“These are nothing more than great, immovable masonry telescopes, for watching the stars in their courses!” cried the doctor. “Look, there is one perpendicular cylinder for observing just when a star or planet comes directly overhead, and these scores of other cylinders, at different angles, successively afford a view of a given constellation as it rises and then declines.”
“Then they have built a separate masonry telescope, pointing in almost every conceivable direction, instead of having one movable telescope to take any direction,” said I.
The wonderful size and massive construction of these was very striking, rivalling the pyramids of Egypt in their ponderous and enduring character. They were located on a raised plateau, whence the view in all directions was quite unobstructed. We came gently to land in the midst of them. To the rear, whence we had come, I could see the desolate waste of the desert. From the forward window we observed that the peaceful river kept a straight course from the cataract where it plunged over the plateau, through the green valley, between level banks, as far as we could see; and just at the foot of our plateau restfully nestled a city, whose massive and towering structures reached almost to our level. With the aid of the telescope we saw beings moving slowly about. Their form was upright and unwinged, but more than this we could not see. The deliberation and stately dignity of their movements comported perfectly with the majestic city wherein they dwelt.
“At last we have arrived at the boundaries of Martian civilization,” exclaimed the doctor. “We will rest here and test the atmosphere; and if it permits us, we will then venture forth to measure our skill and knowledge against this race of builders. I hazard a guess that we will excel them in many things, for they are apparently only at the perfection of their Stone Age, while we finished that long ago, and have since passed through the Ages of Iron and of Steam, and are now at the dawn of the Era of Magnetism and Gravitation. Our minds are more fertile and elastic, for with this little movable telescope we probably obtain better results than they have done with their years of toiling calculation and patient building.”
“You will be sadly disappointed if they so far excel us that they eat us up at two mouthfuls,” said I. “As they move about yonder, they impress me as being full of power.”
“They are as sluggish as elephants,” he replied. “We are certainly more rapid in thought and action, and it is highly probable that we shall excel them in physical strength, as we have been built for three times as heavy muscular tasks as they.”
“Still, if we cannot make them understand that we come peaceably as friends, they may attempt to kill us as the quickest solution of the question. And they are a whole race against two of us,” said I, just beginning to realize all the difficulties that were yet ahead of us.
“Unless they are a very intelligent and magnanimous race, they will probably attempt to take us prisoners,” he answered. “It is the mark of an enlightened nation to welcome strangers whose powers are unknown. A primitive race fears everything it does not understand, and force is its only argument against a superior intelligence.”
Thereupon I immediately began a thorough overhauling of all the arms and ammunition, while the doctor prepared to test the air. There was a tone of confident exultation in his voice when he spoke again.
“This redness of the air will not trouble us a whit. Look! you can see no tinge of red between here and that huge wall yonder, nor anywhere along the ground as far as you can see. It is so slight a colouring that it is only noticeable in vast reaches of atmosphere, like the blue colour in our own air. See here, where a small cloud obscures the sky there is no ruddy tinge. There is no more colouring-matter in this than there is indigo in our own air. The amount of it is so infinitely small that it will never trouble us. Now, if it only contains oxygen enough, we are sure of life in it.”
“Yes, if they will leave us alive to breathe it,” I added, counting out seventeen cartridges for each rifle.
“The air outside shows a pressure of only eleven, while we have eighteen inside,” he said. “I will bring in the discharging cylinder full of the outer air, and by keeping it upside down the lighter air will remain in it. Then, if a candle flame will burn steadily in it, the oxygen we need is there.”
Suiting the action to the word, he carefully drew in the inverted cylinder, and cautiously brought a lighted candle into it. To our great delight the flame burned for a moment with a brighter, stronger light than it did in the air of the compartment.
“Hurrah!” cried the doctor, as happily as if he had just earned the right to live. “It seems to have more oxygen than our own air, which will make up for the lesser density.”
Then he put the lighted candle in the cylinder, and quickly discharged it outside upon the ground where we could see it. The flame had almost twice the brilliancy that it had had inside.
“Our scientists who have sneered at the possibility of life on Mars, because of its rare atmosphere, have overlooked the simplicity of the problem. They delight in propounding posers for Omnipotence. If a Creator dilutes oxygen with three parts of nitrogen on one planet where conditions make a dense atmosphere, why should He not dilute oxygen with an equal part of nitrogen on a planet where the air is rare? Air is not a chemical compound, but a simple mixture. When a stronger, more life-giving atmosphere is needed, let there be less of the diluting gas. The nitrogen is of no known use, except to weaken the oxygen.”
“Let me out into it, if you say it is all right,” I cried. “I am tired of this bird-cage.”
“Put on the diver’s suit and helmet, and I will weaken the pressure of the air gradually, to prevent bleeding at the nose and ears which a sudden change might cause. When you are used to the low pressure, you can throw off the helmet and try the Martian double-oxygenated air.”
I hurriedly donned the queer, baggy suit and the enormous helmet with the bulging glass eyes, and then connected the two long rubber tubes which sprang from the top with the air pipes which led to the doctor’s compartment. He put in the bulkhead, and I went to the port-hole to unseal it. As I glanced out the little window, I thought I saw a light very near the mica. Was it our candle flame that something had lifted? The thick glass of the helmet blinded me a little, and I approached the window and peered out, coming face to face with a Martian, whose nose was pressed against the mica! What a rounded, smooth, and expressionless face! But what large, deep, luminous eyes!
I sprang back from the window in surprise, but not more quickly than he did. Just then the projectile rolled over slightly with a crunching noise, and I hear the thud of a heavy muffled blow on the doctor’s end. Suddenly he pulled away the bulkhead and whispered to me excitedly:—
“They are all about us outside—dozens of them! They are examining the projectile and trying to break it open. If they strike the windows, it will be too easy.”
The projectile tottered a little again. There was a heaving noise, and one end rose a little from the ground.
“They are trying to carry us off, Doctor,” I cried. “You must turn in the currents and fly away from them.”
The projectile was just then lifted awkwardly, and wavered a little and pitched, as if it were being carried by a throng struggling clumsily all about it. The doctor sprang to his apparatus and turned in four batteries at once. We shot up swiftly in a long curve, and from my window I could see the circle of amazed Martians, standing dumbly with their hands still held up in front of them, as they had been when the projectile left them, while they gazed open-mouthed into the sky at us.