"You were just in time. Another five minutes would have been too late," she answered weakly. "But I had a great trip." "You see," added Bennie, "we were afraid you might run out of air and get lost, so we thought if we made a short flight in the same general direction we should be nearer in case of accidents, and the Ring would guide you back to us. Anyhow, our tractor is running strong again, and we're all ready to start for Medusa--as soon as we have had our breakfast." "Or dinner," corrected Burke. "Or supper," added Atterbury. Rhoda smiled faintly. "Will someone please tell me what time it is up here?" she asked plaintively. Bennie shrugged his shoulders. "The days and nights on the moon are each three hundred and fifty-four hours long--almost fifteen of our terrestrial days." "My!" whistled Atterbury. "What do you suppose a day's pay amounts to? I'd hate to be a labor-leader on the moon working for shorter hours!" "Yes--trying to get a two-hundred-and-ninety-nine-hour day!" added Burke. "I suppose the Selenites had lunch at half after one hundred and seventy-seven," commented Rhoda, carrying on the joke. "That would be midday," assented Bennie. "But probably they had tea along about two hundred and forty-five and a late supper around three hundred and nineteen." "Makes me hungry to think of it!" said Rhoda. "What's the matter with tea now? I'm ravenous!" She looked at her wrist-watch. "Heavens--it's nearly nine hours since we left Washington!" "And we've only come about two hundred and fifty thousand miles!" groaned Burke. "And with Medusa scorching toward the earth at ninety miles a second, we ought to get busy!" ejaculated Bennie. "But we surely can wait long enough for a cup of tea," urged Rhoda. "Please, Mr. Atterbury, do hustle out the tea-things!" While the kettle was getting ready to boil, Rhoda and Bennie stood by the window and took a last look at the surface of the moon. But no longer did she regard its tumbled monoliths, its spires, crests, and craters either with interest or pleasure. On the contrary, her hand sought Bennie's, and she shuddered as she gazed across that barren plain where no human thing of itself could live. "Thank God!" she murmured. "I should have hated to die out there, in that vast cemetery--that Valley of Death." He pressed her hand--now so warm, yet so cold only a few minutes before. "Yes," he answered. "Yet, isn't it beautiful, with its blazing lights and black-velvet shadows? We shall never see anything like it again--unless we make another trip to the moon." "The sun doesn't seem to move at all," she hazarded. "It's because the days are so long," he replied. "The sun's motion would be hardly perceptible on the earth if our days were ten times longer than they are." "But what nights!" she ejaculated.