"We've had the tractor running now for something over an hour," remarked Bennie presently. "Suppose we shut it off and coast for a while. We must now be over twelve thousand miles from the earth, and moving about seven miles a second. There's no longer the slightest danger of falling back, and it's almost impossible, with all that light in our wake, to see anything."
So saying, he walked heavily over to the speaking-tube and rang the electric bell.
"Shut her off for a bit!" he shouted to Atterbury. "But stand by the switch until I call you!"
Then he returned to the deadlight and threw himself on the floor again.
"We're going to get a new sensation now, all right," he said, "but don't be alarmed. It isn't anything to worry about."
The shrill note of the dynamo dropped rapidly in pitch, and the glowing wake of helium beneath the car faded away slowly and presently disappeared.
The Ring was coasting.
It was at this precise moment that Thornton had lost it in the finder of the big telescope at Georgetown. As the helium blast died away, a curious sensation made itself apparent to all of them. The pressure which had drawn them to the floor gradually relaxed, and their bodies became lighter. Hooker placed his hands on the floor at his side and, pushing down gently, raised himself to the full length of his arms, easily supporting his weight on the tips of his two forefingers. Then, suddenly, he raised his hands, and, to the surprise of his companions, instead of falling, he slowly settled back to his original position, like a body suspended in water.
"We shan't weigh anything in a moment," he announced. "The tractor is still pushing a little, but, as soon as it stops entirely, good-by to gravitation!"
There was now no sensation of movement in the car, which seemed, as it were, to be hanging motionless in space. Like the inhabitants of the earth, who are being carried through the universe at a speed of sixty-eight thousand miles an hour, the travelers were unconscious of their transportation.