They took me to one of the other rings, inhabited by a still more peculiar people, for they had no heads at all. In place of that adornment, they had only one strong arm, at the end of which was a very small hand. Otherwise they were like ordinary mortals, if they had been dressed up. As it was, they were nothing but muscles, veins, and bones.
They had a heart shaped something like a transparent goose egg. They communicated with each other by the motions of the blood within this egg, which they detected by grasping the other fellow’s egg and feeling the blood bubble. They had no lungs, getting their vitality by absorption from the atmosphere. It was perfectly ludicrous to observe a number of these queer people laughing, and they seemed to be very merry. The ebullitions of the blood at such times was terrific, and they would twist that one arm in the oddest manner. I forgot to say they worked their machine, if I may use the term, on the hour-glass principle. The blood went from one side to the other through a hole in a middle partition, and when it all got into the lower compartment the hand would take hold of it and turn the other side up.
But I was not really astonished until I got onto the body of Saturn.
There I found a people very much like ourselves; in fact, in appearance they were just like ourselves; but they neither ate nor drank, and I was much at a loss to understand how they existed, as they seemed to possess all of the parts of a human body. Neither were they immortals; for they were very flashy in their habits and life generally.
I saw a number of these people standing in a line. Another one had a pump attached to a pipe that led into a pond filled with bright red liquid. As each one came up, he would insert the nozzle of his pump under his left arm and fill him up. I then learned that twice a day they had their hearts filled with new blood, which was found in numberless springs all over the surface of Saturn. By this frequent replenishing of the system with new blood all disease was avoided.
It occasionally happens there, so I was told, that a mischievous one would go to another part of the country and bring a little of the blood that was pumped into the servants or black people and pour it into the spring where the other people replenished. In that case the people who used this tainted spring would be spotted for a while, and so would the one who did it. As soon as the spots began to appear, by changing to another pure spring the blemishes would gradually disappear.
There were springs for all of the different animals, which seemed peculiar to me at first; but I learned that the different animals were the same people trying experiments upon themselves by using different kinds of blood.
One of the marvelous things about Saturn was the fact there was no night there, the luminosity of the rings being such as to keep it a perpetual day; hence the people never slept there.
Another fact that attracted my attention was there was no heat in the center of Saturn, and that it was all on the surface; therefore, there was no winter; just perpetual spring. The inhabitants told me Saturn was not old enough for the heat to have got down to the center; that it was a young planet; when the oldest inhabitant was a child it was not even necessary to inject blood into their hearts.
So I was satisfied that in all probability they would ultimately reach our state of perfection.