several small groups of
natives were gathered, watching the strangers. With a few swift words
Loto now dismissed their guide, who bowed low with his hands to his
forehead and left them.

Led by the Chemist, they continued on down into the city, talking
earnestly, telling him the details of their trip. The natives followed
them as they moved forward, and as they entered the city others looked
at them curiously and, the Very Young Man thought, with a little
hostility, yet always from a respectful distance. Evidently it was
night, or at least the time of sleep at this hour, for the streets they
passed through were nearly deserted.

CHAPTER XIX

THE CITY OF ARITE

The city of Arite, as it looked to them now, was strange beyond anything
they had ever seen, but still by no means as extraordinary as they had
expected it would be. The streets through which they walked were broad
and straight, and were crossed by others at regular intervals of two or
three hundred feet. These streets paralleled each other with
mathematical regularity. The city thus was laid out most orderly, but
with one peculiarity; the streets did not run in two directions crossing
each other at right angles, but in three, each inclined to an equal
degree with the others. The blocks of houses between them, therefore,
were cut into diamond-shaped sections and into triangles, never into
squares or oblongs.

Most of the streets seemed paved with large, flat gray blocks of a
substance resembling highly polished stone, or a form of opaque glass.
There were no sidewalks, but close up before the more pretentious of the
houses, were small trees growing.

The houses themselves were generally triangular or diamond-shaped,
following the slope of the streets. They were, most of them, but two
stories in height, with flat roofs on some of which flowers and
trellised vines were growing. They were built principally of the same
smooth, gray blocks with which the streets were paved. Their windows
were large and numerous, without window-panes, but closed now, nearly
all of them by shining, silvery curtains that looked as though they
might have been woven from the metal itself. The doors were of heavy
metal, suggesting brass or gold. On some of the houses tiny low-railed
balconies hung from the upper windows out over the street.

The party proceeded quietly through this now deserted city, crossing a
large tree-lined square, or park, that by the confluence of man