It was a fibrous city of growing sea-vegetation! Huge stalks planted like a thick forest of trees in the sandy ooze of the water-bottom, grew straight upward a thousand feet or more. Broad, leaf-like branches spread from them at the top, sustained in an upright position by air-bladders. These upright stalks were the vertical girders upon which the fabric of the city was built. For eight hundred feet up they were pruned of their branches. Parasite growing vines had been guided laterally to connect the vertical stalks. And upon these, other rope-like vegetation was woven. The result was a series of tiers some twenty feet apart—one above the other—forty of them from top to bottom of the city. The tiers were further cut up into segments which served as houses. I shall describe one in detail presently—the one they gave Nona and me at the time our great event took place. Throughout the city there were both vertical and horizontal streets at intervals—up and down and along which the inhabitants swam or drifted. And occasionally there was cubical open space—a sort of three-dimensional park. One of these, the largest, occupied the exact center of the city, with the ruler’s home contiguous to it. * * * * * Have I made myself clear? The fabric of this entire city—the very walls and rooms of its honeycombed houses—was living, growing vegetation of the sea. It grew rapidly. It was easily trained to grow in desired directions. A third of a man’s lifetime, no more, would grow such a city as this. One species of vegetation? No, there seemed a hundred—each one of them had its specific use and adaptability. It was curious stuff. You have marine vegetation in your great oceans of Earth. You may conceive what this was like. Tough, smooth, somewhat slimy main stalks. But porous—like the stalk of your banana tree. The leaves were intricate and beautifully shaped; and there were millions of tiny air-pods growing everywhere. When I first saw the city of Rax, I remember marvelling at the ingenuity that could build it. But soon I marveled at the greater ingenuity that could maintain its interior form. The main stalks changed little from year to year. But a constant pruning, altering, uprooting and replanting was necessary throughout every detail. The very walls of a man’s house were of varying form. Yet, since each man was responsible for his own, it was easily done. Above the city, the great branches of the main stalks spread out—green-brown wavering things, a lace-work of great ferns with hundreds of pods twice as big as a man’s body—the air-bladders which sustained the entire city. I have said the water was calm. Not a ripple down here save those made by the animate things themselves. Nature was passive. The half-twilight never altered; the temperature remained always the same; no storms, not a sound of the world disturbed its peace and calm.