They went back to the bows, and watched the universe stretched out before them. They passed close to a star, whose name they did not know, and its radiance lit up the little cabin for fourteen days, that were marked off religiously on Alan’s calendar. Then came another terrible time, when depression took hold of them all again, and they would sit, silent, staring into space. Their eyes were dull and lustreless; their limbs cramped from lack of exercise, and their brains torpid and sluggish.
Perhaps Alan felt the deprivation of air and exercise most, but he continued to be the cheeriest of them all.
“Oh, for some green vegetables,” sighed Mavis one day. John Alan had been particularly restless, and she felt more than usually miserable.
“And plenty of nice rabbit food,” went on Alan cheerfully. “Crisp, long lettuces, the rosy radish, juicy tomatoes, and above all the cool, refreshing slices of the unwholesome cucumber.”
“Oh, Alan, I’m so miserable,” she sobbed. “Will this awful existence never end? Shall we just die here, and this ship become the meteoric tomb of seven unfortunates of the world? A tomb always spinning on, on, through endless space, through endless time, like some lost soul.”
“Lost world, you mean,” corrected Alan. “You are mixing your metaphors, and when a lady does that, it’s a sure sign she wants a cup of tea!”
“I don’t want a cup of tea, Alan. I just want to get a breath of air. Alan, couldn’t you persuade Masters to open the shutters? Couldn’t we just go on to the deck for five minutes—only five minutes?” she pleaded.
“My dear,” said Alan gently. “It’s quite impossible. Now listen carefully to what I am saying. Long, long ago, we were out of the atmosphere and the gravitation of our earth. In some way or other, the tornado that accompanied the end of our world drove us through space where nothing is! Oh, I know it sounds complicated, dear, but by all the knowledge of science, as taught by the most advanced astronomers, long ago we should have been suspended in space, unable to move or be moved, outside the gravitation of other worlds; just atoms, motionless, still. That hasn’t happened. We have defied the great authorities, and are being whirled through the heavens by some power unheard of by the scientists of the earth. Still, dear, we do not know whether there is air outside. Should we lift the shutters that protect us, we might find we were unable to exist.”
“That’s the word,” cried Mavis. “We aren’t living now. We are only existing. We don’t know from hour to hour what terrible fate may await us. If by lifting the shutters we kill ourselves, surely that is better than this lingering death.”
“Mavis, Mavis, don’t.”