A square building located in the eastern
hemisphere, its walls are 200 feet tall and 2 miles long! “The
building in which I found myself contained the machinery which produces that
artificial atmosphere which sustains life on Mars. The secret of the entire
process hinges on the use of the ninth ray, one of the beautiful scintillations
which I had noted emanating from the great stone in my host's diadem.
“This ray is separated from the other rays of the sun
by means of finely adjusted instruments placed upon the roof of the huge building,
three-quarters of which is used for reservoirs in which the ninth ray is
stored. This product is then treated electrically, or rather certain
proportions of refined electric vibrations are incorporated with it, and the
result is then pumped to the five principal air centers of the planet where, as
it is released, contact with the ether of space transforms it into atmosphere.
“There is always sufficient reserve of the ninth ray
stored in the great building to maintain the present Martian atmosphere for a
thousand years, and the only fear, as my new friend told me, was that some
accident might befall the pumping apparatus.
“He led me to an inner chamber where I beheld a
battery of twenty radium pumps any one of which was equal to the task of
furnishing all Mars with the atmosphere compound. For eight hundred years, he
told me, he had watched these pumps which are used alternately a day each at a
stretch, or a little over twenty-four and one-half Earth hours. He has one
assistant who divides the watch with him. Half a Martian year, about three
hundred and forty-four of our days, each of these men spend alone in this huge,
isolated plant.
“Every red Martian is taught during earliest childhood
the principles of the manufacture of atmosphere, but only two at one time ever
hold the secret of ingress to the great building, which, built as it is with
walls a hundred and fifty feet thick, is absolutely unassailable, even the roof
being guarded from assault by air craft by a glass covering five feet thick.” (PM XX)
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