“I looked upon my friend, and in the rapidly rising flood of emotions that came with the acting members of my body, flushed and throbbing with excitement, and with a wild joy besides, I flung myself upon his neck and pressed him with arms that seemed once more those natural physical ties that have held upon my breast those I best loved on earth.

“The stranger led me slowly up the stairway and past great celestial spheres which filled the higher hallways, conducting me to a room at one corner of the great structure.  The room was a singular and unique apartment.  It consisted of a large central space, furnished with the usual ivory chairs, and a broad, massive center table, also of ivory, curiously inlaid with particles of the omnipresent phosphori, which gave out a liquid light and imparted indescribable chasteness and beauty to the carved ornaments upon them.  The floor was dark, a leaden color, lustrous, however, like black glass, and made up in mosaic.  Around the room were alcoves lit by lamps of the phosphori, and in each alcove a globe of a blue metal upon which were painted sketches like charts or maps.  A chandelier of this blue metal was pendant from the ceiling, and in its cup-like extremities, arranged in vertical tiers, were round balls of the phosphori, glowing softly.

“Wide windows, unprotected by glass or sashes, just embrasures framed in white stone which everywhere prevails in Mars, looked out upon the marvellous City, which thus seemed a lake of glowing fires, over which, rising and refluent waves of light constantly chased each other to its dark borders, where the surrounding plain country met the City’s edges.  But throughout the distance I could trace lines of light marking highways or roads leading interminably away until quite extinguished at the optical limits of my vision.

“The walls of this beautiful room rose to an arched ceiling which was inlaid with this wonderful blue metal, seen in the globes, designed in scrolls and waving ribbons, and just descending upon the walls themselves in attenuated twigs and strings.  The walls were bare and shining.

“My friend led me to one of the great windows and placed me in a chair.  Drawing another beside me, placing his hand on mine, and leaning outward toward the burning splendor below us, above which in the still, clear heavens shone those stellar hosts you and I have so often watched with wonder, he said: 

“’Ten Martian years ago I came to this world as you have come.  As a spirit I entered the chambers on the Hill of the Phosphori.  I sat in the Chorus Hall.  I entered the City and slowly changed, as you are changing, into one of the Martian white people.  I found my work, as you will, in this Patenta, for by that name in Mars is called this home of astronomy and physical philosophy.  Here, amid telescopes and apparatus of experiment and investigation, I have spent the years, mapping with many others the skies, and above all beating the earth we left, as have many, many, whom you will meet, with magnetic waves, hoping against hope, that some response might be gained, some hint of that connection through space which the physicists of this planet expect, ere long, may make all the beings of the universe one great sidereal society.’