The Moon Maker

III

As the date set for the departure of the Flying Ring on its amazing venture drew near, a furious controversy arose in the newspapers as to the feasibility of Professor Hooker’s project. Leading scientists wrote technical letters demonstrating not only that the Ring could not possibly be controlled in space when beyond the earth’s attraction, but that it was manifestly absurd to suppose that it could even get away from the earth’s attraction at all. One distinguished pedagog was particularly insistent upon the point that the gravitational force of the earth was a sina qua non for steering the Ring in a given direction. He demonstrated conclusively—to himself, at any rate—that, once in the pure ether, the Ring would be like a rudderless ship, quite unmanageable and unable to meet and oppose any external influence. But another, equally celebrated, immediately countered on him with great effect by showing that, once in space, there would be no external influence to alter the direction of the flying machine. Going his opponent one better, he gave it as his own opinion that the Flying Ring would never even start—couldn’t get off the ground!

Bennie, Atterbury, and Burke read all these letters, articles, and editorials with considerable amusement, spending all their waking-hours in the Ring, overseeing the installation of the new apparatus and making plans to meet all possible emergencies. The longer they waited—and the collision between the earth and the asteroid was due to occur on April twenty-second—the less distance it would be necessary for the Ring to traverse to meet its enemy. They had, therefore, arranged to leave the earth on April twentieth.

But while all these preparations were being made, a great migration—like nothing in the history of mankind save possibly the western movement of the Huns and Ostrogoths—was taking place from Lower California and the Southwestern states, northward along the Pacific coast, across the deserts of Arizona and Nevada, and eastward across the Gulf of Mexico by tug, barge, and steamer, as hundreds of thousands of Mexicans, miners, cowboys, and their families sought to escape their impending doom. The migration, however, was not confined to the Southwest. A large proportion of the total population of the Northwestern states also streamed across the boundary into Canada and British Columbia. The rivers were choked with flotillas of boats; flat cars and coal-cars brought fabulous prices and took the place of Pullmans; while a millionaire who could commandeer, beg, borrow, steal, or purchase a cattle-van was regarded as fortunate indeed.

In the East, where there was, perhaps, less actual hysteria, millions of men, women, and children clamored with but a single voice for passage to Europe or to any port upon the other side of the world. At Boston, New York, and Baltimore, the congestion from incoming and outgoing ships was so great that passengers could speak from vessel to vessel until they were well out to sea. The same situation prevailed at San Francisco. For every mere thousand who escaped through the Golden Gate, there were millions more who either could secure no passage or who had not the means of paying for it.

To be sure, the daily papers were still published, and a pretense was made at keeping office-hours. But most people were actively engaged in excavating subcellars in their houses, to which they might take refuge from the prophesied deluge of rock and slag. The minds of many, of course, refused to grasp the situation. This was particularly the case with the very old, who remembered having been fooled before by these scientists. Hadn’t the papers, only ten years before, stated that the earth was going to pass through the tail of Hailey’s Comet? And hadn’t everybody sat up for three whole nights without even seeing a comet? And, after it was all over, the scientists had said that the event had really occurred, only nobody had known about it. They nodded their heads, averring that it would be the same way with this asteroid business that everybody was shouting about. Anyhow, there was no use worrying yet a while. But, in spire of these octogenarian wiseacres, by the first of April, the population of Canada had increased, at the expense of the United States, by twenty million people, and, as the weeks passed and the new green star burned brighter every night, people began to ask each why something was not done—why the Ring did not start upon its journey.

Unmindful of the conflicting emotions which he inspired, Bennie Hooker quietly and calmly went about his work, with no thought of posing as a modern Perseus about to attack and slay a fiery Medusa.

IV

At last, the great day—the greatest day in the scientific history of mankind—dawned clear and still. Not a cloud broke the calm continuity of the blue. It seemed almost as if one could see into the distant infinity of space—whither the newspapers all said it was Professor Hooker’s genuine intention to go. These papers also announced that it was the purpose of the space-flyer ("aviator" being an obviously inaccurate descriptio personae) to wait until the earth’s revolution upon its axis should bring the asteroid directly above the Ring, thus avoiding the necessity,

once he had started, of altering the direction of flight. This would not occur until about midnight.

Bennie had packed his valise and, accompanied by Atterbury and Burke, had reached the field at an early hour. The machinery had been given its final test, and fresh provisions taken on board. All was in readiness for the flight. But would the machine fly? That was the question. It had flown once, to be sure, but would it fly again? No one could tell.

The Ring had been raised on a rough trestle of timbers to facilitate the start by furnishing a path for the escape of the air vortex carried down by the blast from the tractor. The steel fence which had been built around the machine had been removed, and a barbed-wire enclosure, over a quarter-mile in diameter, had been thrown around the Ring, this being the danger-zone, as calculated from observations of the destruction wrought at the golf-links when the Ring landed. By three o’clock, there was closely packed outside of this barrier a dense mass of humanity, estimated at not less than two hundred and fifty thousand persons.

These remained, patiently waiting for that sight which no more than half a dozen pairs of eyes had ever seen before. At eight o’clock, a heavy limousine pushed its way through the crowd, was admitted by the guards, and rumbled its way across the field to the foot of the landing-ladder below the great cylinder, and from it emerged President Thomas, of the National Institute; Professor Evarts, of the Observatory, Mr. and Mrs. Bentham T. Tassifer, and their niece, Miss Rhoda Gibbs, over whose shoulder was slung a small camera. At the hook of the horn, Bennie appeared at the air-lock, turned on an electric light at the head of the wooden stairway which led up the side of the scaffolding, and welcomed his guests, one by one, as they made the unaccustomed ascent to bid farewell to the "Columbus of the Universe,” as Professor Hooker was now half sarcastically called by the newspapers. Inside, the chart-room was warm and brilliantly lighted. The last extras containing "full accounts" of the preparations for the trip into space lay upon the center-table—preparations of which the world, except the three men themselves, knew nothing. In fact, these three had so fully tested each piece of apparatus, so carefully made all their preparations down to the minutest detail, that they had only to fasten the air-lock, throw over the switch connected with the dynamo, and their journey would be begun without more ado. Indeed, the visitors felt that, after their struggles with the crowd outside the gate, it was almost an anticlimax to find the three so calmly facing the prospect of a flight into eternity, and, after a few moments’ conversation, shook hands and prepared to depart. The clock pointed to nineteen minutes to nine. The start was to take place precisely at eight-fifty. At the bottom, they all stopped and looked up. Bennie waved his hand to them.

