Page:Life in a thousand worlds.djvu/44

 and at another the lava would run. Fate, with a merciless hand, was dragging each one into one or another of the inevitable pits."

"How many were saved?" I asked with deepening interest.

"Parts of only eight families aggregating nineteen human beings."

"And how many people are on the Moon now?"

"Almost forty million."

"How do you account for this slow growth?" I asked after I had explained that on our globe a much larger number of inhabitants sprang from a smaller number than nineteen in a shorter period of time.

This allusion cost me much explanation and, after I had selfishly brushed his rising questions aside, I learned that large companies of the Moonites had been swept into death by frequent volcanic outbursts all along the line of the centuries.

No one can estimate my interest as I continued the conversation. But finally I decided to stroll through certain parts of the city and, thinking it advisable to give no