Intensify my feelings fourfold as I stood looking into the leveled revolvers of those two men, then spread out the two seconds to cover a half hour. In this way only can I describe my state of mind while we fought for a safe landing on the planet Mercury. Cries of wonder and apprehension echoed to me from overhead. Above them I heard the shrill voice of the professor: "Zero." "Zero," I repeated, throwing the lever clear over. There followed a jolt as the screens covered the cubes and shut off their energy. Instantly there came the sickening sensation of a fall, accompanied by a rush of displaced air that roared and bellowed all about the car. "Forty-five!" shrieked Quinn. "Forty-five!" I yelled, throwing the lever half over. Then we caught ourselves with a suddenness that threw me to my knees. We were moving upward again—I could feel the steel floor rising under me. "Twenty!" came down from above. "Twenty," I answered hoarsely, struggling erect and shifting the lever. I felt that we were still rising, but slowly. The professor was juggling with an unknown atmosphere, and on the success of his judgment depended our lives. "Fifteen!" "Fifteen!" and over went the lever for five degrees. We were swinging stationary in mid-air. From the window by the switch board I looked outward and downward with bulging eyes. A dazzling glow covered peak and plain, and I turned away that my sight might not be blinded to the lever numbers. "Ten!" cried the professor. "Ten it is!" and I threw the switch to the number given. Then again we dropped, but slowly, very slowly. "Five!" I repeated the order, and again the air rushed against the blunt base of the car, yet not so fiercely as before. Then, all of a sudden, I felt a grip of fingers about my throat, and I was hauled from the lever and thrown back on the floor. Gilhooly had a knee on my breast and was strangling me with fingers of steel. The fire of an insane purpose gleamed in his eyes, and he seemed possessed of the strength of a dozen demons. I struggled, but I might as well have tried to rise under the thousand-tons pressure of a hydraulic press. "Ten!" cried Quinn. I did not answer—I could not, for my tongue was lolling between my lips. "Ten!" screamed Quinn. "_Ten—or we’re lost!_" A groan, hardly audible, escaped my gasping throat. I heard a frantic clamor above and then there was such a jar and crash as I hope I shall never experience again. All tangible life slipped away from me, and I collapsed into an unconsciousness that I felt might be death itself. *CHAPTER VII.* *FACING A MERCURIAL STORM.* That our lives were preserved and the car saved from destruction was due to two circumstances, one of them most peculiar and of far-reaching importance.