"My companion led me out of the Hall. Men and women were moving slowly in various directions and as we made our way over the campus and between the many noble buildings I saw many of the lambent spirits half emergent into fleshly shapes accompanied by the watchers, who are in great numbers in the City, carrying over their arms the white and blue dresses with which to clothe them as the spirits fall into solid forms.
"Amongst these buildings I easily noted the marvellous observatories where objectives twenty feet in diameter are used with which the astronomers actually discern the life of our earth. The reports they make from week to week of their inspection of the Solar system, and of the commotions, changes, births and demolition of Stars, are the sensations of Mars. These Reports are read aloud in the Halls of Announcement and Recreation. But astounding beyond belief, they photograph the surfaces of these distant bodies, and report in moving pictures the disturbances of the cosmic universe. No wonder that the whole Mind, as it were, of Mars is concentrated on the fabulous results of their cosmic studies.
"We descended from Patenta Hill in an avenue that led between the white columned houses with their spheres of Phosphori and their umbrageous squares around them. It was a season of flowers, though I understood that by the use of fertilizing injections the number of flowers in a shrub and even in an herb can be here greatly multiplied. The windows of the houses were open and their sills crowded with blossoms. The use of the red blossoming vine was strangely extravagant. In many cases it had thrown its branches over an entire house, clambering over the roof and encircling the phosphoric cage, so that the white house was dissected by its twigs and tendrils, while the red honeysuckle flowers depended in clusters from the walls, the roof gutters, and the light house globes above them.
"The Court of the Registeries was a long low structure made of the prevalent white stone with a roof of what seemed to be red copper. It was built upon one of the canals which here enter the city and formed one side of a long pier or dock to which and from which interesting little boats were constantly approaching and as constantly departing.
"A hum of business and everyday work surrounded the place, and it seemed refreshing to note the stir and bustle of affairs. Streams of people were entering the Court as we arrived. They were inhabitants and watchers bringing the new incarnations to the Registeries to have their origin recorded if they could recall it. Indeed many spirits fail utterly to remember their former condition, and happen, as we might say, upon Mars, unexplained and inexplicable. They even are without speech and learn the Martian language as a child learns to talk.
"We pushed in with the jostling crowd, and even as I entered I could hear the murmurous chant of the Chorus Halls, borne hither-ward on the morning wind. It now seemed a long time, although but one day apparently had elapsed since I sat, a trail of luminous ether, undergoing the strange process of materialization.
"How incredible it all was, how incomprehensible. I pinched myself until I could have cried out with pain, and at that very instant a voice saluted me, calling me by name and a rushing figure encountered me. I stood transfixed. Before me was Chapman, the mechanic, workman, and photographer for Mr. Rutherford, in New York in the seventies, a man whom I knew well, from whom I had learned much, and whose skill helped so largely in the production of Rutherford's negatives of the Moon. My repulsion was over in an instant. I clasped him heartily. It seemed so good, so human, to embrace something in this strange world. An equal resistance met my own. We were indeed substance.
"'Mr. Dodd,' exclaimed my old acquaintance, 'are you here? This is wonderful. Have you just become one of us? What luck! what a great providence for me! I am in the observatory. Must sail to-morrow to Scandor to report a sudden confusion in Perseus. They call it here Pike. You shall go with me. I have a long leave of absence I will show you many marvels. And you can tell me everything about Tony. He was a baby when I knew you.' Turning to my smiling companion, he spoke in Martian, of which to give you some semblance I cipher these words: 'Aru meta voluca volu li tonti tan dondore mal per vuele vonta bidi ami.'
"I returned Chapman's hearty salutation. I yet retained the human speech of earth and I was struck with the miraculous incident that in the planet Mars, in a populous city, I was addressing a friend in the English tongue.
"But the joy of it was inexpressible. Oh, the sweetness of old acquaintanceship in strange, and as here, impossible surroundings! I gazed on him with unspeakable curiosity. I talked to him just to hear my own voice and his in response, to realize if words were still words with the old meaning, if the intangible mutation I had undergone was a reality, if I was indeed alive, if my lungs and throat, the configuration of my mouth, the vocalic impact of the air, was a fact, a sound, a meaning, or whether it all was some phantasmagoria, beautiful and fair indeed, to be dispelled with a shock of annihilation.