The only thing I'm afraid of is the pull of the Sun, equal to goodness knows how many times the attraction of all the planets put together.

You see, little woman, it's like this," he went on, taking out a pencil and going down on one knee on the deck: "Here's the _Astronef_; there's Venus; there's Mercury; there's the Sun; and there, away on the other side of him, is Mother Earth.

If we can turn that corner safely and without expending too much power we ought to be all right." "And if we can't, what will happen ?" "It will be a choice between morphine and cremation in the atmosphere of the Sun, dear, or rather gradually roasting as we fall towards it." "Then, of course, it will be morphine," she said quite quietly, as she turned away from his diagram and looked at the now fast-increasing disc of the Sun.

A well-balanced mind speedily becomes accustomed even to the most terrible perils, and Zaidie had now looked this one so long and so steadily in the face that for her it had already become merely the choice between two forms of death with just a chance of escape hidden in the closed hand of Fate.
Thirty-six Earth-hours later the glorious golden disc of Venus lay broad and bright beneath them.

Above was the blazing orb of the Sun, nearly half as big again as it appears from the Earth, with Mercury, a round black spot, travelling slowly across it.
"My dear Bird-Folk!" said Zaidie, looking down at the lovely world below them.