names, zey are scattered everywhere. Zey bring zemselves out easily by chemicals. La plupart are, as we say, inconnus; but others, of peoples and dirigible balloons, are easily interpreted. Weez such help, I breeng you a translation soon."
Less than a week later he 'phoned to say that the English version was ready; but we refused to accept it until he'd had it examined for readability by somebody with more knowledge than he of our great mother tongue. Three days later, as we were finishing an especially tempestuous game of cribbage, he arrived with the manuscript.
"Messieurs—zhentlemen," he said, his long hands cutting planes through the air, "attend not a great deal. I think yes zat you 'ave been w'at you call 'oaxed.”
He meant hoaxed. Perhaps we had been; for I noticed that he requested his pay before relinquishing the translation (a scandalous sum he charged, too; thank goodness that Corker, not I, had hired him), and left with murmured excuses immediately afterward.
I reproduce the substance of the metal roll without further preliminary.
Thirteenth Rotation, Year 12,076 of the Separation To the Lords of Colla and to their sons, Greeting:
Since I am but a simple-minded youth, who say what seems truth and say it clumsily, I trust that my lords will not take ill my periodic reports, of which this is the first, on the condition and attitudes of Womanland. As I am the first ambassador to the crater-capital of the western country since the wars concluding in the year 11,334 of the Separation, there are many things which are strange to me; and I shall inform you of them in due course.
My lords will remember from the ancient history of our globe that the males and females of the human race split into distinct nations shortly after the perfection of the parthogenesis, which occurred at the dawning of recorded history. An agreement was entered upon whereby human eggs were furnished the men, who incubated them ectogenically; and the two sexes lived for a time in peace, the males occupying the eastern and the females the western hemispheres of Luna. In that era our day occupied twenty-three rotations of Terra, our parent body. The period is now twenty-four; and Womanland astronomers estimate that within 1,000,000 years our rotation will be forced into accordance with our revolution, so that we shall present what is now the western hemisphere constantly to Terra.[1]
Since the less advanced men and women found difficulty in living contentedly without members of the opposite sex, raids between the two hemispheres became a commonplace, and finally led to a static state of war, which ceased a year since, when both nations discovered that they required all their energies for maintaining life in face of the swiftly lessening air supply and the unprecedented encroachment of termites and ants.
You have asked for a description of present-day women. On the whole, my lord, they bear little resemblance to our portraits and tapestries of their foremothers. In most instances superficial fatty matter has been modified or has disappeared alto-
- ↑ This has since become the case. A single rotation of the moon requires 29 d. 12 h. 44 m. 2 s. .8, or the exact length of the synodic month. It should be remembered that the sidereal month of 27 d. 7 h. 43 m. 11s.5 falis more than two earth days short of making a complete moon day.
