ive feet from the floor, and held her there while the _Astronef_
made another revolution. For a moment he let go, and she and the chair
floated between the roof and the floor of the deck-chamber. Then he
pulled the chair away from under her, and as the floor of the vessel
once more turned towards Saturn, he took hold of her hands and brought
her to her feet on deck again.

[Illustration: _Without any apparent effort he raised her about five
feet from the floor._]

"I ought to have had a photograph of you like that!" he laughed. "I
wonder what they'd think of it at home?"

"If you had taken one I should certainly have broken the negative. The
very idea--a photograph of me standing on nothing! Besides, they'd never
believe it on Earth."

"We might have got old Andrew to make an affidavit as to the true
circumstances," he began.

"Don't talk nonsense, Lenox! Look! there's something much more
interesting. There's Saturn at last. Now I wonder if we shall find any
sort of life there--and shall we be able to breathe the air?"

"I hardly think so," he said, as the _Astronef_ dropped slowly through
the thin cloud-veil. "You know spectrum analysis has proved that there
is a gas in Saturn's atmosphere which we know nothing about, and,
however good it may be for the Saturnians, it's not very likely that it
would agree with us, so I think we'd better be content with our own.
Besides, the atmosphere is so enormously dense that even if we could
breathe it it might squash us up. You see we're only accustomed to
fifteen pounds on the square inch, and it may be hundreds of pounds
here."

"Well," said Zaidie, "I haven't got any particular desire to be
flattened out, or squeezed dry like an orange. It's not at all a nice
idea, is it? But look, Lenox," she went on, pointing downwards, "surely
this isn't air at all, or at least it's something between air and water.
Aren't those things swimming about in it--something like fish in the
sea? They can't be clouds, and they aren't either fish or birds. They
don't fly or float. Well, this is certainly more wonderful than anything
else we've seen, though it doesn't look very pleasant. They're not
nice-looking, are they? I wonder if they are at all dangerous!"

While she was saying this Zaidie had gone to her telescope, and was
sweeping the surface of Saturn, which was now about a hundred miles
distant. Her husband was doing the same. In fact, for the time being
they were all eyes, for they