“Do you know, Admiral,” he said (he calls me Admiral because of a yachting cap I wear at the beach), “that when I was a kid I used to believe every word of those crazy stories of yours about Mars and Pellucidar. The inner world at the earth’s core was as real to me as the High Sierras, the San Joaquin Valley, or the Golden Gate, and I felt that I knew the twin cities of Helium better than I did Los Angeles. “I saw nothing improbable at all in that trip of David Innes and old man Perry through the earth’s crust to Pellucidar. Yes, sir, that was all gospel to me when I was a kid.” “And now you are twenty-three and know that it can’t be true,” I said, with a smile. “You are trying to tell me it is true, are you?” he demanded, laughing. “I never have told any one that it is true,” I replied; “I let people think what they think, but I reserve the right to do likewise.” “Why, you know perfectly well that it would be impossible for that iron mole of Perry’s to have penetrated five hundred miles of the earth’s crust, you know there is no inner world peopled by strange reptiles and men of the stone age, you know there is no Emperor of Pellucidar.” Jason was becoming excited, but his sense of humor came to our rescue and he laughed. “I like to believe that there is a Dian the Beautiful,” I said. “Yes,” he agreed, “but I am sorry you killed off Hooja the Sly One. He was a corking villain.” “There are always plenty of villains,” I reminded him. “They help the girls to keep their ‘figgers’ and their school girl complexions,” he said. “How?” I asked. “The exercise they get from being pursued.” “You are making fun of me,” I reproached him, “but remember, please, that I am but a simple historian. If damsels flee and villains pursue I must truthfully record the fact.” “Baloney!” he exclaimed in the pure university English of America. Jason replaced his headpiece and I returned to the perusal of the narrative of an ancient liar, who should have made a fortune out of the credulity of book readers, but seems not to have. Thus we sat for some time. Presently Jason removed his ear phones and turned toward me. “I was getting music,” he said; “strange, weird music, and then suddenly there came loud shouts and it seemed that I could hear blows struck and there were screams and the sound of shots.” “Perry, you know, was experimenting with gunpowder down there below, in Pellucidar,” I reminded Jason, with a grin; but he was inclined to be serious and did not respond in kind. “You know, of course,” he said, “that there really has been a theory of an inner world for many years.” “Yes,” I replied, “I have read works expounding and defending such a theory.” “It supposes polar openings leading into the interior of the earth,” said Jason.