artly covered by a mass of
smooth, shining pebbles. I was bruised and battered from head to
foot--in a far worse condition than you first saw me when I returned.

"I sat up and looked around. Beside me, sloped upward at an apparently
increasing angle a tremendous glossy plane. This extended, as far as I
could see, both to the right and left and upward into the blackness of
the sky overhead. It was this plane that had evidently broken my fall,
and I had been sliding down it, bringing with me a considerable mass of
rocks and bowlders.

"As my senses became clearer I saw I was lying on a fairly level floor.
I could see perhaps two miles in each direction. Beyond that there was
only darkness. The sky overhead was unbroken by stars or light of any
kind. I should have been in total darkness except, as I have told you
before, that everything, even the blackness itself, seemed to be
self-luminous.

"The incline down which I had fallen was composed of some smooth
substance suggesting black marble. The floor underfoot was quite
different--more of a metallic quality with a curious corrugation. Before
me, in the dim distance, I could just make out a tiny range of hills.

"I rose, after a time, and started weakly to walk towards these hills.
Though I was faint and dizzy from my fall and the lack of food, I walked
for perhaps half an hour, following closely the edge of the incline. No
change in my visual surroundings occurred, except that I seemed
gradually to be approaching the line of hills. My situation at this
time, as I turned it over in my mind, appeared hopelessly desperate, and
I admit I neither expected to reach my destination nor to be able to
return to my own world.

"A sudden change in the feeling of the ground underfoot brought me to
myself; I bent down and found I was treading on vegetation--a tiny
forest extending for quite a distance in front and to the side of me. A
few steps ahead a little silver ribbon threaded its way through the
trees. This I judged to be water.

"New hope possessed me at this discovery. I sat down at once and took a
portion of another of the pills.

"I must again have fallen asleep. When I awoke, somewhat refreshed, I
found myself lying beside the huge trunk of a fallen tree. I was in what
had evidently once been a deep forest, but which now was almost utterly
desolated. Only here and there were the trees left standing. For the
most part they were lying in a crushed and tangled mass, man