I felt certain that this statement was an exaggeration, but before I had had time for comment, my attention was suddenly diverted. All of our party had paused before a circular slit in the floor; and a brown-clad workman, stepping forth from amid the boilers, applied a key to a little hole near the edge of the slit, and removed a steel disk perhaps five feet in diameter. Instantly we were bathed in a brilliant copper light, so dazzling that at first I had to turn abruptly away. Then as my startled eyes gradually accustomed themselves to the vivid illumination, I peered through a glass partition far down into what remotely reminded me of a furnace, except that no flames were visible, but from the vague fire-bright background great sheets and rods of a shining red or a blinding brassy yellow stared at me steadily with unbearable incandescence. “Those are the intra-atomic generators,” explained the workmen. “They are constantly liberating energy, which is transformed into electrical power by means of giant induction coils; and it is this electricity which is wired to the boiler-room below and heats the water from the Salty River.” “But how terrible to work down there!” it occurred to me to comment. “How can any man--” “It is not necessary to work down there,” I was promptly informed. “The generators continue operating automatically so long as they are supplied with fuel.” “What fuel do you use?” I inquired. The reply was not at all what I had expected. “Any of the heavier metals will do,” stated the workman. “One of the best of the cheaper fuels is gold, for its high atomic weight makes possible extensive dissociation. Sometimes, however, we use silver, platinum, or lead--although the latter is ordinarily regarded as too valuable for such purposes. A supply of lead will run the generator for twenty-seven years, one of silver for thirty-three, and one of gold for forty-five. When new fuel is required, we simply shoot it in through the tube over there.” And the speaker pointed to a tube of about the thickness of a man’s wrist, which projected several feet above the floor between two of the boilers. I thought that I had now seen enough of the distillery, and was not disappointed when my companions made ready to leave. But there was one problem which still troubled me: why did the building look so much like a hill from without, and why had such evident pains been taken to conceal its existence? To these questions I found a speedy answer. “If this edifice had been erected in the days before Agripides,” declared one of my young friends, “it would have been nothing more than an ugly mass of steel and stone. But Agripides, seeking a way to beautify the structure and hide its unavoidable defects, hit upon the plan of covering it with a coating of earth and sowing the earth with grass, so as to give the appearance of a green hill. All our factories, you will find, have in some such way been concealed or made beautiful.”