The adventure whetted their appetites for further exploration, and on proceeding they saw in many parts of the country colonies of beings, and selecting one of the largest colonies, they found it inhabited by strange people, who were highly intelligent and who, though not greatly unlike human beings, had a skin covered with exceedingly fine and silky hair which gleamed in the light. They wore no clothing nor did they eat, as do the denizens of the solar system, but drew in their nourishment from the air itself, which not only entered the lungs and gave life and heat to the body as with us, but provided them with a sufficiency of the chemical elements to build up the frame, and replace the loss caused by physical and mental exertion. They were apparently sexless, and seemed all to live together in the closest bonds of love and friendship, thinking and doing no wrong, and treating their strange visitors with courtesy, respect and perfect frankness. They examined the ship with interest, and were pleased to hear what the vessel had done, though knowing nothing of Earth, which was too far away to be seen by their instruments, except as a very minute star. They spoke of the sun—which was seen from here with the naked eye as but a star—as from actual knowledge, explaining its internal and external structure accurately, and when their description was confirmed, they were both pleased and grateful for the proof. They were entirely without guile, childishly frank and open, and of a scale of intelligence far surpassing human limits. Although the Earthians could not telepath even to each other in this world—or indeed anywhere outside the solar system—they were so much under the influence of these people that they could both understand and be understood by thought alone. Dennis and his close friends had been to other planets in the solar system, and only now did they realise what had previously escaped their notice, plain though it was. Although the people and climates, and modes of living, had differed on various planets, yet there had been a certain similarity in form and thought. They had been ‘humans’—differing more or less, but in action, power, life, manner of keeping alive by eating cooked or uncooked food, and telepathy alike, and so far as the terrestrians were concerned they had been able to communicate with Earth by ether wave so long as they had remained in the solar system, thus proving that all the members of that system were really of one family, and that the welfare of one world was identical with that of all the others, but in this planet—the first they had visited outside the system—all communication with the units of that system was cut off.