CHAPTER XVI Space-Rovers Before us Earth and its little moon gleamed brilliant in the blackness of space when our five hundred space-fliers shot in toward them once again, days later. Again we four held our familiar positions in the four control-chairs of our space-flier, and again Marlin and Randall and Whitely were gazing forth with me as at the head of those massed space-fliers we moved in with slowing speed. It had been for a score of days that we had reeled back through the solar system from Neptune, from its edge, had reeled back from the border line of that vast void of space, in which Triton long days before had become invisible, hurtling out into that void forever. Past perilous Saturn, and past mighty Jupiter, and through the dangers of the asteroidal belt and past red Mars once more we had sped, within us only a strange sick desire for Earth once more; that Earth which we knew, would be shaken even now with unimaginable rejoicings as its peoples saw the acceleration of the sun's spin that had menaced all our universe halted at last with the hurling forth of Triton days before. And now, as we sped in at last toward Earth, it was in mutual silence that we gazed ahead. Once again the outlines of Earth's great continents were coming clear to our eyes as we shot nearer, and once again, now, we were heading toward that side of it that lay in shade, in night, toward the North American continent, to hover out from it, over it, and then to drop down toward it, down through the darkness of Earth's night toward New York. Again beneath us Earth's surface was widening to a vast dark plain as we sank down toward it, and then again through the darkness we had seen, beneath us, the gleaming lights of New York, and were sinking lower toward them. Down--down--until New York stretched beneath us but one colossal bed of brilliance, one vast mass of blazing lights above which there flashed to and fro the innumerable brilliantly-lit aircraft like countless shuttles of light, the giant World Government Building and all the colossal buildings that stretched far away around it burning with unequalled brilliance, and their roofs and the ways between them thronged once more with crowds, such crowds as never yet had the mighty city seen.