Perhaps it's the Sun shining on the ice."
As the _Astronef_ fell towards the surface of Ganymede she crossed his
northern pole, and the nearer they got the plainer it became that a
light very like the terrestrial Aurora was playing about it,
illuminating the thin, yellow clouds with a bluish-violet light, which
made magnificent contrasts of colouring amongst them.
"Let us go down there and see what it's like," said Zaidie. "There must
be something nice under all those lovely colours."
Redgrave checked the R. Force and the _Astronef_ fell obliquely across
the pole towards the equator. As they approached the luminous clouds
Redgrave turned it on again, and they sank slowly through a glowing mist
of innumerable colours, until the surface of Ganymede came into plain
view about ten miles below them.
What they saw then was the strangest sight they had beheld since they
had left the Earth. As far as their eyes could reach the surface of the
Ganymede was covered with vast orderly patches, mostly rectangular, of
what they at first took for ice, but which they soon found to be a
something that was self-illuminating.
"Glorified hot-houses, as I'm alive," exclaimed Redgrave. "Whole cities
under glass, fields, too, and lit by electricity or something very like
it. Zaidie, we shall find human beings down there.
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