"Good luck!” shouted Tassifer. "Don’t stay way too long!”

Then they turned to the waiting motor and began to climb in.

Hooker, somewhat unnerved, in spite of himself, at seeing the last, as he feared, of Rhoda, withdrew quickly through the air-lock into the chart-room. It was now eight-forty-seven—only three minutes more! Atterbury had gone into the condenser-room. Burke was at his post in the control-room.

"Are you both ready?" called Bennie.

"Ready!" answered Atterbury.

"Ready!" came the cheery voice of Burke.

Down below, the party had all squeezed into the motor except Rhoda—who stopped with her foot on the steps.

"Oh dear, I forgot to leave the films!" she exclaimed. "Don’t wait. I’ll just run up the ladder and then hustle after you to the gate."

The chauffeur started the motor. Above her towered the gleaming cylinder of aluminum. What if the air-lock had been finally closed? No; the ladder had yet to be replaced. Hurriedly she climbed up and entered the lock. The door into the chart-room was ajar, and she could see Bennie as he walked to the door of the control-room to ask if all was ready. Swinging it wide enough to slip through, she threw herself on the floor in the shadow of one of the long wicker easy chairs. Bennie turned, glanced at his watch, and, stepping to the lock, hauled up the ladder and closed and clamped both doors. For a moment, he stood under the big lamp, its white light shading the big hollows beneath his eyes, the tense lines about his mouth. No wonder that his face was drawn! He was about to speak the word that would sever— perhaps for all eternity—their connection with the earth.

"Rhoda!" he murmured, unconscious of her presence.

An impulse almost overcame her to cry out to him, to beseech him not to set forth upon this crazy if marvelous adventure. But before she could speak, Burke appeared in the doorway.

"Well," he said,"everything’s ready. What are you waiting for?"

Bennie pulled himself together with a jerk, walked over to the window, and looked out and up into the sky.

"It looks all-fired dark and cold up there,” he muttered.

Then, turning, he caught Burke’s eye, and the latter smiled.

"Well, that’s where we’re goin’, ain’t it?” inquired the aviator.

Bennie set his teeth and walked over to the speaking-tube which communicated with the condenser-room.

"All right, Atterbury!” he called sharply. "Turn her loose!”

V

The gate of the entanglement opened just enough to permit the exit of the motor bearing the irate Tassifers, and was instantly closed behind it. But once outside, it was impossible to proceed further, for the crowd had now swelled to such proportions that it absolutely blocked all movement.

"We’re stuck—and that’s all there is about it. They might just

as well have let us stay inside," scolded Mrs. Tassifer. "We might as well make up our minds to stop right here and see whatever is to be seen. Don't let those men climb on the roof of the car, Bentham. Just look at them!"

Tassifer had caught out of the comer of his eye the dangling ends of a pair of trousers supplemented by a heavy pair of mud-covered shoes swaying outside the window of the limousine.

"Here you! Come down out of that!" he roared, grabbing at the legs and loosening the owner from his perch. "If anybody’s going to sit up there, I'm going to! I paid for this car."

The man landed heavily amid the jeers of the onlookers, and Bentham, opening the door climbed on the driver’s seat and swung himself up to the roof. Here, at a height of nine feet above the crowd, he had a magnificent view on all sides.

The great bulk of the Ring loomed dark in the moonlight. High in the heavens, a little east of the meridian and not far from the red-flushed planet Mars, Medusa shone with a pale, greenish light. It was easy for a trained eye to pick it out, though it was not a conspicuous object, even at its present distance of less than two million miles.

"Speech! Speech!" yelled the spectators, instinctively recognizing that Bentham was a ridiculous person.

"Shut up!" he retorted, in his most aggressive manner, and somehow suggesting a fugitive cat on a fence. "Mind your own business!"

"Hooray!" cheered the crowd unanimously. "Speech!"

Tassifer glowered at them mutely. There was nothing to throw.

"Don’t mind them, Bentham," came plaintively from within the car.

He might have jumped on their heads—committed any degree of manslaughter— had not a sudden murmur directed his attention toward the Ring.

A dull purring sound filled the air.

Then Tassifer grabbed at his tall hat.

A rush of wind spread out from the center of the field, carrying caps, newspapers, and other light objects over the heads of the onlookers. The purring sound increased in volume, and presently a faint glow appeared at the top of the tripod, and a yellow beam of light shot down through the center of the Ring, throwing the cross-beams of the wooden scaffolding into bright relief. The wind increased to a gale, and dust filled the air. The ground shook under the impact of the yellow blast of helium which drove down from the tractor with a roar like that of a Niagara. Through the whirling clouds of dust, Tassifer caught a glimpse of what appeared to be the sudden explosion of the scaffolding—great timbers and joists flying through the air, followed by the collapse of the entire structure, which fell with a crash and was promptly torn to pieces, blown apart, and scattered over the ground by the typhoon which whirled in every direction from the middle of the aerodrome. The Ring, though deprived of all support, did not fall, however—it remained suspended, as it were, in the air—nay, it was rising, slowly and majestically at first, like a balloon, and then faster, with the rush and roar of a rocket. Ten seconds, and it had risen a hundred feet. A minute, and it had soared two-thirds of a mile above the field. And then it darted up, up and almost out of sight, leaving a fading streak behind it like that of a shooting star.

"Gee whiz!” gasped Tassifer. "Hookey!”

Even his associate solicitors in the Department of Justice, had they heard, would have forgiven him. It was an echo of his first infantile vision of an elephant.

A white mass of faces followed the upward lift and rush of the Ring, which now, with its trail of yellow light, was vanishing toward the moon, its roar but faintly audible amid the extraordinary silence of the multitude. Then, nothing could be heard. The Ring, now at a height of eighteen miles, was in an atmosphere so rarified as to transmit no sound.

Suddenly Mrs. Tassifer’s face appeared in the aperture below.

"What do you suppose has become of Rhoda?” she inquired.

