“I am sure they must be worth seeing, but we have already stayed so long that we must hurry on now,” said the Prince and, thanking the guide for his courtesy and kindness, they quickly donned their wishing-robes and started for Uranus, glad to leave the gloom of Saturn and relieved to get away from a place where they had not heard one merry laugh. CHAPTER VII. Off, off into space sped our quartette with their guide, past heaven’s many-colored star-lamps shining in their vault of blue to light the many worlds that surround as well as our world beneath them. They neither loitered nor stopped at any place on their way for you must remember that they had to travel many million miles to reach Uranus, that planet being way out in space at a distance of from one billion, six hundred and ninety-nine million to one billion, eight hundred and sixty-five million miles from the Sun. It takes this planet about eighty-four years, traveling in its regular path, to make one complete circuit of the Sun. Without their magic robes it would have been impossible to reach this distant island, but with them, and by constantly reiterating their wish to be there, they at last came in sight of this glorious planet and were dazzled by its clear white light which gleamed and flashed with the brilliancy of the purest diamond. “It is well that we are going to the Satellite Island instead of to the planet itself,” said Ione. “I doubt if we could endure its dazzling light for it hurts my eyes even at this distance.” “Strange, eccentric people live there,” said Mercury. “People who on Earth would be thought foolish or insane, for nothing is too strange for them to tolerate, to investigate, or to experiment with, and they are constantly proving that what Earth people sometimes look upon as impossible or merely as the idea of a diseased brain often proves both possible and practical, while the so-called lunatic, the inventor, is here revered as a man of brains and a genius.” The buzz of wheels and drills accompanied with the pounding of hammers was heard on all sides, for everywhere men were working on newly-invented, highly-perfected air-ships, steamers, war-vessels, air brakes, railroad apparatus of all kinds, machinery for hoisting great weights, etc.; while inside the buildings men were busy in laboratories, bending over retorts in which boiling liquids could be seen. These men were so quaintly dressed and so weird-looking that they reminded one of the alchemists of old trying to turn the baser metals into gold. There were wide-awake young men here also, studying the marvelous properties of the newly-discovered radium, which at the present time is worth three hundred thousand times its own weight in gold, and many elements and metals that Earth people know nothing of.