You could scarcely believe your eyes were you to look upon the durable
works of architecture built by these strangely shaped mortals.

Still more wonderful are the seas of boiling fire which are sometimes
comparatively quiet, and then again, in all madness, their majestic
flames shoot upward thousands of miles.

When the sea is quiet, life is oppressive in the centers of population
just as it is in our world when the air is still and the summer sun is
pouring down upon us. Breathing is easier and life is quickened when the
molten sea boils furiously. These terrible heat blasts are most
exhilarating and refreshing to the inhabitants living near enough to
receive the benefit of them.

You may imagine that these people of Alpha Centaurus are idlers, being
fed by the ceaseless heat waves that beat upon them. Such a conception
is totally false, for I saw that industry was plainly evident, and labor
had its reward in securing the necessaries and luxuries of life.

These life-sustaining foods are composed of elements which can be
appropriated into muscle and bone (if you will permit me to use these
terms), and are obtained by reuniting and re-combining spent forces.
This explanation is somewhat mystical, but I can do no better in
describing the food production and assimilation in a pure fire-world
like this one on which I had arrived.

To imagine and believe that fertility can be possible in a seething
world-furnace, is too far beyond our philosophy to be conceivable. Alpha
Centaurus is so large a sun that although it has a population ten times