Now that the mystery was
explained there was no reason to keep her in the dark. Indeed, he had
given her his word that he would conceal from her no danger, however
great, that might threaten them when he had once assured himself of its
existence.
She listened to him in silence and without a sign of fear beyond a
little lifting of the eyelids and a little fading of the colour in her
cheeks.
"And if we can't resist this force," she said, when he had finished, "it
will drag us millions--perhaps millions of millions--of miles away from
our own system into outer space, and we shall either fall on the surface
of this dead sun and be reduced to a puff of lighted gas in an instant,
or some other body will pull us away from it, and then another away from
that, and so on, and we shall wander among the stars for ever and ever
until the end of time!"
"If the first happens, darling, we shall die--together--without knowing
it. It's the second that I'm most afraid of. The _Astronef_ may go on
wandering among the stars for ever--but we have only water enough for
three weeks more. Now come into the conning-tower and we'll see how
things are going."
As they bent their heads over the instrument-table Redgrave saw that the
remorseless needle had moved two degrees more to the right. The keel of
the _Astronef_, under the impulse of the R.
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