The energy developed by the two insulated cubes gave to our steel car the stupendous velocity of one hundred miles per second, six thousand miles per minute, three hundred and sixty thousand miles per hour! Human reason might well falter at the threshold of such immensity.
Yet while I slept peacefully on that bale in the storeroom, these figures were verified by the professor and J. Archibald Meigs, who happened to be the only two who were wide awake. It has been my lasting regret that they did not rouse me so that I might also have had a view of the noble spectacle for the first time unrolled to earthly eyes.
We passed the moon, a dreary, burned-out world, and the professor was able to check off two hundred and forty thousand miles of our sunward plunge. We had traveled a little more than half an hour at our ultimate velocity; taking this into consideration, and noting the exact minute when we crossed the centre of the satellite's orbit, the professor was able to do some figuring and so test his theories as to speed.
The car skimmed through ether less than five hundred miles above the lunar crust. Quinn was doubly pleased, for he not only proved that our velocity was substantially as he had supposed, but also discovered that the moon's attraction, so powerful on the tides of our mother sphere, could not swerve the car by a hair's breadth from its direct course, or overcome the influence of the sun.
Meigs told me later that the marvelous beauty of the satellite, gleaming against the black void with ghostly radiance, was probably worth the trip and its attendant inconveniences. He and Quinn had looked their fill on the hemisphere which is never seen from the earth.
After this the hours literally flew past, the novelty of our journey precluding any such thing as monotony. In fact, we hardly allowed ourselves a sufficient amount of time for rest and refreshment.
A lookout was kept continually at the eye-piece of the telescope to signal the approach of any asteroid with which we might possibly come into collision. Only once did this danger threaten us, and then, as may be supposed, it was the professor who proved our salvation.
The lever in the wall of the lower or living room of the car communicated with screens, ingeniously arranged for shutting off the power of the anti-gravity cubes. By lessening our speed, the professor suffered the asteroid to cross our course, our car ducking through the luminous trail that swept out behind it.
Night reigned around us constantly. Our car caught the rays of the sun, it is true, but the lack of an atmosphere caused the light to be thrown back into space and lost.
The castle was nothing less than a small planet, attended by five satellites which, held to our vicinity by the car's attraction, circled around us continually. These satellites were the four knotted handkerchiefs containing the tribute I had levied upon the plutocrats, and also the revolver which had assisted me in the work.