“Oh, no,” she replied; “the house will not run away, nor the children either. We do not often stay away from them over night, but we do not hesitate to do so when we have a good reason for it. Our children know us well enough to be sure we have such a reason now, and this faith in us and in our safe return will permit us to stay away as long as we please. As for our feelings, we have no such thing as anxiety, for all our experience teaches us that no harm of any kind can come to our loved ones. I suppose in such circumstances on the earth both the mother and the children would have a feeling of great fear, caused by the fact that there would be in reality some danger of harm, but here we have never heard of such a thing, and even the word ‘danger’ has little meaning in it to us, because all we know about it comes from our reading.” The moon was now well above us, and we were making for a point in the western sky where Foedric hoped to intercept it. We were already so far from the planet that the air was getting weak, so we all put on breathing machines. These were of such perfect construction that our lungs had free play, nor were they cumbersome enough to interfere much with our movements. By this time the moon had grown so vastly, owing to our swift traveling, that our friends began to be amazed at its enormous proportions. The jagged, mountainous surface was plainly visible, a most uninviting place for people accustomed to the serene beauty and felicity of the planet Mars. “Remember,” said the doctor, “that you are not to judge the earth by what you see of her old satellite.” “Well,” answered Thorwald, “we mean to see what we can of the satellite. Foedric, let us point the glass at it and be selecting a place to land.” But Foedric was obliged to let Thorwald handle the glass alone, for his attention was needed just now to manage our craft. He had discovered that shutting off the power did not diminish the speed, and for a moment he was puzzled, quite a new sensation for a Martian of that era. But he soon studied out the difficulty and made the following announcement: “I find this huge mass that we are approaching is pulling us toward its surface, so that we are using but little power. I expect in a short time we can merely fall to its surface.” This suggested to Thorwald the very trouble that the doctor and I had encountered with our balloon, and he asked Foedric if we could get away again after we had dropped to the moon. “Yes,” Foedric answered, “I am sure we have power enough here to overcome the attraction and get away whenever we please.” Thorwald, who had been intently studying the surface through the telescope, now spoke out with some excitement in his voice: “Doctor, I begin to think you did not make a thorough investigation of the moon’s condition. Did you not report it practically uninhabited?”