VI

Less than a mile away, Professor Thornton stood at his window in the observatory watching for the burst of light which, if it came, would indicate to him that the Ring had started upon its flight into space. He had already been to the equatorial-room and revolved its dome until the mouth of the great telescope pointed in the general direction which the Ring would presumably take. Medusa was almost at the zenith, her pale-green light somewhat dimmed by the light of the full moon, which blazed in the sky a few degrees to the east of the asteroid. He glanced at the clock. It was already quarter to nine. Perhaps Hooker might not start on time, after all. Something might go wrong with the complicated anatomy of the machine; some unexpected delay might occur—in which event he, Thornton, would not be notified and would wait at the telescope vainly searching the heavens while, perhaps, the Ring would suddenly start on its flight—the direction slightly altered from that as originally planned—and he would miss it altogether. So he returned to his office to observe with the naked eye the departure of the Ring, note its general direction, and make sure of getting it in the finder of the telescope.

For Thornton had never doubted that the Ring would start. He had known Hooker, boy and man, for nearly thirty years, knew that he was a practical as well as a brilliant scientist, and, when Pax had threatened to knock the earth topsyturvy, had himself been the one to rout the professor out of his scholastic seclusion on the Appian Way in Cambridge, and stimulate him to those investigations which shortly resulted in the discovery of the valley of the Ring in Ungava and the navigation of the air-craft back to the United States.

Thornton did not question the ability of Hooker and his comrades to navigate space in the great machine, or the power of the lavender ray to destroy Medusa or any other heavenly body. What he feared was the unknown factor of chance, always arising when an experiment is hazarded under new conditions. What did they know of space? Would their liquid-air tanks accomplish their purpose? What would be the effect of the complex and opposing forces of attraction to which, once outside the sphere of the earth’s gravitation, this new man-made meteor would be exposed? Could the Ring be "turned” so as properly to alight? Would it turn? Would the human organs function under these extraordinary artificial conditions? Would, in fact, the brain work properly or logically when no natural premises were left from which to reason? Well, they would see! But the Ring would start! Oh, yes, it would start—and its departure would be caught on the film of the automatic moving-picture astronomical camera attached to the big telescope—provided, of course, that he succeeded in following its meteoric flight.

The observatory stood on the top of a small hill, and, from his window, Thornton could see across a sea of tumultuous housetops, colorless in the moonlight, to a dark strip where lay the aerodrome.

He raised his eyes and gazed up through the heavens, that looked almost like a field of pale-blue corn-flowers sprinkled with a myriad of daisies, into the deeper blue of the infinity behind and beyond the Milky Way, just as he had looked through his big telescope now for nearly thirty years. That vast, blue-black arch had always looked the same—save for the slight changes in the celestial bodies themselves which were his life-study. Blue, deep blue—flash! Suddenly the heavens were no longer blue but dazzling white. The silence of night was shattered by a roar from the sky above the aerodrome. The Ring! It was off!

Half blinded by the glare, he rushed to the equatorial-room. Already the intense brilliancy had died away, but through the yawning gap in the roof he caught a glimpse of a fast-fading streak of yellow light. Toward this streak, he turned the telescope—but it was no longer there! Upward again—and then, at last, he caught it in the finder—a glowing dot—and brought the cross-wire upon it—only to lose it, so rapid was its flight. Once more, and a third rime, he caught it on the cross-thread, but it passed out of the field of the larger instrument before he could shift the position. A fear that he would never succeed in bringing the giant lenses to bear upon it seized him. He knew that if he could not pick it up within the first few minutes, it would be hopeless to find it.

Then, unexpectedly, there it was—slowly descending into the field of the telescope, its yellow beam pointing directly upward. For a moment, he almost forgot that the astronomical telescope inverts the object. Once more he fixed his eye at the finder. He could see distinctly the under surface of the Ring, illuminated by

the light of the glowing gas which streamed beneath it, while the blinding glow of the helium jet, seen nearly end - on, looked like a great ball of fire in its center. It reminded him forcibly of the planet Saturn. Was it possible that his old friend Bennie Hooker, with two companions, was inside of that minute, flaming pellet?

Momentarily it grew smaller. The minutes passed; the hour came and went, and still Thornton stuck at his post. At nine-fifty, all that he could see was a faint wisp of pale-yellow light, like an almost invisible comet. He estimated that it would remain visible for perhaps fifteen minutes more, and then—good-by!

Suddenly, to his utter amazement, it commenced to fade, and in eight or ten seconds more it vanished. He wiped his glasses and anxiously looked again. There was no sign of the Ring whatever. He glanced up at the sky over the telescope, but it bore no trace of cloud. The Ring had been completely swallowed up in the abyss of space!

"Good God,” he thought, "something has gone wrong, and they are falling back!"

He did not know that the Ring was at that moment flying out into space with a velocity of over twenty miles a second, and that Hooker had stopped his driving machinery and was depending upon the momentum of his machine to carry him over the remainder of his journey—in other words, that he was coasting out to his encounter with the asteroid Medusa.

PART III THE FLIGHT OF THE RING

I

"Turn her loose!" repeated Hooker, and stepped swiftly to the nearest port-hole, while Rhoda, lying in her place of concealment behind the chair, clutched at the floor in breathless apprehension. A humming sound filled the air. Through the open door of the lighted control-room, the girl could see the gyroscopes slowly beginning to revolve. The Ring throbbed as if alive. Fear seized her. Perhaps she could still escape from her voluntary imprisonment. Perhaps she could even yet open the air-lock and leap safely back to earth. She almost longed for her aunt.

And then her courage came back with a rush. There was her lover—her funny little Bennie—staring out of the window, a strange expression of exaltation on his face. Here was where she wanted to be—with him! With him, on his strange, unearthly journey! With him amid the stars, journeying to the music of the spheres!

Through the window she could see flickers of yellow light, and from outside came a noise like escaping steam. The glow cast strange shadows on Bennie’s face, and gave his features a pallid tinge that frightened her anew. The discharge from the tractor had risen to a muffled roar—deafening. The floor trembled

and quivered, and the glare, now pouring through the deadlights, paled the electric lights of the interior. There was a tremendous hullabaloo going on out there. She clambered to her feet.

"Bennie!" she shouted instinctively, holding out her arms to him.

Amid the tumult, he turned to her a face like that of a man who sees a ghost.

"My God!" he gasped. "How did you get here?”

She walked unsteadily toward him and clutched his arm.

"I'm going, too," she said. "I told you I would. I'm a stowaway."

Bennie put his arm around her waist and dragged her to the window.

"Now you’re here,” he cried hysterically, "just look at that!”

