and speed.

In a moment it was out of the building and into the feeble sunlight of
a broad metal-paved street. About them lay a Martian city, seen by
their eager eyes for the first time. It was a city whose structures
were giant metal cones like that from which they had just come, though
none seemed as large as that titanic one. Throngs of the hideous
crocodilian Martians were moving busily to and fro in the streets,
while among them there scuttled and flashed numbers of the
centipede-machines.

* * * * *

As their strange vehicle raced along, Randall saw that the conelike
structures were for the most part divided into many levels, and that
inside some could be glimpsed ranks of great mechanisms and hurrying
Martians tending them. Away to their right across the vast forest of
cones that was the city the sun's little disk was shining, and he
glimpsed in that direction higher ground covered with a vast tangle of
bright crimson jungle that sloped upward from a great, half-glimpsed
waterway.

The Martian beside them saw the direction of his gaze and leaned
toward him. "No Martians live there," he hissed slowly. "Martians live
only in cities where canals meet."

"Then there's no life in those crimson jungles?" Randall asked,
repeating the question a moment later more slowly.

"No Martians there, but life--living things," the other told him,
searching for words. "But not intelligent, like Martians and you."

He turned to gaze ahead, then pointed. "The Martian Master's cone," he
hissed.

The three saw that at the end of the broad metal street down which
their vehicle was racing there loomed another titanic cone-structure,
fully as large as the mighty one in which they first found themselves.
As the centipede-machine swept up to its great door-opening and
halted, they descended to the metal paving and then followed their
reptilian guide through the opening.

* * * * *

They found themselves in a great hall in which scores of the Martians
were coming and going. At the hall's end stood a row of what seemed
guards, Martians grasping shining tubes such as they had already
glimpsed. These gave way to allow their passage when their conductor
uttered a hissing order, and then they were moving down a shorter hall
at whose end also were guards. As these sprang aside before them, a
great door of massive metal they guarded moved softly upward,
disclosing a mighty