appearance as that of an enormous crescent. Finally he invited us to take
a look for ourselves.

I shall never forget that first view! It was only a glimpse, for Edmund
was nervous about meteors again, and would allow us only a moment at the
peephole because he wished to be continually on the watch himself. But,
brief as was the view, that vast gleaming sickle hanging in the black sky
was the most tremendous thing I ever looked upon!

Soon afterwards Edmund changed the course again, and then we saw her no
more. We had not come upon the swarms of meteors that Edmund had expected
to find lurking about the planet, and he said that he now felt safe in
running into her shadow, and making a landing on her night hemisphere.
You will allow me to remind you that Schiaparelli had long before found
out that Venus doesn't turn on her axis once every twenty-four hours,
like the earth, but keeps always the same face to the sun; the
consequence being that she has perpetual day on one side and perpetual
night on the other. I asked Edmund why he should not rather land on the
daylight side; but he replied that his plan was safer, and that we could
easily go from one side to the other whenever we chose. It didn't turn
out to be so easy after all, but that is another part of the story.

"I hardly expect to find any inhabitants on the night side," Edmund
remarked, "for it must be fearfully cold there--too cold for life to
exist, perhaps; but I have provided against that as far as we are
concerned. Still, one can never tell. There _may_ be inhabitants there,
and at any rate I am going to find out. If there are none, we'll just
stop long enough to take a look at things, and then the car will quickly
transport us to the daylight hemisphere, where life certainly exists. By
landing on the uninhabited side, you see, we shall have a chance to