When we were seated comfortably and were enjoying once more the exquisite sensation of sailing so easily through that balmy air, Thorwald said to the doctor and me:
“We all anticipate a great deal of pleasure in showing you our big natural curiosity and what it contains. We want to see your surprise when you look upon its vast proportions, and your growing curiosity as you try to make out some of its mysteries. Things which baffle our skill may be plain to you, and perhaps you will even be able to do something with that puzzling language.”
“Yes,” said the doctor, “if it is beyond your skill we shall no doubt be able to read it at sight.”
“Well, at any rate,” continued Thorwald, “we shall enjoy the novel experience of exhibiting the marvel of our whole world to those who were, until so recently, entirely ignorant of its existence.”
“I hope,” I said, “that our behavior will not be such as to disappoint you, when we are brought face to face with the object for which you have so deep a sentiment.
“But, Thorwald, the doctor and I have been talking about going home. Not that we are tiring of your society, but we are filled with a desire to tell the people of the earth what we have found on Mars and try to teach them some of the good lessons you have given us. The doctor, who has a monopoly of the scientific culture in our party, can see no prospect of our getting away from your planet. With your more advanced science, can you suggest any way by which we can take a dignified leave of you?”
“We should regret exceedingly,” replied Thorwald, “to lose you just as we are becoming well acquainted, but I have no criticism to make on the excuse you offer for wanting to revisit your home. I must say, however, that you present to us too hard a problem to solve. With all our attainments in astronomy and in the navigation of the air, you went one point beyond us when you took passage from the earth to Mars, for we have no means by which to express passengers from one planet to another.
“We consider the circumstances of your leaving the earth and your journey hither the most remarkable thing of the kind ever heard of, and we have nothing in our experience on which we can begin to build any scheme for sending you off on so long a flight through space. If you will only be content to stay here till we have progressed further with our investigations of the high civilization brought to light in our comet, perhaps we can help you. The remarkable people whose exalted condition is there represented may have had powers in this direction of which we cannot conceive. The subject will add even more zest to our researches.
“Why do you desire to leave us so soon? You have seen but few of our notable improvements, and learned comparatively little of the practical workings of our high civilization. And then I have been hoping the doctor would come fully into our belief before he went away.”
“If you could hear what he has told me,” I said, “you would see that he is already fit to be sent as a foreign missionary from this blessed world to the struggling earth.”