nd telephones, which was the
mother of their invention here. Flying or air-travelling machines will
no more have occurred to them than a walking machine to us. They will
have thoroughly explored every part of their planet, and it is possible
that their cities will have been built on high plateaus, or even on
mountain peaks. But they will not have builded greatly, for they will
have been able to use the great architecture of nature in a way
impossible to us."

"Have you heard the theory advanced by some humorous scientist not long
ago, that the organs of locomotion and prehension would some day, or on
some planet, be supplanted by machinery, and that digestive apparatus
would give way for artificially prepared blood?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, that fanciful idea is novel, but irrational. It makes man only
a fraction of a being. On every planet, no matter what the advancement
of civilization, we shall find _complete beings_, not dependent on
adventitious machinery for locomotion or labour, or on artificial or
animal blood for nutriment. Think how helpless such a creature would be
at the loss or rusting of his machinery, and at the exhaustion of just
the right sort of nutritive fluid. Our digestive apparatus will convert
a thousand different foods into blood. Suppose we could live only on
buffalo meat? We should all have been dead long ago. We might as well
imagine men as mere fungus brains, swimming in rivers of blood; or as
beings beyond the necessity of personal thought, and living on brain
sandwiches, cut from the thinking heads of others. Eating is not only a
necessity, but a pleasure----"

"That is just what I was thinking," I interposed, looking at my watch,
for it was growing late.

"Well, now I have told you how I would have peopled Mars had the order
been sent to me here to do it," said the doctor, "will you go along with
me, and see how nearly I am right?"

"I am afraid not," I replied; "my business ties forbid. However, I want
to see you make the start and the moment you return!"

CHAPTER V

Final Preparations

On the tenth day of June, Dr. Anderwelt had written me as follows:

"Please catch the 7.25 train on the Lake Shore for Whiting this
evening. I will take the same train, and we will walk from Whiting
to a deserted railway siding two miles further on, where the
projectile has been shipped. We will unload it from the flat car and
take it into a grove of scrub oaks on the sho