will understand these things better as you gradually become acquainted
with the conditions here. You must remember that you are in the position
of a man over fifteen hundred years in advance of his day.

"Having become convinced, through close observations, that the progress
of Earth was identical with that of Mars, and that Earth, being the
younger planet, was consequently following our lead, we anxiously
watched for the discovery on Earth of the wonderful power that had been
the means of bringing us into such close visual contact with you. When
you discovered radium, we realized that this would eventually lead to
the discovery of the higher power, but we feared that this might not be
for hundreds of years.

"That communication was possible through the medium of radium and
electricity, we were totally ignorant of. It was the responsive
properties of radium in your instrument, however, that first attracted
my attention while searching over Paris for an object I had previously
been observing. Thereafter my interest in your progress was as great as
your own, and every twenty-four hours, when the eastern hemisphere of
Earth was turned toward Mars, I searched with the radioscope until I got
the response of your instrument.

"I have kept my success in communicating with Earth a secret, as it
involves an invention of mine which I have not yet made public, and of
which I will now tell you. This invention is the radiphone, through
which we are now conversing, and to which the diaphragm of your
instrument responds, as it doubtless contains radium also. My entire
life has been devoted to the development of Martian-Earthly
communication, and this instrument has been the goal which I have
striven to reach since boyhood, and yet its success in communicating