Chapter 6 



A FIRST ROUND TRIP 

 TO DAVY JONES'S LOCKER 



Jk CERTAIN day and hour and second are approaching 



L\ rapidly when a human face will peer out through 



jL ^ a tiny window and signals will be passed back to 



companions, or to breathlessly waiting hosts on earth, with 



such sentences as: 



"We are above the level of Everest." 

 "Can now see the whole Atlantic coastline." 

 "Clouds blot out the earth." 



"Temperature and air pressure have dropped to minus 

 minus." 



"Can see the whole circumference of Earth." 

 "The moon appears ten times its usual size." 

 "We now . . ." etc. 



Both by daylight and by moonlight I have looked from 

 a plane down on the earth from a height of over four 

 miles, so I know the first kindergarten sensations of such 

 a trip. But until I actually am enclosed within some futur- 

 istic rocket and start on a voyage into interstellar space, 

 I shall never experience such a feeling of complete isola- 

 tion from the surface of the planet Earth as when I first 



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