CHAPTER XX

Farm and Factory

Early the following morning we were again under way. Leaving Thalos through a little arched gateway under the western wall, we trudged for several hours through flat green countryside. Here and there, amid breaks in the vegetation, we observed edifices which my companions described as “farmhouses,” but which, with their statue-lined walls and marble columns, seemed to me to be little less than palaces. These remarkable dwellings, of which there must have been four or five to every square mile, were conspicuous from a distance, for there were no obscuring trees, and the landscape was dominated by a hardy reed that grew shoulder-high in impenetrable clusters.

Except for the size of this plant, I might have fancied it to be a variety of wheat. Not only were its leaves long and grass-like, but it bore a rich crop of some grain that closely resembled wheat, although each of the seed-clusters were large as ears of Indian corn. That it was cultivated for food purposes was obvious, for brilliant white lamps were beaming from the tinted columns as in the fruit-jungles, and at regular intervals we passed irrigation ditches, and now and then caught glimpses of gray-clad men at work amid the green thickets.

But while this scenery was fairly interesting, it was on the whole the most monotonous I had yet viewed in Atlantis. Hence I was relieved when the landscape showed a sudden change, and the cultivated plains gave way to a series of long, low, grass-covered hills. From the beginning, I noticed something peculiar about these eminences, for their contours were rounded with almost geometrical evenness; while beyond the furthest heights, a clear, rapid stream flowed out of the ground as if forced up from nowhere, and, after meandering to the edge of the reed-covered plain, divided into half a dozen diverging irrigation canals. But all this was less surprising than what I next observed; for as I stood staring at the stream in wonder, a huge rock at the base of the nearest hill thrust itself outward, and a man emerged as if from the center of the earth!

Startled, I turned to my companions for an explanation--but not a murmur issued from them, and their faces showed none of that amazement I might have expected. “Here is where we enter,” declared one of the tutors, in matter-of-fact tones; and followed by the rest of the party, he plunged through the aperture made by the dislodged boulder.

Like one in a dream--or rather like one in a nightmare--I trailed with the others into that hole on the hillside. As I approached the entrance, I found that what I had taken to be a rock was not a rock at all, but merely a cleverly disguised bit of metal; upon reaching the doorway, I was amazed to find, instead of the tunnel-like corridor I had expected, a spacious and wide-vaulting hall.

With the exception of the Sunken World itself it was the largest enclosure I had ever entered; indeed, it occupied the entire interior of the hill. Along the full length of a half-mile gallery the white-lanterned ceiling arched to a height of two hundred feet; and on each side of a broad passageway, rising almost to meet the ceiling, was a series of what I took to be gigantic boilers. All of these were connected with innumerable wires and with pipes thicker than a man’s body, while at the further end of the gallery the tubes were interwoven in intricate loops, coils and convolutions like the exposed entrails of a Titan.

As I stepped through the doorway, a warm breeze swept my face, bearing to my nostrils the odor of oil, and at the same time bringing me reminders of the furnace-dry air of steam-heated apartments. “What place is this?” I could not forebear to ask; but almost instantly I was sorry that I had spoken, for four or five pairs of eyes were turned upon me in surprise at so obvious a question.

“This is a distillery, of course,” answered one of my young companions.

“A distillery?” I echoed, scarcely less astonished at his words than at the extraordinary appearance of the place. And although the Atlanteans had seemed to me to be a sober people, I had visions of the manufacture of intoxicants on a scale inconceivable to the most bibulous of my own countrymen.

“Yes, this is where we prepare our distilled water,” continued my friend, surprised at my surprise.

* * * * *

For a moment I merely stared at him without comprehension. “But why so much distilled water?” was all that I could gasp.

“That’s easily explained,” said the young man, with a smile. “The water piped from our deep wells, which serves us for drinking purposes, couldn’t begin to take care of our irrigation problems--and without irrigation Atlantis would be a desert. The Salty River, of course, contains enough for all our needs; but it is ocean water, and the brine would kill all land vegetation. And so the only possibility was to distill the water. This was arranged for long ago by Agripides, when he built this distillery and eleven others, which together keep the irrigation system of Atlantis supplied, and incidentally provide us with all the salt required for domestic and chemical purposes.”

“That may be all very well,” I remarked, “but the amount of heat necessary to evaporate so much water must be tremendous ...”

“That is no problem at all,” my companion assured me. “By means of intra-atomic energy, we could generate power enough to distill the entire ocean.”

I felt certain that this statement was an exaggeration, but before I had had time for comment, my attention was suddenly diverted. All of our party had paused before a circular slit in the floor; and a brown-clad workman, stepping forth from amid the boilers, applied a key to a little hole near the edge of the slit, and removed a steel disk perhaps five feet in diameter.

