"Fields," he said, and pointed to squared areas of pale reds and blues; "though what it is, heaven knows. And the trees!--if that's what they are." The ship went downward where an area of tropical denseness made a tangled mass of color and shadow. "Trees!" Lieutenant McGuire had exclaimed, but these forests were of tree-forms in weirdest shapes and hues. They grew to towering heights, and their branches and leaves that swayed and dipped in the slow-moving air were of delicate pastel shades. "No sunlight," said the Professor excitedly; "they have no direct rays of the sun. The clouds act as a screen and filter out actinic rays." McGuire did not reply. He was watching the countless dots of color that were people--people who swarmed here as they had in the city; people working at these great groves, crouching lower in the fields as the ship swept close; people everywhere in teeming thousands. And like the vegetation about them, they, too, were tall and thin, attenuated of form and with skin like blood-stained ash. "They need the sun," Sykes was repeating; "both vegetable and animal life. The plants are deficient in chlorophyl--see the pale green of the leaves!--and the people need vitamins. Yet they evidently have electric power in abundance. I could tell them of lamps--" * * * * * His comments ceased as McGuire lurched heavily against him. The flyer had taken note of the tense, attentive attitude of the one in scarlet; the man was leaning forward, his eyes focused directly upon the scientist's face; he seemed absorbing both words and emotions. How much could he comprehend? What power had he to vision the idea-pictures in the other's mind? McGuire could not know. But "Sorry!" he told Sykes; "that was clumsy of me." And he added in a whisper, "Keep your thoughts to yourself; I think this bird is getting them." Buildings flashed under them, not massed solidly as in the city, yet spaced close to one another as if every foot of ground not devoted to their incredible agriculture were needed to house the inhabitants. The ground about them was alive with an equally incredible humanity that swarmed over all this world in appalling profusion. Their horrid flesh! Their hideous features! And their number! McGuire had a sudden, sickening thought. They were larvae, these crawling hordes--vile worm-things that infested a beautiful world--that bred here in millions, their numbers limited only by the space for their bodies and the food for their stomachs. And he, McGuire, a _man_--he and this other man with his clear-thinking scientific brain were prisoners to this horde; captives, to be used or butchered by those vile, crawling things!