“Well,” said I, “I can’t say that I am sorry to know that my time will be out long before the earth reaches the conditions that makes it necessary for the inhabitants to retreat underground. These spaces below must indeed be queer places to live in, for it don’t seem like they would be exposed to storms, as if out of doors, and yet not cosy and homelike, as if in a house, and I don’t see how they can be otherwise than cold damp and gloomy—that is, viewed from the stand point of earth. Am I right?”
“No,” he replied, “you are not. Those abodes, as we have them fixed up on the moon, you would regard as more delightful than anything you have on earth, and as equalling your dreams of paradise. There are as you suppose no storms and no extremes of temperature. There is always a very light breeze blowing, half the time in one direction, and half in the other. This is caused by the action of the sun on the external continent, as it progressively passes over it from east to west. There is always fog and cloud at all the entrances to the interior continent that prevent the radiation of heat and help preserve an even temperature within. All the inhabited chambers are made as bright as sunlight by immense and numerous electric lights, which are placed with reference to the best, effects both from a utilitarian and an artistic point of view. They are generally placed at great elevations, and are often arranged to imitate the constellations of the heavens, so that looking up, one may see a portion of the sky as he would see it from the external continent, and by traveling about among the various interior provinces, he can see the whole of it. In some of the chambers, the lights are made to represent the members of the solar system and each one is caused to make the movements properly, belonging to it, the whole constituting a planetarium on an immense scale—in some instances—several miles in diameter and three miles above the floor.”
“I can well imagine the glory of such scenery and such possibilities,” said I, “but I do not see by what mechanism you can accomplish such results.”
“You must remember,” he replied, “that we have resources, that your race does not possess. With you a great many things would be practically out of the question that with us are very easy. In the first place, we are a flying race as you see, and this means a great deal on the moon’s external continent, and still more in the internal continent, where on account of the attraction of the earth and the hump, our weight is much reduced without a corresponding reduction of strength. The fluttering and flying about of crowds overhead is one of the pleasing features of our life.