about to search for it,
he found a great red ball quite four times the diameter of our own
sun, neatly bisected by the horizon. Tommy watched, waiting for it to
sink. But it did not sink straight downward as the sun seems to do in
all temperate latitudes. It descended, yes, but it moved along the
horizon as it sank. Instead of a direct and forthright dip downward,
the sun seemed to progress along the horizon, dipping more deeply as
it swam. And Tommy watched it blankly.

"It's not our sun.... But it's not our world. Yet it revolves, and
there are men on it. And a sun that size would bake the earth.... And
it's sinking at an angle that would only come at a latitude of--"

That was the clue. He understood at once. The instrument through which
he regarded the strange world looked out upon the polar regions of
that world. Here, where the sun descended slantwise, were the high
latitudes, the coldest spaces upon all the whole planet. And if here
there were the gigantic growths of a carboniferous era, the tropic
regions of this planet must be literal infernos.

And then he saw in its gradual descent the monster sun was going along
behind the golden city, and the outlines of its buildings, the
magnificence of its spires, were limned clearly for him against the
dully glowing disk.

Nowhere upon earth had such a city ever been dreamed of. No man had
ever envisioned such a place, where far-flung arches interconnected
soaring, towering columns, where curves of perfect grace were united
in forms of utterly perfect proportion....

* * * * *

The sunlight died, and dusk began and deepened, and vividly brilliant
stars began to come out overhead, and Tommy suddenly searched the
heavens eagerly for familiar constellations. And found not one. All
the stars were strange. These stars seemed larger and much more near
than the tiny pinpoints that blink down upon our earth.

And then he swung the instrument again and saw great fires roaring and
the Ragged Men crouched about them. Within them, rather, because they
had built fires about themselves as if to make a wall of flame. And
once Tommy saw twin, monstrous eyes, gazing from the blackness of the
tree-fern forest. They were huge eyes, and they were far apart, so
that the head of the creature who used them must have been enormous.
And they were all of fifteen feet above the ground when they
speculatively looked over the ring of fires and the ragged, degr