What if ...? These are the magic words that lie behind all good science fiction What if such-and-such, which today seems impossible, or hardly likely at best, could really happen? Thirty-five years ago, when today's rocketry was no more than a dream, an impractical toy in the minds of most people, science-fiction authors were writing romances which assumed that rockets to the moon and beyond might be built. Such stories formed much of the backbone of the early science-fiction magazines. But wonderful stories of other worlds beyond the sky, even beyond our solar system, had been written long before this. The first World War was till raging when, early in July 1918, readers of Munsey's All-Story Magazine opened the latest issue to start reading a serial novel of such adventure. The author had not invented a rocket ship, or some means of defying gravity, or entering hyperspace. How, then, could Jason Croft travel to Palos, a planet of the great star Sirius? The author, J. U. Giesy, found the answer for his story in the ancient religions and teachings of the East. Here mystics taught, that, with proper training, a person could project his ego, his "astral" personality, out of his body-which would then lie as in deep sleep-and roam the world.