A few minutes brought them to the outskirts of
the city. It had no walls and exhibited no signs of any devices for
defence. Its streets were broad and well-paved, and the houses, built of
great blocks of grey stone joined together with white cement, looked as
fresh and unworn as though they had only been built a few months,
whereas they had probably stood for hundreds of thousands of years. They
were flat-roofed, all of one storey and practically of one type.
There were very few public buildings, and absolutely no attempt at
ornamentation was visible. Round some of the houses were spaces which
might once have been gardens. In the midst of the city, which appeared
to cover an area of about four square miles, was an enormous square
paved with flag-stones, which were covered to the depth of a couple of
inches with a light grey dust, which, as they walked across it, remained
perfectly still save for the disturbance caused by their footsteps.
There was no air to support it, otherwise it might have risen in clouds
about them.
From the centre of this square rose a huge pyramid nearly a thousand
feet in height, the sole building of the great silent city which
appeared to have been raised most probably as a temple by the hands of
its long-dead inhabitants.
When they got nearer they saw a white fringe round the steps by which it
was approached, and they soon found that this fringe was composed of
millions of white-bleached bones and skulls, shaped very much like those
of terrestrial men, save that they were very much larger, and that the
ribs were out of all proportion to the rest of the skeleton.
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