The earth and the moon had been left more than a hundred million miles behind in the depths of Space, and the _Astronef_ had crossed this immense gap in eleven days and a few hours; but this apparently inconceivable speed was not altogether due to the powers of the Space-Navigator, for her commander had taken advantage of the passage of the planet along its orbit towards that of the earth. Hence, while the _Astronef_ was approaching Mars with ever-increasing speed, Mars was travelling towards the _Astronef_ at the rate of sixteen miles a second. The great silver disc of the earth had diminished until it looked only a little larger than Venus appears to human eyes. In fact the planet Terra is to the inhabitants of Mars what Venus is to us, the Star of the Morning and the Evening. Breakfast on the morning of the twelfth day--or, since there is neither day nor night in Space, it would be more correct to say the twelfth period of twenty-four earth-hours as measured by the chronometers--was just over, and Redgrave was standing with Zaidie in the forward end of the deck-chamber, looking downwards at a vast crescent of rosy light which stretched out over an arc of more than ninety degrees. Two tiny black spots were travelling towards each other across it. "Ah," she said, going towards one of the telescopes, "there are the moons. I was reading my Gulliver last night. I wonder what the old Dean would have given to be here, and see how true his guess was. Are we going to land on them?" "I don't see why we shouldn't," he said. "I think we might find them convenient stopping places; besides, you know this isn't only a pleasure-trip. We have to add as much as we can to the sum of human knowledge, and so of course we shall have to find out whether the moons of Mars have atmospheres and inhabitants." "What, people living on those wee things!" she laughed. "Why they're only about thirty or forty miles round, aren't they?" "About," he said, "but then that's just one of the points I want to solve; and as for life, it doesn't always mean people, you know. We are only a few hundred miles away from Deimos, the outer one, and he is twelve thousand five hundred miles from Mars. I vote we drop on him first and let him carry us towards Phobos. And then when we've examined him we'll pay a visit to his brother and take a trip round Mars on him. Phobos does the journey in about seven hours and a half, and as he's only three thousand seven hundred miles above the surface, we ought to get a very good view of our next stopping-place." "That ought to be quite delightful," said Zaidie. "But how commonplace you are getting, Lenox. That's so like you Englishmen. We are doing what has only been dreamt of before, and here you are talking about moons and planets as if they were railway stations."