Well, thank God for that, sir, for in a few minutes more we should have been cinders!" The astronomer smiled again as he took the paper back.

Meanwhile the _Astronef_ was rushing upward like a meteor through the clouds.

In ten minutes the limits of the Jovian atmosphere were passed.

Stars and suns and planets blazed out of the black vault of Space, and the great disc of the World that Is to Be once more covered the floor of Space beneath them--an ocean of cloud, covering continents of lava and seas of flame, the scene of the natal throes of a world which some day will be.
They passed Io and Europa, which changed from new to full moons as they sped by towards the Sun, and then the golden yellow crescent of Ganymede also began to fill out to the half and full disc, and by the tenth hour of Earth-time, after they had risen from its surface, the _Astronef_ was once more lying beside the gate of the Crystal City.
At midnight on the second night after their return, the ringed shape of Saturn, attended by his eight satellites, hung in the zenith magnificently inviting.

The _Astronef's_ engines had been replenished after the exhaustion of their struggle with the might of Jupiter.