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Accordingly they proceeded, and were delighted, a few minutes later, to see the sunlight reflected from the projectile's polished roof. On reaching the Callisto, Ayrault worked the lock he had had placed on the lower door, which, to avoid carrying a key, was opened by a combination. The car's interior was exactly as they had left it, and they were glad to be in it again.
Neither Cortlandt nor Bearwarden felt much like sleeping, and so, after finishing the birds the president had brought down that morning, they persuaded Ayrault to sit up and smoke with them. Wrapping themselves in their blankets for there was a chill in the air they sat about the camp-fire they had built in the mouth of the cave. Two moons that were at the full rose rapidly in the clear, cold sky.
On this occasion their chief had given them a particularly good dinner, but the spirit took only a slice of meat and a glass of claret. "Won't you tell us the story of your life," said Ayrault to the spirit, "and your experiences since your death? They would be of tremendous interest to us."
Without saying anything to his companions, Ayrault left the cave, and, passing through the grove in which the spirit had paid them his second visit, went slowly to the top of the hill about half a mile off, that he might the more easily gaze at the faint star on which he could picture Sylvia.
"You should be happy," it kept repeating "you should be happy," in soft musical tones. "I know I should," replied Ayrault, finally recognizing the voice of Violet Slade in the song of the wind, "and I cannot understand why I am not. Tell me, is this paradise, Violet, or is it not rather purgatory?"
Many of the grains were no larger than peas or mustard-seeds; no mass was more than four feet in diameter, and all of them had very irregular shapes. The space between the particles was never less than one hundred times their masses. "We can move about within it," said Ayrault, as the Callisto entered the aggregation of particles, and moved slowly forward among them.
The loose earth looked as if the cross-ties of some railroad had been removed, the space formerly occupied having been but partly filled, and these depressions were across the probable direction of motion. "Whatever was capable of chasing mastodons and carrying such weights," said Ayrault, "will, I suspect, have little to fear from us.
"Since we have reached what we might call the end of Jupiter, and still have time, continued Ayrault, "let us proceed to Saturn, where we may find even stranger things than here. I hoped we could investigate the great red spot, but am convinced we have seen the beginning of one in Twentieth Century Archipelago, and what, under favourable conditions, will be recognized as such on earth."
The monster was entangled in the wires, and in another second would have stepped on the batteries that were still causing the bell to ring. "Aim for the heart," said Bearwarden to Ayrault. "When you show me his ribs, I will follow you in the hole." Ayrault instantly fired for a point just back of the left foreleg.
Dropping their loads, Bearwarden and Ayrault threw themselves upon the monster with their hunting-knives with such vim that in a few seconds it beat a hasty retreat, leaving, as it did so, a wake of phosphorescent light. "Are you hurt?" asked Bearwarden, helping him up. "Not in the least," replied Cortlandt. "What surprises me is that I am not.
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