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N the course of unnumbered thousands of years, the Lunarians, as we will call them, had developed in powers, both mental and physical, far beyond either yours or ours at the present day. At that time the Earth and Venus were still without other than the lower forms of life, in consequence of their more recent habitability. The only other place where life had now advanced to the higher plane was the much smaller planet, Mars. At the time when the dominating race on Mars had arrived approximately at your present mental status, the Lunarians were vastly advanced.

"The Moon was palpably growing old, and unfitted for the easy maintenance of its inhabitants. As it had been the first to be habitable, so it would be the first to be uninhabitable. As to the causes of this, I cannot enter now, but will explain them on a future occasion. The near neighborhood of your Earth had much to do with it. The Lunarians saw ahead of them the time when daily revolution would altogether cease, and induce conditions, apart from the shrinkage of atmosphere and moisture, impossible for them any longer to combat. Generation after generation the contest with Nature, under less and less easy terms, became more strenuous. In judging the Lunarians, it is but just to recall all the facts.

"The science and intellect of these beings enabled them to make a minute investigation into the local conditions prevailing on the other members of the Solar System, or at all events, of the four inner members of it. They began to discuss the question—were there any among these that would afford a better home, if attainable? There was one—Mars! But this was already inhabited by beings of high intelligence, and with whom the Lunarians had succeeded in establishing communication. Could Mars be reached? There was a way; so horrible in its selfishness, so fiendish in its unspeakable wickedness, that the mind shrinks from thought contact with it, even after the lapse of a million years. But it is now my painful duty to tell you the terrible narrative.

"The Lunarians knew the double impracticability of transferring their bodies to Mars; impossible to launch themselves those millions of miles across the Zodiac and live, impossible to continue existence in the new world, even if they could safely arrive there.

HE conditions of health quite as much as the conditions of disease, depend on the microscopic forms of life, which teem both in our bodies and in our surroundings. The greater number of the latter are only innocuous because, by being, ab initio, accustomed to their action, we have acquired immunity. But these bacterial and other low forms of life are quite different on Mars from those which are common to the Earth and her satellite. The result would be that no animal form of life from the one could continue to exist on the other. It would be the defenceless victim to unnumbered new diseases, any one of which would be fatal. Yet there was a way.

"Have you thought of the fact that so far as your will is concerned you are now completely under my influence? That it was an easy thing for me to hold intercourse with you for twenty hours without your knowledge? That without even knowing why, without consciousness of the outside influence, you came to this present interview at the appointed moment, and in spite of your having resolved to the contrary? What you do not realize is that you had no option in the matter. That lay entirely with me. But such powers as mine, while no doubt greater in degree, although not perhaps very different in kind, from what is known on your Earth, are as nothing, compared to the powers possessed by the Lunarians, both now and at the time I speak of, when neither your world nor mine had a reasoning being on it.

"It was an easy thing for a Lunarian to establish with a fellow-being, by mutual consent, a mental rapport, and not only thus to exchange ideas without outward physical means, but even to exchange personalities, which practically amounts to exchanging bodies. But it need not be with a fellow Lunarian. It could be with any being of sufficiently high mental-status to be brought on the same plane of mental rapport, and mere physical distance had nothing to do with it. In the case of weaker beings, no mutual consent was necessary. Once that intercourse enabled them by hypnotic influence to establish this rapport, they could compel the weaker will. The awful idea was conceived, and in due course remorselessly carried out, of effecting bodily exchange with the unfortunate Martians of those days.

NTO all the details of this appalling crime, extending over weeks, it is not necessary to enter. The science of the Lunarians, amplified as to Martian local conditions by intercourse with their intended victims, enabled them to acquire in advance all the needed particulars and data for successfully mastering, and dealing with, the new conditions, so that in taking possession of their, to them, new bodies, they were at no loss as to procedure. On the contrary, each Martian awoke from his hypnotic sleep to find himself, not himself, so far as his bodily form was concerned, but some strange, and, to him, loathsome creature, in a world of which he knew nothing. Reason could not stand so great a shock; in raving dementia he died. So six hundred million beings of high intellect and culture perished. This is the greatest tragedy that our Sun has ever looked on.

"The invaders now inhabited a new world full of life and beauty, with a fauna and flora of infinite variety, splendor and novelty, and general conditions of life making their existence as a race pleasant and easy. But everything in the Universe is a means to an end, and crime is no exception, and its end is not happiness. The essence of crime is selfishness. The crime of the Lunarians, whom we will henceforth speak of as Martians, was a race crime. It was not lacking in heroic qualities so far as the individuals who carried it out were concerned. To them personally the advantages were questionable, the sacrifice inevitable.

"It must be remembered that each of them, no less than his victim, now inhabited a body at least as unattractive to him as his to the poor unfortunate who had been forced into it. More so: the older and vastly superior of the two races could not but feel