This is our world, a world travelling among worlds, and since I have been able to bring the most delightful of the daughters of Terra with me, I, at any rate, am perfectly happy.

Now, I think it's getting on to supper time, so if your Ladyship will go to your household duties, I'll have a look at my engines and make everything snug for the voyage." The first thing he did when he left the conning-tower was to hermetically close every external opening in the ship.

Then he went and carefully inspected the apparatus for purifying the air and supplying it with fresh oxygen from the tanks in which it was stored in liquid form.
Lastly he descended into the lower hold and turned on the energy of repulsion to its fullest extent, at the same time stopping the engines which had been working the propellers.
It was now no longer necessary or even possible to steer the _Astronef_.
She was directed solely by the repulsive force which would carry her with ever-increasing swiftness, as the attraction of the earth diminished, towards that neutral point at which the attraction of the earth is exactly balanced by the moon.

Her momentum would carry her past this point, and then the "R.

Force" would be gradually brought into play in order to avert the unpleasant consequences of a fall of some forty odd thousand miles.
Andrew Murgatroyd, relieved from his duties in the wheel-house, made a careful inspection of the auxiliary machinery, which was under his special charge, and then retired to his quarters in the after end of the vessel to prepare his own evening meal.
Meanwhile, her Ladyship, with the help of the ingenious contrivances with which the kitchen of the _Astronef_ was stocked, had prepared a dainty little _souper a deux_.