Still, if you don't fancy it, we'll go
somewhere else."
"No, thanks," she said. "That's not my father's daughter. I haven't come
a hundred million miles from home to go away before the first act's
finished. We'll go down to see if we can make them understand."
By this time the _Astronef_ was hanging suspended over an enormous
square about half the size of Hyde Park. It was laid out just as a
terrestrial park would be, in grass land, flower-beds, and avenues, and
patches of trees, only the grass was a reddish yellow, the leaves of the
trees were like those of a beech in autumn, and the flowers were nearly
all a deep violet, or a bright emerald green.
As they descended they saw that the square, or Central Park, as Zaidie
at once christened it, was flanked by enormous blocks of buildings,
palaces built of a dazzlingly white stone, and topped by domed roofs and
lofty cupolas of glass.
"Isn't that just lovely!" she said, swinging her binoculars in every
direction. "Talk about your Park Lane and the houses round Central Park;
why, it's the Chicago Exposition, and the Paris one, and your Crystal
Palace, multiplied by about ten thousand, and all spread out just round
this one place. If we don't find these people nice, I guess we'd better
go back and build a fleet like this, and come and take it."
"There spoke the new American imperialism," laughed Redgrave.
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