Although Earth was rarely visited by Neptunians, Mars had a fair number of visits — at least one every Neptunian solar cycle. The general Neptunian public only heard news of Mars through the Interplanetary section of the Neptunian Herald, which in turn got its news from the Interplanetary section of the Cyclical Saturnia, which in turn got its new from the Interplanetary section of the—oh, you get the point. This, of course, meant that the news was always a few light hours old at the very least (or, as humans would call it, stale news) and not always accurate, as the Neptunians would sometimes discover when one of them visited Mars.

As it happened, this delay in relaying news was most advantageous to the young Neptunians because, as the spaceship was happily trundling along, the Neptunian Herald was hard at work distributing its latest edition which blared the headlines:

It would, of course, take at least one Neptunian orbit before this news reached Mars, by which time, that spaceship would be on its way to Earth in blissful ignorance.

And so, the spaceship trundled just over the surface of Mars, while Eta held a section of the map so close to her face, she could no longer be seen.

“A little further,” came her voice from within the folds of the map.

Eta's directions finally led the spaceship over a small crater.

The surface of Mars was a barren red desert of dust, set against an equally dusty looking sky, and dotted with occasional hills, mountains, and craters.

As far as humans were concerned, there was no life visible on Mars. And sure enough, the surface of Mars couldn’t look more devoid of life. This was because, the Martians, sick of humans always pointing telescopes at them or sending those strange contraptions to find them, moved below the surface. And the entrance to their true home was that small crater, which the humans had not yet noticed. The Martians ingeniously created their entrance out of a small, inconspicuous crater, knowing very well the humans would be more engrossed with the larger craters.

The spaceship hovered above the crater, and then descended very slowly.

“Can’t you go a little faster?” asked Tep, tired of seeing the reddish sediment of the crater pass by so slowly.

“Oh no, slow is fine--"

Nip, who had had quite enough of Tep’s comments and was questioning how a complainer made an interplanetary expedition effective, ignored Eta and stepped on the pedal so hard, the spaceship plummeted down almost at 10 times the speed of light.

Eta, who always felt like her stomach jumped into her throat whenever descending too fast, grabbed Tep’s hand, unable to breathe, let alone talk. While this speed suited Tep, he immediately regretted his question after seeing Eta’s pale face.

“Okay, okay, stop it,” shouted Tep, over the sound of the engine. “The earlier speed was fine.”

Nip released his stubby foot from the pedal, returning to his original speed, and Eta awkwardly released Tep’s hand. Nip was by no means reckless, and only acted as he did, because he knew for certain that the end of the tunnel was a very long way down. He couldn’t help but feel pleased about himself, because Tep, feeling guilty about the consequences of his complaining, sank back into his seat and didn’t open his mouth until they reached the end of the tunnel.

In fact, silence fell over the entire spaceship, and it continued its slow descent into the rusty depths of the Red Planet.

At the bottom of the vertical tunnel, another tunnel opened up, extending horizontally. While the vertical tunnel was pitch black, this new tunnel grew increasingly brighter as it ran farther, emanating a dusty brownish-red glow. As the tunnel neared its end, a brighter and warm orangeish light shone through, and the world of the Martians emerged.