“You’re a wipe!” he shrieked. “You want to trap me and send me to the Comfortable Bedroom because I’m too old to work. Never a month passes but I put up my hektone and a quarter. Look on the register. You want to switch an old man who minds his own business and puts up his hektone and a quarter, you rotten moron!” His old face worked with fear and excitement, and he raised his fist in a threatening manner; then, suddenly changing his intention, he swung on his heel and hurried away toward the gate. I saw him glance back furtively at me and then increase his speed. As I turned to look at him I perceived that a small wooden gate on the interior side of the circular fortification stood partly open, and inside I saw a troop of the international guards at drill. I crossed the court and came to a halt before the Corinthian columns that I had seen; and now I perceived that the pedestal of each contained a bas-relief, a conventionalized figure beneath which was engraved a tribute to some great leader of mankind. The engravings were in the old Roman characters, which seemed to have been retained on statues, coins, and brasses, just as we in our day still inscribed coins and statue pedestals in Latin. I walked around the columns, reading these inscriptions. The first that caught my eye was in honor of Darwin, and read simply, “The Father of Civilization.” The next was to Karl Marx. “He interpreted history in the light of materialism, and gave us the social State, with food for all,” I read. There was one in honor of Wells, “the Prophet of the Race.” There was one to Weismann, “who gave us immortality, not in a ghostly heaven, but in the germ-plasm.” The next was to Mendel, who had “interpreted man’s destiny in terms of the pea.” Poor, patient, toiling Abbot, what were you doing in this galaxy? And there was one to Nietzsche, “the scourge of Jesus of Nazareth, a peasant god.” CHAPTER XI THE GODDESS OF THE TEMPLE The man in blue with the machine badge on his shoulder, who was waiting for me at the entrance, surveyed me with a smile of tolerant amusement. “You are now at the heart of civilization,” he began. “Let me act as your guide, for I see that you are a stranger. Is it not wonderful to contemplate that here, upon a space of a few hektares, man has erected a monument that shall endure forever! This wing,” he added, “is Doctor Sanson’s domain, while Boss Lembken exercises his priestly function from the People’s House, under the dome.” He led me within the portico and through a swing door on the north side of the building. I found myself within a circular chamber like a hospital theater, with marble seats rising almost to the roof around a small central platform, on which were a crystal table, a large silver tank, and a cabinet with glass doors, through which I could see surgical appliances.