"Thus you see, every individual has his financial standing--all in relation to the government. He can let his balance pile up if he is able, or he can keep it low."

"Suppose he goes into debt?" suggested the Very Young Man.

"In the case of obvious, verified necessity, the government will allow him a limited credit. Persistent--shall I say willful--debt is a crime."

"I thought at first," said the Big Business Man, "that everybody in this nation was on the same financial footing--that there was no premium put upon skill or industriousness. Now I see that one can acc.u.mulate, if not money, at least an inordinate amount of the world's goods."

"Not such an inordinate amount," said the Chemist smiling. "Because there is no inheritance. A man and woman, combining their worldly wealth, may by industry acquire more than others, but they are welcome to enjoy it. And they cannot, in one lifetime, get such a preponderance of wealth as to cause much envy from those lacking it."

"What happens to this house when you and Lylda die, if Loto cannot have it?" the Big Business Man asked.

"It is kept in repair by the government and held until some one with a sufficiently large balance wants to buy it."

"Are all workers paid at the same rate?" asked the Doctor.

"No, but their wages are much nearer equal than in your world."

"You have to hire people to work for you, how do you pay them?" the Doctor inquired.

"The rate is determined by governmental standard. I pay them by having the amount deducted from my balance and added to theirs."

"When you built this house, how did you go about doing it?" asked the Big Business Man.

"I simply went to the government, and they built it for me according to my own ideas and wishes, deducting its cost from my balance."

"What about the public work to be done?" asked the Big Business Man.

"Caring for the city streets, the making of roads and all that. Do you have taxes?"

"No," answered the Chemist smiling, "we do not have taxes. Quite the reverse, we sometimes have dividends.

"The government, you must understand, not only conducts a business account with each of its citizens, but one with itself also. The value of articles produced is computed with a profit allowance, so that by a successful business administration, the government is enabled not only to meet its public obligations, but to acquire a surplus to its own credit in the form of acc.u.mulated merchandise. This surplus is divided among the people every five years--a sort of dividend."

"I should think some cities might have much more than others," said the Big Business Man. "That would cause discontent, wouldn't it?"

"It would probably cause a rush of people to the more successful cities.

But it doesn't happen, because each city reports to the National government and the whole thing is averaged up. You see it is all quite simple," the Chemist finished. "And it makes life here very easy to live, and very worth the living."

Unnoticed by the four interested men, a small compact-looking gray cloud had come sweeping down from the horizon above the lake and was scudding across the sky toward Arite. A sudden sharp crack of thunder interrupted their conversation.

"h.e.l.lo, a storm!" exclaimed the Chemist, looking out over the lake.

"You've never seen one, have you? Come upstairs."

They followed him into the house and upstairs to its flat roof. From this point of vantage they saw that the house was built with an interior courtyard or _patio_. Looking down into this courtyard from the roof they could see a little, splashing fountain in its center, with flower beds, a narrow gray path, and several small white benches.

The roof, which was guarded with a breast-high parapet around both its inner and outer edges, was beautifully laid out with a variety of flowers and with trellised flower-bearing vines. In one corner were growing a number of small trees with great fan-shaped leaves of blue and bearing a large bell-shaped silver blossom.

One end of the roof on the lake side was partially enclosed. Towards this roofed enclosure the Chemist led his friends. Within it a large fiber hammock hung between two stone posts. At one side a depression in the floor perhaps eight feet square was filled with what might have been blue pine needles, and a fluffy bluish moss. This rustic couch was covered at one end by a canopy of vines bearing a little white flower.

As they entered the enclosure, it began to rain, and the Chemist slid forward several panels, closing them in completely. There were shuttered windows in these walls, through which they could look at the scene outside--a scene that with the coming storm was weird and beautiful beyond anything they had ever beheld.

The cloud had spread sufficiently now to blot out the stars from nearly half of the sky. It was a thick cloud, absolutely opaque, and yet it caused no appreciable darkness, for the starlight it cut off was negligible and the silver radiation from the lake had more than doubled in intensity.

