"Do you suppose we'll be alive then?" asked Jim, gazing in awe at the great sphere, with its mountains and valleys, now floating almost above our heads.
"It doesn't look like it now," I replied, "but still you never can tell."
It was that night that the headlong plunge toward the earth was arrested, and the next day saw the scarlet sphere no larger when it appeared. We immediately became hopeful that we might escape. We had grown used to the sound of the wind and we had slept under the plane. We had the cabin so full of gasoline cans and food that there was no room for us to stretch out.
The sky had retained its burnished copper hue, but after the moon had passed over the western ridge, the wind and changed sky were the only things to remind us of what was happening. Then, as I said, when we found the next morning that the moon was no larger, we were distinctly encouraged.
It took only fifteen hours to encircle the earth, that time.
"I believe I can calculate how near us it is," I said.
I figured for a few minutes on a scrap of paper and decided that the moon and the earth were at that moment ninety thousand miles apart. It seems that I was ten thousand miles out of the way, but as my result was based on a purely mathematical calculation, without any help from observation other than the moon's time of revolution around the earth, my error was excusable.
Waiting for the End
There was no slackening of the wind after the moon had disappeared beneath the western cliff which was our horizon. It was then eleven o'clock in the morning. The sky kept its burnished copper tint and the sun was not visible. In fact, we did not see the sun during this entire period. Day was a little brighter than night, but there was nothing that corresponded to ordinary daylight.