, the pressure was somewhat relieved
and I glanced to the instruments. We were more than a thousand miles
from our starting point and the speed indicator read seven thousand
miles an hour. We were traveling at the rate of nearly two miles a
second!

* * * * *

Another blast from the rockets, this one of interminable length, and I
must have lost consciousness. For when I next took note of things I
found that we had been out for nearly two hours and that the tremendous
pressure of acceleration was relieved. I moved my head, experimentally
and found that my senses were normal, though there was a strange and
alarming sensation of being wrong side up. Then I remembered that I had
experienced the same thing when we first searched the upper levels of
the atmosphere for the origin of the destructive rays of the enemy.

But this was different! I gazed through a nearby port and saw that the
sky was entirely black, the stars shining magnificently brilliant
against their velvet background. Streamers of brilliant sunlight from
the floor ports struck across the cabin and patterned the ceiling.
Looking between my feet I saw the sun as a flaming orb with streamers of
incandescence that spread in every direction with such blinding
luminosity that I could not bear the sight for more than a few seconds.
Off to what I was pleased to think of as our left side, there was a huge
globe that I quickly made out as our own earth. Eerily green it shone,
and, though a considerable portion of the surface was obscured by
patches of white that I recognized as clouds, I could clearly make out
the continents of the eastern hemisphere. It was a marvelous sight and I
lost several minutes in awed contemplation of the wonder. Then I heard
Hart laugh.

"Just coming out of it, Jack?" he asked.

* * * * *

I stared at him foolishly. It had seemed to me that I was alone in this
vast universe, and the sound of his voice startled me. "Guess I'm not
fully out of it yet," I said. "Where are we?"

"Oh, about sixty thousand miles out," he replied carelessly; "and we are
traveling at our maximum speed--that is, the maximum we need for this
little voyage."

"Little voyage!" I gasped. And then I looked at George and the professor
and saw that they, too, were grinning at my discomfiture. I laughed
crazily, I suppose, for they all sobered at once.

Traveling through space at more than forty thousand