"But your facts may be wrong," I persisted. "In the first place, it is perfectly fantastic to even imagine that the Martians are so scientifically advanced that they could send a rocket like this, safely and unerringly through space to the earth."
"Fantastic?" Olinski exclaimed, heatedly. "No more so than Colonel Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic would have appeared to the world in the time of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella."
Our discussion was suddenly arrested by a cry of surprise from Pat, who had been inspecting the rocket, unnoticed by us.
"Oh, look! See what a pretty box I've found!" she exclaimed.
A very few steps brought the four of us to her side. She handed the box to Henry. It was a small, oblong box of some strange wood, beautifully made, the lid embellished with the design of a gold star. A most unusual looking box, which somehow had been overlooked. There was some trickery about opening it, which Olinski soon solved.
As it turned out, this was a discovery of first importance. The box contained a scroll of parchment, which, when unwound, was about three feet long. The parchment contained tiny tracings, the most minute writing I've ever seen, and apparently written in purplish ink. The tracings, or cuneiform writings, or whatever they were, were wholly unintelligible; to me they resembled myriads of fly-specks. Unfortunately, Henry and Olinski had forgotten their microscopic glasses, but they both accepted the scroll and its contents instantly as the "key of knowledge," mentioned in the Martian radio message, the deciphering of which, they predicted, would disclose the complete truth about Mars.
Looking back on that day, with all its strange and exciting revelations, I cannot help marveling at how really peaceful it was, in view of what was to come.
McGinity remained as our house guest. Before the afternoon was over, he had typed and sent off the bulk of his copy by messenger to the Daily Recorder. Every precaution had been taken by Henry to prevent any news leaking out about the landing of the Martian rocket, and the discovery of its strange occupant, so that McGinity might score another "beat," which was, I thought, mighty decent of him. On the other hand, he put his foot down firmly on the reporter's plea to have photographs taken. He felt the popping of photographic flashlights might unduly excite the creature from Mars, in its present state of collapse.
McGinity was rather silent about his work, but Olinski nearly drove me wild. If he went half-dotty on first seeing the rocket, he went completely dotty when Henry ushered him into the presence of the horrible thing that had come in it. When he had worn Henry out, talking, he began following me around, and insisting on discussing the awful thing, and his various suppositions connected with it. He would have kept on talking indefinitely, I believe, if Henry, finally, had not locked him in the library and forced him to settle down to the laborious task of decoding the Martian code-message contained in the scroll.
The evening passed with intolerable slowness. After dinner, Pat and McGinity contrived to meet on the terrace. I watched them from a window in the entrance hall as well as I could, not that I felt there was anything wrong about their meeting secretly. When they strolled in, nonchalantly, about half an hour later, I was pretending to read the evening newspaper.