The great silver disc of the earth had diminished until it looked only a
little larger than Venus appears to human eyes. In fact the planet Terra
is to the inhabitants of Mars what Venus is to us, the Star of the
Morning and the Evening.
Breakfast on the morning of the twelfth day--or, since there is neither
day nor night in Space, it would be more correct to say the twelfth
period of twenty-four earth-hours as measured by the chronometers--was
just over, and Redgrave was standing with Zaidie in the forward end of
the deck-chamber, looking downwards at a vast crescent of rosy light
which stretched out over an arc of more than ninety degrees. Two tiny
black spots were travelling towards each other across it.
"Ah," she said, going towards one of the telescopes, "there are the
moons. I was reading my Gulliver last night. I wonder what the old Dean
would have given to be here, and see how true his guess was. Are we
going to land on them?"
"I don't see why we shouldn't," he said. "I think we might find them
convenient stopping places; besides, you know this isn't only a
pleasure-trip. We have to add as much as we can to the sum of human
knowledge, and so of course we shall have to find out whether the moons
of Mars have atmospheres and inhabitants."
"What, people living on those wee things!" she laughed.
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