ieked
its way down through the atmosphere, till its outer shell was radiating
far in the violet.

Straight it flew to where a gigantic city sprawled in the heaped, somber
masonry, but in some order yet, for on closer inspection the appearance
of interlaced circles came over the edge of the giant cities. Ray
screens were circular and the city was protected by dozens of stations.

The scout was going well under the speed of light now, and a message,
imperative and commanding, sped ahead of him. Half a dozen patrol boats
flashed up, and fell in beside him, and with him raced to a gigantic
building that reared its somber head from the center of the city.

Under a white sky they proceeded to it, and landed on its roof. From the
little machine the single man came out. Using the webbed hands and feet
that had led the Allied scientists to think them an aquatic race, he
swam upward, and through the water-dense atmosphere of the planet toward
the door.

Trees overtopped the building, for it had but four stories, above
ground, though it was the tallest in the city. The trees, like seaweed,
floated most of their enormous weight in the dense air, but the
buildings under the gravitational acceleration, which was more than one
hundred times Earth's gravity, could not be built very high ere they
crumple under their own weight. Though one of these men weighed
approximately two hundred pounds on Earth, for all their short stature,
on this planet their weight was more than ten tons! Only the enormously
dense atmosphere permitted them to move.

And such an atmosphere! At a temperature of almost exactly 360 degrees
centigrade, there was no liquid water on the planet, naturally. At that
temperature water cannot be a liquid, no matter what the pressure, and
it was a gas. In their own bodies there was liquid water, but only
because they lived on heat, their muscles absorbed their energy for work
from the heat of the air. They carried in their own muscles
refrigeration, and, with that aid, were able to keep liquid water for
their life processes. With death, the water evaporated. Almost the
entire atmosphere was made up of oxygen, with but a trace of nitrogen,
and some amount of carbon dioxide.

Here their enormous strength was not needed, as Arcot had supposed, to
move their own bodies, but to enable them to perform the ordinary tasks
of life. The mere act of lifting a thing weighing perhaps ten pounds on
Earth, here required a lifting f