As though trained for years in this particular
evolution, the green Martians melted like mist into the spacious
doorways of the nearby buildings, until, in less than three minutes,
the entire cavalcade of chariots, mastodons and mounted warriors
was nowhere to be seen.
Sola and I had entered a building upon the front of the city, in
fact, the same one in which I had had my encounter with the apes,
and, wishing to see what had caused the sudden retreat, I mounted
to an upper floor and peered from the window out over the valley
and the hills beyond; and there I saw the cause of their sudden
scurrying to cover. A huge craft, long, low, and gray-painted,
swung slowly over the crest of the nearest hill. Following it came
another, and another, and another, until twenty of them, swinging
low above the ground, sailed slowly and majestically toward us.
Each carried a strange banner swung from stem to stern above the
upper works, and upon the prow of each was painted some odd device
that gleamed in the sunlight and showed plainly even at the distance
at which we were from the vessels. I could see figures crowding
the forward decks and upper works of the air craft.
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