"I suppose the Selenites had lunch at half after one hundred and seventy-seven," commented Rhoda, carrying on the joke.
"That would be midday," assented Bennie. "But probably they had tea along about two hundred and forty-five and a late supper around three hundred and nineteen."
"Makes me hungry to think of it!" said Rhoda. "What's the matter with tea now? I'm ravenous!"
She looked at her wrist-watch.
"Heavens—it's nearly nine hours since we left Washington!"
"And we've only come about two hundred and fifty thousand miles!" groaned Burke.
"And with Medusa scorching toward the earth at ninety miles a second, we ought to get busy!" ejaculated Bennie.
"But we surely can wait long enough for a cup of tea," urged Rhoda. "Please, Mr. Atterbury, do hustle out the tea-things!"
While the kettle was getting ready to boil, Rhoda and Bennie stood by the window and took a last look at the surface of the moon. But no longer did she regard its tumbled monoliths, its spires, crests, and craters either with interest or pleasure. On the contrary, her hand sought Bennie's, and she shuddered as she gazed across that barren plain where no human thing of itself could live.
"Thank God!" she murmured. "I should have hated to die out there, in that vast cemetery—that Valley of Death."