He's
bigger than Mercury, and nearly as big as Mars, so we ought to find
something interesting there. This is only a sort of combination of the
Moon and the polar regions and I don't think very much of it. Suppose we
go back."
"Just as your Ladyship pleases," laughed Redgrave over the wire which
connected their helmets, as, with joined hands, they turned back and
danced along the snow-covered ocean shore towards the _Astronef_.
Zaidie took a couple of photographs of the mountain range and the
ice-sea and another one of the general landscape of Calisto as they rose
from the surface. Then, while she went to get lunch ready, Redgrave took
the pieces of rock and the bag of dust into the laboratory which opened
out of the main engine-room and analysed them. When he came out about an
hour later he saw Murgatroyd going through his beloved engines with an
oil-can and a piece of common cotton-waste which had come from a faraway
Yorkshire mill.
"Andrew," he said, "should you be surprised if I told you that that moon
we've just left seems to be mostly made of a spongy sort of alloy of
gold and silver?"
"My lord," said the old engineer, straightening himself up and looking
at him with eyes in which this announcement had not seemed to kindle a
spark of interest, "after what I have seen so far there's nothing
that'll surprise me unless it be that the grace of God allows us to get
back safely.
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