Instantly we were bathed in a brilliant copper light, so dazzling that at first I had to turn abruptly away. Then as my startled eyes gradually accustomed themselves to the vivid illumination, I peered through a glass partition far down into what remotely reminded me of a furnace, except that no flames were visible, but from the vague fire-bright background great sheets and rods of a shining red or a blinding brassy yellow stared at me steadily with unbearable incandescence.

“Those are the intra-atomic generators,” explained the workmen. “They are constantly liberating energy, which is transformed into electrical power by means of giant induction coils; and it is this electricity which is wired to the boiler-room below and heats the water from the Salty River.”

“But how terrible to work down there!” it occurred to me to comment. “How can any man--”

“It is not necessary to work down there,” I was promptly informed. “The generators continue operating automatically so long as they are supplied with fuel.”

“What fuel do you use?” I inquired.

The reply was not at all what I had expected. “Any of the heavier metals will do,” stated the workman. “One of the best of the cheaper fuels is gold, for its high atomic weight makes possible extensive dissociation. Sometimes, however, we use silver, platinum, or lead--although the latter is ordinarily regarded as too valuable for such purposes. A supply of lead will run the generator for twenty-seven years, one of silver for thirty-three, and one of gold for forty-five. When new fuel is required, we simply shoot it in through the tube over there.” And the speaker pointed to a tube of about the thickness of a man’s wrist, which projected several feet above the floor between two of the boilers.

I thought that I had now seen enough of the distillery, and was not disappointed when my companions made ready to leave. But there was one problem which still troubled me: why did the building look so much like a hill from without, and why had such evident pains been taken to conceal its existence?

To these questions I found a speedy answer. “If this edifice had been erected in the days before Agripides,” declared one of my young friends, “it would have been nothing more than an ugly mass of steel and stone. But Agripides, seeking a way to beautify the structure and hide its unavoidable defects, hit upon the plan of covering it with a coating of earth and sowing the earth with grass, so as to give the appearance of a green hill. All our factories, you will find, have in some such way been concealed or made beautiful.”

This, indeed, I discovered to be the case. We had now reached the industrial center of Atlantis; and all the rest of that day we were busy inspecting manufacturing plants of sundry kinds and sizes. But nowhere was the air clouded with that smoke and dust which I had come to associate with industrial districts in my own land; nowhere was there a dingy or soot-blackened building, nowhere were my ears assaulted by the shrieking or droning of whistles, or by the hammering, pounding, screeching, whirring or grating of machines. Instead, we passed through a region that might have been recommended to sufferers from nervous ailments. In the midst of pleasant, grassy lands an occasional tree-bordered building arose with glittering steeples or stainless marble facade or august columns of granite; and within each building, which one might have mistaken for a mansion or a temple, electrically driven wheels and levers would be operating noiselessly, preparing the food of the Atlanteans or weaving their clothes from the fibre of a flax-like plant, manufacturing farm implements or fertilizers or scientific articles or household wares; and in each of these factories a few workers (never more than a score) would be calmly and often smilingly tending the machines, occupying thus their two or three hours of assigned daily service for the State.

* * * * *

The institution that interested me most was the building where chemists were at work renewing the air supply of Atlantis--or, rather, the oxygen supply. Here, in a long hall dominated by great vats connected by pipes and wires reminding me vaguely of the distillery, a continual stream of water was being disintegrated by a process of electrolysis, the hydrogen being diverted to enter into various chemical compounds, with carbon nitrogen and other elements, the oxygen being released into the atmosphere to replace that consumed by respiration and combustion. By means of the air-gauge, a finely adjusted apparatus whose index was a flame that varied in intensity with the amount of oxygen, chemists were able to determine how much of this vital gas was required at any specific time; but some oxygen had to be provided continually, for, large as Atlantis was, it was not so great that nature would preserve a balance and replace the oxygen that was consumed by that freed in the course of organic processes of plant life.

But if the Atlantean industries were arranged with a regard for the welfare and esthetic sensibilities of the people as a whole, scarcely less pains had been taken to insure the health and convenience of the workers. I will not speak of the safety devices, which had been so perfected that accidents were virtually unknown; I will not dwell upon the precautions to vary the monotony even of the two-or three-hour working day, to make possible individual initiative, to guard against fatigue and excessive strain, or to render the surroundings pleasant to the eye and mind. But what I must mention, because it impressed me as unique, is the fact that the workers were housed in dwellings not less imposing than the most stately city homes. The road took us through half a dozen villages reserved for the factory workers; and each of these seemed to be in itself a work of art, with many-columned residences, arches and marble portals and connecting colonnades, flowered parks and statuary and fountains, all co-ordinated in a tasteful and elegant design.

##