Epworth made a thorough examination of the rocks and debris that blocked the way.
“We are not going out this way,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “It looks as if we are doomed to become Selinites.”
“Moawha and her people are very charming,” Joan added thoughtfully, “but they are not our kind of people. They like us now but the Selinites may take a notion to change rulers over night. If they did we might not be so popular.”
“The light in the Land of the Selinites is steady, constant, and never lets up,” Billy put in. “You have explained that to me with the statement that the sun shines all the time through an open space in Mount Leibnitz. That means that there is an outer opening in that mountain. Why not try going out that way?”
“Billy, you are a scholar and a statesman,” Epworth declared enthusiastically. “We will do that very thing.”
They returned to Moawha’s city, and explained to her why they could not go on to the outer portion of the moon. When they told her that they were going to try to go out through the hole in Mount Leibnitz she immediately informed them that she would go with them as far as Mount Leibnitz.
Moawha had spent her entire life in the Land of the Selinites, and the idea that there was a great ball of fire out in space and shining through the outer rim of the moon was new and strange to her.
“I can’t believe that there is such a fire,” she exclaimed. “If there is I want to see it.”
Again Epworth, Joan and Billy, accompanied by Moawha, made a journey with a view of gaining the exterior. It was not a hard trip. All four had motor-gliders, and were able to fly easily over the rugged hills and interior projections of the moon which stuck up like small mountains.
But as they approached the great Mount Leibnitz the air grew warmer and warmer. Presently it became intensely hot, and even when they faced this heat they did not get a view of the sun. It was the steady flame of sunlight reflected against the rugged interior near the south pole that created the heat.