quartz-glass ports. He did not put his hand into the sunlight, but
shifted the glare shutters over those ports which admitted direct
sunshine. Some ports remained clear. Through one of them he saw the
Earth seemingly at arm's length somewhere off. Not up, not down. Simply
out from where he was. It filled all the space that the porthole
showed. It was a gigantic mass of white, fleecy specks and spots which
would be clouds, and between the whiteness there was a muddy dark
greenish color which would be the ocean. Yet it seemed to slide very,
very slowly past the window.

He saw a tanness between the clouds, and it moved inward from the edge
of his field of view. He suddenly realized what it was.

"We've just about crossed the Atlantic," he said in a peculiar
astonishment. But it was true the ship had not been aloft nearly as much
as half an hour. "Africa's just coming into sight below. We ought to be
about 1,200 miles high and still rising fast. That was the calculation."

He looked again, and then drew himself across to the opposite porthole.
He saw the blackness of space, which was not blackness because it was a
carpet of jewels. They were infinite in number and variations in
brightness, and somehow of vastly more colorings than one noticed from
Earth.

He heard the Chief grunt, and Haney gulp. He was suddenly conscious that
his legs were floating rather ridiculously in mid-air with no particular
relationship to anything. He saw the Chief rise very cautiously, holding
on to the arms of his seat.

"Better not look at the sun," said Joe, "even though I've put on the