Those words of Marlin, I think, steadied us all in the whirling rush of activities that was ours during the next, the last, three days. For in those three days, as the last generator approached completion and was completed and installed, we four were ceaselessly busy with the last preparations for our start. Whitely, who had designed and was to have complete charge of the space-flier's great generators, was busy inspecting and testing those generators. Randall and I were familiarizing ourselves with the flier's controls, for we two were to alternate in controlling its flight through the void. Marlin, who would not only command our little party but would have charge of the astronomical equipment in it, and would chart our course out through the trackless gulf, was occupied beside numberless other tasks in plotting, with the assistance of some of the world's foremost astronomers, that course that we must follow now. So that as there came upon us the last day of June 16th, that day upon whose night we were to start our momentous journey, it found us working still upon our last preparations. By the time that day and night had come, too, it found the excited expectation of the world keyed up to an agonized point. For days, indeed, great crowds had swirled about the base of the huge World Government building, on whose roof we worked, and, as the last hours approached, it seemed that all the world's thoughts, indeed, were concentrated upon that roof, upon the great gleaming space-flier on it. For all knew that upon that flier and upon the mission which we four were attempting in it depended the one chance of escape for Earth. For steadily, remorselessly, the sun was spinning still ever faster, the great pushing force-ray from Neptune still stabbing across the solar system to spin the sun on and on with greater and greater rotatory speed, until it divided and doomed Earth and its sister-planets. So that those last days, those last hours, seemed to all the world as to ourselves to pass with nerve-tearing slowness.