A typhoon of glare and noise was raging outside, roaring down from the tractor through the center of the Ring, and a blinding cloud of dust, illuminated by dazzling yellow light, was driving out and away from the base of the staging in the gigantic circle. The earth below them was completely concealed from view by clouds of vapor, dust, and steam, shot through with phosphorescent gleams that made it look like the mouth of some devilish caldron. From the swiftly spinning disks of the gyroscopes in the control-room came a draft that blew the newspapers off the table. The floor quivered under their feet, and ominous creaking and snapping sounds reverberated through the outer shell, as the beams of the staging were gradually relieved of the weight.

"We’ll be clear in a moment!” yelled Bennie in her ear.

She clutched his arm tight.

"Will it hurt?” she asked, almost piteously.

"Not much,” he answered. "Hold fast to the rail, and don’t bend your knees. We’ll be going off with a pretty big acceleration.”

The tumult increased in volume, and suddenly there came a crash accompanied by the sound of splintering timbers as the staging collapsed, blown to pieces by the blast. The floor seemed to sink away from beneath their feet.

"We’ve blown that staging into the middle of next week!” chuckled Bennie.

The room swayed as the Ring, lifted by the tractor, rocked drunkenly from side to side for a second or two. Then, as the machine steadied itself, there came an upward pressure from the floor again and a sudden increase in their weight, which told them they were rising.

Rhoda, who, in the excitement of the moment, had forgotten Bennie’s instructions, felt her knees bend quickly under her and found herself upon the floor, where an unseen, relentless force seemed to be pressing her down. Above her, Bennie had dragged himself up the spiral stairway to the small observing-stage which hung suspended from the ceiling, and was now lying on his back, with his eye glued to the vertical telescope that pointed up

through the glass deadlight in the roof.

Burke, who, at discovering Rhoda’s presence, had merely nodded and grinned as if not at all surprised at her being there, stood at his post near the side window with his hand on the control-Iever. To him, Bennie gave his orders from where he lay.

Medusa, the bluish green star which was their destination, swam in the firmament well off toward the edge of the field of the telescope; the direction of their flight must needs be altered until the asteroid touched the illuminated cross-wires at the center. "More to the west!" shouted Bennie. "More—more—still more! Hold it! Too far—back a little! Now you’re on the wire—a little south! More! Hold! There we are! All right!”

He scrambled to his feet, and descending the stairs too hastily, landed in a heap at the bottom.

"My Lord,” he groaned, rubbing his shins; "I nearly broke my leg! Never run down-stairs when you’re going up. Be sure and remember that.”

Rhoda, meanwhile, flat on the floor, half sick from the acceleration, with her face pressed against the lower deadlight, watched the earth rush downward and away. At first she could see nothing but the dazzling cone of yellow light that shot away from them

like the tail of a great rocket, but presently, by partially shielding her eyes with her hand, she was able to discover a great and ever widening ring of yellow dust, with riffles of light and shade chasing each other outward, and, in the middle, a maelstrom of earth and shattered timbers. Then she saw that the lights of the city and of the neighboring towns seemed to be flowing in from all sides to a point just below her.

"Twenty thousand feet!” yelled Burke, shouting out the readings of the manometer as they rose. "Thirty thousand!”

Hooker crawled along the floor to her side, and she clutched his hand.

"Oh, Bennie,” she exclaimed, "it’s perfectly wonderful! But I’m scared almost to death.”

With his head close to hers, he looked down into the black void at the retreating earth.

"Sixty thousand!” sang out Burke.

The lights of Washington had now fused into a pale-yellow, phosphorescent spot. A silver thread showed where flowed the Potomac, and, off to the north, another path of luminous haze— Baltimore—was gradually crawling in toward the first, and still farther off a third and fourth—Wilmington and Philadelphia. The surface of the earth in the moonlight had taken on a frosty, bluish tinge, while, from the east, a darker shade was drawing in like a curtain—the sea.

"Ninety thousand; nearly twenty miles up—and running like a watch!” chirruped Burke.

A few minutes, and the whole Atlantic seaboard was spread out below them—New york, with its more congested illumination, glowing like a planet. The whole mass of the globe’s surface

gradually came into view as the Ring drove up and out of the earth’s atmosphere, the mountain ranges shining like necklaces of jewels and the Great Lakes showing as darker patches, while everything else remained misty and obscured as by a dense haze.

"One hundred and fifty thousand!" intoned Burke. "The manometer no longer registers. We shall be out of the atmosphere presently. We’re getting into space!"

For a while, they remained silent. Then Bennie and Rhoda noticed that the helium blast from the tractor had diminished in intensity, assuming a pale straw-color, and its roar had subsided to a faint and scarcely audible purr.

"What’s happened?" she asked nervously. "Are we running down?"

"No," Bennie replied; "we’re getting out into the ether. There is no air to oppose the radiant discharge or to transmit the sound. But you feel the drag, don’t you? That shows that the tractor is still giving the same lift."

"How fast are we going now?" she asked in awe.

Bennie glanced at his watch.

"It’s just twenty minutes since we started. We must be doing about twelve thousand feet a second, and are probably well over a thousand miles from the earth already."

They lay speechless, gazing down through the deadlight for ten or fifteen minutes—at the end of which period Bennie suddenly started to his feet.

"By George, I almost forgot something!" he exclaimed. "It’s time for me to rig my ropes."

Hastily going to an adjacent cupboard, he removed several coils of clothes-line, which he began to fasten systematically to small steel staples attached to the floor, sides, and ceiling of the chart-room, running them back and forth and diagonally across the interior.

"Is this wash-day?’’ jocularly inquired Rhoda.

"Those are life-lines," replied Bennie. "Another twenty minutes, and we shall stop our engines and coast. Then you’ll find it difficult to get around without something of this sort. Gravitation will no longer be felt. I figured it all out long ago. You see there isn’t really any ’up’ or ’down* out here, and, if you get out of position, there is nothing to pull you back where you belong again, unless you have something to grab hold of."

In fact, the room now looked as if a gigantic spider had been at work in it. Clothes-lines radiated everywhere from the chart-table, one leading directly to the door of the air-lock, another to the wardrobe, and the last into the control-room, where Atterbury was likewise engaged in rigging more "aerial roads."

These precautionary measures having been arranged, they all partook, at Bennie’s suggestion, of a light supper, in order to avoid the inconvenience to which they might be subjected in handling plates and glasses when, later, the dynamo having been shut off, there should be no downward pressure from the lift of the

Ring.

