Edmund say that we actually had traveled such a distance, the idea struck us with overwhelming force.
Meteors on All Sides
"In Heaven's name, Edmund," Jack called out, "at what rate are we traveling, then?"
"Just at present," Edmund replied, glancing at an indicator on the wall, "we're making twenty miles a second."
Twenty miles a second!
"Why," I exclaimed, "that's faster than the earth goes in its orbit!"
"Yes, just a trifle faster," Edmund replied, smiling. "But I'll probably have to work her up to a little better speed, in order to get where I want to go before our goal begins to run away from us."
"Ah! that's it," put in Jack. "That's what I wanted to know. What is our goal, Edmund? Where are we going?"
Before Edmund could reply we all sprang to our feet affrighted.
A loud grating noise had broken upon our ears. At the same instant the car gave a lurch, and a blaze like a flash of the most vicious lightning streamed through one of the windows.
"Blank the things!" shouted Edmund, springing to the window, and then darting at one of the knobs, and beginning to twist it with all his force.
In a second we were sprawling on the floor, except Edmund, who kept his hold. Our course had been changed with amazing quickness, and our startled eyes beheld huge misshapen objects darting past the window.
"Here comes another!" cried Edmund, seizing the knob again.
I had managed to get my face at the window, and I certainly thought that we were lost. Only a few rods away, rushing straight at us, was a vast black mass, shaped something like a dumb-bell, with ends as big as houses, tumbling over and over itself, and threatening us, as it came, with annihilation. If it hit us, as it seemed sure to do, I knew that we should never return to the earth, Template:SIc it might be in the form of pulverized cinders.
CHAPTER III
The Planetary Limited
But Edmund had seen the meteor and, quicker than thought, with a turn of the knob, he swerved the car, and threw us all off our feet again! But we would have been thankful to him even if he had broken our heads, for he had saved us from instant destruction.
The danger was not yet gone, however. Scarcely had the huge dumb-bell (which Edmund assured us afterward must have been composed of solid iron, from its effect on his magnetic needles) passed before there came from outside a blaze of lightning so fierce and penetrating that it closed our eyes as if the lids had been slapped shut!
"A collision!" exclaimed Edmund. "The thing has struck another big meteor, and they are exchanging red-hot compliments."
He threw himself flat on the floor, and stared out of the forward peep-hole. Then, immediately, he jumped to his feet, and gave us another tumble. He had changed the course once more.
"They're all about us," he said. "We're like a boat in a raging spring freshet, with rocks, tree-trunks, and tossing cakes of ice threatening it on every hand. But we'll get out of it. The car obeys its helm as if charmed. Why, I got away from that last fellow by setting up an atomic reaction against it, as a boatman pushes his pole against an ice-floe."
A Trip to Venus
In the midst of our terror we could not but admire our leader.
His resources seemed boundless, and our confidence grew with every escape. We watched the meteors out of the windows while Edmund kept guard at the peep-hole. We must have come almost within striking distance of a thousand in the course of an hour, but Edmund decided not to diminish his speed, for he said that he found he could control the car quicker when it was under full headway.
So on we rushed, dodging the things like a crow in a flock of pestering jays, and after a while we began to enjoy the excitement. It was better sport than shooting rapids in an open skiff, and we got so confident at last in the powers of our car and its commander that we were rather sorry when the last meteor was passed, and we found ourselves once more in clear open space.
After that the time passed quietly. We ate our meals and slept as regularly as if we had been at home.
There was no night for us, because the sun shone in at one window or the other all the time; yet, as I have said, the sky was jet black, and the stars glittered everywhere round us. When we wanted to sleep we put up the shutters, keeping watch only through the peep-hole, which, as it did not face the sun, admitted little light. We kept count of the days by the aid of a calendar clock. There seemed to be nothing that Edmund had forgotten.
Once the idea suddenly came to me that it was a wonderful thing that we had not all been smothered with bad air, breathing the atmosphere of the car over and over again as we were doing, and I asked Edmund about it. He laughed.
"That's the easiest problem of all," he said. "Look here."
And he threw open a little grating in the side of the car.
"In there," he explained, "there's an apparatus which absorbs the carbonic acid and renews the air. It is good to work for at least a month, which will be more time than we need for this expedition."
"There you are again," broke in Jack. "I was asking you about that when we ran into those pesky meteors. What is this expedition? Where are we going?"
Taking Rifles to Venus
"Well, since you have become pretty good shipmates," replied Edmund, "I don't see any objection to telling you. We are going to Venus!"
