Page:Life in a thousand worlds.djvu/257

 the passing cycles to carry out the plan of the Infinite Mind.

My next pause was at the glorious constellation of Orion on the star Rigel. This brilliant orb is not inhabited, but more than one-half of the worlds revolving around it sustain human life.

After I had taken a passing glimpse of a few worlds belonging to this system, I proceeded to visit another world that revolves around Rigel at a distance of sixteen hundred million miles. It is a trifle larger than our world and is inhabited by only about one-tenth as many people.

This is the brightest planet I had ever seen, for it dazzled and sparkled like pearls of ice in the sun, and yet it gave forth no light of its own.

I soon learned the secret of all this scintillation. I had come to a world that seemed to be covered with diamonds and precious stones. The mountains were barren of all vegetation and glistened with all the glory of a hundred rainbows.

I presumed that I had come to immense beds of quartz, but the rare brilliancy of the