"Going to Venus?" we all cried in a breath.
"To be sure. Why not? We've got the proper sort of a conveyance, haven't we?"
There was no denying that. As we knew that we had left the earth far behind, and had already traveled some millions of miles, it didn't, after all, seem to be a very crazy idea that we might actually go to Venus.
"But how far is it?" asked Jack.
"When we quit the earth," Edmund replied, "Venus was rapidly approaching inferior conjunction. You know what that is, Albert," addressing me. "It's when Venus comes between the sun and the earth. The distance between the two is not always the same at such a conjunction, but I figured out that on this occasion, allowing for the circuit that we should have to make, there would be just twenty-seven million miles to travel. At the average speed of twenty miles a second, we could do that distance in fifteen days, fourteen and one-half hours.
"But, of course, I had to lose some time going slow through the earth's atmosphere, for otherwise the car would have caught fire by friction, like a meteor, and I shall have to slow up again when we enter Venus's atmosphere, so that I don’t count on landing on Venus in less than sixteen days from the time of our departure.
"We've already been out five days, so eleven remain before I hope to introduce you to the inhabitants of another world."
The inhabitants of another world! This idea took us all aback.
"Do you believe there are any such inhabitants?" asked Henry.
"I know there are," said Edmund. "Otherwise I wouldn't have taken the trouble to come."
"Of course," said Jack, stretching out his legs and pulling at his pipe. "Who'd go twenty-seven million miles if he didn't expect to see somebody?"
"Then that's what you put the arms aboard for?" I remarked.
"Yes, but I hope we shall not have to use them."
"Strikes me this is a sort of a pirate ship," said Jack. "But what kind of arms have you got?"
For answer Edmund threw open a locker, and showed us an array of automatic guns, pistols, and some cutlases.
Getting Close to Venus
"Decidedly piratical!" cried Jack. "But, see here, Edmund. With all this interatomic energy that you've got under control, why in the world didn't you construct something new—something that would just knock the Venustians silly, and blow their old planet up, if it became necessary? It seems to me that automatic arms, though pretty good at home, are rather small pumpkins for invading a foreign world with."
"I didn't prepare anything else," said Edmund. "In the first place, because I hadn't time; and, in the second place, because I didn't really anticipate any fighting. I hope that we can get along without that."
"You mean to try moral suasion, I suppose," drawled Jack. "Well, anyhow, I hope they'll be glad to see us, and since it's Venus we're going to visit, I expect that the ladies will be perfect houris for beauty. I'm glad you made it Venus instead of Mars, Edmund, for from all I've heard about Mars, with its fourteen-foot giants, I don't think I should care to go there."
We all laughed at Jack's fancies, but there was something thrilling in the idea, too; for here we were (unless we were dreaming) actually on the way to Venus! I tried every way I could think of to test whether it was a dream or no, but do what I would I came always to the conclusion that I had never been more wideawake in my life. Both Jack and I were sufficiently romantic to find a great charm in the thought of visiting another world, but Henry was different. He always looked at the money in a thing.
"Edmund," he said, "I think you have made a fool of yourself. What good will it do you, or us, to go to Venus? Here you have got an invention that will revolutionize mechanics. You might, if you had exploited it as you ought, have made the greatest millionaire look like the smallest kind of an atom. But instead of developing the thing in a businesslike way, you rush off into space on harebrained adventure."
"That depends upon the point of view and the mental make-up," Edmund replied calmly. "To me Venus is infinitely more interesting than all the wealth that you could pile up between the north pole and the equator. Am I not the Columbus of space—and you my lieutenants?" he added smiling. "Besides, just wait until we return to the earth. I don't promise to give my attention to money-getting then, but I may revolutionize a good deal more than mechanics."
"Yes, if we ever do return," said Jack, a little lugubriously.
Poor Jack! None of us knew, then, what was in store.
The time ran on, and we watched the day hand on the calendar clock. Soon it had marked a week; then ten days; then a fortnight. We were getting pretty close, but up to this time we had not yet seen Venus. Edmund had seen it, he said, but to do so he had been obliged to alter the course, because the planet was almost in the eye of the sun, and the light of the latter, streaming into the peep-hole, blinded him.
A Mysterious Display of Flames
In consequence of the change of course, he told us, we were now approaching Venus from the east—flanking her, in fact—and she appeared in the form of an enormous shining crescent. I shall never forget my first view of her.
We had got within half a million miles, and Edmund was very nervous about meteors again. He said they were probably thicker round Venus than around the earth, because the former is nearer to the sun, and everything crowds up as you approach the center of the solar system. Consequently he would only allow us each a brief peep at the planet, because he wanted to be all the time at the lookout. The peep that I got was sufficient.
That vast gleaming sickle, hanging in the black
