At the sound of my voice, Zarlah clasped her hands in a fervent prayer
of thankfulness, then, burying her face on my shoulder, gave way to a
flood of tears.

"Oh, Harold, my love!" she sobbed. "Thank God, you have been spared to
me! It is indeed by a miracle that this moon, intercepting our aerenoids
in their wild flight through space, thus brought us together at the
eleventh hour, and laid you helpless and dying at my feet."

"The _moon_!" I gasped, raising myself and staring out of the window at
my side in astonishment, as my mind gradually comprehended our
hairbreadth escape from death.

A blazing orb of fire, shining from the intense blackness around it, was
all that met my gaze, and I sank back, exhausted with the effort, into
the arms that awaited me.

"Tell me more, darling," I said, as a great happiness came over me, and
my heart was filled with the simple desire to hear the gentle voice I
loved. What mattered it to me whether we ever reached Mars or not? The
future held no fears for me now; enough that I had Zarlah, for the walls
of the aerenoid that surrounded us seemed to compass the whole universe.

"Ah, my love!" sighed Zarlah, bending over me and nervously clasping my
hands in hers, "now that the danger is past and you are restored to me,
the long hours of agony seem like a dream. But, oh, the anguish of that
moment when I beheld another aerenoid lying close to mine, upon the
surface of the moon that had intercepted my journey to Earth! My soul
cried out that in it lay my beloved, suffocating to death. Who else
would have followed me over the dreaded Pole! With wild haste I attached
an oxygen respirator to my mouth, and, releasing the air from the car,
sprang out upon the surface, little suspecting the danger that lurked
there. But so small is the force of gravity upon this moon that I was
without perceptible weight, and the tendency to rise with every step I
took filled me with terror, and I crept upon my hands and knees to the
aerenoid which lay a few yards away. Opening the door, I found you lying
apparently lifeless upon the floor. My heart told me that it was my love
who lay within Death's grasp, and, desperate at the thought that you had
been so near to me, only to be torn away by the hand of Death, I lifted
you up and hastened with you back to the aerenoid I had left. The small
amount of gravity now aided me, and I carried you without feeling the
burden.

"Filling the car with oxygen and apply