"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 forward at about fifty miles an hour, rose in a slanting direction through a dense bank of rosy-tinted clouds, which hung over the bigger of the two cities--New York, as Zaidie had named it.
When they reached the golden-red sunlight above it the _Astronef_ stopped her ascent, and then, with half a turn of the steering-wheel, her commander sent her sweeping round in a wide circle.

A few minutes later they saw the Martian fleet rise almost simultaneously through the clouds.

They seemed to hesitate a moment, and then the prow of every vessel was directed towards the swiftly moving _Astronef_.
"Well, gentlemen," said Redgrave, "you evidently don't know anything about Professor Rennick and the R.Force; and yet you ought to know that we couldn't have come through Space without being able to get beyond this little atmosphere of yours.