Mr. Scoville smiled, and said: "I'm afraid you'll have to be more explicit than that, Mr. Royce. Where did you get that information?"
"I can be entirely explicit," Henry answered. "In transmitting our first radio message to the planet, we said: 'Stand by, Mars! Earth is calling!' To our great surprise, we received this reply: 'Noble friends, you err in calling our planet, Mars. This is the Red Sphere. Your planet, which you call the Earth, is known to us as the Blue Sphere.'"
"And why should they call the earth the Blue Sphere?" Mr. Scoville inquired.
"Because the earth, to the Martian astronomers, appears in a bluish haze," Henry explained, "just as Mars looks reddish to us."
"But why should the Martians—I beg your pardon—why should the inhabitants of the Red Sphere, take such an interest in our insignificant globe?"
"Doubtless, because the conviction has persisted there, among scientists, that our planet is inhabited," said Henry, "just as the conviction has persisted here that Mars harbors life."
"Supposing this is true, how can you explain their knowledge of a radio code, which somewhat resembles our International Morse code?"
After a moment's hesitation, Henry replied: "It's my opinion that they gained this knowledge from the International Morse messages directed on their planet by a powerful beam of light, from the lofty summit of the Jungfrau, in Switzerland, less than a year ago. This was undertaken by a group of American scientists, in the hope of attracting attention on Mars."
"Were these code messages, to a strange people, in a remote planet, decipherable in English?"
"Oh, yes," Henry readily replied; "and there's no doubt in my mind that superior intellects on Mars worked them out into English."