itest of
clouds."

"Oh, yes," said Zaidie, "I've often seen that in the Rockies. But it's
lunch-time, and I must go down and see how my things in the kitchen are
getting on. I suppose you'll try and land somewhere where it's morning,
so that we can have a good day before us. Really, it's very convenient
to be able to make your own morning or night as you like, isn't it? I
hope it won't make us too conceited when we get back, being able to
choose our mornings and our evenings; in fact, our sunrises and sunsets
on any world we like to visit in a casual way like this."

"Well," laughed Redgrave, as she moved away towards the companion
stairs, "after all, if you find the United States, or even the Planet
Terra, too small for you, we've always got the fields of Space open to
us. We might take a trip across the Zodiac or down the Milky Way."

"And meanwhile," she replied, stopping at the top of the stairs and
looking round, "I'll go down and get lunch. You and I may be king and
queen of the realms of Space, and all that sort of thing, but we've got
to eat and drink, after all."

"And that reminds me," said Redgrave, getting up and following her, "we
must celebrate our arrival on a new world as usual. I'll go down and get
out the wine. I shouldn't be surprised if we found the people of the
Love-World living on nectar and ambrosia, and as fizz is our nearest
approach to nectar----"

"I suppose," said Zaidie, as she gathered up her skirts and stepped
daintily down the companion stairs, "if you find anything human, or at
least human enough to eat and drink, you'll have a party and give them
champagne. I wonder what those wretches on Mars would have thought of it
if we'd only made friends with them?"

Lunch on board the _Astronef_ was about the pleasantest meal of the day.
Of course, there was neither day nor night, in the ordinary sense of the
word, except as the hours were measured off by the chronometers.
Whichever side or end of the vessel received the direct rays of the sun,
was bathed in blazing heat and dazzling light. Elsewhere there was black
darkness and the more than icy cold of Space; but lunch was a convenient
division of the waking hours, which began with a stroll on the upper
deck and a view of the ever-varying splendours about them, and ended
after dinner in the same place with coffee and cigarettes and
speculations as to the next day's happenings.

This lunch-hour passed even more pleasantly and rapidly th