nd all the splendid possibilities that it held
for two young lives like theirs.

As the sunlight vanished they looked at each other in the golden
moonlight of Venus, and Zaidie let her head rest for a moment on her
husband's shoulder. Then a swiftly broadening gleam of light shot out
from behind the black circle of Mercury. The first crisis had come.
Redgrave put out his hand to the signal-board and rang for full power.
The planet seemed to swing round as the _Astronef_ rushed into the
blaze. In a few minutes it passed through the phases from "new" to
"full." Venus became eclipsed in turn as they swung between Mercury and
the Sun, and then Redgrave, after a rapid glance to either side, said:

"If we can only keep the two pulls balanced we shall do it. That will
keep us in a straight line, and our own momentum ought to carry us into
the Earth's attraction."

Zaidie did not reply. She was shading her eyes with her hand from the
almost intolerable brilliance of the Sun's rays, and looking straight
ahead to catch the first glimpse of the silver-grey orb. Her husband
read her thoughts and respected them. But a few minutes later he
startled her out of her dream of home by exclaiming:

"Good God, we're turning!"

"What do you say, dear? Turning what?"

"On our own centre. Look! I'm afraid only a miracle can save us now,
darling."

She glanced to the left-hand side where he was pointing. The Sun, no
longer now a sun, but a vast ocean of flame filling nearly a third of
the vault of Space, was sinking beneath them. On the right Mercury was
rising. Zaidie knew only too well what this meant. It meant that the
keel of the _Astronef_ was being dragged out of the straight line which
would cut the Earth's orbit some forty million miles away. It meant
that, in spite of the exertion of the full power that the engines could
develop, they had begun to fall into the Sun.

Redgrave laid his hand on hers, and their eyes met. There was no need
for words. Perhaps speech just then would have been impossible. In that
mute glance each looked into the other's soul and was content. Then he
left the conning-tower, and Zaidie dropped on to her knees before the
instrument-table and laid her forehead upon her clasped hands.

Her husband went to the saloon, unlocked a little cupboard in the wall
and took out a blue bottle of corrugated glass labelled "Morphine,
Poison." He took another empty bottle of white glass and measured fifty
drops into