You needn't be afraid of that, dear," he said, putting his arm round
her shoulders. "Of course it's perfectly natural that they should look
upon us with a certain amount of suspicion, dropping like this on them
from the stars. Can you see anything like men on board them yet?"

"No, they're all closed in just as we are," she replied; "but they've
got conning-towers like this, and something like windows along the
sides. That's where the guns are, and the guns are moving. They're
pointing them at us. Lenox, I'm afraid they're going to shoot."

"Then we may as well spoil their aim," he said, pressing one of the
buttons on the signal-board three times, and then once more after a
little interval.

In obedience to the signal Murgatroyd turned on the repulsive force to
half power, and the _Astronef_ leapt up vertically a couple of thousand
feet. Then Redgrave pressed the button once and she stopped. Another
signal set the propellers in motion, and as she sprang forward across
the circle formed by the Martian air-ships, they looked down and saw
that the place which they had just left was occupied by a thick
greenish-yellow cloud.

"Look, Lenox, what on earth is that?" exclaimed Zaidie, pointing down to
it.

"What on Mars would be nearer the point, dear," he said, with what she
thought a somewhat vicious laugh. "That, I'm afraid, means anything but
a friendly reception for us. That cloud is one of two things--it's the
smoke of the explosion of twenty or thirty shells, or else it's made of
gases intended to either poison us or make us insensible, so that they
can take possession of the ship. In either case I should say that the
Martians are not what we should call gentlemen."

"I should think not," she said angrily. "They might at least have taken
us for friends till they had proved us enemies, which they wouldn't have
done. Nice sort of hospitality that, considering how far we've come, and
we can't shoot back, because we haven't got the ports open."

"And a very good thing too!" laughed Redgrave; "if we had had them open,
and that volley had caught us unawares, the _Astronef_ would probably
have been full of poisonous gases by this time, and your honeymoon,
dear, would have come to a somewhat untimely end. Ah, they're trying to
follow us! Well, now we'll see how high they can fly."

He sent another signal to Murgatroyd, and the _Astronef_, still beating
the Martian air with the fans of her propellers, and travelling forwa