After that the time passed quietly. We ate our meals and went to bed and
rose as regularly as if we had been at home. In one respect, however,
things were very different from what they were on the earth. We had no
night! The sun shone continually, although the sky was black and always
glittering with stars. None of us needed to be told by our conductor that
this was due to the fact that we no longer had the shadow of the earth to
make night for us when the sun was behind it. The sun was now never
behind the earth, or any other great opaque body, and when we wished to
sleep we made an artificial night, for our special use, by closing all
the shutters. And there was no atmosphere about us to diffuse the
sunlight, and so to hide the stars. We kept count of the days by the aid
of a calendar clock; there seemed to be nothing that Edmund had
forgotten. And it was a delightful experience, the wonder of which grew
upon us hour by hour. It was too marvelous, too incredible, to be
believed, and yet--_there we were!_
Once the idea suddenly came to me that it was astonishing that we had not
long ago perished for lack of oxygen.
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