CHAPTER XXIX
THE FIELD OF DIAMONDS
Dumbly the wanderers gazed at each other. They could not comprehend it at first. That the projectile, on which their very lives depended in this dead world of the moon, should float away and leave them seemed incredible. Yet they had witnessed it.
"Do—do you really think we saw it—saw the Annihilator, Mark?" asked
Jack in a low voice, after several minutes had passed.
"Saw it? Of course, we saw it. We've seen the last of it, I'm afraid.
But what do you mean?"
"I—I thought maybe I was out of my head, and I only saw a vision," answered Jack. "You know—a sort of mirage. It was real, then?"
"Altogether too real," spoke Andy Sudds grimly. "They didn't see us nor hear us. We're left behind!"
"But can't we do something?" demanded Mark. "Let's start off and try to catch them. They were going slow."
"The wonder to me is how they moved at all," said Jack. "I thought the machinery wouldn't work until we got back with the lost tool."
"Probably the two professors found some way of patching up the motor," was Mark's opinion, and later they found that this was so.