hing we
shall do I hope, we shall solve once and for all the great problem of
the worlds.

"Look, for instance," he went on, turning round and pointing to the
west, "there is Venus following the sun. In a few days I hope you and I
will be standing on her surface, perhaps trying to talk by signs with
her inhabitants, and taking photographs of her scenery. There's Mars
too, that little red one up yonder. Before we come back we shall have
settled a good many problems about him, too. We shall have navigated the
rings of Saturn, and perhaps graphed them from his surface. We shall
have crossed the bands of Jupiter, and found out whether they are clouds
or not; perhaps we shall have landed on one of his moons and taken a
voyage round him.

"Still, that's not the question just now, and if you are in a hurry to
circumnavigate the moon we'd better begin to get a wriggle on us as they
say down yonder; so come below and we'll shut up. A bit later I'll show
you something that no human eyes have ever seen."

"What's that?" she asked as they turned away towards the companion
ladder.

"I won't spoil it by telling you," he said, stopping at the top of the
stairs and taking her by the shoulders. "By the way," he went on, "I may
remind your Ladyship that you are just now drawing the last breaths of
earthly air which you will taste for some time, in fact until we get
back. And you may as well take your last look at earth as earth, for the
next time you see it it will be a planet."

She turned to the open window and looked over into the enormous void
beneath, for all this time the _Astronef_ had been mounting swiftly
towards the zenith.

She could see, by the growing moonlight, vast, vague shapes of land and
sea. The myriad lights of New York and Brooklyn were mingled in a tiny
patch of dimly luminous haze. The air about her had suddenly grown
bitterly cold, and she saw that the stars and planets were shining with
a brilliancy she had never seen before. Redgrave came back to her, and
laying his arm across her shoulder, said:

"Well, have you said goodbye to your native world? It is a bit solemn,
isn't it, saying goodbye to a world that you have been born on; which
contains everything that has made up your life, everything that is dear
to you?"

"Not quite everything," she said, looking up at him--"at least I don't
think so."

He lost no time in making the only reply which was appropriate under the
circumstances; and then he sai