th a feeling of almost normal body weight. The
air was softly warm like a night in the tropics, with a faint breeze
against our faces. It seemed a trackless waste here. We mounted an
ascending ramp, topped a rise with an undulating plateau ahead of
us.

Tako stood a moment for us to get our breath. The air seemed
rarefied; we were panting, with our cheeks tingling.

"My abode is there." He gestured to the distant lowland region
behind us. We were standing upon a gray hilltop. The ground went
down a tumbled broken area to what seemed a lowland plain. Ten miles
away--it may have been that, or twice that--I saw the dim outline of
a great castle or a fortress. A building of gigantic size, it seemed
strangely fashioned with round-shaped domes heaped in a circle
around a tower looming in the center. A wall, or a hedge of giant
trees, I could not tell, but it seemed as gigantic as the wall of
China, and was strung over the landscape in an irregular circle to
enclose an area of several square miles, with the castle-fortress in
its center. A little city was there, nestled around the fortress--a
hundred or two small brown and gray mounds to mark the dwellings. It
suggested a little feudal town of the Middle Ages of our own Earth,
set here in this trackless waste.

* * * * *

And I saw, down on the plain, a shining ribbon of river with thick
vegetation along its banks. And within the enclosing wall there, was
the silvery sheen of a lake near the town; patches of trees, and
brownish oval areas which seemed to be fields under cultivation.

"My domain," Tako repeated. There was a touch of pride in his voice.
"I rule it. You shall see it--when we are finished with New York."

Again his gaze went to Jane, curiously contemplative. We started
walking over the upper plateau level, seemingly with nothing in
advance of us save empty luminous darkness. A walk of an hour.
Perhaps it was that long. Time here had faded with our Earthly
world. It was difficult to gauge the passing minutes--as difficult
as to guess at the miles of this luminous distance.

As though the sight of his fortress--his tiny principality, whose
inhabitants he ruled with absolute sway--had awakened in Tako new
emotions, he put Jane beside him and began talking to us with
apparent complete frankness. It must have been an hour, during which
he explained this world of his, of which we were destined to have so
brief a glimpse, and told