"Listen," he said, and his deep-set eyes were afire with an intense emotion. "The moon is no tiny satellite; it is a sister planet. It is whirled on the end of a rope (we call it gravitation), swung around and around the earth. How could there be water or anything fluid on this side? It is all thrown to the other side by the centrifugal force. Who knows what life is there? No one—no one! I am going to find out."
Jerry Foster was silent. He was thinking hard. He looked about him at the clean hills, the trees, the world he knew. And he was weighing the secure life he knew against a great adventure.
He took one long breath of the clear air as one who looks his last at a familiar scene. He exhaled slowly. But he stepped firmly into the machine.
"Winslow," he said, "have you any rope handy?"
The inventor was annoyed. "Why, yes, I guess so. Why? What do you want of it?"
"I want you to tie me up again," said Jerry Foster. "I want you to carry me off as you planned. I want to go with you."
The tall man stared at the quiet, determined face before him. Slowly his own strained features smoothed into kindly lines. He grasped tight at Jerry's hand.
"I was dreading that part of it," he confessed slowly: "going alone. It would have been lonely—out there...."
