We were gazing upwards at the vast assemblage of air-ships, which were lit up by the ordinary lamps used when travelling at night, when suddenly the whole sky became brilliant with the glow of countless thousands of coloured lights, and the air-ships began to move into their allotted positions.
Every ship—and there was a very large number of them—was covered all over with electric lamps. Some of the ships had all red lights, others all blue, others yellow, and so on through the whole range of tints known to us, besides many tints which we had never seen before.
The evolutions began with the formation of simple geometrical designs, starting with a complete circle of immense diameter. Then, inside this circle of many-coloured lights other ships took up their position, and, before we were prepared for anything, a triangle of lights had been formed. It was clear that even in their amusements the Martians were scientific; for here outlined in glowing colours was the familiar geometrical figure of an equilateral triangle inscribed within a circle, perfectly worked out on a most gigantic scale, and very pretty it was. Quickly, another triangle was formed across the first one, the result being a six-pointed star; and so on with several other more elaborate geometrical figures. The rapidity and certainty with which these air-ships took up the requisite positions and showed their coloured lights in the appropriate places was marvellous to see.
After about a dozen geometrical figures had been formed there ensued a rapid and bewildering movement of the ships towards the southern vault of the sky. Coloured lights flashed and whirled about in what, for a few minutes, seemed chaotic confusion, then suddenly the chaos was transformed into order. The vessels formed up in long rows one below the other, each row having one distinctive colour: a little movement of the ships from the centre to each end, in a downward direction, and the straight rows were transformed into complete semicircles concentric with each other, their bases seeming to reach the ground. Then they closed together, and lo! right across the sky shone a perfect representation of a rainbow (an extremely rare phenomenon upon Mars) glowing in brilliant light, with every tint and nuance accurate, and a thousand times brighter than any rainbow we had ever seen. It was magnificent!
Further rapid movements followed: the semicircles were broken up; the large vessels now being arranged in a long straight line across the sky, with the smaller vessels in another line just below and in front of them. The electric lamps were then instantaneously extinguished, and all was darkness. But only for a moment; then from the top of every vessel numerous immense pillars of coloured lights shot upwards into the sky.
We gazed at this in some perplexity, wondering what it all meant, as the design gradually developed to its completion. Then John touched my arm, excitedly exclaiming, "Look, Professor; it is the spectrum of the sun!" Yes, that it was, and never had we gazed upon such an immense and glorious spectrum. We pointed out to each other the lines of hydrogen, sodium, strontium, and many others, all of which were truly depicted, both in colour and position. These lines were formed by the lights of the smaller vessels shown against the background of the lights on the large vessels, and we noticed that all the Martians around us quickly recognised what the lights represented.
Next we had a representation of the spectrum of Sirius, then that of Aldebaran, and after that a spectrum which we were unable to identify. Merna explained that it was the spectrum of their south polar star. A few others were shown, then the line arrangement of the ships was again broken up, the search-lights extinguished, and the coloured lamps once more shone out.
Many of the ships now rushed across the sky over our heads in all directions, and, after a few evolutions, the whole were seen arranged so as to form four immense concentric circles, with a considerable space between each ship.
The ships in the two inner circles then began to move slowly, and passed in two wavy lines alternately in front of one ship and behind the next ship in the outer circles, the serpentine movement gradually becoming more and more rapid; and most wonderful changes of colour were produced by the passage of the vessels past those lighted with lamps of another colour. Swifter and swifter became the speed until it seemed utterly impossible that these intricate movements could go on without resulting in a series of collisions and disasters. Yet, with all this bewildering whirling, twisting, and intertwining, the ships were guided on their courses with consummate skill and with an unerring accuracy which was marvellous to behold.
Another shake of the aerial kaleidoscope and the vessels were seen drawn up in three parallel lines on the east and three on the west. Then the search-lights again flashed out, filling the whole intermediate area of the sky with beams of brilliant coloured light, which were caused to oscillate sideways and overlap, producing a most gorgeous intermingling of glowing colours. The Martians certainly had a complete understanding of all the peculiarities connected with mixtures of coloured lights.