“We don’t need heat for our dwellings. Owing to the fact that our country is protected from all cold winds by the high cliffs around it, and that the earth crust is thin over the fires of the volcano below, the temperature remains about eighty the year round. Then, we don’t cook any crude, nasty food, as you humans do; so—”
“No, you live on pills,” Bob interjected, in a tone of scorn and disgust. “Bah!”
“So,” Fitz Mee went on smoothly, unheeding his comrade’s splenetic interruption, “all we need heat for is in running our factories. For that we bore down to the internal fire of the earth.”
“Well—well!” Bob ejaculated. “You do?”
“Yes.”
“Well, where are your factories, Fitz? I didn’t see anything that looked like factories when we got out of the balloon.”
“They’re all in caverns hewed in the cliffs.”
“And the fire you use comes from ’way down in the ground?”
“Yes.”
“And you light your factories with electric fireflies?”