ry. The creature before them opened his great jaws
and uttered slowly a succession of sounds that for the moment puzzled
them, so different were they from the hissing speech of the others,
though with the same sibilance of tone. Again the thing repeated the
sounds, and this time Milton uttered an exclamation.

"He's speaking to us!" he cried. "Trying to speak the English that I
taught them in our communication! I caught a word--listen...."

As the creature repeated the sounds, Randall and Lanier started to
hear also vaguely expressed in that hissing voice familiar words:
"You--are Milton and--others from--earth?"

Milton spoke very clearly and slowly to the creature: "We are those
from earth," he said. "And you are the Martians with whom we have
communicated?"

"We are those Martians," said the other's hissing voice slowly.
"These"--he waved a taloned paw toward those behind him--"have charge
of the matter-transmitter and receiver. I am of our ruler's council."

"Ruler?" Milton repeated. "A ruler of all Mars?"

"Of all Mars," the other said. "Our name for him would mean in your
words the Martian Master. I am to take you to him."

* * * * *

Milton turned to the other two with face alight with excitement.
"These Martians have some supreme ruler they call the Martian Master,"
he said quickly; "and we're to go before him. As the first visitors
from earth we're of immense importance here."

As he spoke, the Martian official before them had uttered a hissing
call, and in answer to it a long shape of shining metal raced into
the vast hall and halted beside them. It was like a fifty-foot
centipede of metal, its scores of supporting short legs actuated by
some mechanism inside the cylindrical body. There was a
transparent-walled control room at the front end of that body, and in
it a Martian at the controls who snapped open a door from which a
metal ladder automatically descended.

The Martian official gestured with a reptilian arm toward the ladder,
and Milton and Lanier and Randall moved carefully out of the
cube-chamber and across the floor to it, each of their steps being
made a short leap forward by the lesser gravity of the smaller planet.
They climbed up into the centipede-machine's control room, their guide
following, and then as the door snapped shut, the operator of the
thing pulled and turned the knob in his grasp and the long machine
scuttled forward with amazing smoothness