“Remember,” said the doctor, “that you are not to judge the earth by what you see of her old satellite.”
“Well,” answered Thorwald, “we mean to see what we can of the satellite. Foedric, let us point the glass at it and be selecting a place to land.”
But Foedric was obliged to let Thorwald handle the glass alone, for his attention was needed just now to manage our craft. He had discovered that shutting off the power did not diminish the speed, and for a moment he was puzzled, quite a new sensation for a Martian of that era. But he soon studied out the difficulty and made the following announcement:
“I find this huge mass that we are approaching is pulling us toward its surface, so that we are using but little power. I expect in a short time we can merely fall to its surface.”
This suggested to Thorwald the very trouble that the doctor and I had encountered with our balloon, and he asked Foedric if we could get away again after we had dropped to the moon.
“Yes,” Foedric answered, “I am sure we have power enough here to overcome the attraction and get away whenever we please.”
Thorwald, who had been intently studying the surface through the telescope, now spoke out with some excitement in his voice:
“Doctor, I begin to think you did not make a thorough investigation of the moon’s condition. Did you not report it practically uninhabited?”
“Our means of investigation were rather limited,” replied the doctor, “but we surely found no inhabitants except poor Mona, whom, I am confident, we shall never see again. Why do you ask? Are there any signs of life visible? I have no doubt you Martians can see more at this distance than we could when standing on the globe itself.”
“Well,” Thorwald answered, “either you reached wrong conclusions or else a race has grown up there pretty rapidly. I cannot make out anything definite yet, but there is smoke, I am sure, and I can see some object moving about.”