"We can be back among them in a few hours with absolute safety," interrupted her husband, catching at the suggestion. "I've told you the truth about the bare possibility of getting back to the Earth. It's only a chance at best, and even if we pass the Sun we may not have force enough left to prevent the _Astronef_ from being smashed to dust or burnt up in the atmosphere. After all we might do worse----" "What would you do if you were alone, Lenox?" she said, interrupting him in turn. "I should take my chance and go on. After all home's home and worth a struggle. But you, dear----" "I'm you, and so I take the same chances as you do. Besides, we're not perfect enough for a world where there isn't any sin. We should probably get quite miserable there. No, home's home, as you say." "Then home it is, dear!" he replied. The resplendent hemisphere of the Love-Star sank swiftly down into the vault of Space, growing smaller and dimmer as the _Astronef_ sped towards the little black spot on the face of the Sun, which to them was like a buoy marking a place of utter and hopeless shipwreck in the Ocean of Immensity. The chronometer, still set to Earth-time, had now begun to mark the last hours of the _Astronef's_ voyage. She was not only travelling at a speed of which figures could give no comprehensible idea, but the Sun, Mercury, and the Earth were rushing towards her with a compound velocity, composed of the movement of the Solar System through Space and of the movement of the two planets round the Sun. Murgatroyd was at his post in the engine-room. Redgrave and Zaidie had gone into the conning-tower, perhaps for the last time. For good fortune or evil, for life or death, they would see the end of the voyage together. "How far yet, dear?" she said, as Venus began to slip away behind them, rising like a splendid moon in their wake. "Only sixty million miles or so, a matter of a few hours, more or less--it all depends," he replied, without taking his eyes off the compass. "Sixty millions! Why I feel almost at home again." "But we have to turn the corner of the street yet, dear, and after that there's a fall of more than twenty-five million miles on to the more or less kindly breast of Mother Earth." "A fall! It does sound rather awful when you put it that way; but I am not going to let you frighten me. I believe Mother Earth will receive her wandering children quite as kindly as they deserve."