ble beyond a certain limit
of time. Just as long as he sought an earthly means of preservation, he
was doomed to disappointment. All earthly elements are composed of atoms
which are forever breaking down and building up, but never destroying
themselves. A match may be burned, but the atoms are still unchanged,
having resolved themselves into smoke, carbon dioxide, ashes, and
certain basic elements. It was clear to the professor that he could
never accomplish his purpose if he were to employ one system of atomic
structure, such as embalming fluid or other concoction, to preserve
another system of atomic structure, such as the human body, when all
atomic structure is subject to universal change, no matter how slow.

[Illustration: It glowed in a haze of light, the interior clearly
revealed.]

He had then soliloquized upon the possibility of preserving the human
body in its state of death until the end of all earthly time--to that
day when the earth would return to the sun from which it had sprung.
Quite suddenly one day he had conceived the answer to the puzzling
problem which obsessed his mind, leaving him awed with its wild, uncanny
potentialities.

He would have his body shot into space enclosed in a rocket to become a
satellite of the earth as long as the earth continued to exist. He
reasoned logically. Any material substance, whether of organic or
inorganic origin, cast into the depths of space would exist
indefinitely. He had visualized his dead body enclosed in a rocket
flying off into the illimitable maw of space. He would remain in perfect
preservation, while on earth millions of generations of mankind would
live and die, their bodies to molder into the dust of the forgotten
past. He would exist in this unchanged manner until that day when
mankind, beneath a cooling sun, should fade out forever in the chill,
thin atmosphere of a dying world. And still his body would remain intact
and as perfect in its rocket container as on that day of the far-gone
past when it had left the earth to be hurled out on its career. What a
magnificent idea!

At first he had been assailed with doubts. Suppose his funeral rocket
landed upon some other planet or, drawn by the pull of the great sun,
were thrown into the flaming folds of the incandescent sphere? Then the
rocket might continue on out of the solar system, plunging through the
endless seas of space for millions of years, to finally enter the solar
system of some far-off