From here on we climbed interminable stairways, passed through
numerous corridors and chambers, all of which were illuminated by the
radium-bearing substance which coated their walls and ceilings, and
then we emerged suddenly upon a terrace into the open air, and I
obtained my first view of a lunar city. It was built around a crater,
and the buildings were terraced back from the rim, the terraces being
generally devoted to the raising of garden truck and the principal
fruit-bearing trees and shrubs. The city extended upward several
hundred feet, the houses, as I learned later, being built one upon
another, the great majority of them, therefore, being without windows
looking upon the outer world.
I was led along the terrace for a short distance, and during this
brief opportunity for observation I deduced that the cultivated
terraces lay upon the roofs of the tier of buildings next below. To
my right I could see the terraced steps extending downward to the rim
of the crater. Nearly all the terraces were covered with vegetation,
and in numerous places I saw what appeared to be Va-gas feeding upon
the plants, and this I later learned was the fact, and that the
Kalkars, when they are able to capture members of the race of Va-gas,
keep them in captivity and breed them as we breed cattle, for their
flesh. It is necessary, to some extent, to change the diet of the Va-
gas almost exclusively to vegetation, though this diet is
supplemented by the flesh of the Kalkars, and their Laythean slaves
who die, the Va-gas thus being compelled to serve the double purpose
of producing flesh for the Kalkars and acting as their scavengers as
well.
Upon my left were the faces of buildings, uniformly two stories in
height, with an occasional slender tower rising fifteen, twenty or
sometimes as high as thirty feet from the terraced roofs above. It
was into one of these buildings that my captors led me after we had
proceeded a short distance along the terrace, and I found myself in a
large apartment in which were a number of male Kalkars, and at a desk
facing the entrance a large, entirely bald man who appeared to be of
considerable age. To this person I was led by Gapth, who narrated my
capture and the escape of Na-ee-lah.
The fellow before whom I had been brought questioned me briefly. He
made no comment when I told him that I was from another world, but he
examined my garments rather carefully and then after a moment turned
to Gapth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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