ced him earnestly.

"Randall, there isn't much time now, but I am going to tell you what I
have been doing in the last two years on this God-forsaken Maine
coast. I have been for those two years in unbroken communication by
radio with beings on the planet Mars!

"It was when I still held my physics professorship back at the
university that I got first onto the track of the thing. I was
studying the variation of static vibrations, and in so doing caught
steady signals--not static--at an unprecedentedly high wave-length.
They were dots and dashes of varying length in an entirely
unintelligible code, the same arrangement of them being sent out
apparently every few hours.

"I began to study them and soon ascertained that they could be sent
out by no station on earth. The signals seemed to be growing louder
each day, and it suddenly occurred to me that Mars was approaching
opposition with earth! I was startled, and kept careful watch. On the
day that Mars was closest the earth the signals were loudest.
Thereafter, as the red planet receded, they grew weaker. The signals
were from some being or beings on Mars!

"At first I was going to give the news to the world, but saw in time
that I could not. There was not sufficient proof, and a premature
statement would only wreck my own scientific reputation. So I decided
to study the signals farther until I had irrefutable proof, and to
answer them if possible. I came up here and had this place built, and
the aerial towers and other equipment I wanted set up. Lanier and
Nelson came with me from the university, and we began our work.

* * * * *

"Our chief object was to answer those signals, but it proved
heartbreaking work at first. We could not produce a radio wave of
great enough length to pierce out through earth's insulating layer and
across the gulf to Mars. We used all the power of our great
windmill-dynamo hook-ups, but for long could not make it. Every few
hours like clockwork the Martian signals came through. Then at last we
heard them repeating one of our own signals. We had been heard!

"For a time we hardly left our instruments. We began the slow and
almost impossible work of establishing intelligent communication with
the Martians. It was with numbers we began. Earth is the third planet
from the sun and Mars the fourth, so three represented earth and four
stood for Mars. Slowly we felt our way to an exchange of ideas, and
within mon