You see, little
woman, it's like this," he went on, taking out a pencil and going down
on one knee on the deck: "Here's the _Astronef_; there's Venus; there's
Mercury; there's the Sun; and there, away on the other side of him, is
Mother Earth. If we can turn that corner safely and without expending
too much power we ought to be all right."
"And if we can't, what will happen?"
"It will be a choice between morphine and cremation in the atmosphere of
the Sun, dear, or rather gradually roasting as we fall towards it."
"Then, of course, it will be morphine," she said quite quietly, as she
turned away from his diagram and looked at the now fast-increasing disc
of the Sun. A well-balanced mind speedily becomes accustomed even to the
most terrible perils, and Zaidie had now looked this one so long and so
steadily in the face that for her it had already become merely the
choice between two forms of death with just a chance of escape hidden in
the closed hand of Fate.
Thirty-six Earth-hours later the glorious golden disc of Venus lay broad
and bright beneath them. Above was the blazing orb of the Sun, nearly
half as big again as it appears from the Earth, with Mercury, a round
black spot, travelling slowly across it.
"My dear Bird-Folk!" said Zaidie, looking down at the lovely world below
them. "If home wasn't home----"
"We can be back among them in a few hours with absolute safety,"
interrupted her husband, catching at the suggestion.
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