oors and, to Zaidie's considerable
displeasure, getting the deck Maxims ready for action in case they
should be required. As soon as the doors were open Zaidie's judgment of
the inhabitants of Venus was entirely justified.

Without the slightest sign of fear, but with very evident astonishment
in their round golden-yellow eyes, they came walking close up to the
sides of the _Astronef_. Some of them stroked her smooth, shining sides
with their little hands, which Zaidie now found had only three fingers
and a thumb. Many ages before they might have been birds' claws, but now
they were soft and pink and plump, utterly strange to manual work as it
is understood upon Earth.

"Just fancy getting Maxim guns ready to shoot those delightful things,"
said Zaidie, almost indignantly, as she went towards the doorway from
which the gangway ladder ran down to the soft, mossy turf. "Why, not one
of them has got a weapon of any sort; and just listen," she went on,
stopping in the opening of the doorway, "have you ever heard music like
that on Earth? I haven't. I suppose it's the way they talk. I'd give a
good deal to be able to understand them. But still, it's very lovely,
isn't it?"

"Ay, like the voices of syrens," said Murgatroyd, speaking for the first
time since the _Astronef_ had landed; for this big, grizzled, taciturn
Yorkshireman, who looked upon the whole cruise through Space as a mad
and almost impious adventure, which nothing but his hereditary loyalty
to his master's name and family could have persuaded him to share in,
had grown more and more silent as the millions of miles between the
_Astronef_ and his native Yorkshire village had multiplied day by day.

"Syrens--and why not, Andrew?" laughed Redgrave. "At any rate, I don't
think they look likely to lure us and the _Astronef_ to destruction."
Then he went on: "Yes, Zaidie, I never heard anything like that before.
Unearthly, of course it is, but then we're not on Earth. Now, Zaidie,
they seem to talk in song-language. You did pretty well on Mars with
your American, suppose we go out and show them that you can speak the
song-language, too."

"What do you mean?" she said; "sing them something?"

"Yes," he replied; "they'll try to talk to you in song, and you won't be
able to understand them; at least, not as far as words and sentences go.
But music is the universal language on Earth, and there's no reason why
it shouldn't be the same through the Solar System. Come al