CHAPTER XIV

"Five hundred million miles from the Earth, and forty-seven million miles from Jupiter," said Redgrave as he came into breakfast on the morning of the twenty-eighth day after leaving Venus. During this brief period the _Astronef_ had recrossed the orbits of the Earth and Mars and had passed through that marvellous region of the Solar System, the Belt of the Asteroides. Nearly a hundred million miles of their journey had lain through this zone in which hundreds and possibly thousands of tiny planets revolve in vast …