He took her below and laid her on her bed, and in a few minutes he had
brought her to and told her that it was all right. Then he gave her a
drink of brandy-and-water and went back to the upper deck. As he reached
the top of the stairway one of the astronomers came towards him with a
sheet of paper in his hand, smiling gravely, and pointing to a sketch
upon it.
He took the paper under one of the electric lights and looked at it. The
sketch was a plan of the Jovian System. There were some signs written
along one side, which he did not understand, but he divined that they
were calculations. Still, there was no mistaking the diagram. There was
a circle representing the huge bulk of Jupiter; there were four smaller
circles at varying distances in a nearly straight line from it, and
between the nearest of these and the planet was the figure of the
_Astronef_, with an arrow pointing upwards.
"Ah, I see!" he said, forgetting for a moment that the other did not
understand him, "that was the miracle! The four satellites came into
line with us just as the pull of Jupiter was getting too much for our
engines, and their combined pull just turned the scale. Well, thank God
for that, sir, for in a few minutes more we should have been cinders!"
The astronomer smiled again as he took the paper back. Meanwhile the
_Astronef_ was rushing upward like a meteor through the clouds.
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