Part 28

I close this dramatic picture with the poor comfort

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that several philanthropic people have suggested signalling to them as a mark of sympathy. It is said that a fortune was bequeathed to the French Academy for the purpose of communicating with the Martians. It has been suggested that we could flash signals to them by means of gigantic mirrors reflecting the light of our Sun. Or, again, that we might light bonfires on a sufficiently large scale. They would have to be about ten miles in diameter! A writer in the Pall Mall Gazette suggested that there need really be no difficulty in the matter. With the kind cooperation of the London Gas Companies (this was before the days of electric lighting) a signal might be sent without any additional expense if the gas companies would consent to simultaneously turn off the gas at intervals of five minutes over the whole of London, a signal which would be visible to the astronomers in Mars would result. He adds, naively: "If only tried for an hour each night some results might be obtained."

We have reviewed the theory of the artificial construction of the Martian lines. The amount of consideration we are disposed to give to the supposition that there are upon Mars other minds than ours will--as I have stated--necessarily depend upon whether or not we can assign a probable explanation of the lines upon purely physical grounds. If it is apparent that such

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lines would be formed with great probability under certain conditions, which conditions are themselves probable, then the argument by exclusion for the existence of civilisation on Mars, at once breaks down.

{Fig. 10}

As a romance writer is sometimes under the necessity of transporting his readers to other scenes, so I must now ask you to consent to be transported some millions

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of miles into the region of the heavens which lies outside Mars' orbit.

Between Mars and Jupiter is a chasm of 341 millions of miles. This gap in the sequence of planets was long known to be quite out of keeping with the orderly succession of worlds outward from the Sun. A society was formed at the close of the last century for the detection of the missing world. On the first day of the last century, Piazzi--who, by the way, was not a member of the society--discovered a tiny world in the vacant gap. Although eagerly welcomed, as better than nothing, it was a disappointing find. The new world was a mere rock. A speck of about 160 miles in diameter. It was obviously never intended that such a body should have all this space to itself. And, sure enough, shortly after, another small world was discovered. Then another was found, and another, and so on; and now more than 400 of these strange little worlds are known.

But whence came such bodies? The generally accepted belief is that these really represent a misbegotten world. When the Sun was younger he shed off the several worlds of our system as so many rings. Each ring then coalesced into a world. Neptune being the first born; Mercury the youngest born.

After Jupiter was thrown off, and the Sun had shrunk away inwards some 20o million miles, he shed off another ring. Meaning that this offspring of his should grow up like the rest, develop into a stable world with the

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potentiality even, it may be, of becoming the abode of rational beings. But something went wrong. It broke up into a ring of little bodies, circulating around him.

It is probable on this hypothesis that the number we are acquainted with does not nearly represent the actual number of past and present asteroids. It would take 125,000 of the biggest of them to make up a globe as big as our world. They, so far as they are known, vary in size from 10 miles to 160 miles in diameter. It is probable then--on the assumption that this failure of a world was intended to be about the mass of our Earth--that they numbered, and possibly number, many hundreds of thousands.

Some of these little bodies are very peculiar in respect to the orbits they move in. This peculiarity is sometimes in the eccentricity of their orbits, sometimes in the manner in which their orbits are tilted to the general plane of the ecliptic, in which all the other planets move.

The eccentricity, according to Proctor, in some cases may attain such extremes as to bring the little world inside Mars' mean distance from the sun. This, as you will remember, is very much less than his greatest distance from the sun. The entire belt of asteroids--as known--lie much nearer to Mars than to Jupiter.

As regards the tilt of their orbits, some are actually as much as 34 degrees inclined to the ecliptic, so that in fact they are seen from the Earth among our polar constellations.

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From all this you see that Mars occupies a rather hot comer in the solar system. Is it not possible that more than once in the remote past Mars may have encountered one of these wanderers? If he came within a certain distance of the small body his great mass would sway it from its orbit, and under certain conditions he would pick up a satellite in this manner. That his present satellites were actually so acquired is the suggestion of Newton, of Yale College.

Mars' satellites are indeed suspiciously and most abnormally small. I have not time to prove this to you by comparison with the other worlds of the solar system. In fact, they were not discovered till 1877--although they were predicted in a most curious manner, with the most uncannily accurate details, by Swift.

One of these bodies is about 36 miles in diameter. This is Phobos. Phobos is only 3.700 miles from the surface of Mars. The other is smaller and further off. He is named Deimos, and his diameter is only 10 miles. He is 12,500 miles from Mars' surface. With the exception of Phobos the next smallest satellite known in the solar system is one of Saturn's--Hyperion; almost 800 miles in diameter. The inner one goes all round Mars in 71/2 hours. This is Phobos' month. Mars turns on his axis in 24 hours and 40 minutes, so that people in Mars would see the rise of Phobos twice in the course of a day and night; lie would apparently cross the sky

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going against the other satellite; that is, he would move apparently from west to east.

We may at least assume as probable that other satellites have been gathered by Mars in the past from the army of asteroids.

Some of the satellites so picked up would be direct: that is, would move round the planet in the direction of his axial rotation. Others, on the chances, would be retrograde: that is, would move against his axial rotation. They would describe orbits making the same various angles with the ecliptic as do the asteroids; and we may be sure they would be of the same varying dimensions.

We go on to inquire what would be the consequence to Mars of such captures.