"We’ve had the tractor running now for something over an hour," remarked Bennie presently. "Suppose we shut it off and coast for a while. We must now be over twelve thousand miles from the earth, and moving about seven miles a second. There’s no longer the slightest danger of falling back, and it’s almost impossible, with all that light in our wake, to see anything."

So saying, he walked heavily over to the speaking-tube and rang the electric bell.

Shut her off for a bit!" he shouted to Atterbury. "But stand by the switch until I call you!"

Then he returned to the deadlight and threw himself on the floor again.

"We’re going to get a new sensation now, all right," he said, "but don’t be alarmed. It isn’t anything to worry about."

The shrill note of the dynamo dropped rapidly in pitch, and the glowing wake of helium beneath the car faded away slowly and presently disappeared.

The Ring was coasting.

It was at this precise moment that Thornton had lost it in the finder of the big telescope at Georgetown. As the helium blast died away, a curious sensation made itself apparent to all of them. The pressure which had drawn them to the floor gradually relaxed, and their bodies became lighter. Hooker placed his hands on the floor at his side and, pushing down gently, raised himself to the full length of his arms, easily supporting his weight on the tips of his two forefingers. Then, suddenly, he raised his hands, and, to the surprise of his companions, instead of falling, he slowly settled back to his original position, like a body suspended in water.

"We shan’t weigh anything in a moment," he announced. "The tractor is still pushing a little, but, as soon as it stops entirely, good-by to gravitation!"

There was now no sensation of movement in the car, which seemed, as it were, to be hanging motionless in space. Like the inhabitants of the earth, who are being carried through the universe at a speed of sixty-eight thousand miles an hour, the travelers were unconscious of their transportation.

"How do you mean—weigh nothing at all?" demanded Burke. "Isn’t the earth attracting us still?"

"Of course," retorted Bennie, "the earth is still attracting us, but its only effect will be gradually to reduce our velocity."

"Oh dear, I certainly feel very queer!” suddenly declared Rhoda. "I feel as one does in a ’flying’ dream - terribly weird inside, I’m afraid I am going to be ill.”

"No, you’re not,” Bennie encouraged her, "That is just an impression. You see, out here in space where we don’t weigh anything, neither do our insides. They just sort of float around, and all the supporting membranes relax. It will pass off in a minute.”

"Sure it will,” put in Burke. "You get the same thing, only

not as bad, when you make a fast dive in an aeroplane or drop through an ether whorl. I’ve noticed it often."

"Try holding your breath for a minute," suggested Doctor Bennie.

"I’d rather hold your hand, I think," she said softly, with a little blush. "But I’m beginning to feel better already."

"Now the fun is going to start!" announced their commander. "I think I’ll leave you. Please excuse me for a moment."

He pressed quickly against the floor with his hands, and floated slowly up into the air over their heads until he grasped the stage below the telescope.

"I’ve got to take a squint at Medusa and see if we're on out direct course," he called down over his shoulder, at the same time navigating himself into position under the telescope. Hold-ing the eyepiece lightly between his fingers, he reclined easily in a horizontal position in an attitude of rakish nonchalance in mid-air.

"We’re a degree or two off, but it will do for the present", he said. "Now, here I go again!" And, thrusting lightly against the telescope, he sailed over their heads on his back with his arms at his side.

"Heavens!" cried Rhoda, half rising from her chair.

To her consternation, she also floated upward and, still in a graceful sitting posture, sailed slowly up to the ceiling to Bennie’s side.

Burke shook with laughter.

"Human Zeppelins, by thunder! How are you ever going to get down again?"

Rhoda wrapped her skirts tightly around her ankles with one hand and waved to Burke with the other.

"Why don’t you come up and join us? It’s fine!"

Professor Hooker assumed an expression of great solemnity.

"Action and reaction—to use the words of one I. Newton—are equal and opposite in their effects," he declaimed, giving Rhoda a slight push to one side, which caused them to drift apart until they bumped lightly against the opposite wails of the room. "Isn’t this great? If we’d only brought along some balls and cues, we could play billiards in three dimensions."

Burke had thrust his face close to the deadlight and was peering down into the abyss of space that yawned below.

"By George," he cried, "you’re missing something! Better come down here and take a look."

"But how shall I get down?" gasped Rhoda, in great embarrassment. "What on earth shall I do!"

"Not what you do on earth," grinned Bennie. "Grab a lifeline and pull yourself down. We’re in the center of the universe— so to speak."

Together they slowly drew themselves back to the chart-table by means of the clothes-lines and then to the deadlight.

The glare from the tractor had now entirely disappeared, and

the Ring swam in the Stygian darkness of space. Their first impression was that the earth had vanished. In its place was a vast black firmament crowded with millions of blazing worlds. Though the great orb of the moon was full, and shone like a sun through the pure ether above their heads, the lunar light, undiluted and undimmed by the earth’s atmosphere, diminished in no way the brilliancy of the stars. It was a new and marvelous ef-fect—the black-velvet robe of night studded with incandescent and apparently motionless orbs, which gleamed like resplendent meteors in countless myriads on every side, but with a calm and absolutely steady light.

Then, as they looked, they saw, just below them, what appeared to be a vast black hole in the darkness, covering perhaps one-tenth of the sky, within which not a single star could be seen.

"Put out the lights,” directed Bennie, rubbing off with his handkerchief the condensation, due to the incense cold of interplanetary space, which had formed on the inside of the deadlight.

And now, as their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, they saw that the great circle in the galaxy of stars was not quite black but shone with a pale-gray, ashen phosphorescence, through which they could eventually discern the outlines of the continents of North and South America. This huge circular disk, which blotted out so much of the night below them, was naught but the dark side of the earth illumined by the light of the moon alone.

For many minutes, they gazed in silent wonder at the distant globe. No sound, no movement suggested the fact that they were flying through space at the rate of twenty miles a second. The only indication of their flight was the gradual, almost imperceptible shrinking that went on in the size of the earth beneath their feet.

"Atterbury ought to see this!” exclaimed Burke suddenly, and, acting upon his own suggestion, he moved himself, hand over hand, to the tube and called to the engineer, who, after a few moments’ delay, made his appearance. He had hardly joined the others around the deadlight when a silvery light manifested itself in the form of faint streamers stretching out from one side of the dark circle of the earth below. Each moment these streamers increased in length and brilliancy.

"What is going on down there?” cried Burke, in excitement. "Is the old globe on fire?”

