hardly needs to be considered, and the problem of return simply resolves itself into a matter of our ability to evade or turn to our advantage the various centers of attraction we shall encounter," replied the scientist thoughtfully.
And so after a little more discussion it was decided, and the great steel globe was permitted to continue its headlong rush through the black abyss toward the huge orb of Jupiter. That giant of our planetary family, whose diameter exceeds 85,000 miles, whose day is no more than live hours, and night no longer, whose four moons race round his great girth with a speed far in excess of our own placid luminary's sedate behavior, and whose year contains 4,332 of its brief days. Luckily there are no inhabitants to suffer the inconvenience of such things, for the huge orb is, like the sun, still in a gaseous condition, and its heat and light of its own making, though its texture is much more concentrated than the sun's tenuous immensity.
In less than two hours from his recovery Carscadden ordered his friend to reverse the cover, and Jupiter, now a large, glowing disk of fast-increasing brightness, went out of sight beneath them as they dropped with terrific but shortly abating speed toward it. Exactly eleven hours after he emerged from his stupor he gave the command to reverse the cover again.
9. Near to Destruction
As it swung back, letting light through the lower windows, the intrepid voyagers saw the giant planet below them, a huge whirling orb of glowing cloudiness, with vast, tormented eddies of super-heated gas spinning and leaping within it. Across this expanse of titanic activity a black speck moved quickly.
"The inner moon," explained their captain. "It revolves around the planet in forty-two hours. It is nearly four times as large as our own moon. We shall try and land on it."
Nearer and nearer sank the globe to the huge glowing orb, and distinctly visible were the curious belts of alternately liquefying and vaporizing elements. Steadily it was growing larger and soon it dominated the black sky like a vast crimson sun.
Suddenly a tremendous crash resounded on the globe's exterior, and in a moment it was subjected to a tremendous bombardment, as though batteries of heavy artillery were playing upon it. The globe vibrated and trembled with the incessant blows, and great scratches appeared on the outer surface of the windows. The temperature at once rose considerably, and the globe's occupants panted and perspired with every movement.
Carscadden hastily wrote on a piece of paper and passed it around, for it was impossible to hear a word in that deafening uproar.
"We are passing through a swarm of meteorites," he had written. "They are on their way to Jupiter. I think the Neutralia can safely stand it, unless we meet an unusually large fragment. However, we can only carry on and chance to the luck that has so far befriended us."
The supply of missiles seemed inexhaustible, and the bombardment continued for over an hour. But at last, abruptly as it had started, the crashing uproar ceased. Shortly after, on the vast glowing disk a faint scintillation broke out in one particular location. It was the cloud of myriads of meteorites rushing to their destruction, fused into vapor by the friction of their passage through the planet's gaseous envelope.
Now the black speck of the inner moon loomed larger, and it could be seen as a round dark object on the dull fiery
