"They help the planet grow to its full size," he continued, "for every time they land and hit the planet, they become part of it."
This one, being in front of our ship, indicated on our instrument a gravitational force of one thousand miles, which it had already made around itself.
Immediately the speaker exclaimed, "see what we mean, it creates its own protective field. This force becomes larger and larger as the planet becomes bigger and bigger."
"How long does it take for a planet to become a full fledged planet?" inquired Dr. Johnston, "and does it remain within the system within which it was born?"
"Sometimes it does remain within the system within which it is born," was the answer, "but more often it is the beginning of a new system."
"It takes anywhere from five million to fifty million years for a planet to attain its full growth, depending upon its size. Then it takes another five million to thirty million years before it is in a fit state for human habitation. When a new system is born, it starts out with one of these planets like in the beginning. While this planet-like ball does not break up and divide itself, it does attract conditions unto itself, and small particles slightly larger than dust eventually become other planets. For while in the state of being larger than dust, they do break up and multiply, as cells do in the body. And the fine, so-called dust, forms a boundary or a system consisting of a boundary. The boundary in turn is nothing but an influence of a system into the outer space of a given distance between itself and another system, also forming a neutral gap between its system and another system, the same as there is between two planets which may be easily called a boundary of its influence, acting as a protector against colliding one system against another."
At this point we are nearing planet Mars and are told, "we will soon be where we can explain these things a lot better. As you were told while on the Moon, we have on Mars a large telescope and space library by which we can show you in great detail the exact law operating which brings these conditions into manifestation. Then you will understand more clearly what you have been seeing during this trip."
In what seemed to be a split second from the time he spoke, due to the great speed of the ship, we were circling over one of the large cities of planet Mars. Then we lowered and landed.
This landing field is enormous. It would have to be to accommodate ships the size of these and there are quite a number of them standing by on it, some larger than this one we are in.
As the doors of the ship were opened after landing, our host led the way out. To our amazement, there is a crowd of about two million people gathered to welcome us. It seems as though the whole city has turned out to greet us.