nterests, my desires, my hopes were all ahead of me on a new planet.
And what was waiting for me on Mars? Discovery, riches perhaps, and a
measure of fame when I returned. Then I thought of the numberless
problems that the next few weeks must solve for us. Would there be
intelligent inhabitants on Mars? Would they be in the forms of men or
beasts? Would they be civilized or savage? Would they speak a language,
and how could we learn to communicate with them? Would they have foods
suitable to us; indeed, would the very air they breathed be fit to
sustain our lives? Should we find them peaceable, or, if warlike, should
we be able to cope with them?

These thoughts were interrupted by the doctor, who called feebly to me
to come up. "Don't eat any of the peas," he said weakly. "There was a
queer taste about them, and they have made me deathly sick."

He was very wretched, and grew rapidly worse. I immediately saw that it
was a severe case of poisoning, and I did everything I could to relieve
him, but he groaned in agony for several hours. Finally he fell asleep,
but his rest was disturbed by fits of delirium, in which he raved wildly
in German mixed with English. As he slept I had time to think the matter
over carefully. After all, it was a thing which required only simple
remedies, and I had administered them. It was only a question of a
little nursing and a careful diet, and he would be well again.

But his fever increased and his delirium became more frequent, and I
began to appreciate that the derangement incident to the poisoning had
prepared the way for a more serious illness. During his ravings I caught
a glimpse of the struggling and ambitious side of his nature, which he
always so carefully repressed.

Once I heard him mumble this to himself in German: "Kepler perceived a
little, he saw dimly; Newton comprehended the easy half; but Anderwelt,
Anderwelt of Heidelberg, grasped the hidden meaning!"

In spite of all my attentions (I did not then understand the nature of
Space Fever, of course), he was growing steadily worse, and I was
becoming desperate. I could not afford to have him ill long. The
currents would probably continue to work fairly well until it became
necessary to reverse them, and that time was not far off. Unless they
were reversed exactly at the right moment, we might fall into the
neutral spot and be held there for ever. Even if I managed to stop the
negative current, and succeeded in falling tow