thing like
us."

As soon as they got back on board the _Astronef_ and had taken their
breathing-dresses off, Redgrave and the old engineer, who appeared to
take no visible interest in their new surroundings, threw open all the
sliding doors on the upper and lower decks so that the vessel might be
thoroughly ventilated by the fresh sweet air. Then a gentle repulsion
was applied to the huge snow mass on which the _Astronef_ rested. She
rose a couple of hundred feet, her propellers began to whirl round, and
Redgrave steered her out towards the centre of the vast cloud-sea which
was almost surrounded by a thousand glittering peaks of ice and domes of
snow.

"I think we may as well put off dinner, or breakfast as it will be now,
until we see what the world below is like," he said to Zaidie, who was
standing beside him on the conning-tower.

"Oh, never mind about eating just now, this is altogether too wonderful
to be missed for the sake of ordinary meat and drink. Let's go down and
see what there is on the other side."

He sent a message down the speaking tube to Murgatroyd, who was below
among his beloved engines, and the next moment sun and clouds and
ice-peaks had disappeared and nothing was visible save the
all-enveloping silver-grey mist.

For several minutes they remained silent, watching and wondering what
they would find beneath the veil which hid the surface of Venus from
their view. Then the mist thinned out and broke up into patches which
drifted past them as they descended on their downward slanting course.

Below them they saw vast, ghostly shapes of mountains and valleys, lakes
and rivers, continents, islands, and seas. Every moment these became
more and more distinct, and soon they were in full view of the most
marvellous landscape that human eyes had ever beheld. The distances were
tremendous. Mountains, compared with which the Alps or even the Andes
would have seemed mere hillocks, towered up out of the vast depths
beneath them.

Up to the lower edge of the all-covering cloud-sea they were clad with a
golden-yellow vegetation, fields and forests, open, smiling valleys, and
deep, dark ravines through which a thousand torrents thundered down from
the eternal snows beyond, to spread themselves out in rivers and lakes
in the valleys and plains which lay many thousands of feet below.

"What a lovely world!" said Zaidie, as she at last found her voice after
what was almost a stupor of speechless wonder a