A Honeymoon in Space by George Griffith Page B

of homes. Lenox, when we get back, you and the States and the British Government will have to build a fleet of these ships, and then the Anglo-Saxon race must say to the rest of the world—”
    â€œThe millennium has come and its presiding goddess is Zaidie Redgrave. If you don’t stop fighting, disband your armies and turn your fleets into liners and cargo boats, she’ll proceed to sink your ships and decimate your armies until you learn sense. Is that what you mean, dear?” laughed Redgrave, as he slipped his left hand round her waist and laid his right on the searchlight-switch to reply to the message.
    â€œDon’t be ridiculous, Lenox. Still, I suppose that is something like it. They wouldn’t deserve anything else if they were fools enough to go on fighting after they knew we could wipe them out.”
    â€œExactly. I perfectly agree with your Ladyship, but still sufficient unto the day is the Armageddon thereof. Now I suppose we’d better say goodbye and be off.”
    â€œAnd what a goodbye,” whispered Zaidie, with an upward glance into the starlit ocean of Space which lay above and around them. “Goodbye to the world itself! Well, say it, Lenox, and let us go; I want to see what the others are like.”
    â€œVery well then; goodbye it is,” he said, beginning to jerk the switch backwards and forwards with irregular motions, sending short flashes and longer beams down towards the earth.
    The Empire City read the farewell message.
    â€œThank God for the peace. Goodbye for the present. We shall convey the joint compliments of John Bull and Uncle Sam to the peoples of the planets when we find them. Au revoir! ”
    The message was answered by the blaze of the concentrated searchlights from land and sea all directed on the Astronef . For a moment her shining shape glittered like a speck of diamond in the midst of the luminous haze far up in the sky, and then it vanished for many an anxious day from mortal sight.
    A few moments later Zaidie pointed over the stern and said:
    â€œLook, there’s the moon! Just fancy—our first stopping place! Well, it doesn’t look so very far off at present.”
    Redgrave turned and saw the pale yellow crescent of the new moon swimming high above the eastern edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
    â€œIt almost looks as if we could steer straight to it right over the water—only, of course, it wouldn’t wait there for us,” she went on.
    â€œOh, it’ll be there when we want it, never fear,” he laughed, “and, after all, it’s only a mere matter of about two hundred and forty thousand miles away, and what’s that in a trip that will cover hundreds of millions? It will just be a sort of jumping-off place into Space for us.”
    â€œStill, I shouldn’t like to miss seeing it,” she said. “I want to see what there is on that other side which nobody has ever seen yet, and settle that question about air and water. Won’t it just be heavenly to be able to come back and tell them all about it at home? But just fancy me talking stuff like this when we are going, perhaps, to solve some of the hidden mysteries of Creation, and, may be, look upon things that human eyes were never meant to see,” she went on, with a sudden change in her voice.
    He felt a little shiver in the arm that was resting upon his, and his hand went down and caught hers.
    â€œWell, we shall see a good many marvels, and, perhaps, miracles, before we come back, but why should there be anything in Creation that the eyes of created beings should not look upon? Anyhow, there’s one thing we shall do I hope, we shall solve once and for all the great problem of the worlds.
    â€œLook, for instance,” he went on, turning round and pointing to the west, “there is Venus following the sun. In a few days I hope you and I will be standing on her surface, perhaps trying to talk by signs with her