He threw on the power, and for some time watched the bar anxiously, expecting to see it swing back into the vertical, but the angle continually increased. He again reduced the current and searched the heavens for the troublesome body.
"Do you see it yet?" asked Dorothy with concern.
"No, there's apparently nothing near enough to account for all this deflection."
He took out a pair of large night-glasses and peered through them for several minutes.
"Good God! It's a dead sun, and we're nearly onto it! It looks as large as our moon!"
Springing to the board, he whirled the bar into the vertical. He took down a strange instrument, went to the bottom window, and measured the apparent size of the dark star. Then, after cautioning the rest of the party to sit tight, he advanced the lever farther than it had been before. After half an hour he again slackened the pace and made another observation, finding to his astonishment that the dark mass had almost doubled its apparent size! Dorothy, noting his expression, was about to speak, but he forestalled her.
"We lost ground, instead of gaining, that spurt," he remarked, as he hastened to his post. "It must be inconceivably large, to exert such an enormous attractive force at this distance. We'll have to put on full power. Hang onto yourselves as best you can."
He then pushed the lever out to its last notch and left it there until the bar was nearly gone, only to find that the faint disk of the monster globe was even larger than before, being now visible to the unaided eye. Revived, the three others saw it plainly--a great dim circle, visible as is the dark portion of the new moon--and, the power shut off, they felt themselves falling toward it with sickening speed. Perkins screamed with mad fear and flung himself grovelling upon the floor. Margaret, her nerves still unstrung, clutched at her heart with both hands. Dorothy, though her eyes looked like great black holes in her white face, looked DuQuesne in the eye steadily.
"Not yet," he replied in a calm and level voice. "The end will not come for a good many hours, as I have calculated that it will take at least two days, probably more, to fall the distance we have to go. We have all that time in which to think out a way of escape."