The class learned that the nearest planet with an atmosphere, and supposedly habitable, was Venus, which, at inferior conjunction, is distant some twenty-five million miles from Terra, as Quinn called our own planet. Counting out the delays at starting, and in maneuvring to escape the asteroid, our instructor asserted that we should reach Venus in something like seventy-five hours. Markham, Meigs, and Popham, on consulting the bulletin board and finding that seventy hours had passed, began to brush their clothes and tidy themselves against the hour of landing. But they were destined to disappointment. Unable to locate Venus at the point where he had hoped to find it, the professor decided that it was nearing superior conjunction and was somewhere on the other side of the sun. Meigs made a deplorable display of temper. Quinn was a mighty poor astronomer, he said sneeringly, if he could find himself so far wide of the mark on such a simple matter. Meigs further added—with a good deal of childishness as I thought—that the role of a derelict was distasteful to him: a derelict, he argued, was nothing more than a tramp, and he objected to being a tramp, even a celestial tramp. I was out of patience with the man. Admiration for the professor had taken fast hold of me and I would not have him sneered at or maligned. A war of hot words was on between myself and the Wall Street broker when Quinn interfered. "True," said he, "we have missed Venus by a few millions of miles, but we are aimed directly at the orbit of another world, and I can so manipulate the lever as to wait for it, if necessary, and drop upon its surface when it overtakes us." "What world is that?" said Popham, pricking tip his ears. "Mercury," answered the professor. "It is the smallest orb in our solar system and measures some three thousand miles in diameter." "I thought Venus was rather contracted for men with such large schemes as ourselves," remarked Meigs, shaking his head, "but this other planet seems to be smaller still." "I wonder if they have coal mines there?" murmured Popham meditatively. "And if they grow wheat and cotton?" added Meigs. "If Mercury is inhabited," spoke up Markham eagerly, "food will certainly be as necessary there as on the earth. I don’t know, gentlemen, but it strikes me we might fall into worse places." "Poor Gilhooly!" sighed Meigs. "What a pity it will be if the Mercurials prove to have traction interests!" "How long before we shall reach this planet you speak of, professor?" inquired Popham. "Well," answered Quinn thoughtfully, "Mercury is rather slow. It travels along its orbit at the rate of thirty miles per second, while we are moving at one hundred miles. At a rough estimate, I should say we can effect a juncture with the planet in ten hours, although an extra hour may be required for maneuvres to secure a landing."