The propellers slowed down and the _Astronef_ dropped with a hardly-perceptible shock in the midst of a little plateau covered with a thick, soft moss of a pale yellowish green, and fringed by a belt of trees which seemed to be over three hundred feet high, and whose foliage was a deep golden bronze.
They had scarcely landed before the flying figures reappeared over the tree tops and swept downwards in long spiral curves towards the _Astronef_.
"If they're not angels, they're very like them," said Zaidie, putting down her glasses.
"There's one thing, they fly a lot better than the old masters' angels or Dore's could have done, because they have tails--or at least something that seems to serve the same purpose, and yet they haven't got feathers." "Yes, they have, at least round the edges of their wings or whatever they are, and they've got clothes, too, silk tunics or something of that sort--and there are men and women." "You're quite right, those fringes down their legs are feathers, and that's how they can fly.

They seem to have four arms." The flying figures which came hovering near to the _Astronef_, without evincing any apparent sign of fear, were the strangest that human eyes had looked upon.

In some respects they had a sufficient resemblance for them to be taken for winged men and women, while in another they bore a decided resemblance to birds.

Their bodies and limbs were human in shape, but of slenderer and lighter build; and from the shoulder-blades and muscles of the back there sprang a second pair of arms arching up above their heads.

Between these and the lower arms, and continued from them down the side to the ankles, there appeared to be a flexible membrane covered with a light feathery down, pure white on the inside, but on the back a brilliant golden yellow, deepening to bronze towards the edges, round which ran a deep feathery fringe.
The body was covered in front and down the back between the wings with a sort of divided tunic of a light, silken-looking material, which must have been clothing, since there were many different colours all more or less of different hue among them.