The half-disc of Venus seemed to fall below them, and in a few minutes
they could see it from the upper deck spreading out like a huge
semi-circular plain of light ahead and on both sides of them. The
_Astronef_ was falling at the rate of about a thousand miles a minute
towards the centre of the half-crescent, and every moment the brilliant
spots above the cloud-surface grew in size and brightness.
"I believe the theory about the enormous height of the mountains of
Venus must be correct after all," said Redgrave, tearing himself with an
evident wrench away from his telescope. "Those white patches can't be
anything else but the summits of snow-capped mountains. You know how
brilliantly white a snow-peak looks on earth against the whitest 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.
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