the only real danger, though, I believe, that confronts us in this our drop sunward."
"Some consolation, that," St. Cloud told him.
"Oh, well," he added, "a good hope is better than a bad possession."
"And death," Henry said, "has nothing terrible in it save what life has made so."
"I am not so sure of that," said Morgan St. Cloud.
"You're a cheerful couple!" I interposed. "Is Venus the Planet of Death?"
"She may be that, Rider," muttered St. Cloud, "and something even worse. At any rate, she is the Planet of Love: isn't that bad enough?"
"Maybe," Henry Quainfan said. "For what is Love but Death's Dawn?"
"For Goodness' sake," I exclaimed, "give over this cabalistic stuff and talk sense!"
"I thought we were doing that, doing that, Rider," Henry laughed. "We might as well talk the sheerest nonsense, though, as stand chewing our thoughts. Confound it, I wish we were out of this!"
"What's that?" I asked him.
He laughed.
"I don't mean out of the Hornet, Rider. I wouldn't wish that for the world and all the kingdoms of the world. Had that feeling been possible, I would have remained there below. What I mean is this: out of the atmosphere."
"Of course," I said.
"Don't get impatient," growled Morgan St. Cloud. "You'll probably wish yourself back in it before we are done."
"Icarus, eh?" queried Henry Quainfan.
"Great guns, no!" St. Cloud replied.
"The air," I remarked, somewhat irrelevantly, "must be deucedly rarefied at this height."
"It is," Henry returned. "But it goes up a long way, how far nobody knows:the highest meteors are about eighty miles up.
"The atmosphere at that altitude, and upward, must be nothing but hydrogen. Dr. Wegener, however, has postulated a substance above the hydrogen even. He assumes that the green line in the spect rum of the auroral arches is due to this unknown gas of remarkable tenuity, to which he has given the name geocoronium.
"You will remember, Rider," he added, "that helium was seen in the sun long before it was discovered, by Ramsay, on the earth."
"I remember," I said. "And I remember, too, that the great Herschel believed in the sun's habitability."
"Rider," Henry laughed, "do you think you will ever get over it?"
"And above this gcocoronium, I suppose," put in St. Cloud, "lies that other gas of remarkable tenuity (and ubiquity) called perhapsium."
"And above your perhapsium," said Henry, "you'll probably find it-may-bethere-ium."
"Science in a nutshell!'? I observed. "Coronium itself is hypothetical stuff, and yet here we find another postulated substance named after it. I am beginning to believe that Keats was wrong."
"Of course he was, Rider," said St. Cloud. "All you've got to do is look out 31 one of these windows to see that."
"You score," I told him.
And he did indeed,
In stranger places we were to find ourselves, and things unimaginable we were to see and hear; but never before had men (save in wild fancy) beheld such a thing as this.
We were, of course, now far above the altitude reached by the highest clouds, the cirrus, though the so-called "luminous night clouds" were observed in some instances at a height of fifty miles above the earth; but these anomalous phenomena were not clouds in the usual meaning of that term.
Also, we were in that mysterious region called the stratosphere, the discovery of which (by Teisserenc de Bort and Assman) demolished the belief en tertained by scientists that there was a steady decrease in temperature with increase of altitude, until at last the absoJute zero of space itself was reachedfor in the stratosphere the temperature is constant. Furthermore, there is a de crease in the rotational velocity of the stratospheric lamellae as one goes up-, ward, with the result that the outer most parts of the earth's atmosphere do not rotate at all!
Steadily upward the Hornet sped, past that point reached by the highest "night clouds," past that region in which the highest meteors are seen, up till the moon (in her third quarter) came swimming into view from behind the bulge of the earth, hurling through the windows a light that was blinding in its white intensity.
And up and up and out!
Up till the sunlight smote through the windows, burning and blinding-and blinding-and soon of a strange bluish color. We had issued from the earth's shadow; we were now in endless day. And yet, paradoxical though it be, those ether deeps are pitch black.
"We'll give her the gas!" said Henry Quainfan.
Now it was that our drop sunward to the Queen of Beauty really began. And it was now that something happened which at first was simply horrible.
I had been standing perfectly still for some time; I started to step past St. Cloud-and then it happened.
I don't know how to describe it. My brain and body seemed suddenly to become disassociated. I felt like one entering some horrible nightmare.
Uttering a wild exclamation, I thrust forth a hand to the wall, and then came another mystery: on the instant I found myself up in the air and doing an amazing acrobatic stunt, for I was in the act of turning upside down. Contact with the opposite wall, however, put an end to this unaccountable bouleversement of mine.
"What on earth is the matter?" I cried.
"Easy, Rider," Henry laughed. "Stay still! Let yourself relax."
"But in Heaven's name what is it?"
"You've forgotten. It's the loss of weight. Your muscles, though, have lost none of their strength."
"Good Lord!" I said. "And this thing's only begun."
"Of course. Keep a grip on your movements until you get used to it. We are now eight thousand miles from the earth, and so your weight has been reduced to about eighteen pounds."
"Eighteen pounds! Man's size and no heavier than a baby!"
"And worse is coming," smiled St. Cloud.. "From now on, ethereal's the word."
"Doll baby's the word," said Henry. "For after a time, when we shall have passed out of the region in which the earth's gravity is stronger than the sun's our combined weight will be less than half a pound!"
"Good heavens!" I said. "It's unearthly now; what will it be like then, when we each weigh no more than an ounce or two?"
"We'll get used to it," he told me.
However, I never did succeed in entirely ridding myself of that terrible feeling of disembodiment.
To weigh no more than a little doll baby and yet possess the full stature and strength of a man-well, perhaps you can imagine the unearthliness of it.
The swing of the Hornet soon brought the edge of the earth's illuminated hemisphere into view. Oh, the wonder of that sight! There are other things (and perhaps-who knows?-there will be more) to dim, in a measure, the awful beauty of it; but, in my dying hour, one of the visions on which memory will linger is that tremendous sickle of light.
