"Isn't there the possibility of an optical illusion about all this?" the Prince persisted. "Isn't it possible that you and other astronomers let your imagination run riot, and create in your mind these conditions on Mars necessary to sustain life, patterned after those existing on earth?"
"Nothing of the sort," Henry replied in exasperation. "The existence of life there is evidenced by the presence of free oxygen in the atmosphere."
"Do you mean to say that men and women of flesh and blood, with brains, like those who walk the earth, populate this dried-up planet?" the Prince said. "Ah, it is too impossible!"
"Yes, Uncle Henry, it does seem almost beyond human conception," Pat interjected.
"Furthermore," the Prince went on, "authoritative sources claim that no creature with warm blood could survive there, with the temperature ranging between 150 and 250 degrees. A cold-blooded creature might freeze and then thaw out, but a warm-blooded one would freeze and remain dead as a door nail. The indications, I fear, are that your inhabitants of Mars are in the order of—of sublimated lobsters."
"Lobsters!" Pat repeated, laughing.
"Don't be an ass, Your Highness," Olinski interposed at that point. "Or, at any rate, try not to be an ass."
"But it all sounds so deuced silly," exclaimed the Prince, in some heat. "You know yourself, Mr. Olinski, that science has definitely proved that Mars cannot support life as we know it. You may as well admit," he continued, turning again to Henry, "that you really have no proof except your own imagination that there is life on Mars. Providing there is some sort of living organisms there, it is utterly absurd and preposterous to claim that life is as much advanced, physically and intellectually, as our own."
"But I have proof," Henry announced firmly. "Mr. Olinski and I have demonstrated that fact."
"I don't catch the point, really," said the Prince.