"Really it isn't good to think about these things, situated as we are.

Fancy, in a single year of Saturn there are nearly 25,000 Earth-days.

Why, we should each of us be about thirty years older when we got round, even if we lived, which, of course, we shouldn't.

By the way, how long could we live for, if the worst came to the worst ?" "Given water, about one Earth-year at the outside;" "but, of course, we shall be home long before that." "If we don't become one of the satellites of Saturn," she replied, "or get dragged away by something into the outer depths of Space." Meanwhile the downward speed of the _Astronef_ had been considerably checked.

The vast circle of the rings seemed to suddenly expand, and soon it covered the whole floor of the Vault of Space.
As she dropped towards what might be called the limit of the northern tropic of Saturn, the spectacle presented by the rings became every minute more and more marvellous--purple and silver, black and gold, dotted with myriads of brilliant points of many-coloured light, they stretched upwards like vast rainbows into the Saturnian sky as the _Astronef's_ position changed with regard to the horizon of the planet.
The nearer they approached the surface, the nearer the gigantic arch of the many-coloured rings approached the zenith.