"And you brought back nothing at all?" I asked. For there was the ring of truth in his story and I was hoping it could be proved.

"Nothing except an old match-box broken in a very peculiar way. And, if you can't see what broke it, that will prove nothing to you either. I'll show it to you later."

"What broke it?" I asked.

"When we come to it," he said, "you shall tell me. I'll show it you and you shall see for yourself."

Jorkens nodded his head.

"Well, I didn't go gathering flowers or anything else, except for those twigs that I lost. I ought to have, I know. And perhaps I was in too much of a hurry to get away when I saw that second lot in the distance. But I had seen the faces of the beasts, and they were all I was thinking of. I had a large camera, and took a few shots at the landscape, which ought to have been conclusive. But I didn't get it home. I'll tell you what happened to that afterwards.

"Well, all that incredulity here was the last thing that I thought of; and the mounds of those loathsome beasts were filling all my imagination. I hurried my calculations and was off, homewards towards the sun. I saw several more of those chicken-runs as I went; but little else besides forest, and plains of mud. I might have seen more if the sun had not been in my eyes. Very soon Mars turned a lovely cobalt blue, and the beauty of it made me even sadder.

"Then began again that long weary day, with sun and 'plane apparently motionless. Engines shut off, no sound, no movement, no weather; and the weeks dragging by with no sign that time was passing at all. It is an awful place; time seems dead there.

"Again I began to despair, nearly to death; when suddenly I saw ahead of me, like a swan's feather all alone in Space, the familiar curved shape of a world, a quarter lit by the sun. There is no mistaking a planet. And yet, rejoiced as I was to be nearing home, one thing strangely perplexed me: I seemed to be ten days ahead of my time. What amazing luck, I thought, that part of my calculations must have been wrong, and yet I had not missed Earth.

"I had not seen it as soon as I had seen Mars, on account of its being so near to the line of the sun. Consequently it was large when I did se it. As it grew larger and larger I tried to work out what continent I was approaching, not that it greatly mattered, as I had petrol enough to make a good landing unless I was very unlucky. Though it couldn't be where I had expected to land, as I was so much ahead of my time. Well, I couldn't make out anything as most of the orb was in darkness. And when I got into that darkness it was a blessed thing after the glare of the sun in that endless day. For there is no light there really, only glare. In that awful loneliness there is nowhere for light to fall; it just goes by you in a glare. I got into the darkness at last and switched on my engines, and flew till I came to the very first edge of twilight that gave light enough to land, for I was tired of staring at the sun. And that was how I came to make a bad landing, with my wheels deep down in a marsh. It was not that that whitened my hair. I felt my scalp go cold, and my hair whitened; but it was not being stuck in a marsh that whitened it. It was the knowledge I had, the very moment I landed, that I was on the wrong planet. I should have seen it before, coming down, although in the dark: the whole thing was much too small. But I saw it now: I was on the wrong planet and didn't even know which. The awful concentrated loneliness of the accident at first froze my thoughts. And, when I did begin to think, all was bewilderment. What lay inside of Mars? Only Earth, Venus, and Mercury. The size pointed at Mercury. But I was ahead of my time, not behind it. Or was my chronometer all wrong? But the sun had appeared no larger, five minutes ago than it appears from Earth. In fact rather smaller. Perhaps, I thought, it was Venus in spite of this; though it was too small even for Venus. And the asteroids were behind me, outside Mars.

"What I did not know then was how Eros (and perhaps others too), on account of the tilt of the planes of some of the asteroids, comes at certain times within fourteen million miles of us. So that though his path round the sun lies outside Mars, whose nearest is thirty-five million, Eros at certain times is Earth's nearest neighbor. Of this I knew nothing; and yet, when I began to think reasonably, the facts at last spoke for themselves: I was on a strayed or an unknown asteroid. It should be easier to examine such a body when one is actually on it, with its continents all spread round one, than when it appears no more than a small pin's head in a telescope. But the calm, the safety, above all that feeling of Home, which lie about the astronomer, are aids to accurate thought which cannot be estimated.

"I saw that I had blundered when leaving Mars, making some wrong calculation in my hurry, and was very lucky to have got anywhere. Who can say when he thinks of all the things he might have become, who can say as I can that I nearly became a comet?"

"Very true," said Jorkens.

Terner said this with the utmost seriousness. The danger had evidently been near to him.

"When I realized where I must be," continued Terner, "I set to work to pull my 'plane out of the marsh, standing up to my knees in it. It was easier than I thought. And, when I had got it up I lifted it over my head and carried it about nine miles on to good dry land."

"But an aëroplane?" I said. "What does it weigh?"

"Over a ton," said Terner. "And you carried it?"