It was clear to Rhoda that this process could conceivably, and in fact probably, have been performed while the Ring was in flight, but she shuddered at the thought of her two friends climbing about on the outside of their machine while in transit at a velocity of twenty miles per second, however imperceptible that velocity might have been. Suppose one of them had fallen? Like the shadow of a lost soul, he would have followed the Ring in its journey among the stars—since, moving at the same speed as the machine through space at the moment of his fall, there would have been nothing to alter his relation to it, and, like a satellite—a true satellite, indeed—he would have flown along beside, or after it, until the tractor was started again and he had been left behind alone in the abyss of space! But here they could quite safely conduct their operations—in fact, as easily as safely—for the uranium cylinder now weighed but one-sixth of what it had weighed upon the earth, and the block and tackle could be handled without difficulty.
Leaving the men thus engaged, Rhoda descended the ladder and started off on a walk, feeling her way gingerly along until she could accommodate her muscles to her reduced weight. All about her lay what might have been the ruins of a Selenite civilization metamorphosed by the magic of erosion. Giant monoliths, like pillars, lay tumbled here and there in suggestive juxtaposition with giant blocks of porous stone which might have served as bases for such pillars, as the steps of a lunar temple, or even as an altar to some unknown god.
The great solitary pinnacle which she had noticed through the chart-room window especially excited her curiosity, and, as it seemed but a short distance away, she first photographed it and then decided to study it at closer range—to determine the cause of such a stalagmite formation under the open sky. The possibility of having any trouble in finding her way back to the Ring did not occur to her, since every object in the moonscape was defined with a truly unearthly brilliancy, snow-white on the light side and almost jet-black upon the other.
Out of the inky curtain of the sky, the sun glared through a circular rent, like a beam through a hole in the roof of some dark garret. Where it fell, everything was dazzling bright, but in the shadow was the darkness of the Styx. It was like walking across a lava field by full moonlight. Thus, it seemed easy enough to mark the high lights of the vicinity and to find one's way around.
Clearing from four to eight feet at a stride, Rhoda quickly crossed the plain to where the pinnacle stood like a lofty minaret, found that it could be easily climbed by a gently sloping ridge, and, without apparent exertion, gained the top and sat down on the very crest. Below her lay the Ring, its windows gleaming yellow in the startlingly white light, inclining slightly on its side in almost the center of the plain. Having photographed it, she turned her eyes in the other direction. Everywhere, as far as she could see, the lunar surface was spotted with craterlets, large and small, surrounded by circular ridges of jagged rock, and bristled with spires and pinnacles. It reminded her vividly of the white, dried shell of a sea-urchin with a few lingering bristles still adhering to it, such as are found so plentifully on the seashore. To what, owing to the sun's position, ought to be the north, her view was cut off by a towering range, beyond which she could glimpse the white peak of a high mountain—Copernicus, probably—and believing this range to be not more than a few miles away, she resolved to utilize the time while the men were at work in trying to get a photograph of the moon's most superb natural feature.
II
The reader may recall that, at the moment of the departure of the Ring upon the preceding evening from the aerodrome at Georgetown, Bentham T. Tassifer had ensconced himself on the roof of the limousine containing his wife and the professional members of their party, and that, the Ring having vanished upward into the air, Mrs. Tassifer suddenly recalled the absence of her niece Rhoda, and, thrusting her head out of the window, had anxiously inquired of the world in general and of Bentham in particular what could have become of her.
"How should I know?" snapped back her husband, whose attention had thus, much against his will, been directed back to earth again. "How should I know? She went back to that machine, and I suppose she can't get through the crowd."