beyond the air-belt altogether--out into
that bitter void of space, where pressure
there was none.

No wonder that the inventor called this
log the golden egg, for when the magic
Bird had flown its furthest, when all the
little powder-rockets which, exploding
successively, sent it on its way, were spent,
then its dying scream would release the
log from its bursting head.

Back that would come, fluttering to
earth on the wing of a sable parachute,
lit on the way, as it drifted down two
hundred miles, or so, by the glowworm
gleam of a tiny electric battery,--a little
dry cell attached to it!

And this, really, was, as Pemrose had
said, the kernel of the present experiment
to her father, the only witness to
prove that the baby Thunder Bird had,
indeed, "got there", flown higher than
anything earthly had ever ventured before
; and that if a little two-footer in
the shape of a sky-rocket had done so
[[230]]

p229 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p230w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p231

v?