Joshua did not reply at once, but slumped down lower, absently sucking at a dead pipe. Then he roused himself.
“I’ll tell you,” he said, as if the decision to expose his ideas had just come upon him. “But”—his grave eyes twinkled—“I warn you at the start that there probably will be no money in it.
“I have a theory,” he went on. “I am one of those who firmly believe that the planet Mars is inhabited. Also I believe, with others, that the inhabitants are trying to communicate with us. You have been reading the papers, of course, and you probably know that on the first of this month, I think it was, Signor Marconi made some experiments on the yacht Electra, and made the announcement that he had received wireless waves of greater length than those of the highest-powered station in the world. Hence, he argued, these waves could not have originated on the earth. However, he did not say, as he was reported to have said, that he thought these communications—if such they were—came from Mars. Still, he would not say that such a thing was improbable.
“Edison has expressed the belief that the inhabitants of some heavenly body are even now trying to communicate with us, and has predicted that wireless from star to star will be an accomplished fact within the next few years.
“Then the American scientist, Mr. B. McAfee, says that he is convinced that life exists on Mars, and he expects to prove it.”
“But what makes them think so?” Madge queried, her interest aroused as it had been on the night when Joshua told her about the good ship “Argo,” far off in Hathaway. “Now make it as simple as possible, please.”
Joshua Cole’s eyes grew dreamier still. “Arguments are advanced by certain scientists that Mars is physically incapable of sustaining life,” he told his listeners. “This, they claim, is because of its thin atmosphere, low mean temperature, and small amount of oxygen and water vapor. Despite all this, I believe that plant life and animal life exist on that planet.
“Through my own refractor—heavens, how I’ve missed it!—I have seen great white patches, occasionally covering an area of some three hundred thousand square miles of the Martian surface. That’s about six times the size of the State of New York, Madge. These white patches I have observed to come and go, and in the course of time they were followed by green patches covering the same region. And later the green patches turned brown. To me, all this signifies the accumulation of vast masses of watery vapor, the precipitation of rain, the springing into life of green vegetation, and the gradual drying up of the soil and the conversion of the green growth into patches of brown, dried-up plants.
“Again, if there is no water vapor on Mars, how does it come that frost patches can occasionally be observed in the Martian summer?—which, by the way, lasts for one hundred and forty-nine days. I’ve seen these frost patches—have seen them disappear before the rising sun just as they would on this earth. They never last until noon. And it is well known that at rare intervals atmospheric storms have appeared in projection on the sunrise edge of the planet.
“But, laying all this aside, it is the canal system on Mars that convinces me it is inhabited. It consists of a beautiful network of long line-like markings, continuous and uniform throughout, encompassing the planet from pole to pole. These lines have definite beginnings and definite endings, and each proceeds with definite directness from one oasis—or dark, oval area—to another. In some cases these lines are near together in pairs, and mathematically straight. Double canals, these are called. In other cases two lines intersect, and then both continue to run precisely on their own straight courses. Now, do natural markings on this earth—rivers, for instance—do that? Then are we not justified in the assumption that these geometrical lines on Mars are the work of intelligent engineers? And are we not justified in assuming, also, that these canals were constructed for the growing of vegetation?”