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?The central pillar or magnetic pole serves a double purpose,? explained my bench companion. ?Besides providing most of the power for flight, it also serves as a powerful telescope with one end pointing up through the dome to view the sky, and the other pointing down through the floor to inspect the land below. Images are projected through it into the two big lenses in the floor and ceiling, as you can see.? He did not explain whether this was done electronically or by some other means. Its magnifications could be varied at will, and | suspect that there was more to it than a simple optical system such as we know on Earth. | looked up into the translucent dome. The stars had always looked near enough to touch in the clear air of my mountain home, but viewed through this ceiling lens they seemed to be actually on top of us. As | alternated between watching the wonders of the sky and the swift Earth flashing beneath us, | noticed four cables which appeared to run through the floor lens (or immediately below it), joining the central pole in the form of a cross. The Martian, noting my change of interest, explained, ?Three of those cables carry power from the magnetic pole to the three balls under the ship which, as you have seen, are sometimes used as landing-gear. These balls are hollow and, although they can be lowered for emergency landing and retracted when in flight, their most important purpose is as condensers for the static electricity sent to them from the magnetic pole. This power is present everywhere in the Universe. One of its natural but concentrated manifestations is seen displayed as lightning. ?The fourth cable,? he continued, ?extends from the pole to the two periscope- like instruments, the one beside the pilot?s seat and the other directly behind his seat but close to the edge of the center lens, as you can see. These instruments are really extensions of the main optical system and enable the pilot to see everything that is going on without leaving his seat. They can be switched on and off, or adjusted at will, so that both members of the usual crew can have full use of the telescope without interfering with each other.? All the machinery was beneath the floor of this compartment, and under the outer flange, as clearly shown in the photograph of this Scout.? | did not actually see any of it, but | was shown into a very small room which served both as an entrance to the compartment which contained the machinery, and as a workshop for emergency repairs. Here there was a tiny forge and a few storage cupboards in which, | surmised, necessary tools and materials would be kept. It was while | was looking through the door into this room that our pilot said, ?7Be prepared for landing. We are near our mother ship.? | could not believe it. It seemed that only a few minutes had sped by since we had entered the Scout. Just a moment earlier the wall behind the bench on which we had been sitting had appeared solid. Now a round hole began to appear! | watched in astonishment while it continued to open, rather like the iris of a camera. Shortly, a porthole about eighteen inches wide appeared. This, then, explained the portholes in my Saucer photographs, of which till now | had seen no sign. (The photograph referred to is numbered 1 in the list of illustrations in this