side, though there were no
clouds. The sky was a perfectly cloudless dull red, and the coppery sun
was shining almost overhead. His orb looked less than two-thirds the
size it did from the Earth, and one could look at its duller light
fixedly without hurting the eyes. Phobos was also faintly visible,
steering his backward course across the ruddy sky. The thermometer
showed a temperature just above freezing, but I was perfectly warm
within the diver's suit and its envelope of air. The red haze and utter
lack of breeze added a deceptive appearance of sultry heat.

I was gazing back toward the Gnomons, when suddenly a group of the
Martians we had first seen came around a turn of the road and over a
knoll into full view of us. They were plainly surprised beyond all
measure by my strange appearance. My puffed and corpulent figure, my
bulging face of glass, my two long rubber tentacles extending back into
my shell, must have made them think I was a very curious animal! Also
they were probably surprised at seeing any living thing come out of the
mass, which they must have thought had fallen from their moon, for she
was always shying things at them. And I now had my first chance to
study their appearance closely.

"Doctor," I said softly, to see if he could hear me through the
connecting tubes. As I had hoped, they proved to be very good
speaking-trumpets, and I heard his answer noisily.

"Speak lower; I hear you easily," I said. "There is a party of them
coming down this road to descend to the city. They have stopped upon
seeing me. They are nothing but men like ourselves. I see no wings,
horns, tails, or other appendages that we have not. They are just fat,
puffy, sluggish men, very white and pale in colour, and covered with a
peculiar clothing that looks like feathers. I seem to be a far greater
freak to them than they are to me."

Had he been a million miles away, I should have known that it was the
doctor answering, from his unsurprised and matter-of-fact tone. I
imagined I could see the exact expression of his face as he said,--

"After all, then, man is the most perfect animal the Creator could make.
From a mechanical standpoint he needs nothing that he has not, and has
nothing that he does not need. However you change him, you would make
him imperfect. Physiologically he may be much the same on all the
planets, but there is room for the widest variations on the intellectual
and spiritual side."

"Do not forget th