Under the strong wind that had sprung up the lake a.s.sumed now an extraordinary aspect. Its surface was raised into long, sweeping waves that curved sharply and broke upon themselves. In their tops the silver phosph.o.r.escence glowed and whirled until the whole surface of the lake seemed filled with a dancing white fire, twisting, turning and seeming to leap out of the water high into the air.

Several small sailboats, square, flat little catamarans, they looked, showed black against the water as they scudded for sh.o.r.e, trailing lines of silver out behind them.

The wind increased in force. Below, on the beach, a huge rock lay in the water, against which the surf was breaking. Columns of water at times shot into the air before the face of the rock, and were blown away by the wind in great clouds of glistening silver. Occasionally it thundered with a very sharp intense crack accompanied by a jagged bolt of bluish lightning that zigzagged down from the low-hanging cloud.

Then came the rain in earnest, a solid, heavy torrent, that bent down the wind and smoothed the surface of the lake. The rain fell almost vertically, as though it were a tremendous curtain of silver strings.

And each of these strings broke apart into great shining pearls as the eye followed downward the course of the raindrops.

For perhaps ten minutes the silver torrent poured down. Then suddenly it ceased. The wind had died away; in the air there was the fresh warm smell of wet and steaming earth. From the lake rolled up a shimmering translucent cloud of mist, like an enormous silver fire mounting into the sky. And then, as the gray cloud swept back behind them, beyond the city, and the stars gleamed overhead, they saw again that great trail of star-dust which the Chemist first had seen through his microscope, hanging in an ever broadening arc across the sky, and ending vaguely at their feet.

CHAPTER XXII

THE TRIAL

In a few moments more the storm had pa.s.sed completely; only the wet city streets, the mist over the lake, and the moist warmth of the air remained. For some time the three visitors to this extraordinary world stood silent at the latticed windows, awed by what they had seen. The noise of the panels as the Chemist slid them back brought them to themselves.

"A curious land, gentlemen," he remarked quietly.

"It's--it's weird," the Very Young Man e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

The Chemist led them out across the roof to its other side facing the city. The street upon which the house stood sloped upwards over the hill behind. It was wet with the rain and gleamed like a sheet of burnished silver. And down its sides now ran two little streams of liquid silver fire.

The street, deserted during the storm, was beginning to fill again with people returning to their tasks. At the intersection with the next road above, they could see a line of sleighs pa.s.sing. Beneath them, before the wall of the garden a little group of men stood talking; on a roof-top nearby a woman appeared with a tiny naked infant which she sat down to nurse in a corner of her garden.

"A city at work," said the Chemist with a wave of his hand. "Shall we go down and see it?"

His three friends a.s.sented readily, the Very Young Man suggesting promptly that they first visit Lylda's father and Aura.

"He is teaching Loto this morning," said the Chemist smiling.

"Why not go to the court?" suggested the Big Business Man.

"Is the public admitted?" asked the Doctor.

"Nothing is secret here," the Chemist answered. "By all means, we will go to the court first, if you wish; Lylda should be through very shortly."

The court of Arite stood about a mile away near the lake sh.o.r.e. As they left the house and pa.s.sed through the city streets the respect accorded the Chemist became increasingly apparent. The three strangers with him attracted considerable attention, for, although they wore the conventional robes in which the more prominent citizens were generally attired, their short hair and the pallid whiteness of their skins made them objects of curiosity. No crowd gathered; those they pa.s.sed stared a little, raised their hands to their foreheads and went their way, yet underneath these signs of respect there was with some an air of sullenness, of hostility, that the visitors could not fail to notice.

The Oroid men, in street garb, were dressed generally in a short metallic-looking tunic of drab, with a brighter-colored girdle. The women, most of them, wore only a sort of skirt, reaching from waist to knees; a few had circular discs covering their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. There were hardly any children to be seen, except occasionally a little face staring at them from a window, or peering down from a roof-top. Once or twice they pa.s.sed a woman with an infant slung across her back in a sort of hammock.

The most common vehicle was the curious form of sleigh in which they had ridden down through the tunnels. They saw also a few little two-wheeled carts, with wheels that appeared to be a solid segment of tree-trunk.