The others were too engrossed to comment. The sky-car was rapidly
sinking nearer and nearer the planet; already Smith had stopped the
current with which he had attracted the cube toward the little world's
northern hemisphere, and was now using negative voltage. This, in order
to act as a brake, and prevent them from falling to destruction.

Suddenly Van Emmon, the geologist, whose eyes had been glued to his
binoculars, gave an exclamation of wonder. "Look at those faults!" He
pointed toward a region south of that for which they were bound; what
might be called the planet's torrid zone.

At first it was hard to see; then, little by little, there unfolded
before their eyes a giant, spiderlike system of chasms in the strange
surface beneath them. From a point almost directly opposite the sun,
these cracks radiated in a half-dozen different directions; vast,
irregular clefts, they ran through mountain and plain alike. In places
they must have been hundreds of miles wide, while there was no guessing
as to their depth. For all that the four in the cube could see, they
were bottomless.

"Small likelihood of anybody being alive there now," commented the
geologist skeptically. "If the sun has dried it out enough to produce
faults like that, how could animal life exist?"

"Notice, however," prompted the doctor, "that the cracks do not extend
all the way to the edge of the disk." This was true; all the great
chasms ended far short of the "twilight band" which the doctor had
declared might still contain life.