Then at length Ezariel, wearied at our long delay and our rapt dwelling upon Mars, said: "Let us behold more. Perchance, Mars is not to be compared with the mightier orbs beyond. Let us go on—forward into space to behold new splendours, new miracles of Divine love and power."
We assented to the justice of what he said, and tore ourselves unwillingly from the ruddy orb and its tiny satellite, and went onwards into space. We put our machine into action. The compensating force was set against gravitation. The little moon and the orb of Mars lost their attractive power, and we launched into infinity—far into the black ether, studded with its myriads of distant systems—the huge measureless ocean of the infinite. The satellite Deimos rushed away from us in his course around Mars, and we plunged in our little ether-car into infinity.
Our first work, as before, was to seek for one of the meteoric streams rolling away from the sun. We soon, flying through ether, came on one of these—a long crowd of rocks, poised in space, rolling on through ether around the sun in an ellipse. We attached our car to one of the larger of these, and then swept on with it.
