Krag flashed the light on to the door of the car, to enable them to enter.  Before doing so, Maskull gazed sternly once again at the gigantic, far-distant star, which was to be their sun from now onward.  He frowned, shivered slightly, and got in beside Nightspore.  Krag clambered past them onto his pilot’s seat.  He threw the flashlight through the open door, which was then carefully closed, fastened, and screwed up.

He pulled the starting lever.  The torpedo glided gently from its platform, and passed rather slowly away from the tower, seaward.  Its speed increased sensibly, though not excessively, until the approximate limits of the earth’s atmosphere were reached.  Krag then released the speed valve, and the car sped on its way with a velocity more nearly approaching that of thought than of light.

Maskull had no opportunity of examining through the crystal walls the rapidly changing panorama of the heavens.  An extreme drowsiness oppressed him.  He opened his eyes violently a dozen times, but on the thirteenth attempt he failed.  From that time forward he slept heavily.

The bored, hungry expression never left Nightspore’s face.  The alterations in the aspect of the sky seemed to possess not the least interest for him.

Krag sat with his hand on the lever, watching with savage intentness his phosphorescent charts and gauges.

Chapter 6

JOIWIND

It was dense night when Maskull awoke from his profound sleep.  A wind was blowing against him, gentle but wall-like, such as he had never experienced on earth.  He remained sprawling on the ground, as he was unable to lift his body because of its intense weight.  A numbing pain, which he could not identify with any region of his frame, acted from now onward as a lower, sympathetic note to all his other sensations.  It gnawed away at him continuously; sometimes it embittered and irritated him, at other times he forgot it.

He felt something hard on his forehead.  Putting his hand up, he discovered there a fleshy protuberance the size of a small plum, having a cavity in the middle, of which he could not feel the bottom.  Then he also became aware of a large knob on each side of his neck, an inch below the ear.

From the region of his heart, a tentacle had budded.  It was as long as his arm, but thin, like whipcord, and soft and flexible.

As soon as he thoroughly realised the significance of these new organs, his heart began to pump.  Whatever might, or might not, be their use, they proved one thing that he was in a new world.

One part of the sky began to get lighter than the rest.  Maskull cried out to his companions, but received no response.  This frightened him.  He went on shouting out, at irregular intervals—­ equally alarmed at the silence and at the sound of his own voice.  Finally, as no answering hail came, he thought it wiser not to make too much noise, and after that he lay quiet, waiting in cold blood for what might happen.