"That must be the sun’s corona,” answered Beanie. "We’ve been watching an eclipse of the sun by the earth. It was night when we left Washington, so, of course, the sun was behind the earth. I hadn’t thought of it before. Now we are getting near the edge of the earth’s conical shadow, and before long shall be out in full sunlight.”

"How wonderful!” gasped Rhoda. "That alone makes the crip worth the taking!”

"Look!” cried Bennie. "The sun is coming—watch!”

A half-ring of luminous violet light now encircled the great

disk of the earth. Gradually it increased in brilliancy, changed to white, and finally to orange-red. Then, as the Ring shot out of the cone of the shadow, the rim of the earth kindled with a blinding glare as the blazing orb of the sun emerged like a golden furnace.

Immediately the air turned warm, and the frost disappeared from the glass of the window. Yet, in spite of the fact that the universe was filled with light, the sky remained as black as midnight and was still filled with undimmed stars. There being no atmosphere, no light came from the sky, and the sun, burning out of a profundity of darkness, produced no illumination inside the car except to project through the glass window a circular spot of light upon the ceiling, which shone there like an arc-lamp in an opal globe. Thus, the interior of the car, in spite of the fact that they were in full sunlight, was illuminated only by the light which radiated from the glowing spot over their heads. And now the unimpeded rays of the sun, playing directly upon the sides of the aluminum car, began to raise the temperature inside it to a degree almost insupportable.

"Phew!" gasped Burke. "If we don't take care, we shall melt."

Bennie turned on a switch beneath the table, to the side of which was attached a spirit thermometer. It indicated eighty-nine degrees.

"It will only take a few seconds to fix this," he assured Rhoda. "You see those jacketed coils there—running around the room just above the floor? That is our cooling apparatus. I have just turned it on. Watch the thermometer.

The men had taken off their coats, and Rhoda was fanning herself violently. But, even as they watched it, the thermometer began to fall until the instrument registered less than seventy

degrees.

"Really," exclaimed Rhoda, in admiration, "what a perfect housekeeper you are! You don't happen to have a soda-fountain under that table, do you?"

Bennie laughed.

"No; that was something I forgot. But I can give you a glass of ice-water if you like."

"If you please," she acquiesced.

Bennie pulled himself over to the water-cooler, where he held a pitcher under the spigot and opened the cock. But nothing happened.

"What's the trouble?" inquired Rhoda.

Bennie grinned,

"Of course," he answered, "the water won't run out, for there isn't any gravity to make it,"

He lifted the lid off the cooler and filled the pitcher by scooping up the water. Then he floated back to Rhoda with the remark,

"I'll show you an experiment which no one has ever seen before."

Holding the pitcher upside down, he lifted it quickly away from the water inside, which remained suspended in the air as a pulsating, transparent mass of irregular form. Gradually the mass ceased its pulsations and, as it did so, collected itself into a perfect sphere resembling a crystal ball.

"See what surface-tension will do!” he exclaimed admiringly. "Did you ever see a soap-bubble as beautiful as that?”

"How extraordinary!” murmured Rhoda. "Anyhow, it’s just what I wanted.” And, leaning forward, she applied her lips to the floating sphere and sucked in a deep draft of the icy fluid.

"The latest thing in hygienic drinking-fountains,” she remarked, as she settled herself back in her armchair. "I really

don’t need this chair for repose, but without it I feel like a

picture without a frame,” she added.

"This is crazy-house, all right!” nodded Atterbury. "Gee, but we’ve got to be awful careful or we’ll break every bone in our bodies!”

"If we can only manage to sit still for an hour,” answered Bennie, "we shall have our tractor running again. Just now, I feel like a toy balloon!”

At this point, Burke elevated his legs and gave himself a

shove with his hands.

"So long!” he remarked, as he shot forward, and, floating horizontally through the door of the control-room, disappeared.

"Easy way to go to work!” chuckled Atterbury. "Lie on your back and kick yourself down-town. Watch me!”

He lifted himself with his forearms until he was poised like an athlete above a pair of parallel bars. Then, extending his arms in front of him, he gave a jerk with his legs and swam through the doorway after Burke. Rhoda and Bennie looked at each other in amusement.

"Have you thought what is going to happen when we begin to get within the sphere of Medusa’s attraction?” she inquired.

"You mean that, since that is the direction of our flight, gravitation will lift us up instead of down?”

"Exactly. We shall have to walk on the ceiling with our heads toward the floor”

"That won’t be very convenient, will it?” he replied. "You know, I never thought of that at all. All our fixtures will be in just the wrong places. This table, for instance, will be way down below us and upside down at that. No—I mean it will be upside down above us on the ceiling. No—what do I mean?”

"I don’t know,” she retorted. "If we are right side up, it will be upside down, but if we are wrong side up, it will be right side down, for if the up side becomes the down side then the wrong side will be the right side, and the up side and the down side—”

"Stop—stop- For heaven’s sake, stop!” shrieked Bennie. "You’re talking nonsense, anyway. We’re going to turn the Ring over before we slow down.”

It is problematical in what result the complexities of the situation would have involved them had not Bennie suddenly noticed that the spot of sunlight upon the ceiling had shifted slightly to one side. Calling Rhoda’s attention to this unexpected phenomenon, they returned to the deadlight, to find that the sun was no longer below them but considerably to one side, and, shielding their eyes with their hands, they were able to observe, where the vast black circle had been beneath the car, a shining crescent, light-bluish white in color and fifteen or twenty times the diameter of the moon. Neither Rhoda nor Bennie could repress a gasp of awe as they saw, for the first time, the enormous silvery arch of the earth pinned, as it were, against the utter blackness of space, with all its seas and continents plotted like a map.

"The crescent earth!" she breathed, in wonder.

"The crescent earth!" echoed Bennie. "How marvelous -like the new moon! I suppose we should call it ’the new earth' there is the whole Atlantic coast line from Cape Horn to Hudson Bay—Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, Greenland and the Arctic ice-cap! Look at the cloud-banks over the Atlantic Ocean and along the west coast of South America. Quick—get your camera and put in a telephoto lens!"

The camera was still hanging by its strap from Rhoda’s shoulder, and it took but a moment to exchange the lenses. Then she threw a puzzled glance at her comrade.

How shall I do it? I don’t understand," she hesitated.

You will have to take the picture through the deadlight," he answered,

"But how long an exposure shall I make?" she inquired.

"Oh—a tenth of a second," he suggested, "or a fifth, perhaps."

