I want to see a bit more of this, and then I must
go through the engines and see that they're all right and ready for that
thousand million mile homeward voyage you're talking about. You can have
a good ten hours' sleep without missing much, I think, for there doesn't
seem to be anything more interesting than our own Arctic life down
there. So good-night, little woman, and don't have too many nightmares."
"Good-night!" she said; "if you hear me shout you'll know that you're to
come and protect me from monsters. Weren't those two-headed brutes just
too horrid for words? Good-night, dear!"
CHAPTER XIX
A little before six (Earth time) on the fourth morning after they had
cleared the confines of the Saturnian System, Redgrave went as usual
into the conning-tower to examine the instruments, and to see that
everything was in order. To his intense surprise he found, on looking at
the gravitational compass, which was to the _Astronef_ what the ordinary
compass is to a ship at sea, that the vessel was a long way out of her
course.
Such a thing had never yet occurred. Up to now the _Astronef_ had obeyed
the laws of gravitation and repulsion with absolute exactness. He made
another examination of the instruments; but no, all were in perfect
order.
"I wonder what the deuce is the matter," he said, after he had looked
for a few moments with frowning eyes at the multitude of orbs ahead.
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