a little
bit better, doesn't it? Now I think I had better go down and see to my
engines."

When he had gone, Zaidie sat down to the telescope again and kept it
focussed on one of the little black spots travelling across the crescent
of Mars. Both it and the other spot rapidly grew larger, and the
features of the planet itself became more distinct. Soon even with her
unaided eyes she could make out the seas and continents and the
mysterious canals quite plainly through the clear, rosy atmosphere, and,
with the aid of the telescope, she could even see the glimmering
twilight which the inner moon threw upon the unlighted portion of the
planet's disc.

Deimos grew bigger and bigger, and in about half an hour the _Astronef_
grounded gently on what looked to Zaidie like a dimly lighted circular
plain, but which, when her eyes became accustomed to the light, was more
like the summit of a conical mountain. Redgrave raised the keel a little
from the surface again and steered towards a thin circle of light on the
tiny horizon.

As they crossed into the sunlit portion it became quite plain that
Deimos, at any rate, was as airless and lifeless as the moon. The
surface was composed of brown rock and red sand broken up into miniature
hills and valleys. There were a few traces of bygone volcanic action,
but it was evident that the internal fires of this tiny world must have
burnt themselves out very quickly.

"Not much to be seen here," said Redgrave, as he came up the
companion-way, "and I don't think it would be safe to go out. The
attraction is so weak here that we might find ourselves falling off with
very little exertion. Still, you may as well take a couple of
photographs of the surface, and then we'll be off to Phobos."

Zaidie got her apparatus to work, and when she had taken her slides down
to the dark-room, Redgrave turned the R. Force on very slightly and
Phobos began to sink away beneath them. The attraction of Mars now began
to make itself strongly felt, and the _Astronef_ dropped rapidly through
the eight thousand miles which separate the inner and outer satellites.

As they approached Phobos they saw that half the little disc was
brilliantly lighted by the same rays of the sun which were glowing on
the rapidly increasing crescent of Mars beneath them. By careful
manipulation of his engines Redgrave managed to meet the approaching
satellite with a hardly perceptible shock about the centre of its
lighted portion,