"Our rate of speed has been multiplied by two, and we are rushing through space with frightful rapidity. There is my telescope"—and the professor pointed to the instrument which stood beneath a window in the sloping roof of the car. "Suppose Gilhooly had demolished that! Or what if he had wrecked the oxygen vat, or the anti-temperature reservoir! Gentlemen, I shudder to think of what might have happened." The professor sank down on a copper tank and brushed his perspiring brow with a bandanna handkerchief. I placed the lamp on a box beside the bull’s-eye lantern and reclined on a bale of something or other that lay conveniently near. Meigs and Popham dropped down on a packing case with Gilhooly moored between them, and Markham took up his station on an overturned cask. The loft of the car, stored as it was with odds and ends of science, together with a supply of provisions made ready for us by the farsighted and wonderful man who was conducting this select party into the unknown, was an object of deep solicitude and interest. Out of a desire to tag the various materials understandingly, I lifted the lid of my curiosity and let out a few questions. "If I mistake not," said I, "you mentioned this anti-temperature material once before. What is it, professor?" "A liquid," he answered amiably. "As a discovery, it is outranked only by my anti-gravity compound. An ounce of the fluid in a bath renders the bather impervious to heat or cold, keeping in the animal caloric and keeping out all other extremes of temperature. Some of the mixture was incorporated into the paint with which this car is coated. "Yonder is the water receptacle," and the professor nodded toward a large tank opposite him. "With economy, the supply in that reservoir will last us several months. The food I have provided is of the ready-prepared kind, mostly in tins, with an alcohol lamp for the brewing of tea, coffee, and chocolate. During this hegira into infinity I have omitted nothing, gentlemen, which will minister to your comfort." "You are a very able man, professor," acknowledged Popham. "How long have you been planning this little excursion?" "Ever since I began erecting what the Harlemites were pleased to call my castle," smiled Quinn. "The plan was conceived at the time the success of the manipulations of yourself and your friends seemed assured." "It was your purpose to foil the speculative gentlemen," I struck in, "and so come to the aid of a long-suffering public?" "You hit off the matter finely, Mr. Munn," replied the professor. "That was my purpose." "Could not your anti-temperature mixture have been donated to the poor with beneficial results?" "It is altogether too expensive for general use. I will not conceal from you gentlemen the fact that we are falling sunward. If we make landfall on a planet where the heat is several hundred degrees beyond our earthly powers of endurance, the mixture in question will preserve us."