d Mrs. Preston, and a number of people with passes,
occupied seats arranged at the sides of the platform; while sightseers
and scientists assembled from every part of the world.

"There's a ship for you!" said Secretary Stillman to the Secretary of
the Navy. "She'll not have to be dry-docked for barnacles, neither
will the least breeze make the passengers sick."

"That's all you landlubbers think of," replied Deepwaters. "I remember
one of the kings over in Europe said to me, as he introduced me to the
queen: 'Your Secretary of State is a great man, but why does he always
part his hair in the middle?'

"'So that it shall not turn his head,' I replied.

"'But with so gallant and handsome an officer as you to lean upon,' he
answered, 'I should think he could look down on all the world.'
Whereupon I asked him what he'd take to drink."

"Your apology is accepted," replied Secretary Stillman.

Cortlandt also came from Washington, where, as chief of the
Government's Expert Examiners Board, he had temporary quarters.
Bearwarden sailed over the spectators' heads in one of the Terrestrial
Axis Straightening Company's flying machines, while Ayrault, to avoid
the crowd, had come to the Callisto early, and was showing the interior
arrangements to Sylvia, who had accompanied him. She was somewhat
piqued because at the last moment he had not absolutely insisted on
carrying her off, or offered, if necessary, to displace his
presidential and Doctor-of-Laws friends in order to make room.

"You will have an ideal trip," she said, looking over some astronomical
star-charts and photographic maps of Jupiter and Saturn that lay on the
table, with a pair of compasses, "and I hope you won't lose your way."

"I shall need no compass to find my way back," replied Ayrault, "if I
ever succeed in leaving this planet; neither will star-charts be
necessary, for you will be a magnet stronger than any compass, and,
compared with my star, all others are dim."

"You should write a book," said Sylvia, "and put some of those things
in it." She was wearing a bunch of forget-me-nots and violets that she
had cut from a small flower-garden of potted plants Ayrault had sent
her, which she had placed in her father's conservatory.

At this moment the small chime clock set in the Callisto's wood-work
rang out quarter to eleven. As the sounds died away, Sylvia became
very pale, and began to regret in her womanly way that she had allowed
her hero to