I could not but smile to myself when I realized
that we were now continuing directly along the same corridor as that
which we had entered immediately after they had first blindfolded me,
their little excursion through the short corridor into the second
chamber having been but a ruse to bewilder me. A moment later, at the
foot of a flight of steps they removed the blind, evidently satisfied
that there was now no chance of my being able to retrace my steps and
find the main tunnel leading to the crater, while, as a matter of fact,
I could easily have retraced every foot of it blindfolded.
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 Nah-ee-lah.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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