"Well, this is what happened. I'd thought of it ever since I realized that aëroplanes could do it. But about 1920, with Mars coming nearer and nearer, and 1924 the only year that would be possible, I began my calculations. I worked at them steadily for three years; I have the figures still: I will not ask you to read them, but the whole point of my work was this, that there was only one motive power that could possibly get me to Mars before all my provisions gave out, and that power was the pace of the world. An aëroplane can do over two hundred miles an hour, and mine got up to nearly three hundred by means of the propeller alone; and in addition to that I had a rocket attachment that gradually increased my pace to an enormous extent; but the world, which is ninety-three million miles from the sun, goes right round it in a year; and nothing we know on its surface has any pace like that. My petrol and my rocket were merely to pull clear of the earth's attraction, but my journey was made by the force that is moving you in that chair at this moment at something like a thousand miles a minute. One doesn't lose that pace merely by leaving the earth; it remains with one. But my calculations were to direct it; and I found that the pace of the earth would only carry me to Mars when Mars was a bit ahead of us. Unfortunately Mars is never straight ahead, but a bit out to the right, and I had to calculate at what angle I was to aim my plane away to the right of our orbit, in order that the combined pull of my little plane and my rockets, and the vast pace of the earth, should give me the right direction. It had to be as precise as aiming a rifle, with this slight advantage on my side, to make up for

all the forces that grudged my journey, that the target would attract any missile that was going a little too wide.

"But how to get back? That doubled the complexity of my calculations. If the pace of the world sent me forwards, so would the pace of Mars. Mars would be ahead of the world when I started. Where would the pace of Mars send me?"

I saw a flash of doubt even on Jorkens's face at that.

"But it was fairly simple," continued Terner. "Our world has the inside berth, a much shorter journey round the sun at ninety-three million miles than Mars at an average of a hundred and thirty-nine million. It consequently soon passes its neighbor, and I found that just as I was to shoot forward from Earth to Mars, so, by leaving at the right hour, I could shoot forwards from Mars to Earth. As I said, these calculations took me three years, and of course my life depended on them.

"There was no difficulty in taking food for two months. Water was more cumbersome; so I took the great risk of carrying water for only a month, and trusting to find it in Mars. After all, we have seen it there. It seemed a certainty, and yet it was an anxiety all the while, and I drank so sparingly that, as it turned out, I had ten full days' supply when I got to Mars. A far more complicated matter was my supply of compressed air in cylinders, my method of releasing it for use, and my utilization of exhaled air to the utmost that it could be utilized."

I was about to ask some questions about those cylinders when Jorkens interrupted. "You know my theory about Jules Verne and the men in the moon?" he said.

"No," I replied.

"So many things he describes have been done since, and have become commonplace," said Jorkens; "Zeppelins, submarines, and one thing and another; and are described so minutely and vividly; that 'tis my theory, I don't know what you think, that he actually experienced these, especially the trip to the moon, and then told them as fiction."

"No, I never heard that theory," I said.

"Why not?" said Jorkens. "Why shouldn't he? There are innumerable ways of recording events. There's history, journalism, ballads, and many more. People don't believe any of them very devoutly. They may disbelieve fiction too, now and then. But look how often you hear it said 'That's Little Dorrit's home, that's where Sam Weller lived, that's Bleak House,' and so on and so on. That shows you they believe fiction more than most things; so why shouldn't he have left his record in that form? But I am interrupting you. I beg your pardon."

"Never mind," said Terner. "Another thing that perplexed me greatly, and gave rise to immense discomfort, was the loss of the pressure of the atmosphere, to which we are accustomed. I shall always regard this as the greatest of all the handicaps that anyone has to face on a journey from Earth. Indeed without the most careful and thorough binding with bandages one's body would be crushed, by the pressure within it working outwards when the weight of the air was gone. I should have published details of all these things if it hadn't been for that outbreak of disbelief; which would not have occurred if I had a publicity agent."

"Most annoying," said Jorkens.

Terner got up and paced about the room, still smoking as always.