“You will go out now,” said the Comet Master. “You will travel for thirteen weeks and three days, and will then return. You will avoid the neighborhood of the Sun, the Earth, and the planet Bungo. You will turn to the left on meeting other comets, and you are not allowed to speak to meteors. These are your orders. Go!”
At the word, the comet shot out of the gate and off into space, his short tail bobbing as he went.
Ah! here was something worth living for. No longer shut up in that tiresome court-yard, waiting for one’s tail to grow, but out in the free, open, boundless realm of space, with leave to shoot about here and there and everywhere—well, nearly everywhere—for thirteen whole weeks! Ah, what a glorious prospect! How swiftly he moved! How well his tail looked, even though it was still rather short! What a fine fellow he was, altogether!
For two or three weeks our comet was the happiest creature in all space; too happy to think of anything except the joy of frisking about. But by-and-by he began to wonder about things, and that is always dangerous for a comet.
“I wonder, now,” he said, “why I may not go near the planet Bungo. I have always heard that he was the most interesting of all the planets. And the Sun! how I should like to know a little more about the Sun! And, by the way, that reminds me that all this time I have never found out why I am travelling. It shows how I have been enjoying myself, that I have forgotten it so long; but now I must certainly make a point of finding out. Hello! there comes Long-Tail No. 45. I mean to ask him.”
So he turned out to the left, and waited till No. 45 came along. The latter was a middle-aged comet, very large, and with an uncommonly long tail,—quite preposterously long, our little No. 73 thought, as he shook his own tail and tried to make as much of it as possible.
“Good morning, Mr. Long-Tail!” he said as soon as the other was within speaking distance. “Would you be so very good as to tell me what you are travelling for?”
“For six months,” answered No. 45 with a puff and a snort. “Started a month ago; five months still to go.”
“Oh, I don’t mean that!” exclaimed Short-Tail No. 73. “I mean why are you travelling at all?”