We might take a trip across the Zodiac or down the Milky Way."
"And meanwhile," she replied, stopping at the top of the stairs and
looking round, "I'll go down and get lunch. You and I may be king and
queen of the realms of Space, and all that sort of thing, but we've got
to eat and drink, after all."
"And that reminds me," said Redgrave, getting up and following her, "we
must celebrate our arrival on a new world as usual. I'll go down and get
out the wine. I shouldn't be surprised if we found the people of the
Love-World living on nectar and ambrosia, and as fizz is our nearest
approach to nectar----"
"I suppose," said Zaidie, as she gathered up her skirts and stepped
daintily down the companion stairs, "if you find anything human, or at
least human enough to eat and drink, you'll have a party and give them
champagne. I wonder what those wretches on Mars would have thought of it
if we'd only made friends with them?"
Lunch on board the _Astronef_ was about the pleasantest meal of the day.
Of course, there was neither day nor night, in the ordinary sense of the
word, except as the hours were measured off by the chronometers.
Whichever side or end of the vessel received the direct rays of the sun,
was bathed in blazing heat and dazzling light. Elsewhere there was black
darkness and the more than icy cold of Space; but lunch was a convenient
division of the waking hours, which began with a stroll on the upper
deck and a view of the ever-varying splendours about them, and ended
after dinner in the same place with coffee and cigarettes and
speculations as to the next day's happenings.
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