Dr. Johnston explained it to them.
"No! No!" they answered. "We don't believe in that. We are scientific people. We are all scientists."
Of course that was kind of a slap in the face to us Earth men, at least we took it that way. In retaliation Bob asked, "don't you ever get over-populated? How do you handle that problem?"
"The powers of the Infinite look after that," came the answer right back. "We don't have to worry about it. All we have to do is to live with one another for the good of each other."
At this we realized that on their ship or on their persons, we had not seen a thing that would give any indication or comprehension of a destructive weapon. Instead, when we were first introduced to these men at the airport we had noticed in their ship many types of scientific instruments and much literature of what we considered was on science because of the sketches and pictures we could see.
In our opinion, this telescope and the whole project is the most stupendous accomplishment in the field of engineering and science that a human could ever view. This has given us evidence of their advancement. In fact, the two hundred inch on Mount Palomar is a toy in comparison, for this instrument, as stated before, is the equivalent on Earth to five thousand inches. It measures automatically the distance of any planet or star, focuses its number on the screen, analyzes the mineral contents of a planet in quantity and in quality, gives the amount of water and the amount of land, its vegetation growth and its deserts, and makes no mistake whatever in regards to inhabitants, whether there be any or not, or life in any form. The astronomers here do not spend night after night taking pictures and then trying to figure them out. It is all done for them mechanically.
They even knew of the war we on Earth have just gone through. They got the picture of the Earth madness so well that they have a photograph of it here, showing airplanes flying above the Earth and blowing it up.
As this picture was shown to us one of the scientists said, "the people on Mars believe that the people on Earth have gone actually insane, destroying their own homes in that way. That is one of the reasons they really don't care whether they ever come to Earth with their ships or not. They feel that people with such destructive natures have nothing in advancement to teach them."
So that is the kind of an instrument they have here, known to us as a telescope.
This five thousand inch telescope is very, very powerful. It is not made of one piece as a reflector, but is made up of many mirrors and they are not glass. They seem to be metal. Each mirror is set slightly different, so when all of them are acting as one they focus to this one big machine which in our system we would call the prime focus, and in there it really takes on the intensity and the amplification of light; while at dead center there is an octagon shape mirror or prism that acts automatically as a spectrum. This seems to be the part that gives the answer to the contents of a planet simultaneously with the viewing of it. Around the edge of the mirror are prism type reflectors that don't reflect to what we would call the prime focus, but instead they reflect along the edge of the barrel to another instrument which seems to be wrapped around the barrel on the tube, and that is the part that measures the distance of any heavenly body. So when the telescope is focused on a heavenly body, not only does it produce that body in clean cut markings of it, but it also gives the distance and the contents of it simultaneously, without an error.