It would be tedious to narrate all the particulars of our journey
through the dark abyss, particularly as nothing very important befell
us, and one day passed like another. Now and then a small meteoric stone
struck the car and glanced off its rounded sides.

"Old Charon," as Gazen and I had nicknamed Carmichael, after the grim
ferryman of the Styx, seldom forsook his engines, and Miss Carmichael
spent a good deal of her time along with him. Occasionally she chatted
with Gazen and myself in the saloon, or helped us to make scientific
observations; but although neither of us openly confessed it, I think we
both felt that she did not give us quite enough of her company. Her
manner seemed to betray no preference for one or the other.

Did she, by her feminine instinct, perceive that we were both solicitous
of her company, and was she afraid of exciting jealousy between us? In
any case we were all the more glad to see her when she did join us. No
doubt men in general, and professors in particular, are fond of
communicating knowledge, but a great deal depends on the pupil; and
certainly I was surprised to see how the hard and dry astronomer beamed
with delight as he initiated this young lady into the mysteries of the
apparatus, and what a deal of trouble he took to cram her lovely head
with mathematics.

We noted the temperature of space as we darted onwards, and discovered
that it contains a trace of gases lost from the atmospheres of the
heavenly bodies. We also found there a sprinkling of minute organisms,
which had probably strayed from some living world. Gazen suggested that
these might sow the seeds of organic life in brand-new planets, ready
for them, but perhaps that was only his scientific joke. The jokes of