"Gentlemen, even the Winter temperature range in my home state of New Mexico pales into insignificance beside that sort of variation! It's common knowledge that it takes a very smart man to survive in New Mexico, so you can figure out for yourselves how smart the Martians must be…"
A roar of laughter at this sally burst from Hansen's hearers and several reporters elbowed their way to the door in order that the world might know of Professor Hansen's culminating bit of evidence for the existence of intelligence on Mars.
The Chairman banged his gavel for several minutes before he could silence the guffaws which burst from the erstwhile solemn listeners, and when he at length succeeded, Hansen continued. "We have reason to believe that Mars once had oceans like ours.
Certain wide, dark spaces lie at a lower level that the surrounding deserts. This suggests that they may have been oceanic basins at one time. Hence we have the same basic conditions for a parallel development of the simpler forms of life on Mars as upon Earth.
There can be no doubt that, as the seas receded, life moved likewise onto solid ground. Conditions grew more and more difficult, thus stimulating nature mightily to develop intelligence as a means of protecting life.
"It seems reasonable that on Mars, too, only one species of living creature can wear the crown of creation. If this is so, the history of Mars should reveal that conditions there favored the creation of a community of living creatures which dominated the planet after man's fashion here.
"Let us consider the evidence on the face of Mars which tells us that such creatures once existed and that they still exist. We cannot, of course, observe them in person, but their intelligence has left traces upon the surface of their smaller world, and these traces we believe we can interpret.
"There is a dense, spider-web-like tracing of dark lines all over the surface of Mars. Giovanni Schiaparelli, the Italian astronomer who first discovered them, called them "canals." Until quite recently, this method of designation has caused much confusion, for the general public concluded that it referred to canals in the common meaning of navigable waterways. The idea is wholly erroneous and I would ask you to consider the word "canal" in the Martian sense to be but a label for those peculiar lines.
"All these canals are not visible simultaneously, for, as we shall see, they are subject to marked seasonal changes. So far, 437 of these lines have been definitely catalogued.
They may be from five to fifteen miles wide and from 200 to 3,000 miles long. The longest known to us is called Eumenidus-Orcus and extends 3,450 miles from a region known as Phoenix Lake to a large, accurately triangular zone named Trivium Charontis.
"The system of canals exhibits certain peculiarities which I shall now recount for you. First: all canals, long or short, are accurate great circles. That is, they follow the shortest distance between their terminal points.
"Second: the aspect of the canals is intimately connected with the seasons on the planet. When the Antarctic snow cap begins to melt in springtime, a blue-green zone develops around its white edges. From this the canals seem slowly to grow towards the Martian equator. Such canals as were invisible or inconspicuous increase in breadth and definition and then stand out in stronger relief against the ochre-brown or reddish deserts they traverse. As the Spring advances in the Southern hemisphere, this widening of the canals extends over further towards the equator. Our observations have timed the advance from the 72nd parallel of Martian latitude to the equator at 52 days. The distance is 2,650 miles. The rate of advance is remarkably uniform, namely 51 miles per day, or 2.1 mph.
"Third: the widening of the canals extends across the equator, far into the Northern hemisphere, and is accompanied by a change of color of good-sized areas from matte to lush blue-green. These areas are frequently geometrically shaped and the change requires only a few days.
"Fourth: Six months later, the same phenomenon is observed in the other hemisphere. Remember, gentlemen — Mars is in a continuous drought, and water is as valuable as in our Sahara…
"We cannot but conclude, with Lowell, that the system of canals is the creation, the mighty creation, of beings of intelligence. Its purpose is to utilize the water of the polar melts for rendering fruitful the arid wastes of the planet. We hold that the blue-green areas I mentioned are not open water, but zones of vegetation which spring into bloom when water flows through the "canals" from the poles. The canals themselves, as we see them through telescopes, are strips of vegetation whose flowering and withering is caused by water or lack of it in the subterranean water courses below them. Nor does the low atmospheric pressure of Mars permit us to assume that water could reach the equator at all, unless the veins of water lay below ground. Otherwise it would evaporate during its long journey.
"You will have noticed that there is a remarkable distinction between Springtime on Earth and on Mars. As seen from Lunetta, Earth's polar snow cap recedes gradually, followed by the growth of the surrounding vegetation towards the Pole. On Mars, however, vegetation begins to grow in the melting zones around the Pole and then extends gradually equatorwards.
"As you know, the awakening of vegetation from its hibernal sleep requires warmth and water. On Earth, water is constantly available everywhere except in deserts, and the plants are brought to life by the extension of the temperate heat belt towards the Poles during Springtime. In the cloudless atmosphere of Mars, daytime temperatures rise more rapidly in Spring that do our own, but the plants cannot react to them until the irrigation system built by the Martians provides the necessary water.
"There is ample evidence to prove that this system is definitely artificial, aside from the mathematical precision of its layout. For instance, it has been disproved that the equatorward movement of the water results from centrifugal force generated by the rotation of the planet on its axis; such force would be zero at the poles and maximum at the equator, but it cannot explain how the water extends beyond the equatorial line when coming from either pole. Likewise, Mars is an oblate spheroid with flattened poles, like Earth. His diameter is 35 kilometers less at the poles than at the equator. Thus water would be forced to run uphill 17 kilometers on its journey from either pole to the equator.
On the other hand, we know that a plumb bob hangs exactly vertical to the plane of the local horizon at any latitude on any planetary oblate spheroid. There is, therefore, no possible explanation of the movement of the water through the canals of Mars except that it is artificially pumped!
"We can estimate from other data that the amount of water frozen each year at the polar caps is about one one-hundred-thousandth of the water on our Earth. That is approximately twenty times the content of Lake Erie. How many millions of horsepower it must take to pump such an enormous quantity through the canal system, twice yearly, for thousands of miles, I'll leave to your imagination, but the pumping stations must be very powerful…
"It appears to me that three basic conclusions may be drawn from these facts. First: Mars must be inhabited by intelligent beings who have built a tremendous irrigation system over their whole globe. They keep it constantly in operation, and in order to do so, they must have a political organization of a global nature and be subject to some central authority.