely girl of the new day, lived and loved and struggled, both joyously and mightily, to overcome the evil that not only for the World, but for the Universe, was personified in the ruthlessly bitter, magnificent wickedness of Killer Kane, and the evil that lay in the heart of Ardala.
ASTERITE AND WILMA
Own the
XX-3
The First and Only Licensed Collector's Model of This 25th Century Masterpiece
^ES
I- than ils actual size of 10" in Innc
60th Anniversary Collector's Edition
Belbre today's space heroes climbed aboard their tlrsl rocket, Buck Rogers was winning the battle
against evil in outer space. And this was his powerful and personal weapon. Originally issued in
193.'). the futuristic look of the XZ-.38 Disintegrator not only captured our imagination, its classic
art deco design represented the spirit of American optimi-sm. Now, for the very first time, this
Exclusively authorized by The Dille Family Trust, inheritors of the Buck Rogers legacy, this
special collector's edition is investment cast in rich bronze. It is an actual working model with
sparking tlinl and the distinctive "pop" which echoes its past. Tliis museum.quality collectible -
the first of its kind - is sure to join the original as a cultural artifact treasured by lovers of
science fiction and classic American design. Included with the XZ-38 Disintegrator Pistol
is a custom-designed display plaque with a bronze collector's medallion. A tiue work of art
crafted entirely in the United States. Full oO da niooev back guarantee of satisfaction.
For more information contact:
EKTEK, INC.
P.O. Box 410110
CreveCoeur, MO 63141
BUCK ROGERS h a tiademork of The DiJle Family Trust,
r.,'V
.^■:
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Buck Rogers- A Life in the Future Page 38