as just one big plain of land, no hills or mountains, no seas,
and only sluggish rivers draining into marshes.

"I suppose that is what they're coming to down yonder. Now, I wonder
what sort of civilisation we shall find. Perhaps we shan't find any at
all. Suppose all their civilisations have worn out and they are
degenerating into the same struggle for sheer existence those poor
creatures in the moon must have had."

"Or suppose," said Redgrave rather seriously, "we find that they have
passed the zenith of civilisation, and are dropping back into savagery,
but still have the use of weapons and means of destruction which we,
perhaps, have no notion of, and are inclined to use them? We'd better be
careful, dear."

"What do you mean, Lenox?" she said. "They wouldn't try to do us any
harm, would they? Why should they?"

"I don't say they would," he replied; "but still you never know. You
see, their ideas of right and wrong and hospitality and all that sort of
thing may be quite different to what we have on the earth. In fact, they
may not be men at all, but just a sort of monster with perhaps a
superhuman intellect with all sorts of extra-human ideas in it.

"Then there's another thing," he went on. "Suppose they fancied a trip
through Space, and thought that they had as good a right to the
_Astronef_ as we have? I daresay they've seen us by this time if they've
got telescopes, as no doubt they have, perhaps a good deal more powerful
than ours, and they may be getting ready to receive us now. I think I'll
get the guns in place before we go down, in case their moral ideas, as
dear old Hans Breitmann called them, are not quite the same as ours."

CHAPTER X

The words were hardly out of his mouth before Zaidie, who still had her
glasses to her eyes, and was looking down towards the great city whose
glazed roofs were flashing with a thousand tints in the pale crimson
sunlight, said with a little tremor in her voice:

"Look, Lenox, down there--don't you see something coming up? That little
black thing. Just look how fast it's coming up; it's quite distinct
already. It's a sort of flying-ship, only it has wings and, I think,
masts too. Yes, I can see three masts, and there's something glittering
on the tops of them. I wonder if they're coming to pay us a polite
morning call, or whether they're going to treat us like trespassers in
their atmosphere."

"There's no telling, but those things on the top of the mast