The girl smiled sweetly, and uttered the first words Marlin had heard from her lips. "There are so many stones." McGruder laughed hoarsely. Maw checked him with a ferocious look. "Go on, dearie," she urged. "Tell us more?" The girl stared upward, as if visioning something in the distance. Her words slurred together; she seemed only half aware of speaking them. "The world is a stone. There are many stones. So many lonely stones." Marlin again experienced the uncanny sense of chills spiraling up his back--for no reason that he could comprehend. He looked uncertainly from one face to another. All were staring at the Sybil of the strange voyage. Maw spoke with vague conviction. "That means something, and don't you mistake it. We'll have to figger it out. Pearlie don't always talk in plain words fer just ever'body to understand." From behind the huge bank of coils, Elias Thornboldt emerged. He glowered in annoyance. "Go away!" he ordered. "None of you are permitted in this room." He looked them over with sudden awareness and spoke bitterly. "What a crew for the pioneer flight into space! Instead of a distinguished gathering of world-famous scientists and statesmen, what do I have? Criminals! Go! Out of my sight!" As they straggled out, DuChane observed with a show of resentment: "We might remind him that if it wasn't for a device rigged up by some of his despised crew, he wouldn't even know his contraption was off the ground." Burning questions raced through Marlin's mind, but he frankly doubted the scientist's ability to answer them. A genius in his line Thornboldt might be; nevertheless, he was singularly impractical in other directions. One of Marlin's questions related to the persistence of almost normal gravity within the sphere. The explanation, DuChane suggested, must lie in the repulsion plates. While one surface exercised this force, the opposite surface compensated for it by exercising attraction. Though he tentatively accepted this theory for want of a better, Marlin was dissatisfied with it. Another question related to the direction of their flight. Were they speeding toward or away from the sun? Was there danger of crashing into some planet, moon, or meteoric body, and if so could they avoid such a fate? Observations through the periscope might presently solve the question of direction. Possibly Eli had instruments which would help. * * * * * The days that followed settled down to a dull, monotonous routine. There was nothing--almost literally nothing--to do but eat, sleep, and chafe at the helplessness of their position. Lacking any measurement of time in the uniform semi-gloom of the sphere, they established an arbitrary day of twenty-four hours. They slept and ate in accustomed routine and kept track of the days of the week.