udge who is about to
pronounce the sentence of life or death, I scanned the cloudy surface
underneath us, to see if I could discover any signs of an ocean that
would break our fall, but the vapours were too thick and compact.

Every instant I expected to hear the fatal intelligence that our descent
had begun.

"Strange!" muttered Gazen by-and-by, as if speaking to himself.

"What is strange?"

"We are neither rising nor falling now. We don't seem to move."

"Impossible!"

"Nevertheless, it's a fact," he exclaimed at the end of some minutes.
"The focus of the telescope is constant. We are evidently standing
still."

His words sounded like a reprieve to a condemned man on the morning of
his execution, and in the revulsion of my feeling I shouted,

"Hurrah!"

"What can it mean?" cried Gazen.

"Simply this," said I joyfully. "We have reached the 'dead-point,' where
the attraction of Mercury on the car is balanced by the attraction of
the sun. It can't be anything else."

"Wait a minute," said Gazen, making a rapid calculation. "Yes, yes,
probably you are right. I did not think we had come so far; but I had
forgotten that gravitation on Mercury is only half as strong as it is on
the Earth or Venus. Let us go and tell Miss Carmichael."

We hurried downstairs to the engine room and found her kneeling beside
her father, who was no better.

She did not seem much enlivened by the good news.

"What will that do for us?" she enquired doubtfully.

"We can remain here as long as we like, suspended between the Sun and
Mercury," replied Gazen.

"Is it better to linger and die in a living tomb than be dashed to
pieces and have done with it?"

"But we shall gain time for your father to recover."

"I am afraid my father will never recover in this place. The heat is
killing him. Unless we can get further away from the sun he will die,
I'm sure he will."

Her eyes filled with tears.

"Don't distress yourself, dear Miss Carmichael, please don't," said
Gazen tenderly. "Now that we have time to think, perhaps we shall hit
upon some plan."

An idea flashed into my head.

"Look here," said I to Gazen, "you remember our conversation in your
observatory one day on the propelling power of rockets--how a rocket
might be used to drive a car through space?"

"Yes; but we have no rockets."

"No, but we have rifles, and rifle bullets fired from the car, though
not so powerful, will have a similar effect."

"Well?"

"