His voice for all that speech sounded like the voice of some one heard in a telephone, weak and far away.
"But the darkness," I said.
"One might get over that."
"How?"
"I don't know. How am I to know? One might carry a torch, one might have a lamp— The others—might understand."
He stood for a moment with his hands held down and a rueful face, staring out over the waste that defied him. Then with a gesture of renunciation he turned towards me with proposals for the systematic hunting of the sphere.
"We can return," I said.
He looked about him. "First of all we shall have to get to earth."
"We could bring back lamps to carry and climbing irons, and a hundred necessary things."
"Yes," he said.
"We can take back an earnest of success in this gold."
He looked at my golden crowbars, and said nothing for a space. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring across the crater. At last he sighed and spoke. "It
