arked, and are now on their way to destroy us?"

Under the impulse of this new feeling, which, it must be admitted,
was very largely inspired by terror, the vast ballroom was quickly
deserted. The lights were suddenly put out in the great dome of balloons,
for someone had whispered:

"Suppose they should see that from Mars? Would they not guess what we
were about, and redouble their preparations to finish us?"

Upon the suggestion of the President of the United States, an executive
committee, representing all the principal nations, was appointed, and
without delay a meeting of this committee was assembled at the White
House. Mr. Edison was summoned before it, and asked to sketch briefly
the plan upon which he proposed to work.

Thousands of Men for Mars.

I need not enter into the details of what was done at this meeting. Let it
suffice to say that when it broke up, in the small hours of the morning,
it had been unanimously resolved that as many thousands of men as
Mr. Edison might require should be immediately placed at his disposal;
that as far as possible all the great manufacturing establishments
of the country should be instantly transformed into factories where
electrical ships and disintegrators could be built, and upon the
suggestion of Professor Sylvanus P. Thompson, the celebrated English
electrical expert, seconded by Lord Kelvin, it was resolved that all
the leading men of science in the world should place their services at
the disposal of Mr. Edison in any capacity in which, in his judgment,
they might be useful to him.

The members of this committee were disposed to congratulate one another
on the good work which they had so promptly accomplished, when at the
moment of their adjournment, a telegraphic dispatch was handed to the
President from Professor George E. Hale, the director of the great Yerkes
Observatory, in Wisconsin. The telegram read:

What's Happening on Mars?

"Professor Barnard, watching Mars to-night with the forty-inch telescope,
saw a sudden outburst of reddish light, which we think indicates that
something has been shot from the planet. Spectroscopic observations of
this moving light indicated that it was coming earthward, while visible,
at the rate of not less than one hundred miles a second."

Hardly had the excitement caused by the reading of this dispatch subsided,
when others of a similar import came from the Lick Observatory, in
California; from the branch of the Harva