Rhoda was having a hard time to preserve her equilibrium and handle the camera.

"Oh dear," she complained; "I can’t keep still. This weighing nothing is very awkward—you slip around so."

With Bennie’s assistance, however, she managed to hold the lens firmly against the deadlight.

"Push it down hard and squeeze the bulb," he directed.

While Rhoda was engaged in making different exposures, Bennie floated up to the observation-stage to ascertain their direction. To his astonishment, he discovered that Medusa was no longer in the field.

"There’s something wrong!" he shouted to Burke. "We’re way off our course!"

"What’s happened?" yelled Atterbury, shooting, in his favorite posture, feet foremost, out of the condenser-room. "We’re running all cock-eyed! Look where the sun is—the earth!"

"They ought to be nearly in line," replied Burke, in a confused way. "There’s some new influence at work here."

But I've lost Medusa entirely!" Hooker called down to them* I can’t imagine what’s up. Of course, we left the earth with its

axial and orbital velocities as well as our own. I thought I’d worked it out all right, but I must have overlooked something. Anyhow, the first thing to do is to get back on our course. Atterbury, start up your engines half-speed; I’ll call to you when I want your whole force. Burke, you must slant the tractor over and turn the Ring until we are pointing toward Medusa. I don’t know just how she’ll act, but I think we can tip her almost any way we please. When we’re pointed in the right direction, we’ll straighten out the tractor and give her full-speed ahead. Are you ready?”

Atterbury darted back toward the condenser-room, and almost immediately the hum of the dynamo began again. With its resumption, their weight returned, but hardly enough to enable them to walk in comfort.

"Ah,” exclaimed Burke, "It sure feels good to be on foot again! I was getting darn tired of this spook business.”

Under Hooker’s directions, he moved the control-lever until Medusa swam again into the field of the telescope. Then, as the green star neared the center of the lens, Bennie ordered him to straighten the course and directed Atterbury to turn on full-speed. The noise of the machinery increased, and with it came a further increase in their weight. The whole force of the tractor was again pressing them on toward their distant goal. Bennie once more descended from the observation-cage and took his place beside Rhoda at the deadlight on the floor of the car.

Hypnotized by the wonder and beauty of the crescent earth beneath them, they hardly noticed that it was gradually shifting its place. Suddenly, it slipped entirely out of sight.

"Hang it!” shouted Bennie, in despair. "We’ve lost control of the Ring!”

Where, before, the earth had been, there now appeared the stupendous disk of the full moon.

At the same moment, Burke uttered an exclamation of fear. "W^;e’re all out of kilter!” he cried. "I was looking down through the observation-window at the earth, and—all of a sudden it wasn’t there!”

"The Ring is evidently slowly turning over,” stammered Bennie. "If our tractor were not running, it wouldn’t matter, but our direction must now be changing from moment to moment. We may have been captured or pulled out of our course by the moon! It’s pretty near us, and you know how Jupiter changes the orbits of the comets that pass near it.”

At that moment, Atterbury appeared in the doorway.

"Shall I keep the engines running?” he asked. "Our uranium is getting low, I’m afraid. The gage indicates that over seventy per cent has been used.”

"Troubles never come singly!” exclaimed the master of the Ring." Here we are, going we don’t know where, gravitating around the moon, perhaps, and our fuel giving out! We’ve got to get a fresh cylinder into the tractor to get back, and it will be bad business making the change in space. We ought to land and make re-

pairs and get a fresh start with new bearings.”

"Land?” gasped Rhoda, in astonishment. "Where?”

"On the moon, of course. It’s only ten thousand miles away, and we’re headed straight for her, apparently. Turn her over again, Burke, and we’ll slow down. It’s going to be ticklish business, but I don't see what else we can do. We may go to smash and we may not. It all depends on whether we have time to overcome our

velocity before we get there. We could slue off and run by, of

course, but our uranium might give out, and then what should we

do? Anyhow, there’s no time to be lost.”

Yet, accustomed as Rhoda now was to supernormal situations and surroundings, Bennie’s practical suggestion of landing on the moon, which, after all, was the one celestial body with which they were at all familiar, seemed utterly inconceivable of execution. "The moon!” she repeated vaguely. "The moon!”

She had seen the moon off and on with the greatest regularity for nearly thirty years—had photographed it, drawn pictures of it, made calculations about it, and read all sorts of fanciful yarns concerning it and its imaginary inhabitants. She really knew a good deal about it and could call some of its mountains and dried-up seas by name - Copernicus, for instance, and Tycho—but she had never taken it seriously—had regarded it rather as a sort of stage-

setting for the earth. Thus, when Bennie proposed, almost casually, to set foot on what had hitherto been nothing more than an abstraction or figure of speech, it left her uncomprehending. She had always associated the moon with harvest-fields, straw-rides, weddings, and green cheese. There was a "man in the moon,” a "lady in the moon” and "two children carrying a pail” up there—in it. That was the moon of her childhood and when she was "off duty”— the real moon. The other one—the imaginary moon, far less real in every respect—was the one she knew in her work—a dead world of pitted craters, dry oceans, marked with strange, shining furrows and concentric circles, just so many thousand miles from the earth and having regular habits that could be absolutely relied upon. That was not the real moon at all. The genuine moon, as far as she was concerned, was the old-fashioned one—that cast its yellow light over pumpkin-sprinkled fields and down leafy lanes, or rose like a huge red lantern out of a sparkling blue-black ocean. The real moon signified coon-hunting, fried chicken, banjos, and "Merrily We Roll Along.” The imaginary moon meant the "Mappa Seleno-graphica,” by Beer and Madler.

”The moon!” she murmured again.

"Yes,” remarked Bennie curtly; "the moon—that moon right up there”—he glanced up and wrinkled his forehead—"that ought to be there, I mean! Say, there’s something queer about all this! Hard alee, Burke! Steer for the moon!”

The aviator pressed his control-Iever, and once more the moon floated overhead into their field of vision. But what a moon! Twenty four times her usual diameter—her circular craters plainly visible to the naked eye, her physical configuration seemingly becom-

ing more and more distinct each moment.

"But can we land?" protested the girl, reawakening to the perils of their position. "Suppose we can find no suitable spot—particularly with our machinery out of control? There will be no landing stage..."

