When I glanced at the balls next, I saw that their chains lacked an inch of being parallel. They were already moving slowly inward toward each other. I noted that the chains, which ran through the balls and were connected with a small copper plate on the bottom of each, were just long enough to allow the bottom edges to touch, if they were drawn as far toward each other as possible. The doctor's fever was at its very worst, but that did not dampen my hopes. The balls were gradually drawing nearer together. I wished them to be quite close before I made the supreme trial which was to liberate us or leave us prisoners in space for ever! Presently I loosened the knotted sheets which held him to his bed, and lifted the feverish man, as I might have carried a doll, and brought him in full view of the approaching balls. "Doctor, listen now and look," I said firmly and commandingly. "Always stubborn and unbelieving!" he raved. "I must take it to a new country, to America, where they invent things themselves, and are willing to listen, and anxious to try!" "Doctor, don't you know me? It is I, Werner, who helped you. This is a crisis for us! Do you see those approaching balls? You know what they mean! You must save us." "Thou'rt too busy, like all the rest! Why, then, remember that to-morrow will despise those who are so busy with to-day! Opportunity has knocked and listened for thee and thou hast bade her begone!" "Listen, Doctor. I am he who heard you and gave you the pink cheque. I am he who refused three times to go with you and then came at last. I am he who was afraid of the light, who dodged the Moon, and chaffed you about the pump. Do you not remember it all? Come, you are no longer ill. There is work to do. Have you forgotten the leaden balls? See! they are touching each other now, and we are in the dead-line, the neutral spot, the one danger of the trip which you acknowledged." But it was useless. He remembered nothing, his eyes were dim and vacant, and the great brain that had planned all this was overthrown by fever. The experiment had failed and we were lost! I tied him gently back on his bed and turned in desperation to the apparatus, deciding to risk my life to pull out those nine pegs with my hands, one after another. My God! they were already out! Every one of them was hanging by its spiral spring, just above the hole it had filled. The switchboard had opened a little and released them. It was all automatic! The contact of the copper surface of the balls had completed a short circuit which cut the negative current. He had thought of it all, even to this emergency, and the machine could take care of itself! And in the wave of thankfulness and rejoicing which swept over me, I sank on my knees and kissed the forehead of the feverish old man again and again! CHAPTER XIII The Mystery of a Minus Weight