How are we going to dig it and get it back to earth?" asked another.

"Carry it in your pockets," said one.

"No need of staking claims here," remarked another. "There is enough
for everybody."

Mr. Edison suddenly turned the current of talk.

"What do you suppose those Martians were doing here?"

"Why, they were wrecked here."

"Not a bit of it," said Mr. Edison. "According to your own showing they
could not have been wrecked here. This planet hasn't gravitation enough
to wreck them by a fall, and besides I have been looking at their machines
and I know there has been a fight."

"A fight?" exclaimed several, pricking up their ears.

"Yes," said Mr. Edison; "those machines bear the marks of the lightning of
the Martians. They have been disabled, but they are made of some metal or
some alloy of metals unknown to me, and consequently they have withstood
the destructive force applied to them, as our electric ships were unable
to withstand it. It is perfectly plain to me that they have been disabled
in a battle. The Martians must have been fighting among themselves."

A Martian Civil War!

"About the gold!" exclaimed one.

"Of course. What else was there to fight about?"

At this instant one of our men came running from a considerable distance,
waving his arms excitedly, but unable to give voice to his story, in the
inappreciable atmosphere of the asteroid, until he had come up and made
telephonic connection with us.

"There is a lot of dead Martians over there," he said. "They've been
cleaning one another out."

"That's it," said Mr. Edison. "I knew it when I saw the condition of
those machines."

"Then this is not a wrecked expedition, directed against the earth?"

"Not at all."

"This must be the great gold mine of Mars," said the president of
an Australian mining company, opening both his eyes and his mouth as
he spoke.

"Yes, evidently that's it. Here's where they come to get their wealth."

"And this," I said, "must be their harvest time. You notice that this
asteroid, being several million miles nearer to the sun than Mars is,
must have an appreciably shorter period of revolution. When it is in
conjunction with Mars, or nearly so, as it is at present, the distance
between the two is not very great, whereas when it is in the opposite
part of its orbit they are separated by an enormous gap of space and
the sun is between them."

"Manifestly in the latter case it would be perilous if not entir