She hesitated a minute before she answered. "Not seriously," she finally said. "Of course I have friends, but as yet I haven't made any decision."
My heart gave an extra thump. Then there was hope for me. I asked her if she wanted to marry a man of high rank or of low rank. She answered, "Nowadays very few young men reach the rank degrees, but many of my friends are hoping to marry such. But I first want one whom I love. He must be noble, lovable, intelligent, ambitious and capable of achieving honor by an outstanding action of which I may be proud."
Our talk and thoughts had so confused Xora that she was forgetting to apply her flying rules. We were dodging and barely escaping collisions with planes which seemed suddenly to be cluttering the sky. A small plane came alongside us. The occupant was in uniform, which I recognized as an air policeman's. Recognizing Xora, he cautioned her and indicated that she was out of her flying altitude. She immediately followed the instructions he gave. After he had left, she told me he was a schoolmate of hers and was now serving his first year in the general army of service, of which all policemen were members.
"He certainly went against the rules by not giving me a summons. I suppose he was being considerate of you as an Earth visitor to Mars."
During this time, I had been almost unaware of the city below. Xora now called my attention to the view. She said the city had been constructed five years before. It looked more like a large park than a city. There were no streets, but wide park lanes, criss-crossing each other. There was a large round lake in the center, surrounded by beautiful buildings.
Carefully kept lawns, gardens, and buildings covered all the surface space. The roof tops were pleasant to see with no unsightly water tanks, chimneys, signs, wiring, smoke, and junk. There were no broken-down hulks of unoccupied buildings, no dirty, drab, or sooty walls, no fire escapes. The flat or slanting roofs were all covered with well kept verdure and flower beds.
There were courts of different shapes, five or six clustered together, surrounded by green markings like a hedge, with a very visible letter in the Martian calligraphy within a center flowerbed denoting, I suppose, its number and location.
Along the rivers, busy waterways with freight ships and pleasure yachts, were clean flat beaches. On the Amboria city side of the river, on the edge and over part of the river on the extreme southern end, many large buildings covered a space equivalent to about two hundred and fifty New York city blocks. I asked Xora what these large buildings were.
She answered, "They are our general stores."
"Why so large?" I wanted to know.