Yet in one sense, it was even
more interesting.
There the inhabitants had never learnt to sin; here they had learnt the
lesson that sin is mere foolishness, and that no really sensible or
properly educated man or woman thinks crime worth committing.
The life of the Crystal Cities, of which they visited four in different
parts of the satellite, using the _Astronef_ as their vehicle, was one
of peaceful industry and calm, innocent enjoyment. It was quite plain
that their first impressions of this aged world were correct. Outside
the cities spread a universal desert on which life was impossible. There
was hardly any moisture in the thin atmosphere. The rivers had dwindled
into rivulets and the seas into vast, shallow marshes. The heat received
from the Sun was only about a twenty-fifth of that which falls on the
surface of the Earth, and this was drawn to the cities and collected and
preserved under their glass domes by a number of devices which displayed
superhuman intelligence.
The dwindling supplies of water were hoarded in vast subterranean
reservoirs, and, by means of a perfect system of redistillation, the
priceless fluid was used over and over again both for human purposes and
for irrigating the land within the cities. Still the total quantity was
steadily diminishing, for it was not only evaporating from the surface,
but, as the orb cooled more and more rapidly towards its centre, it
descended deeper and deeper below the surface, and could now only be
reached by means of marvellously constructed borings and pumping
machinery which extended several miles below the surface.
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