Engrossed in the workings and revelations given by this apparatus, George wanted to know if the other planets have machines like this one.
"No," was the answer, "we are the only ones who have it, for we are not as developed as the people on the other planets. Those living on Venus, Jupiter, and all the other planets in our system are still better developed than we are. They use their consciousness instead of a machine to accomplish the same things, and even better."
After all this we are becoming anxious to return to our ship, for while we grasped a lot of what we have seen, there were some things that were puzzling us and which we wanted to think out. Since all this was being given us with the aid of an interpreter, we could not very well expect to get them clearer than they already had been given us. Finally we suggested that we had better return to the airfield and get started back to where we had come from.
On the way to the airport, our host asked us to stop into the observatory once more.
To oblige him, we did.
There he flashed on the screen of the big telescope for us and here we saw the Martonian ship which was by this time approaching Mars at a terrific speed that registered in the observatory a speed of one million, nine hundred thousand miles per hour.
The pilot knew when this happened and he spoke to us, saying, "haven't you yet started back? You must like our school system."
Of course this was in a sort of joking manner, but there was more truth in his words than you realize. We have been in this city two full days, where with the friendship and cooperation of all, we have learned more here than we ever thought we would. By ourselves we could not have learned as much in years as has been given us in these two days.
Finally we started for our ship. On arriving at the airport, we find that the maintenance men of the field have our ship ready for us. We looked it over, checking on everything and saw that it was all in first class shape. Then we took off.
We circled the city twice and started back towards our landing place on the plateau. Once in the air, we contacted the Earth through our radar system and told them that we would have quite a message to send after landing back at our original place. In the meantime we would keep in contact with them steadily, giving them a bird's-eye view of what we are seeing.