ke a look of fear in her eyes. "I suppose that is
because you have just killed somebody--or somethings--whichever they
are."

"Do I, really?"

The hard-set jaw relaxed and his lips melted into a smile under his
moustache, and he bent down and kissed her.

"Well, what do you suppose I should have thought of them if _you_ had
had a whiff of that poison?"

"Yes, dear," she whispered in between the kisses, "I see now."

CHAPTER XI

The _Astronef_ dropped swiftly down through the crimson-tinged clouds,
and a few minutes later they saw that the rest of the fleet had
scattered in units in all directions, apparently with the intention of
getting as far as possible out of reach of that terrible ram. Only one
of them, the largest, which carried what looked like a flag of woven
gold at the top of its centre mast, remained in sight after a few
minutes. It was almost immediately below them when they had passed
through the clouds, and they could see it sinking straight down towards
the centre of what appeared to be the principal square of the bigger of
the two cities which Zaidie had named New York and Brooklyn.

"That fellow has gone to report, evidently," said Redgrave. "We'll
follow him just to see what he's up to, but I don't think we'd better
open the ports even then. There's no telling when they might give us a
whiff of that poison-mist, or whatever it is."

"But how are you going to talk to them, then, if they can talk?--I mean,
if they know any language that we do?"

"They're something like men, and so I suppose they understand the
language of signs, at any rate. Still, if you don't fancy it, we'll go
somewhere else."

"No, thanks," she said. "That's not my father's daughter. I haven't come
a hundred million miles from home to go away before the first act's
finished. We'll go down to see if we can make them understand."

By this time the _Astronef_ was hanging suspended over an enormous
square about half the size of Hyde Park. It was laid out just as a
terrestrial park would be, in grass land, flower-beds, and avenues, and
patches of trees, only the grass was a reddish yellow, the leaves of the
trees were like those of a beech in autumn, and the flowers were nearly
all a deep violet, or a bright emerald green.

As they descended they saw that the square, or Central Park, as Zaidie
at once christened it, was flanked by enormous blocks of buildings,
palaces built of a dazzlingly white stone, and topped by