until we are out of the labyrinth. It's our only chance, for we couldn't
possibly clamber over the hummocky ice and drag the car with us."

"Why not leave the car here?" asked Henry.

Edmund looked at him and smiled.

"Do you want to stay on Venus all your life?" he asked. "I thought you
didn't like it well enough for that. How could we ever get back to the
earth without the car? I can repair the mechanism as soon as I can find
certain substances, which I am sure exist on this planet as well as on
the earth. But it is no use looking for them in this icy wilderness. No,
we can never abandon the car. We must take it with us, and the only
possible way to transport it is with the aid of the coming river."

"But how will you manage to float?" I asked.

"The car, being air-tight, will float like a buoy."

"But the natives, will you abandon them?"

"God forbid. I'll contrive a way for them."

The effects of libration on Venus were not new to me, but they were to
Jack and Henry, who had never studied such things, and they expressed
much doubt about Edmund's plan, but I had confidence in it from the
beginning, and it turned out just as he had predicted, as things always
did. Every twenty-four hours we saw, with thankful hearts, that the sun
had perceptibly risen, and as it rose, the sky gradually cleared, while
the sunbeams, falling uninterruptedly, grew hotter and hotter. Soon we no