Redgrave checked the after engine which was driving them obliquely over the surface of the satellite, and the Astronef fell vertically towards a bare, flat plain of what looked like deep yellow sand, which spread for miles alongside one of the glittering cities of glass.
"Oh, look, they've seen us!" exclaimed Zaidie. "I do hope they're going to be as friendly as those dear people on Venus were."
"I hope so," replied Redgrave, "but if they're not we've got the guns ready."
As he said this about twenty streams of an intense bluish light suddenly shot up all round them, concentrating themselves upon the hull of the Astronef, which was now about a mile and a half from the surface. The light was so intense that the rays of the Sun were lost in it. They looked at each other, and found that their faces looked almost perfectly white in it. The plain and the city below had vanished.
To look downwards was like staring straight into the focus of a ten thousand candle-power electric arc lamp. It was so intolerable that Redgrave closed the lower shutters, and meanwhile he found that the Astronef had ceased to descend. He shut off more of the R. Force, but it produced no effect. The Astronef remained stationary. Then he ordered Murgatroyd to set the propellers in motion. The engineer pulled the starting-levers, and then came up out of the engine-room and said to him:
"It's no good, my Lord; I don't know what devil's world we've got into now, but they won't work. If I thought that engines could be bewitched——"
"Oh, nonsense, Andrew!" said his lordship rather testily. "It's perfectly simple: those people down there, whoever they are, have got some way of demagnetising us, or else they've got the R. Force too, and they're applying it against us to stop us going down. Apparently they don't want us. No, that's just to show us that they can stop us if they want to. The light's going down. Begin dropping a bit. Don't start the propellers, but just go and see that the guns are all right in case of accidents."
The old engineer nodded and went back to his engines, looking considerably scared. As he spoke the brilliancy of the light faded rapidly, and the Astronef began to sink slowly towards the surface.
As a precaution against their being allowed to drop with force enough to cause a disaster, Redgrave turned the R. Force on again and they fell slowly towards the plain, through what seemed like a halo of perfectly white light. When she was within a couple of hundred yards of the ground a winged car of exquisitely graceful shape rose from the roof of one of the huge glass buildings nearest to them, flew swiftly towards them, and after circling once round the dome of the upper deck, ran close alongside.
The car was occupied by two figures of distinctly human form but rather more than human stature. Both were dressed in long, close-fitting garments of what seemed like a golden brown fleece. Their heads were covered with a close hood and their hands with gloves.