cover a
continent which is warmly fruitful and, probably, teeming with life.

Still wordless, too stirred to speak, they opened the vault-like door
and stepped out--into a humid heat which was like that of their own
tropical regions, but not so unendurable.

In their short stay on the moon, during which they had taken several
walks in their insulated suits, they had become somewhat accustomed to
the decreased weight of their bodies due to the lesser gravity, so
that here, where their weight was even less, they did not make any
blunders of stepping twenty feet instead of a yard.

Walking warily, glancing alertly in all directions to guard against
any strange animals that might rush out to destroy them, they moved
toward the nearest stretch of jungle.

* * * * *

The first thing that arrested their attention was the size of the
trees they were approaching. They had got some idea of their hugeness
from the shell, but viewed from ground level they loomed even larger.
Eight hundred, a thousand feet they reared their mighty tops, with
trunks hundreds of feet in circumference; living pyramids whose bases
wove together to make an impenetrable ceiling over the jungle floor.
The leaves were thick and bloated like cactus growths, and their color
was a pronounced lavender.

"We must take back several of those leaves," said Wichter, his
scientific soul filled with cold excitement.

"I wish we could take back some of this air, too." Joyce filled his
lungs to capacity. "Isn't it great? Like wine! It almost counteracts
the effects of the heat."

"There's more oxygen in it than in our own," surmised Wichter. "My
God! What's that!"

They halted for an instant. From the depths of the lavender jungle had
come an ear shattering, screaming hiss, as though some monstrous
serpent were in its death agony.

They waited to hear if the noise would be repeated. It wasn't.
Dubiously they started on again.

"We'd better not go in there too far," said Joyce. "If we didn't come
out again it would cost Earth a new planet. No one else knows the
secret of your water-motor."

"Oh, nothing living can stand against these guns of ours," replied
Wichter confidently. "And that noise might not have been caused by
anything living. It might have been steam escaping from some volcanic
crevice."

They started cautiously down a well defined, hard packed trail through
thorny lavender underbrush. As they went, Joyce blaz