And here I must try to explain a very curious thing which had puzzled our
senses, though not our understanding (because Edmund had promptly
explained it), throughout the voyage, and that was--levitation. On our
first day out from the earth, we began to notice the remarkable ease with
which we handled things, and the strange tendency we had to bump into one
another because we seemed to be all the time employing more strength than
was necessary and almost to be able to walk on air. Jack declared that he
felt as if his head had become a toy balloon.

"It's the lack of weight," said Edmund. "Every time we double our
distance from the earth we lose another three quarters of our weight. If
I had thought to bring along a spring dynamometer, I could have shown
you, Jack, that when we were 4,000 miles above the earth's surface the
200 good pounds with which you depress the scales at home had diminished
to 50, and that when we had passed about 150,000 miles into space you
weighed no more than a couple of ounces. From that point on, it has been
the attraction of the sun to which we have owed whatever weight we had,
and the floor of the car has been toward the sun, because, at that
distance from the earth, the latter ceases to exercise the master force,
and the pull of the sun becomes greater than the earth's. But as we
approach Venus the latter begins to restore our weight, and when we
arrive on her surface we shall weigh about four fifths as much as when we
started from the earth."

"But I don't look as if I had lost any avoirdupois," said Jack, glancing
at his round limbs. "And when you give us a fling I seem to strike pretty
hard, though in other respects I confess I do feel a good deal like an
angel."