"What d'you mean, 'us'? You aren't going, are you?"
"Try to keep me from it! The names of all five of us I-G's were put in a hat, and I was lucky."
"Well, you may come in handy, at that," Brandon conceded. "And here's the big boss himself. Hi, Chief!"
"Ho, Brandon! Ho, Westfall!" Newton, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the IPC, shook hands with the two scientists. "Your Martians and Venerians are in Lounge Fifteen. I suppose that you have a lot of things to thrash out, so you may as well start now. Everything is being attended to—I'll take charge now."
"You going along, too?" asked Brandon.
"Going along, too? I'm running this cruise!" Newton declared. "I may take advice from you on some things and from Crowninshield on others, but I am in charge!"
"All x—it's a relief, at that," and Brandon and Westfall went to join their fellow-scientists in the designated room of the space-cruiser.
What a contrast was there as the representatives of three worlds met! All six men were of the same original stock or of a similar evolution—science has not, even yet, decided the question definitely. Their minds were very much alike, but their respective environments had so variantly developed their bodily structures that to outward seeming they had but little in common.
Through countless thousands of generations the Martians had become acclimated to a planet having little air, less water, and characterized by abrupt transitions from searing heat to bitter cold: from blinding light to almost impenetrable darkness. Eight feet tall and correspondingly massive, they could barely stand against the gravitational force of the Earth, almost three times as great as that of Mars, but the two Martian scientists struggled to their feet as the Terrestrials entered.
"As you were, fellows—lie down again and take it easy." Brandon suggested in the common Interplanetarian tongue. "We'll be away from here very soon, then we can ease off."