"It serves you right," she went on blithely, "for staying away so long. Let's see—you left a year ago June, didn't you, Mr. Hill?"
He swallowed something and managed to reply, "Great guns, yes! I've been in the wilds of New Guinea for a year—without news of any kind! I saw my first newspaper on board the dirigible this morning!"
"Ah, well," commented Mrs. Kinney provokingly, "you'll have to be humored, I suppose." She cogitated unnecessarily long, then left the room to get a folio of newspapers and magazines. One of these she selected with great deliberation, and opened it at the leading article. Even then she would not hand it over right away. "You remember that sky-car idea of the doctor's, don't you?"
"His machine to explore space? He couldn't talk of anything else when I—you don't mean to say"—incredulously—"that he made a success of that!"
"He certainly did. Took a three weeks' tour of the planets, month before last!"
Hill stared in amazement, then leaned forward suddenly and whisked the magazine out of Mrs. Kinney's fingers. He held the paper with hands that trembled in excitement; and this is what he read, in the matter-of-fact black-and-white of The Scientific New Zealander:
STAR EXPLORERS RETURN
Dr. Kinney and Party Visit Venus and Mercury
Bringing proofs which will satisfy the most skeptical, Dr. William G. Kinney, G. Van Emmon, E. Williams Jackson, and John W. Smith, who left the earth on December 9 in a powerful sky-car of the doctor's design, returned on the 23rd, after having explored the two planets which lie between the earth and the sun.
They found Mercury to be a dead world, like the moon, except that it once supported a civilization nearly as advanced as our own. They tell of a giant human, a veritable colossus, who was the planet's last survivor.