The next day a party of prominent scientists, accompanied by a telegrapher and two stenographers, arrived at my farm.

During the weeks that followed there was recorded Myles’s own account of the amazing adventures on the planet Venus (or Poros, as its own inhabitants call it,) which befell him upon his return there after his brief visit to the earth. I have edited those notes into the following coherent story.

II TOO MUCH STATIC

TOO MUCH STATIC

Myles Cabot had returned to the earth to study the latest developments of modern terrestrial science for the benefit of the Cupian nation. He was the regent of Cupia during the minority of his baby son, King Kew the Thirteenth. The loyal Prince Toron occupied the throne in his absence. The last of the ant-men and their ally, the renegade Cupian Prince Yuri, had presumably perished in an attempt to escape by flying through the steam-clouds which completely hem in continental Poros. What lay beyond the boiling seas no man knew.

During his stay on my farm, Cabot had built the matter-transmitting apparatus, with which he had shot himself off into space on that October night on which he had received the message from the skies: “S O S, Lilla.” A thunderstorm had been brewing all that evening, and just as Myles had placed himself between the coordinate axes of his machine and had gathered up the strings which ran from his control levers to within the apparatus, there had come a blinding flash. Lightning had struck his aerial.

How long his unconsciousness lasted he knew not. He was some time in regaining his senses. But when he had finally and fully recovered, he found himself lying on a sandy beach beside a calm and placid lake beneath a silver sky.

He fell to wondering, vaguely and pleasantly, where he was and how he had got here.

Suddenly, however, his ears were jarred by a familiar sound. At once his senses cleared, and he listened intently to the distant purring of a motor. Yes, there could be no mistake; an airplane was approaching. Now he could see it, a speck in the sky, far down the beach.

Nearer and nearer it came.

Myles sprang to his feet. To his intense surprise, he found that the effort threw him quite a distance into the air. Instantly the idea flashed through his mind: “I must be on Mars! Or some other strange planet.” This 

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