The vast, luminous plain below slowly drew away and shrank into a great crescent of light which, with the sun blazing close to its edge, ran half-way around the distant horizon. They were now over the dark side of the moon—the side that is turned always from the earth, the side which no human eye had ever gazed upon before. The room was flooded with sunlight, which came in through the side deadlight.
"Bother it all!" cried Bennie. "One can't see anything in this glare." He pressed his face against the glass in the floor and shielded his eyes with his hands. "One might be able to see something of the surface by starlight."
"Wait a minute!" said Rhoda. "I'll get a black cloth to throw over your head."
But, even as she spoke, a change came. The light faded away as when a thunder-cloud crosses the sun, and in a second or two they were in complete darkness. Burke groped about for the switch that turned on the lights.
"What's happened?" gasped Rhoda. "Are we falling?" And she reached out in the dark and clutched Bennie's hand. "Has anything gone wrong?"
"No," he reassured her; "we've merely entered the moon's shadow—that's all. Give her some more lift, Burke. We mustn't take any chance of dropping back. Don't turn on the light. We're all right, and I want to have a look at the moon."
Again they felt the upward push of the floor and knew that they were rising. Bennie, flat on his face, gazed into the blackness beneath them. Nothing was visible, however, and he called for the lights.
"Now for our bearings," he remarked, climbing to his perch under the telescope. Looking up through the window above, he saw the greenish globe of the asteroid nearly overhead. "Hello," he commented, as he focused his telescope; "it's been coming on fast while we were camping on the moon! All the surface markings are perfectly visible through the glass. And every minute they're growing more distinct."
"What does it look like?" asked Rhoda.
"Looks more like an English walnut than anything else," he mumbled. "There's a funny big spot—perfectly smooth—right in the center of the disk, and hundreds of queer ridges and furrows running from it in every direction."