The ten hours that followed were hours of great anxiety and feverish labor. Believing that my nerves were the steadiest, the professor placed me at the telescope to act as pilot while he served as engineer and manipulated the lever. The responsibilities of my position so worked upon me that I had no time for the glories of the planet we were endeavoring to intercept. Through the telescope I saw huge mountains and broad plains, but they were blurred over with a reddish light and the lesser details of topography were lost. When five hours were gone, the professor left the lever and came upstairs to have a look through the telescope for himself. "You have done very well indeed, Mr. Munn," he was pleased to say, "but I think that I had better take this post from now on, while you go below and station yourself at the switch board. The slightest mismanagement, when the critical moment arrives, might hurl us against Mercury with a force that would result in annihilation. "The lever turns in a half circle, as you may know. The arc is divided into spaces, numbered from zero to ninety. I will call down to you the number to which you must throw the lever; you will repeat the number back to me, and instantly obey my order." "Trust me, sir," said I. But the professor was loath to let me go without still further impressing upon me the importance of the work before us. "In order to alight safely, Mr. Munn," he continued, "we must graduate the power of the anti-gravity cubes to the Mercurial atmosphere. By proceeding intelligently in the matter, we shall make the car weigh slightly more than the atmosphere we encounter; then, when we are about to land, we will let the car just counterbalance the ’pull’ of the planet and there will not be the slightest jar." "I understand, professor," I answered and went downstairs. Markham, Meigs, and Popham ascended to the upper chamber, this position bringing them a few feet nearer the goal of our desires as well as giving them a point of vantage from which to watch events. Gilhooly was the only one besides myself in the lower room; he was kneeling on the divan writing imaginary stock quotations on the steel wall with the point of his finger. For four hours or more the professor called out for slight variations in the speed of the car, but in the main the lever was held on the number, 90, which gave a maximum velocity. The tension of the minutes ushering in the last hour of the ten is beyond my power to describe. Once in my evil days I manipulated the tumblers of a combination and pulled open a vault door. Behind the door stood two men with revolvers. For two seconds I stared agape at the trap which I had sprung upon myself; and when I got away I had a bullet in my shoulder.