"Hang it!" shouted Bennie, in despair. "We've lost control of the Ring!"
Where, before, the earth had been, there now appeared the stupendous disk of the full moon.
At the same moment, Burke uttered an exclamation of fear.
"We're all out of kilter!" he cried. "I was looking down through the observation-window at the earth, and—all of a sudden it wasn't there!"
"The Ring is evidently slowly turning over," stammered Bennie. "If our tractor were not running, it wouldn't matter, but our direction must now be changing from moment to moment. We may have been captured or pulled out of our course by the moon! It's pretty near us, and you know how Jupiter changes the orbits of the comets that pass near it."
At that moment, Atterbury appeared in the doorway.
"Shall I keep the engines running?" he asked. "Our uranium is getting low, I'm afraid. The gage indicates that over seventy per cent has been used."
"Troubles never come singly!" exclaimed the master of the Ring. "Here we are, going we don't know where, gravitating around the moon, perhaps, and our fuel giving out! We've got to get a fresh cylinder into the tractor to get back, and it will be bad business making the change in space. We ought to land and make repairs and get a fresh start with new bearings."
"Land?" gasped Rhoda, in astonishment. "Where?"
"On the moon, of course. It's only ten thousand miles away, and we're headed straight for her, apparently. Turn her over again, Burke, and we'll slow down. It's going to be ticklish business, but I don't see what else we can do. We may go to smash and we may not. It all depends on whether we have time to overcome our velocity before we get there. We could slue off and run by, of course, but our uranium might give out, and then what should we do? Anyhow, there's no time to be lost."