moments of silence, Edmund said, in his quiet way:

"Those are air ships."

"Air ships!"

"Yes, surely. An exploring expedition, I shouldn't wonder. I anticipated
something of that kind. You know already how dense the atmosphere of
Venus is. It follows that balloons, and all sorts of machines for aerial
navigation, can float much more easily here than over the earth. I was
prepared to find the inhabitants of Venus skilled in such things, and I'm
not surprised by what we see."

"Venus with wings!" cried Jack. "Now, Edmund, that sounds more like it. I
guess we've struck the right planet after all."

"But," I said, "you spoke of an exploring expedition. How in the world do
you make that out?"

"It seems perfectly natural to me," replied Edmund. "Remember the two
sides of the planet, so wonderfully different from one another. If we on
the earth are so curious about the poles of our planet, simply because
they are unlike other parts of the world, don't you think that the
inhabitants of Venus should be at least equally curious concerning a
whole hemisphere of their world, which differs _in toto_ from the half on
which they live?"

"That does seem reasonable," I assented.

"Of course it's reasonable, and I imagine that we, ourselves, are about