We are doing what has only been dreamt of before, and here you are talking about moons and planets as if they were railway stations." "Well, if your Ladyship prefers it, we will call them undiscovered islands and continents in the Ocean of Space.

That does sound a little bit better, doesn't it?
Now I think I had better go down and see to my engines." When he had gone, Zaidie sat down to the telescope again and kept it focussed on one of the little black spots travelling across the crescent of Mars.

Both it and the other spot rapidly grew larger, and the features of the planet itself became more distinct.

Soon even with her unaided eyes she could make out the seas and continents and the mysterious canals quite plainly through the clear, rosy atmosphere, and, with the aid of the telescope, she could even see the glimmering twilight which the inner moon threw upon the unlighted portion of the planet's disc.
Deimos grew bigger and bigger, and in about half an hour the _Astronef_ grounded gently on what looked to Zaidie like a dimly lighted circular plain, but which, when her eyes became accustomed to the light, was more like the summit of a conical mountain.

Redgrave raised the keel a little from the surface again and steered towards a thin circle of light on the tiny horizon.
As they crossed into the sunlit portion it became quite plain that Deimos, at any rate, was as airless and lifeless as the moon.