Well, if we can get through these clouds we ought to see something worth
seeing. Just fancy a whole world as big as that all ablaze like molten
iron! Do you think we shall be able to see it, Lenox?"
"I'm not so sure about that, little woman. We shall have to go to work
rather cautiously. You see Jupiter is far bigger than any world we've
visited yet, and if we got too close to him the _Astronef's_ engines
might not be powerful enough to drive us away again. Then we should
either stop there till the R. Force was exhausted or be drawn towards
him and perhaps drop into an ocean of molten rock and metal."
"Thanks!" said Zaidie, with a shrug of her shapely shoulders. "That
_would_ be an ignominious end to a journey like this, to say nothing of
the boiling oil part of it; so I suppose you'll make stopping-places of
the satellites and use their attraction to help you to resist His
Majesty's."
"Your Ladyship's reasoning is perfect. I propose to visit them in turn,
beginning with Calisto. I shouldn't be at all surprised if we found
something interesting on them. You know they're quite little worlds of
themselves. They're all bigger than our moon, except Europa. Ganymede,
in fact, is two-thirds bigger than Mercury, and if old Jupiter is still
in a state of fiery incandescence there's no reason why we shouldn't
find on Ganymede or one of the others the same state of things that
existed on our moon when the Earth was blazing hot.
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