"We must land!" he interrupted fiercely. "What’s more, we’ve got to turn the Ring upside down so as to land right side up. It’s going to be ticklish business, because we must bring our machine to rest within a hundred miles or so of the lunar surface, and we’re traveling more than ten miles a second at the present moment."

"But how can you turn the Ring upside down away out here in space?" she expostulated.

"By slanting the tractor at its maximum angle," he answered. "Since there is little gravitational force acting on us now, the Ring will then rotate around its center of inertia and bring the moon below us. We can then straighten out the tractor and use its full force to slow down our velocity. As soon as we get within striking-distance of the moon, we will reduce our power and come down by gravitational force."

"Have you ever—tried this—turning-maneuver?’’ she asked hesitatingly.

"No; we never have. But we ought to be able to do it—we must do it! Atterbury, throw on your full power; and get ready, Burke, to put her over! Hang on to the ropes, Rhoda, or you may get dizzy! As soon as the tractor starts, we’ll get back our weight and have a firm footing again."

Rhoda took one last look at the moon blazing out of the darkness of the sky overhead, grasped two of the clothes-lines, and closed her eyes. Again the Ring vibrated to the whir of its propelling engines. Burke threw over the control-lever as far as it would go; the helium ray slanted off until it almost grazed the inner surface of the Ring, and slowly the great machine turned over in space, Bennie, with his face glued to the deadlight in the floor, watched the moon glide gradually into his field of view, and when it was directly beneath them, he shouted to Burke to straighten the tractor. Again the ray swung into the center of the Ring, and they felt the pressure of the floor against their feet.

Crowded about the deadlight, the passengers watched intently the enormous yellow globe beneath them steadily increasing in diameter. In twenty minutes, it filled half their field of vision; ten more, and its rim was lost to them. They were settling down upon the moon!

Directly below lay the huge circular crater of Copernicus, frosty in the sun’s light, brilliant streaks radiating from its cone. Inside the circumference of the extinct volcano, and parallel to it, was a smaller crater, at the bottom of which glowed several dazzling points, which Rhoda knew must be other cones. To the south stretched away vast grayish-yellow, lava-strewn plains. Elsewhere, over the visible surface of the moon, were distributed continents of highly irregular formation, with strangely indented coast-

lines, rivaling in their conformation those of Norway and Sweden. Concentric circles of great mountains marked both the northern and southern hemispheres, most of them craters of extinct volcanoes, and each glowing with its own individual color or radiation. Here rose a sparkling white point of light, Mount Eratosthenes; there, Mount Gay-Lussac; beyond, Mount Philolaus, and, to the south, Doerfel, Leibnitz, and that most splendid of lunar glories, Tycho, plainly visible in its dazzling beauty to the naked eyes of the inhabitants of the earth.

The predominating color both of these craters and of the dead seas, or plains, surrounding them seemed to be gray mixed with green or brown, but, here and there, certain of them shone with a bluish tint, while others glowed with a well-defined red or green. The great crater of Copernicus steadily increased in size until Bennie estimated that they were less than two thousand miles above it. The lunar surface was still coming up toward them at an appalling velocity, and Bennie began to have misgivings about their ability to stop in time.

"If we can't stop her, we're done for," he said. "We ought to have reversed sooner. I thought we were going to run by the moon, but we were evidently pointed directly toward it."

You forgot the moon's orbital motion, I think," put in Rhoda. It got in our way, that's all."

"It's too late to do anything now," said Bennie. "We're too near to swerve off and run by." He looked at his watch. "If the tractor is delivering its full power and runs for five minutes more, we ought to be all right, but it's going to be a narrow squeak."

He hurried to the engine-room.

"Atterbury, give her more power!" he shouted.

The engineer threw a frightened glance at him.

"I'm at the last notch now. Look at the tractor! The inductor-tubes are white-hot!"

With a feeling of utter helplessness, Bennie returned to Rhoda, who was lying on the floor with her face pressed against the glass, and threw himself at her side; and she clung to him, like a terrified child, as together they looked down fearfully through the deadlight. The yellow surface of the moon, gleaming like a mass of jewels, was rushing up at them with sickening velocity. A few seconds more, and.. He turned away from the window.

"It's all up," he choked. "Good-by, Burke!"

Burke, standing rigid at the control, made no reply.

"We're slowing up; we're slowing up," whispered Rhoda suddenly. "Look, Bennie! That crater below us! It's not getting any larger!"

Bennie arose and framed the great circle of the crater in the rim of the dead-light.

"You're right!" he yelled exultantly. "We're hovering! We can land! Burke, shut down the power quick, and stand by to pick up your moorings!"

"I'm all ready," answered Burke, throwing over the rheostat

that controlled the current.

The Ring was hanging over a vast roc with small craters, furrowed with crevasses, and bristling with jagged ridges and grotesque turrets and pinnacles. In the glare of the sun, it shone dazzlingly white—like snow - so that it hurt their eyes, and Rhoda was forced to turn hers away.

"How high up are we?" inquired Bennie.

"The manometer doesn’t register," answered Burke. "There can’t be any atmosphere. We won’t be able to use it for landing— more’s the pity! Just have to judge by appearances. I think we’re hovering now—no—by George, we’re rising a little!" He advanced the lever of the rheostat another point. "Now we’re descending. This is about right, I reckon."

Slowly the Ring dropped toward the surface of the plain, Immediately below them was a small forest of pinnacles.

"For heaven’s sake, keep away from that!" shouted Bennie. "If you land there, you’ll spike the Ring on one of those things, just as if you were playing ringtoss. There’s a good place—that round, level spot about three hundred yards to the left."

"Trust me for a bull’s-eye!" laughed Burke, slanting the tractor, and the ground slid slowly off to one side until they were clear of danger and over the smooth patch, which looked as if it had been made to order for their purposes.

Up—up—nearer and nearer—came the lunar plain. The helium ray was now playing directly upon its surface, and throwing up great clouds of white dust, which, as the Ring sank closer to the ground, rose and completely enveloped it. Sight was no longer possible. They could not be more than two hundred feet above the surface. Beneath and above them, they could see only whirling clouds of white powder.

"Here goes for luck!" announced Burke, pulling back the lever.

They grasped the ropes tightly, standing on tiptoe for what seemed ages. Suddenly, the Ring struck with a noise like that of a giant sledge-hammer upon a boiler. The accompanying jar, however, was comparatively slight. Burke touched his forelock.

"We have arrove!" he remarked, with a grin. "All out for the moon! ’ ’

PART IV ON THE MOON