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On the glacier planet there had been few birds but many furry creatures. Possibly the situation was reversed here, though of course it need not be ... "Hm," said Cochrane when the films were all run through. "Ice-caps and land and seas. Plenty of green vegetation, so presumably the air is normal for humans. Since you're alive, Holden, we can assume it isn't instantly fatal, can't we?
Between these boulders a thin carpet of moss is spread, but the slopes themselves are quite naked; they are seamed and cracked and weather-beaten, their surfaces are split and shattered from the play of the elements. High up toward the crest of one of them rides a glacier a pallid, weeping sentinel which stands guard for the great ice-caps beyond.
At the North and South Poles will be glittering ice-caps, growing larger and smaller as they turn toward or away from the sun. A brilliant spectacle!
To left and right they saw the huge ice-caps of the South and North Poles gleaming through the red atmosphere with a pale sunset glimmer. Then came the great stretches of sea, often obscured by vast banks of clouds, which, as the sunlight fell upon them, looked strangely like earth-clouds at sunset.
The first study of the appearance of Mars by Miraldi led him to believe that there were changes proceeding in the two white caps which are seen at the planet's poles. W. Herschel attributed these caps to ice and snow, and the dates of his observations indicated a melting of these ice-caps in the Martian summer. Schroter attributed the other markings on Mars to drifting clouds.
There were smoking cones everywhere in the snow-fields, among the ice-caps, in between the glaciers, and even among the tumbled areas whose greenness proved that here was an environment which might be perilous, but where life should thrive abundantly. The ship continued to descend toward a great forest near a terminal moraine.
"I presume that bright spot on the Southern limb is one of the polar ice-caps," said I, still keeping my eye on the planet. "Yes," replied the professor, "and they are seen to wax and wane in winter and summer. The reddish-yellow tracts are doubtless continents of an ochrey soil; and not, as some think, of a ruddy vegetation. The greenish-grey patches are probably seas and lakes.
It was four times the diameter of the moon as seen from Earth, and it covered sixteen times as much of the sky. Its continents were plain to see, and its seas, and the ice-caps at its poles gleamed whitely, and over all of it there was a faintly bluish haze which was like a glamour; a fey and eerie veiling which made Earth a sight to draw at one's heart-strings.
It had a large content of ham. But it happened to be authentic. The ship had reached another planet, with vast ice-caps and what appeared to be no more than a twenty-degree-wide equatorial belt where there was less than complete glaciation. The rockets roared and boomed as the ship let down into the cloud-layers.
Ultimately, then, it would seem that God does intend to undertake the control of phenomena. Dealing with ice-caps is not so entirely outside his province as one had hastily assumed. The Invisible King is not, after all, a roi fainéant. He will begin to do things as soon as he knows how: any other course would be obviously rash.
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