"Is that in usable condition?" came joyously from Popham.
"So far as I can discover, it lies intact at the bottom of the crater on whose rim we landed. There is no reason why the car cannot be employed for a return to Terra; but," and here the professor's words became emphatic, "it shall not be so employed by King Gaddbai and his army of conquest. I shall prevent that at all hazards."
"How?" came hoarsely from the three ex-millionaires.
"By destroying the car, as a last resort and when other means fail," was the calm rejoinder.
"You would not dare!" breathed Popham.
"You would not have the heart to take from us our sole means of escape!" added Markham.
"Madman!" ground out Meigs. "If I really thought that you would destroy our only means of salvation, I'd——"
"You wouldn't do a thing, Meigs," I chimed in. "Whatever the professor thinks best to do is going to be done, and no two ways about it."
"I don't want to destroy the car," continued the professor, unmoved by this storm he had aroused, "if other means can be made to serve. And I may say that we shall exhaust every effort to make other means serve. I feel that it is my duty to return you gentlemen to the place from whence you were taken. I have not accomplished what I had hoped to do, but it is better to be disappointed in that rather than to let King Gaddbai get away in the car with his fifty warriors."
"Certainly it is your duty to send us back," said Meigs, "and you should consider that duty before anything and everything else."