an order into a nearby tube, and the ship slowly slanted
toward the ground. He was studying these new specimens, as McGuire
observed, but the lieutenant paid little attention; his eyes were too
thoroughly occupied in resolving into recognizable units the picture
that flowed past them so quickly. He was accustomed, this pilot of the
army air service, to reading clearly the map that spreads beneath a
plane, but now he was looking at an unfamiliar chart.

"Fields," he said, and pointed to squared areas of pale reds and blues;
"though what it is, heaven knows. And the trees!--if that's what they
are." The ship went downward where an area of tropical denseness made a
tangled mass of color and shadow.

"Trees!" Lieutenant McGuire had exclaimed, but these forests were of
tree-forms in weirdest shapes and hues. They grew to towering heights,
and their branches and leaves that swayed and dipped in the slow-moving
air were of delicate pastel shades.

"No sunlight," said the Professor excitedly; "they have no direct rays
of the sun. The clouds act as a screen and filter out actinic rays."

McGuire did not reply. He was watching the countless dots of color that
were people--people who swarmed here as they had in the city; people
working at these great groves, crouching lower in the fields as the ship
swept close; people everywhere in teeming thousands. And like the
vegetation about them, they, too, were tall and thin, attenuated of form
and with skin like blood-stained ash.

"They need the sun," Sykes was repeating; "both vegetable and animal
life. The plants are deficient in chlorophyl--see the pale green of the
leaves!--and the people need vitamines. Yet they evidently have electric
power in abundance. I could tell them of lamps--"

* * * * *

His comments ceased as McGuire lurched heavily against him. The flyer
had taken note of the tense, attentive attitude of the one in scarlet;
the man was leaning forward, his eyes focused directly upon the
scientist's face; he seemed absorbing both words and emotions.

How much could he comprehend? What power had he to vision the
idea-pictures in the other's mind? McGuire could not know. But "Sorry!"
he told Sykes; "that was clumsy of me." And he added in a whisper, "Keep
your thoughts to yourself; I think this bird is getting them."

Buildings flashed under them, not massed solidly as in the city, yet
spaced close to one another as if every foot of gr