As we paused there for that moment, Marlin's face grave and intent with purpose, Whitely coolly looking about him, and Randall and I endeavoring to conceal the excitement that pounded at our hearts, the whole scene was imprinted indelibly upon my brain. The crowds and brilliant lights about and beneath us, the great space-flier's faceted bulk looming into the darkness, the colossal buildings of the great world-capital that stretched away in the darkness in all directions, a great mass of shining lights among which swirled a packed sea of humanity gazing up toward our flier--these formed a mighty panorama about us, but in that moment we turned our gaze up from them, up toward the great constellations of summer stars that gleamed in the black skies overhead. Away in the southern skies, not high above the horizon, burned the equatorial constellations, Scorpio and Sagittarius and Capricorn, with the calm white light-globule of Jupiter moving in Scorpio and the bright red dot of Mars and yellow spark of Saturn in Capricorn. But it was toward Sagittarius that we were gazing, for among that constellation's stars there shone also Neptune, invisible to our unaided eyes but almost seen by us, it seemed, in that tense moment. Then we four were moving across the roof toward the looming framework that upheld the space-flier, pausing inside its clear space to face the World President. It was a moment of cosmic drama, that moment in which Earth and the silent peoples of Earth, that had gathered in millions there to watch us, were sending forth four of themselves into the trackless void for the first time, sending them forth with Earth's one chance for life in their hands. The World President, facing us, did not speak, though; did not break the thick silence that seemed to lie over all the mighty city. He reached forth, gripped our hands with his own, grasped them tightly, silently, his steady eyes upon ours, and then stepped back. And then Marlin leading, we were clambering up the framework to the flier's screw-door, passing silently inside and then screwing that great door hermetically shut behind us. That done, we passed across the little vestibule-chamber and through the second screw-door, closing it likewise behind us.