Zaidie stood beside him with a powerful binocular telescope watching, with cheeks a little paler than usual, the movements of the Martian air-ships.

She counted twenty-five vessels rising round them in a wide circle.
"I don't like the idea of a whole fleet coming up," said Redgrave, as he watched them rising, and the ring narrowing round the still motionless _Astronef_.

"If they only wanted to know who and what we are, or to leave their cards on us, as it were, and bid us welcome to the world, one ship could have done that just as well as a fleet.

This lot coming up looks as if they wanted to get round and capture us." "It does look like it," said Zaidie, with her glasses fixed on the nearest of the vessels; "and now I can see they've guns too, something like ours, and perhaps, as you said just now, they may have explosives that we don't know anything about.

Oh, Lenox, suppose they were able to smash us up with a single shot." "You needn't be afraid of that, dear," he said, putting his arm round her shoulders.