These are then placed in the almost air-tight incubators to be
hatched by the sun's rays after a period of another five years. The
hatching which we had witnessed today was a fairly representative
event of its kind, all but about one per cent of the eggs hatching
in two days. If the remaining eggs ever hatched we knew nothing of
the fate of the little Martians. They were not wanted, as their
offspring might inherit and transmit the tendency to prolonged
incubation, and thus upset the system which has maintained for ages
and which permits the adult Martians to figure the proper time for
return to the incubators, almost to an hour.
The incubators are built in remote fastnesses, where there is little
or no likelihood of their being discovered by other tribes. The
result of such a catastrophe would mean no children in the community
for another five years. I was later to witness the results of the
discovery of an alien incubator.
The community of which the green Martians with whom my lot was cast
formed a part was composed of some thirty thousand souls. They
roamed an enormous tract of arid and semi-arid land between forty
and eighty degrees south latitude, and bounded on the east and
west by two large fertile tracts.
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