The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars: Being the Posthumous Papers of Bradford Torrey DoddGratacap, L. P. (Louis Pope)
Science
The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars: Being the Posthumous Papers of Bradford Torrey Dodd
Gratacap, L. P. (Louis Pope)
Mars (Planet) -- Fiction; Science fiction
"Still on, past porticos and under arches, through open forum-like
squares, from which were elevated the great glass globes I have
described, which hung lamp-like in the sky,--past palaces and arcades,
blocks of low stores in iridescent tints, and long, straight fronts of
white opaque buildings, through occasional tunnels into which we
plunged as into a sea of radiance, and on, out, past a few squares of
black umbrageous trees that seemed like dead coals laid on the heat
quivering hearth of a furnace, past minarets of curling, entwined
filagrees of glass threads, past dull or darker areas where the huge
glass factories were built, their forges glowing like Cyclops' eyes in
the night, and from which was produced the colossal sum of manufacture,
which this great City embodied.
"It was a strange bewilderment of marvels, and from it all, as if it
were its interior motive and cause, sprang light. It was electric in
origin, conveyed in some peculiar manner from a great source of power,
in the high falls of Zenapa, near the City. But this I learned later.
"I divined that we were approaching the center of the city. Soon,
indeed, I saw before me the sparkling walls of the amphitheatre I had
descried from the hill of Observation at the locks. Here it is, that the
great plays, the gigantic concerts, the operas, and services of the
Pan-Tan are held. It was a seraphic, astounding picture. It rose in the
midst of a great square of many acres in extent, where the light,
purposely subdued, allowed its dazzling beauty subdued isolation. How
wonderful! I stopped. For one instant, before hurrying on, I gazed upon
a miracle of constructive and decorative art. One hundred columns of red
glass rose upward, and between them was a wall, in tiers of green glass
arches, and on the keystone of each a pink globe of fire. From the
pillars sprang, in an inverted terrace formation, metallic brackets,
carrying gorgeous chandeliers of a red bronze; the largest chandeliers
were at the very upper edge of the building, and the cascade of light
thus shed upon the splendid fabric was indescribably magnificent.
"But there was small time for wonder or examination. We swept on through
the shadowy gardens about it, and my guide quickly brought me to the
Hall of the Council, a low, inconspicuous building of yellow brick, one
of the few discordant architectural notes in the whole city.
"The doors of the single chamber, which embraced all the interior space,
swung open, and I stood on the threshold of a shallow, rectangular
depression, surrounded on all sides with benches, and holding in its
central area a long table, at which, beneath tall lamps, sat, perhaps, a
dozen men and one woman. Opposite to my point of view, in a niche upon
the further wall, was the colossal figure of the Deity I had seen in the
Patenta at the City of Light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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