When, however, he tested the steelonium bomb, labeled "Permagatol," he found it absolutely empty. The discovery nearly paralyzed him. His head swam and he was forced to sit down to keep from slumping over in the gravitation-less flyer. This last blow was almost too much. His cup of hope, that Alice could be brought back to life, had been snatched out of his hands. Without the Permagatol, it was impossible to save her. There was nothing to keep the beautiful dead body from disintegrating. While the Radium-K Bromide stayed the process to a certain extent, the respiratory organs could only be saved by means of the precious Permagatol. Could he use a substitute gas? It was a dangerous experiment to make, but he had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. He threw himself with a frenzy into the work and in six hours had compounded a gas that, in its general structure and atomic weight, came close to the properties and characteristics of Permagatol. The gas he evolved was Armagatol, and while he knew that it had never been used for the purpose for which he intended it, he felt justified in risking the experiment. After the air had been drawn from the glass case, he immediately introduced the Armagatol into it. The change in Alice's face shocked him, as he watched the Armagatol fill the case. The green gas-vapors cast an unearthly green pallor over her countenance, and the ghastliness was further enhanced by the deathly pallor of her face. He arranged the electric heating pads around Alice's body, and inspected the registering instruments. It had now become necessary to take his bearings. He found to his amazement that instead of being close to Mars, as he had expected, he was moving away from that body. The two space flyers, although their machinery was not working, had been moving rapidly, due to the gravitational action of the nearest large celestial body. This body was not Mars, however, but Earth. Although, at the time of the encounter with Llysanorh', the two machines had been slightly nearer to Mars, the larger mass, and consequently the stronger attraction of the Earth had overcome the pull that Mars exerted on the machines, and as a result the machines were now being drawn toward Earth. A glance at the celestial chart revealed to Ralph that Earth and Mars would be in opposition the next day and that he was separated from Earth by twenty-two million miles. He would have to move faster than Earth if he were to overtake that body. Besides, he was twenty-two million miles to the east of the planet. The Earth was traveling 65,533 miles per hour in its orbit. A simple calculation indicated that, by forcing his space flyer to the utmost, or 90,000 miles an hour, he could not hope to reach Earth in less than fifty days, as he could only gain about 24,400 miles an hour on Earth.