The outer edge of the crescent is
bright, but it gets greyer and dimmer towards the inside of the curve.
Of course Venus has an atmosphere. So had Mars; but this must be very
dense. There's a sort of halo all round it. Just fancy that splendid
thing being the little black spot we saw going across the face of the
Sun a few days ago! It makes one feel rather small, doesn't it?"
"That is one of the things which a woman says when she doesn't want to
be answered; but, apart from that, you were saying----"
"What a very unpleasant person you can be when you like! I was going to
say that on the Moon we saw nothing but black and white, light and
darkness. There was no atmosphere, except in those awful places I don't
want to think about. Then, as we got near Mars, we saw a pinky
atmosphere, but not very dense; but this, you see, is a sort of
pearl-grey white shading from silver to black. You notice how much paler
it grows as we get nearer. But look--what are those tiny bright spots?
There are hundreds of them."
"Do you remember as we were leaving the Earth, how bright the mountain
ranges looked; how plainly we could see the Rockies and the Andes?"
"Oh, yes, I see; they're mountains; thirty-seven miles high, some of
them, they say; and the rest of the silver-grey will be clouds, I
suppose. Fancy living under clouds like those.
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