B527 <=> B529 (BTG XXXI Last sojourn to Earth, p. 528)

“As I had nothing particular to do at this time on the planet Mars, I decided to wind up without delay my current affairs and personally to descend to your planet, and there, on the spot, at any cost, to elucidate this question which had always troubled me, in order that having solved it I might no longer think about these phenomena of our Great Universe.

“Several Martian days later I just flew there, as always on the same ship Occasion.

“We decided to descend this time on to the continent Asia near the locality called ‘Afghanistan,’ since before we had flown off, we had made it clear through our Teskooano that the ‘turn-of-the-process-of-reciprocal-destruction’ was proceeding at that time in just the said country.

“Having descended on to the locality near this Afghanistan we decided to send our ship Occasion for mooring somewhere further from those places where your favorites had recently been breeding.

“You must know that to find a suitable mooring place for our ship Occasion on the surface of your planet has already in recent times become anything but easy, since your favorites have furnished themselves with very many kinds of contrivances for what is called ‘marine locomotion,’ which contrivances they also call ships, and these ships of theirs are constantly flitting about in all directions, mostly around the continents.

“We had, it is true, the possibility of making our ship Occasion invisible to their organs of perception of visibility, but we could not annihilate its presence, and without this it could not remain stationary on the water from the constant danger that their ships might bump into it.

“Well, for this reason we this time decided to send our ship for mooring to what is called the ‘North Pole,’ where their ships have as yet no possibility of going.