After a moment I said: "If it's not a rude question, I wonder, ma'am, if you could tell me where I am."

She wrinkled her perfect brow when she heard me and shook her head slowly. "Uhoi merrash? Civinnee norshasa?"

I tried again in French but without any luck. Then in German—again no success. Spanish was equally ineffective at producing communication between us. My Latin and Greek were limited, but I tried those, too. I am something of a linguist, picking up foreign tongues quickly. I tried to remember the little Sioux and Apache I had learned during a brief study of the Red Indians at college. But nothing worked.

She spoke a few more words in her language which seemed to me, when I listened very carefully, to have certain faint similarities to classical Sanskrit.

"We are both, it seems, at a loss," I remarked, standing there with the beast still licking me lovingly.

She stretched out a hand for me to take. My heart pounded and I could hardly make myself move. "Phoresha," she said. She seemed to want me to go somewhere with her, and pointed towards the distant hills.

I shrugged, took her hand and went along with her.

So that was how, hand in hand with its loveliest resident, I came to Varnal, City of the Green Mists—most splendid of the splendid Martian cities.

Oh, how many thousands upon thousands of years ago!

Chapter Two

THE ASTOUNDING TRUTH

VARNAL is more real to me, even in my memories, than ever Chicago or New York can be. It lies in a gentle valley in the hills, which the Martians term the Calling Hills. Green and golden, they are covered with slender trees and, when the wind passes through them, they sound like sweet, distant, calling voices as one walks past.

The valley itself is wide and shallow and contains a fairly large, hot lake. The city is built around the lake, from which rises a greenish steam, a delicate green that sends tendrils curling around the spires of Varnal. Most of Varnal's graceful buildings are tall and white, though some are built of the unique blue marble which is mined close by. Others have traceries of gold in them, making them glitter in the sunlight. The city is walled by the same blue marble, which also has golden traceries in it. From its towers fly pennants, gay and multicolored, and its terraces are crowded with its handsome inhabitants, the plainest of whom would be a sought-after beau or belle in Wynnsville, Ohio—or, indeed, Chicago or any other great city of our world.

When I first came upon the city of Varnal, led by that wonderful girl, I gasped in awed admiration. She seemed to accept my gasp as the compliment it was and she smiled proudly, saying something in her then incomprehensible language.