"You, the members of the World Congress," he said, "have heard that which Dr. Marlin has told you. With this last hope in view, it is unnecessary for me to tell you to bend now all the world's energies toward that one chance, toward the construction of the first space-flier. For since upon that space-flier rests the only chance to save Earth, to prevent the sun's cataclysmic division, which this great ray from Neptune is accomplishing, I have no fear but that in a month from now that space-flier will be completed. Have no fear but that in it, a month from now, Dr. Marlin and his three friends will start on their unprecedented and momentous voyage out from Earth into space; will start on their great flight out through the void--to Neptune!" CHAPTER III The Space-Flier Starts "Three more days and the last work will be done--the space-flier will be finished!" It was Dr. Marlin who spoke and Whitely beside him, nodded. "Three more days," he said, "and we'll be starting." We four, Marlin and Whitely and Randall and myself, were standing on the flat roof of the great World Government building, that gigantic cylindrical white structure that looms two thousand feet into the air at the center of the new world-capital, New York. All around us there stretched the colossal panorama of New York's mighty cylindrical buildings, each rearing skyward from its little green park, extending as far away as the eye could reach, many of them rising on great supporting piers out of the waters of the rivers and bay around the island. In the late afternoon sunlight above them there swirled and seethed great masses of arriving and departing aircraft, unfolding their helicopter-vanes from their long hulls as they paused to rise or descend, seeming to fill the air, while away to the south the great Singapore-New York liner was slanting smoothly down toward the great flat surface of the air-docks. Yet it was to none of these things, nor to the masses of humans that swarmed and crowded in the city's streets far beneath us, that we four were giving our attention at that moment, for we were gazing intently at the great object that stood on the roof before us.