The boys returned with Captain Eaton to the flier. Isaac had taken over helping Ben, since he knew more about this kind of thing than Mr. Klecker. Captain Eaton stood at the door of the air lock. “How are you coming in there?” he asked. Ben gave him a report of their progress. The captain’s face was lined and grave. “You may have to do better than that if we’re going to get out of this alive,” he said. “The moon is very close.” Captain Eaton and the boys spent the time that followed in the observatory dome, watching the steadily growing disk of the moon. It was like a mocking face in the sky, luring the travelers to destruction. No telescope was needed, for the big, rocky satellite of earth appeared to take up the whole heavens. Garry and Patch studied the knife-edged mountaintops, the dry, gray wildernesses that were once thought to be seas, and the mysterious bowl-like craters. Where would the _Carefree_ plunge to her death on the fierce moonscape, Garry wondered. And would he and the others still be aboard her when she crashed? Garry shuddered at the thought. As Captain Eaton had said, Luna was now so frightfully close. The captain made a final check of his instruments. Then he turned abruptly, heading for the door. The boys followed him out. In the flier, moments later, the captain said, “Ben, we’re in our last hour. How do things look in here?” Garry could see Ben’s grimy, tired face turned toward Captain Eaton. “It’ll be close, Captain, awfully close,” Ben answered, and immediately turned back to the network of wiring in the instrument panel. “Anything I can do, Ben?” Captain Eaton asked. “Just hope and pray,” was the reply. “I think it’ll be all up to me now. It’s a one-man job getting these wires hooked up.” “We could take one last look around the ship during this last hour,” Mr. Klecker proposed. “I have some books I want to take along.” “Sorry, Kleck,” Ben said, “but we won’t have room for them. The flier will be crowded as it is. We won’t be able to take belongings of any kind, not even for survival, except for the emergency supplies the flier itself carries. The weight is that critical.” “I don’t want a last look,” Gino spoke up. “Otherwise I might not want to leave the good old _Carefree_, even if she is going to crash.” “Me either,” Isaac Newton added. “I want to remember her the way she was when all of us were very happy and really carefree.” “One thing about Patch and me,” Garry put in. “We came aboard without anything but the clothes we’re wearing, and we’ll be leaving the same way.” “There’s one thing I surely hate to leave behind,” Captain Eaton said. “Katrinka. She’s only a robot, but I’ve had her for so long that she’s almost like a member of the family.” From now on, every minute was beginning to count desperately. Garry wished he could hold back the hands of the clock. He wished he could give Ben an extra hour. But this could not be.