The story of Throckmartin, the happenings I had myself witnessed, were incredible, abnormal, outside the facts of all known science.

I shrank from the inevitable disbelief, perhaps ridicule--nay, perhaps even the graver suspicion that had caused me to seal my lips while on the ship.

Why I myself could only half believe! How then could I hope to convince others?
And as for the third question--I could not take men into the range of such a peril without first warning them of what they might encounter; and if I did warn them-- It was checkmate! If it also was cowardice--well, I have atoned for it.

But I do not hold it so; my conscience is clear.
That fortnight and the greater part of another passed before the ship I awaited steamed into port.

By that time, between my straining anxiety to be after Throckmartin, the despairing thought that every moment of delay might be vital to him and his, and my intensely eager desire to know whether that shining, glorious horror on the moon path did exist or had been hallucination, I was worn almost to the edge of madness.
At last the condensers were in my hands.