"Martian fliers?" echoed Captain Brand. "Then how did we come to be on your ship?"
"I haven't any weapon that will meet those purple atomic bombs on equal terms—though we are now working out a new device. I had Smith cruising around the blue globe in our Red Rover to see what he could learn. He was investigating the wrecks, and found you alive."
"You really mean that men from Mars have come this near the earth?" Captain Brand was frankly incredulous.
"Not men," the Prince corrected, smiling. "But things from Mars have done it. They have already landed on earth, in fact."
He turned to the desk, picked up a broad sheet of cardboard.
"I have a color photograph here."
Bill studied it, saw that it looked like an aerial photograph of a vast stretch of mountain and desert, a monotonous expanse of gray, tinged with green and red.
"A photograph, taken from space, of part of the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. And see!"
He pointed to a little blue disk in the green-gray expanse of a plain, just below a narrow mountain ridge, with the fine green line that marked a river just beside it.
"That blue circle is the first ship that came. It was the things aboard it that sucked the blood out of the people on the Helicon."