Dumbly the wanderers gazed at each other. They could not comprehend it at first. That the projectile, on which their very lives depended in this dead world of the moon, should float away and leave them seemed incredible. Yet they had witnessed it.
"Do--do you really think we saw it--saw the _Annihilator_, Mark?" asked Jack in a low voice, after several minutes had passed.
"Saw it? Of course, we saw it. We've seen the last of it, I'm afraid. But what do you mean?"
"I--I thought maybe I was out of my head, and I only saw a vision," answered Jack. "You know--a sort of mirage. It was real, then?"
"Altogether too real," spoke Andy Sudds grimly. "They didn't see us nor hear us. We're left behind!"
"But can't we do something?" demanded Mark. "Let's start off and try to catch them. They were going slow."
"The wonder to me is how they moved at all," said Jack. "I thought the machinery wouldn't work until we got back with the lost tool."
"Probably the two professors found some way of patching up the motor," was Mark's opinion, and later they found that this was so.
For some time they remained staring in the direction in which the projectile had vanished, as if they might see it reappear, but the great steel shell did not poke its sharp nose in among the towering peaks which hid it from view. Probably it was many miles away now.
"Well," remarked old Andy at length, "we've got to make the best of it. We won't have many more days of light, and we must gather what food we can, put it where we can find it in the dark, and also bring in some water from the black pool. We can store that in some of the stone tables. By turning them upside down they will make good troughs, and it won't freeze. We must work while we have light, for soon the long night will come."
The sight of the projectile going away seemed to take the heart out of all of them, and they did not know what to do. For some time they remained there idly, until Andy roused the boys to a sense of their responsibility by urging upon them the necessity of getting together a store of meat and water.
As they had about exhausted the limited food supply in the ancient restaurant, they sought and found another and larger one. There they had the good fortune to come upon some whole sides of beef and lamb, which were petrified on the outside, but which, when they had blasted off the outer shell of stone, gave them good food.