"Can we not wait, and give it time to pass by?" queried Kobloth.
"Yes, we shall have to. But that means missing our straight line earthward. But we shall have to move as soon as this satellite has passed the critical spot, and even then it will be a mere chance if we miss it," said Carscadden.
"Devil take a planet with four moons!" grumbled the stolid Burgoyne, who seemed by far the least moved of the three listeners.
More waiting in silent suspense; then, eye to telescope, their captain gave the signal. At once the great cover was turned, and the satellite on which it had rested sank from beneath their feet, and they saw passing above them the huge dark ball of the outermost of Jupiter's attendant satellites. Only for a moment was it visible, so rapid was the pace the Neutralia at once attained; then they were out in the darkness and emptiness of space, homeward bound—if all went well.
During the following hours there was nothing to mark their progress save the spinning pointers on the speed dials of the register—no sense of movement within or perception of motion without the globe. They were apparently hanging in the center of a vast sphere of jet-black darkness, a sphere dusted with points, and streams, and clusters of starry light; yet each man knew that he was being hurled through this terrible darkness at nearly 10,000,000 miles every sixty minutes, and each man feared that the end of this daring venture would be death.
At last sixty long hours had crawled by. Now the men were inclined to be dull and querulous; for as well as the nerve-racking suspense, the air was more than a little vitiated. For the tanks did not release a fraction more than the amount needful to sustain the vital spark of existence, and the carbon-consuming apparatus did not work altogether satisfactorily.
At the end of the sixtieth hour both Mars and the earth loomed large again, and the sun had regained much of its splendor. It was evident that they would pass Mars at a good distance to one side; and it was also evident that their course would take them a long distance from the longed-for earth, and the Neutralia would be governed entirely by the pull of the sun's vast mass.
Carscadden worked out his calculations anew, going a long way back in his formulas to make certain that no loophole of error had evaded him, and it was then that he discovered the little slip in a decimal point—a slip a careless schoolboy might have been guilty of, but quite unlooked for in one who regarded calculus as a mild form of recreation. The discovery hurt his pride far more than the fact of the terrible danger it had led them into. Such a trivial error was as a deadly sin to the scientific mind.
The others, when he told them, did not seem to appreciate the gravity of his confession.
"But a point? I don't see anything to worry about," said Burgoyne a little contemptuously.
"No?" sneered Carscadden with a most unusual bitterness. "I hardly thought you would. Nevertheless I think it has signed our death warrant. When I delayed our departure from Jupiter's inner satellite, it was to allow another of the four moons to pass clear of our course. The clearance I then stated was but .10513 of its diameter. That was an error; it should have been 1.0513. On that footing there would not have been the least danger, and we could have started at the exact second requisite to reach our planet safely. Now we shall most certainly miss it."
"Miss it?" echoed Burgoyne. "But
